It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a horde of the undead in possession of insatiable hunger for the brains of the living must be in want of a Jane Austin remix.(via) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies covers the same ground as the original masterpiece – only that ground is full freshly-vacated graves. The “strange…
When I sat down in the middle of January with an Arabic-language translator to look through Facebook, we found one new group with almost 2,000 members called “I’m sure I can find 1,000,000 members who hate Israel!!!” and another called “With all due respect, Gaza, I don’t support you,” which blamed Palestinian suffering on Hamas…
Yesterday at the opening meeting of “Media Lab” (a one-credit class that students take when they wish to get credit for working on the school paper), I told my students that I love print and I always will. I held up a printed copy of the school paper, told them it was a good issue…
He thinks that he will never see A poem lovely as a tree. But poems charm and poems please, And many are lovelier than “Trees.” A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast, Can hardly look at God all day, While lifting leafy arms to pray. Where are her eyes,…
The URL says it all. www.whitehouse.gov/blog Similar:It Costs So Much to Run ChatGPT That OpenAI Is Losing Money on $200 ChatGPT Pro Subscripti…I’m also thinking of the cost to the stu…AcademiaLeonard Nimoy, Spock of ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 83Leonard Nimoy, the sonorous, gaunt-faced…Current_EventsLotteries: America's $70 Billion ShameCan this be true? People spend more mone…BooksDevil's Due…
“The Zoo and the Carnegie Science Center are my two favorite places in the world!” chirps my daughter from the back of the van. “Can we go to the Science Center instead?” “No, honey, we’re driving to your penguin class,” I tell her. She grabs her brother’s arm. “Both of us?” she asks. “The two…
A wonderfully readable, thought-provoking article about the intersection between the worlds of words and computer programming — both ways of modeling and human capabilities, experiences, and desires. It used to be that we in English departments were fond of saying there was nothing outside of the text. Increasingly, though, texts take the form of worlds…
The Freytag Pyramid Concocted 146 years ago by a German philologist, Freytag’s pyramid was long held aloft as the one-size-fits-all narrative template, despite the fact that it describes the tidy Aristotelian side of storytelling (Ben-Hur) far better than its frayed quantum fringes (Memento). Techniques like open-ended conclusion, audience interactivity, and nonlinear chronology “were part of…
A snip from the Washington Post’s brief piece on how high-profile news magazines have changed along with journalism: Many of the recently laid-off staffers, Stengel says, “were people whose jobs really didn’t exist anymore.” Similar:The Secret Lives of Tumblr TeensThat feeling when you hit a million foll…CybercultureEach building in my #medievalyork simulation has four levels…
On October 10, 1765, an Annapolis printer changed his newspaper’s title to the Maryland Gazette, Expiring. Its motto: “In uncertain Hopes of a Resurrection to Life again.” Later that month, the printer of the Pennsylvania Journal replaced his newspaper’s masthead with a death’s-head and framed his front page with a thick black border in the…
The College Media Advisers issues a censure of Western Oregon University for firing its newspaper adviser in the wake of a student report that publicized a computer security breach. See the press release amd the letter of censure (PDF). Wickstrom’s firing followed the June 2007 Journal publication of a story concerning a university computer security…
Bring on the bongo drums and the black turtlenecks — this looks like fun. Students in a poetry class were asked to write their poetry on a piece of fruit, and then share their text with the class. Melanie stood holding her Cassaba melon like a globe or Yorick’s skull in her left hand and…
An informative tribute, from the BBC. It’s remarkable how many of the genre’s classic elements can be traced back to the feverishly fertile imagination of one man, Edgar Allan Poe. Once you start looking, the clues are everywhere. Edgar Allan Poe is best known for his gloomy gothic tales Born 200 years ago, on 19…
Educated Americans have a tendency to think that (i) intelligence can be directly assessed through the surrogate of compliance with the rules of Standard English grammar, and that (ii) compliance with the rules of Standard English grammar can be checked quickly and easily by glancing in Strunk and White’s brainless little pamphlet of 19th-century grammar…
Here’s an excerpt from an article that appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of the Seton Hill University alumni magazine, Forward. Page 1 | Page 2 Similar:30 years later, Sierra's Laura Bow mysteries are still a treasureWhen I was in college and grad school, a…CultureAffect (v. "to change") vs. Effect (n. "the result")I ran into…
I made this slide up for a conference presentation a few years ago. (Of course, it applies to the procrastinating professor, too.) Similar:Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers: Four MovesThe confirmation bias describes the very…AcademiaMS-Word's helpful "View -> Focus" mode delays stress-related breakdowns.You won’t usually catch me saying anythi…CybercultureStar Trek Graphic Design: Six journalists and surprising…
I’ve been using Google’s Picasa for years. It’s a very efficient tool for sorting, cropping, and otherwise tweaking images, and it’s integrated with Google’s online photo album and Google’s YouTube service, so it’s very convenient. It’s also behaving very strangely. After I updated recently to Picass 3, I notice that, every second the program is…
Ricardo Montalban (1920-2009). My kids know him as the grandfather in Spy Kids 2 and 3. Let’s hope they lay him to rest dressed in a spotless white suit, in a casket lined in soft, Corinthian leather. He will always be Captain Kirk’s finest foe, the would-be conqueror who first tried to steal the Enterprise…
There are no real details on the official site, but this is still worth watching. Legends of Zork, which is being published by Activision, is currently in beta with no official release date yet disclosed. Prospective players can join the beta at the game’s official website, as well as sign up for automated updates on…
Three teenage girls who allegedly sent nude or semi-nude cell phone pictures of themselves, and three male classmates in a Greensburg Salem High School who received them, are charged with child pornography. WPXI I’ve got nothing much to say about this, other than Seton Hill University is in Greensburg, so it’s likely some of my…