McSweeney’s: Horatio thinks he saw a ghost. Hamlet thinks it’s annoying when your uncle marries your mother right after your dad dies. The king thinks Hamlet’s annoying. Laertes thinks Ophelia can do better. Hamlet’s father is now a zombie. Thanks for the suggestion, Mike. (Twitter would probably catch the back-and-forth spirit of a drama a…
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I think the lack of respect for math and science is one of the largest unacknowledged problems in today’s society. And it starts in the academy — somehow, we have moved to a place where people can consider themselves educated while remaining ignorant of remarkably basic facts of…
From a 2007 report on liberal education, by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World Through study in the sciences and mathematics, social sciences,humanities, histories, languages, and the arts Focused by engagement with big questions, both contemporaryand enduring Intellectual and Practical Skills, Including Inquiry and analysis…
The headline writer was having an off day, but the content — a thoughtful examination of the trolling subculture — is excellent. NYT Magazine. In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups.…
In today’s landscape, defining “the media” isn’t nearly as clear-cut as it used to be. Big-name newspapers and networks mingle with cable channels, all-purpose Web sites and blogs in the minds of the average news consumer, and for good reason: They are, in many cases, converging, with widely read blogs run by newspapers and online…
It was intersting to see online political discourse (with a case study on the Kerry-Edwards attempt to build a blog presence in 2004) and a history of the internet filtered through a folklorist’s lens. I’m saving this in case I need ever need to update some of the insights found in the older, classic, historical…
A good feature from the New York Times: Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the…
27 Aug 2019 — Updated with a fresh link. Similar:I create five color variations of each #blender3d building I #design, and each of those ha…I create five color variations of each #…AestheticsRivals (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 11) A charming entrepreneur opens a casi… Rewatching ST:DS9 A man in a fanc…AmusingThis is what an…
Interesting observations on the internet’s response to the death of Randy (“The Last Lecture”) Pausch. You interacted with Randy through a little box embedded in a webpage. Your headphones piped his voice clear and strong into the center of your brain, almost as if some deep part of your own mind was delivering his nuggets…
If you want to label me retrofuturistic so I can fit into your compartmentalized worldview, that’s fine. But look past my airplane goggles. This is my lifestyle. While many of my kind doubt there’ll be a complete societal collapse in the future, a near-cataclysm is likely. In this scenario, I will be able to repair…
Jimmy Maher offers a provocative editorial in the latest issue of the Society for the Promotion of Adventure Games newsletter. Galatea excites admiration, interest, even a certain amount of awe, and all of it richly deserved. However, it seems to excite very little love. Nor does it seem to inspire its player to grapple with…
When you die, would you rather be remembered as a technology hack who annoyed millions and forced them to waste time by weeding through torrents of junk e-mail, or a brilliant teacher who inspired millions to treasure every moment of the time they have left? According to police, Edward Davidson, the “spam king” whose wife…
Blogging yet another story that reminds young fans of social networking sites that their profiles may be more public than they think. WashPo “I know for a fact that when a superintendent in Missouri was interviewing potential teachers last year, he would ask, ‘Do you have a Facebook or MySpace page?’ ” said Todd Fuller,…
Thanks, Becca, for forwarding this link about how the American newspaper has changed in the past three years. Last semester my journalism students did a unit on community journalism, and they wrote long features that were destined for our new summer-orientation and fall welcome-back issues. So I was aware of some of the changes observed…
Steampunk is one of my guilty pleasures… I think of it more of an asthetic than a literary movement, and I own neither a pair of aviator goggles nor a wind-up pocketwatch. Nevertheless, it happens that at this moment in another window I’m rendering a 3D view of an brass-and-glass spaceship ethership that features in…
As traditional news organizations face increasing pressure to cut back on investigative reporting and depend more heavily on celebrity and puff pieces (cheap to produce, attractive to advertisers, accessible to a mass audience), Dan Gillmor suggests that advocacy groups such as the ACLU have an opportunity to fill the gap. If only they were fairer…
Does anybody today say — without shame — that their hobby is watching TV? Or listening to the radio? These media are so deeply entrenched in our society that we barely think of them. According to Ian Bogost, a time will come when the concept of “the gamer” is obsolete. Not because games will be…
How did WarGames become the geek-geist classic that legitimized hacker culture, minted the nerd hero — and maybe even changed American defense policy? Related question: Shall we play a game? —Wired Similar:Understanding the difference between credible information and propagandaIn the context of my role as a teacher i…CultureNYT: G.W. Bush is "super-overexposed" and "so far…
Former editors protest and lament the discontinuation of a literary staple: The dismantling of the Sunday Book Review section and the migration of a few surviving reviews to the Sunday Calendar section represents a historic retreat from the large ambitions which accompanied the birth of the section. To be sure, no section of any newspaper…
Thanks for the link, Neha. Inside Higher Ed has a good article on the place of composition within the field of English studies. I have no interest in the now clichéd grumblings over English departments and their esoteric if not onanistic engagement in high-octane literary theory. I will only say that there is merit to…