I remember when I was deeply involved in working on my dissertation, I would have dreams in which I was reading an academic article, and I grew frustrated because the text on the page would keep changing — apparently my dreaming mind didn’t have a buffer big enough to store that much text all at…
Google’s version of Second Life, as explained for the benefit of an audience that isn’t expected to know anything about virtual worlds (NYT). Google unveiled the new product in a post on its official blog — its characteristically understated way of introducing new features to the world. It can be reached at www.lively.com but is…
Rosemary sends me this link from PhillyBurbs.com: About 600 students are enrolled at Pennsylvania Learners Online, a cyber charter school where online gym is a requirement, and 12 others are enrolled in a program called e-Cademy to make up a failed credit. Rich Campsie, who teaches physical education at e-Cademy and at Pennsylvania Learners Online, said he works with students…
I’m not usually interested in sports, but this sounds fantastic: chess boxing. Berlin is home to the world’s biggest chess boxing club with some 40 members and it is in an old freight station here that the two men settled the matter early yesterday. The match began over a chess board set up on a…
This Wired article also mentions the Canadian Roberts variation. When I was living in Canada, I remember being annoyed at having to buy special screwdrivers for furniture that I bought there. I actually came across a set of Roberts power tool heads that someone had thrown into a gutter. True story. The Phillips screw and…
I just saw Wall-E with the family. It’s rare for me to suggest that we all go see a movie — my wife is the cinema buff. But I had read outstanding reviews, and it is a Pixar film, so I went in with high expectations, and was satisfied. It didn’t knock my socks off;…
Active verbs form more efficient and more powerful sentences than passive verbs. This document will teach you why and how to prefer active verbs. (Active and Passive Verbs) I’m slowly rolling out a new template for my online handouts. For years, I’ve been using Dreamweaver to manage my academic website, but I don’t have a…
This list from Mark Potts (of “Recovering Journalist) is just the thing I needed in order to motivate me to ask my students to think of the online version of the paper as the primary product, and the print version a useful offshoot. (At present, the reverse is true.) What would you do if you…
Wilfred M. McClay: The humanities are imprecise by their very nature. But that does not mean they are a form of intellectual Âfinger-Âpainting. The knowledge they convey is not a rough, preliminary substitute for what psychology, chemistry, molecular biology, and physics will eventually resolve with greater finality. They are an accurate reflection of the subject…
Language Log has a good post on a phrase that I’ve seen cropping up increasingly in journalism: Person of interest, called a “euphemism for a suspect” by the National Association of Police Chiefs, is now routinely used in investigations of all types, from murders to brush fires. Donna Shaw, writing in the American Journalism Review…
Online University Reviews has posted an entry guaranteed to generate some in-bound link traffic. There are many sites I’d never heard of before. Academics are flocking to the Internet like never before, particularly to start a blog. Faculty members in colleges across the world are connecting with people on a whole new level. Let’s face…
Great news for fans of robot history and cinema history: Last Tuesday Paula Félix-Didier travelled on a secret mission to Berlin in order to meet with three film experts and editors from ZEITmagazin. The museum director from Buenos Aires had something special in her luggage: a copy of a long version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis,…
From MetaFilter, which is better known as a link filter, comes this detailed story about one small but important part of the Battle of Gettysburg. They smash into the oncoming lines and stop the Southern charge, but their success proves their undoing. As they push the center of the rebel lines back, the wings enfold…
It’s been several years since I attempted a redesign of my curricular website, which holds trusty old handouts, some of which I tweak on a regular basis, and some of which I haven’t touched in years. I’ve been thinking a lot about navigation and layout, especially now that most people’s computer monitors have fairly high…
Beyond balancing difficulty is the simple question of whether it serves any purpose in the game at all. Back at the Pickford blog, another article goes into the various game design options that let a player break down the difficulty at their own pace. Although these games still utilize difficulty to a certain extent, there…
I’m fairly proud of myself because last week I did something I’ve been wanting to do for years… I made little tiny icons, and put them in the right place on my two main websites. Now you should see them in your browser bookmarks and tabs. Incidentally, I love what Firefox 3 does to the…
I’m not a big fan of SHU’s content-management system, Jenzabar, but because the service was recently overhauled and upgraded, I thought I’d give it another chance. How frustrating — the site breaks the “go back” button. Every time you try to go back, it dumps you into a general screen, and of course then you…
Fantastic narrated slide show on the impact of drugs on a community. Striking black and white images, with an equally powerful interface. (Brenda Ann Kenneally.) Similar:The Adversary #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 3, Episode 22) A Changeling saboteur uses the…Rewatching ST:DS9 The cold opening ha…MediaMy colleague @crissycp offers warm soda bread and tea every year, as…
Look who‘s up there with Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper: Famous women programmers are Adele Goldberg, who worked at Xerox PARC laboratory and wrote a number of SmallTalk books, Grace Hopper, a pioneer in the field who wrote the first compiler, Ada Lovelace, credited as being the first programmer, Emily Short, who played a major…
Inside Higher Ed goes to hell. Job Listing #666. University of Hell at Seventh Circle. Visiting Assistant Professor, two years (with possibility of converting to tenure-track position at culmination of two-year appointment). Beginning September 2009. Teaching load of forty-three courses per semester, with no more than thirty-nine preparations (i.e. instructor will teach more than one…