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…
A poll is just a starting point for discussion, not an ending point that proves any one argument. With that in mind… Results indicate that the Internet is the most trusted news source among all age groups, and overall, more trusted than newspapers and television news combined. FOX News is the most trusted news source…
Via a thought-provoking Metafilter item: The only way to save journalism is to develop a new model that finds profit in truth, vigilance, and social responsibility. The old model was beautifully simple. A newspaper publisher in a monopoly market in the twentieth century was like those counts of Savoy who built a castle on the…
How long has this been around? I just noticed it. Google’s user interface is so streamlined that any change at all is noteworthy. I haven’t had the chance to play with it. I’m not sure how much I want my own biases to affect Google’s search results, so I’m going to have to read up…
Lively.com will be discontinued at the end of December, and everyone who has worked on the project will then move on to other teams. We’d encourage all Lively users to capture your hard work by taking videos and screenshots of your rooms. I never did get around to sampling Lively, since the initial reviews I…
Great little feature from the Chronicle Here are some of the things you learn when you participate in a Milton marathon: Milton is not as boring as you think. Paradise Lost has something for everyone: Hot but innocent sex! (You thought Adam and Eve spent all their time in Eden gardening?) Descriptions of hellfire that…
It’s pretty cool to see a Chronicle of Higher Education blog covering text games: It’s noon and you’ve still got 1,000 words to type. That might not seem like much, but it’s been months since you’ve last worked on your dissertation and distractions are plentiful. To make matters worse, your girlfriend, Violet, says she’s out…
I’m willing to give the new Star Trek a chance. I loved Babylon 5 during its initial run, and I’m intrigued by the possibility of a re-imagined Trek. Similar:Don’t Want to Fall for Fake News? Don’t Be LazyFake news is not a problem caused by tho…CultureThe posthuman liberal artsAs those familiar with the liberal arts…
[G]ames are inherently about exploration, in the abstract sense of discovering strategies and options, seeing how rules interact and so on. And yes, you can summon screenshots of Warhammer halls bigger than the Taj Mahal, or mountain vistas in Lord of the Rings Onlinethe Other: societies wholly different from mine, cultures built on assumptions so…
Wired reviews Mirror’s Edge When you run, you see your hands pumping up and down in front of you. When you jump, your feet briefly jut up into eyeshot — precisely as they do when you’re vaulting over a hurdle in real life. And when you tuck down into a somersault, you’re looking at your…
The votes have been tabulated, and we have our winners! Congratulations to the top three games, Violet, Nightfall, and Everybody Dies, as well as to all authors for entering. And a big note of thanks to everyone who judged the games. The full results are available below. (IF Comp 08) See the results page. Similar:"Godspell"…
Motringate? Mommygate? An ad on the Motrin home page, aimed at moms who carry their babies in slings, has upset hordes of mom-bloggers who use the social networking service Twitter. The best analysis I’ve seen so far is by Joyce Schwartz (known for coming up with the idea of putting missing kids on milk cartons),…
Two positions. Assistant Professor of Composition Institution: Seton Hill University Location: Greensburg, PA Category: Faculty – Liberal Arts – English and Literature Posted: 11/10/2008 Application Due: Open Until Filled Type: Full Time Seton Hill University invites applications for an Assistant Professor position in Composition, beginning fall, 2009. The faculty member will teach first-year composition courses,…
A new study by sociologists at the University of Maryland concludes that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as “very happy” spend more time reading and socializing. The study appears in the December issue of the journal Social Indicators Research. Analyzing 30-years worth of national data from time use studies and…
Fiction – including poetry – should be taken just as seriously as facts-based research, according to the team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics (LSE). Novels should be required reading because fiction “does not compromise on complexity, politics or readability in the way that academic literature sometimes does,” said Dr Dennis Rodgers from Manchester University’s Brooks World Poverty…
I heard about Bloxorz this afternoon at a meeting. This evening, I came down to the study where my kids were playing Lego Indiana Jones for the umpteenth time, and without any fuss, started playing Bloxorz on the laptop. Within thirty seconds, my six-year-old daughter was begging to play it. Within two minutes, my ten-year-old…
On the morning of Nov. 10, 1938, Fritz Ottenheimer was awakened by an explosion that shook his bed. Ottenheimer was just 13 then — a boy living in Konstanz, Germany. And he was a Jew. — Jennifer Reeger, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Last night, my son and I attended Seton Hill’s Kristallnacht memorial service. It’s generally a…
Nasa says its Phoenix lander on the surface of Mars has gone silent and is almost certainly dead. | Engineers have not heard from the craft since Sunday 2 November when it made a brief communication with Earth.| Phoenix, which landed on the planet’s northern plains in May, had been struggling in the increasing cold…