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 According to Ian Bogost, a time will come when the concept of “the gamer” is obsolete.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:Reading should not carry a health warningThis is probably the first time in histo…AcademiaI'm really enjoying seeing how my students are responding to Hamlet.As…
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…
A 2001 article from the Columbia Journalism Review… blogging it because one of my journalism courses this fall will focus on election coverage. What’s sure is that TV’s election night practices are in for significant reupholstery well before the 2002 races. Several networks promise they’ll project winners in the future only when all polls have…
I tell my free-verse-loving creative writing majors that Picasso learned to paint traditional portraits before he chose to put two eyes on one side of a figure’s nose. Likewise, learning the traditional rules of grammar will make your writing more powerful, since if you choose to ignore a convention, it will be a deliberate action,…
Rather than link directly to the article, which was published by the Associated Press (an organization that tries to charge bloggers for quoting excerpts of more than a few words), I’ll link to the Slashdot discussion of the article. Similar:Student Journalists Are Our Future—We Should Start Treating Them Like ItCatherine Palmer was already a seasoned…
The other day at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, I attended a brown bag talk given by my Seton Hill colleague, Maureen Vissat, The Art of the 1940s: Styles and Influences. I had seen her present as part of a series of teaching demonstrations, so I knew her talk would be excellent. She wove…
Fascinating stuff… according to CNN, the story is, in order to secure the release of 15 hostages, the Colombian military set up a fake website that borrowed heavily from a real organization’s identity. The organization’s logo — a stylized red bird on a white background in the centermost of three concentric circles, with blue leaves…
From the L Magazine. Some are actually just unfortunate art, but the whole list was worth it for this one:In addition to the usage error, I particularly like how the highlights on the drops of blood seem to be made by a light shining *up* from the lower right. Okay, and this next one is…
A great introduction to some of the reasons why I love studying the English language. From John McIntyre’s You Don’t Say. The malapropism: This venerable category of errors derives from the delicious and eponymous Mrs. Malaprop from Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals of 1775. Mrs. Malaprop (from the French mal a propos) pretentiously and unknowingly…
ZDNet: Researchers at software vendor CA have discovered that social networking site Facebook is able to track the buying habits of its users on affiliated third-party sites even when they are logged out of their account or have opted out of its controversial “Beacon” tracking service. Similar:Gawker Media Files for Chapter 11 BankruptcyThis is fallout…
On a listserv of which I’m a member, Jerome McDonough points out that Tennis for Two is an analog game, so not only does it not require a computer, the medium itself — an oscilloscope — is an analog, so the information being represented on the screen isn’t digital at all. An even earlier game,…
Every year, the Army recruits, at great expense, tens of thousands of young men and women. Given the costs of recruitment (and the dearth of eligible recruits), the Army cannot afford to lose many of these new soldiers. Army training is designed to take recruits who may know nothing about military life, discipline, or maneuvers,…
Threat Level has a story on the McCain campaign’s tracking of the Obama website. Nothing really new about the practice, and nothing stunning about the revelation that the Obama camp sometimes updates its website (gasp!), but what’s unusual is that instead of independent pundits doing this in their pajamas from their living rooms, this is…
One of my favorite things — a photograph of a mistake on a sign. From Language Log. Similar:Traces of ScribesBook historian Irene O’Daly notes that t…AcademiaTo Learn More, This High-Schooler Left The ClassroomNick Bain, 17, was in class one day when…CultureReading Game/Text: EverQuest, Alienation, and Digital Communitiesthough Limbaugh is wrong to decide that …CybercultureThe Boat…
Modern recreation of the 1958 video game “Tennis for Two” (Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories) Similar:What if Generative AI turned out to be a Dud?I’m sad thinking of all the students who…BusinessThe Ongoing Obsession with Shakespeare’s True IdentityI’ve never been all too keen on Shakespe…AcademiaYou're not going to read thisI ask my students to contextualize links…BusinessMy…
The Boston Globe: We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life’s greatest luxuries — one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing mere survival. To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one.…
You won’t find this sort of thing on the TV news shows. Stanley Fish: Milton’s poetry never lets you relax. Even when one of the famous similes wanders down what appears to be a desultory path of mythical allusions and idealized landscapes, it always returns you in the end to the moral perspective that had…
Employees of the New York Times are expected to follow these guidelines for ethical online activity. B5. Web Pages and Web Logs 126. Web pages and Web logs (the online personal journals known as blogs) present imaginative opportunities for personal expression and exciting new journalism. When created by our staff or published on our Web…