Douglas Engelbart gave an earth-shaking demo 40 years ago today. The presentation included the debut of the computer mouse, which Engelbart used to control an onscreen pointer in exactly the same way we do today. For a world used to thinking of computers as impersonal boxes that read punched cards, whir awhile, then spit out…
Harvard redesigns its English major, removing required entry-level surveys and sophomore seminars. In their place, courses in the four new categories–“Arrivals,” “Poets,” “Diffusions,” and “Shakespeares”–would interweave literary history with textual analysis. At a gathering for prospective concentrators on Tuesday, English professor Stephen J. Greenblatt said that these courses will most likely be small seminars. […]…
“It was on the third night that we found out that the octopus Otto was responsible for the chaos. “We knew that he was bored as the aquarium is closed for winter, and at two feet, seven inches Otto had discovered he was big enough to swing onto the edge of his tank and shoot out the 2000…
A new generation of wired politicos will give journalists much fodder for scandal, but isn’t this making it a bit too easy for them? Incoming Obama administration director of speechwriting Jon Favreau (L) and a friend pose with a cardboard cutout of incoming Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a party. (Obtained by The…
Editing, like sending thank-you cards, is one of those things that everyone acknowledges is a good idea but few people do. It takes time and you don’t reap much reward, certainly not equivalent to the time. There is probably not enough attention to teaching writing in graduate school, but at least you have plenty of…
China continued to be world’s worst jailer of journalists, a dishonor it has held for 10 consecutive years. Cuba, Burma, Eritrea, and Uzbekistan round out the top five jailers from among the 29 nations that imprison journalists. Each of the top five nations has persistently placed among the world’s worst in detaining journalists. At least 56 online journalists are jailed worldwide,…
Assess thyself, lest ye be assessed. That’s a line I had drafted for inclusion in the English program review. (One of my colleagues suggested we shorten that to just “Assess thyself.”) We requested funding to bring an assessment expert to campus, to hold a workshop for the English faculty. Inside Higher Ed has an article…
“Anchors and journalists have become part of self-reverential celebrity culture. Everything goes back to ‘me.’ It’s driven somewhat by technological and economical change. Still, I haven’t seen them pulled kicking and screaming into this,” said Robert Lichter, director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University. “Anchors can be bigger stars…
More and more users are spending more and more time on social networking sites, but the study found they aren’t very responsive to ads there: Clickthrough rates were reported to be far lower than at other sites. On the web in general, nearly 80 percent of users clicked on at least one ad in the…
I read the blurb for this article four or five times, trying to figure out what it was about. The effects of addition can lay whole families to waste… (Register) I should think that subtraction causes more stress on the family unit than addition, and disagreements over multiplication can probably cause division. You never know……
“The message behind every movie and book, behind every theme park and T-shirt is that our children’s world needs Disney,” he says. “So they absolutely must go to see the next Disney movie, which we’ll also want to give them on DVD as a birthday present. “They will be happier if they live the full…
In the past, I have pointed out copy-editing weaknesses at Story Book Forest at Idlewild Park, in southwestern PA. When I was last there, shortly before Halloween, my son stopped in his tracks and said, “They repainted the Little Miss Muffet Sign!” And he was right… they repainted some of the signs. Just now, when…
My family saw the American Family Theater‘s production of Babes in Toyland this morning. Barnaby the Bumbling Villain, sneering from under a painted-on handlebar mustache as he gloats over his possession of the widow’s mortgage, pursues the heroes to Toyland. There, after much stock-character humor (cunning disguises, stunning surprises… lovers divided get coincided) the climax…
“It might surprise parents to learn that it is not a waste of time for their teens to hang out online,” said Mizuko Ito, University of California, Irvine researcher and the report’s lead author. “There are myths about kids spending time online – that it is dangerous or making them lazy. But we found that…
As a professor, I collaborate with other authors all the time. But I rarely assign collaborative writing assignments. I often ask students to critique each other’s papers or beta-releases, but that’s not the same thing as having them collaborate to create a single, coherent document. I’m teaching a literary criticism class next term. The last…
Young people around the world are learning, in their pre-teen years, to use tools like Game Maker, Click & Play, Stagecast Creator and others to build simple games. As they move into their teens and twenties kids learn to master and use Flash, modding tools, and even sophisticated tools like C++, game engines and graphics…
A federal jury delivered a mixed verdict today convicting a Missouri mother of misdemeanor charges in a nationally watched cyber-bullying case in which the woman was accused of using a fake MySpace account to torment a teenage girl who later committed suicide. The jurors, however, rejected more serious felony charges against Lori Drew, 49, who…
And then there was light — and it was powered by the sun. The Vatican on Wednesday activated a new solar energy system and announced an ambitious plan that could one day make it an alternative energy exporter. The massive roof of the “Nervi Hall” where popes hold general audiences and concerts are performed, has…
Jason Scott has started a new blog that will discuss the progress of his documentary, GET LAMP. Here’s a good entry on the contents of Steve Meretzky’s basement. As part of the GET LAMP project, I’ve been collecting artifacts and images throughout the commercial heydays of text adventures, and nobody got bigger than Infocom in…
My AT&T long-distance calling card ran out of minutes, so I decided to try to renew it. I checked the website and saw these terms: Minute value applies to state-to-state calling only. A surcharge not to exceed 10 minutes applies to U.S. pay phone calls, a portion of which compensates pay phone providers. One minute…