www.whitehouse.gov/blog

The URL says it all. www.whitehouse.gov/blog Similar:BlewsMicrosoft researchers discuss Blews, whi…CybercultureDisruptions: Texting Your Feelings, Symbol by SymbolBeing a word-oriented thinker, I don’t h…AestheticsWood pile stacking animation (Blender 3D)For a medieval project, I wanted a wood …AmusingFriday 21st March 2025, the sun set on the British Empire for the first time in 200 yearsThis the sunlight…

Socialization at the Zoo

“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…

Hello Worlds: Why humanities students should learn to program

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…

Scott Brown on Why Hollywood Needs a New Model for Storytelling

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…

Time's and Newsweek's Survival Strategy After Recent Cutbacks

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:What's a Snollygoster? Even lexicographers are wrong sometimesThis is an amusing little story about ho…CultureThomas Jefferson on "newspapers without government" vs "government…

The Day the Newspaper Died

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 DNA of detection

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…

Presidential inaugurals: the form and the content

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…

New Media Journalism Professor Uncovers Source Code — And Source Cave — of Forerunner to Modern Computer Adventure Games

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:Dozens of Plagiarism Incidents Are Reported in Coursera's Free Online Courses”If we really are trying to teach the wo…AcademiaThe Royale (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 12)Rewatching Star Trek: The…

Authority and the Procrastinating Student

I made this slide up for a conference presentation a few years ago. (Of course, it applies to the procrastinating professor, too.) Similar:Advice to First Year College Students on Freshman CompFull disclosure… I have marked AP Engl…AcademiaDon’t Text While Parenting — It Will Make You CrankyThe study summarized in Time Magazine lo…CultureIn September, 2001 I…

Pre-golden Age: The Coolest Robots of Pre-Golden Age SF

Forget WALL-E and GORT. Forget sexy Summer Glau and Tricia Helfer in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Battlestar Galactica. OK, don’t forget them. But check it out: Long before Autobots, Fembots, and the Urkelbot, PGA SF authors obsessed over electricity-, steam-, and clockwork-powered machine-men or “robots” (a term introduced in 1921) that might free…

At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard

At M.I.T., two introductory courses are still required — classical mechanics and electromagnetism — but today they meet in high-tech classrooms, where about 80 students sit at 13 round tables equipped with networked computers. Instead of blackboards, the walls are covered with white boards and huge display screens. Circulating with a team of teaching assistants,…