Language Log » Temporally speaking

One of my favorite things — a photograph of a mistake on a sign. From Language Log. Similar:Star Trek Personality Test –Star Trek Personality Test Apparentl…AmusingIn June, 2002, I was blogging about… a female autistic scholars lament, Dr. Seuss, Ortho…In June, 2002, I was blogging about …AcademiaDisruptions: Texting Your Feelings, Symbol by SymbolBeing a word-oriented…

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories – Resurrecting Tennis for Two, a video game from 1958

Modern recreation of the 1958 video game “Tennis for Two” (Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories) Similar:Waiting for a talk on preserving artifacts from NASA’s Apollo program So much to see at the Heinz History Ce…CultureWill ChatGPT Kill the Student Essay? Universities Aren’t Ready for the Answer | The WalrusI’m still grappling with exactly how the…AcademiaYour Frustration…

The joy of boredom

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.…

Octopodes!

If the following line doesn’t get you reading The Steampunk Home, nothing will: I can think of two steampunk references to octopodes. Thanks for the link, Rosemary. Similar:R Grammar Gaffes Ruining The Language? Maybe Not : NPRMatthew Gordon, a linguist at the Univer…CultureGoogle Books ruled legal in massive win for fair use (updated)Update in a…

How to Write with Style

From a collection of writings by Kurt Vonnegut. Read the full text of the essay, which is summarized (by Vonnegut) as follows: 1. Find a subject you care about2. Do not ramble, though3. Keep it simple4. Have guts to cut5. Sound like yourself6. Say what you mean7. Pity the readers Similar:Last event of a busy…

iPhone news, Adventure, Pocket Gamer

I came across this brief article in Pocket Gamer. I don’t have an iPhone, so I can’t check out this version of the game.  The 1977 date for the Don Woods expansion is correct, but (“[s]ources that incorrectly date Crowther’s original to 1972 or 1974… are sourced thinly if at all. The new evidence establishes…

GameSetWatch – COLUMN: 'The Aberrant Gamer – Auto-Neurotic Asphyxiation'

Leigh Alexander makes some good points in this GameSetWatch article. Most lifetime gamers, then, have a built-in bias engine, whether they acknowledge it or not. For some, it’s much more conscious and overt – hence the “Fanboy” network of platform-specific sites, hence forum flamewars, hence almost frighteningly irrational ire over certain reviews. Most reviewers dread…

Pa. students enrolling in online gym classes

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…

Chess boxers slug it out

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…

The Burden of the Humanities

Wilfred M. McClay: The humanities are imprecise by their very nature. But that does not mean they are a form of intellectual ­finger-­painting. 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…