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:Taking Harassment Seriously Requires Serious DistinctionsEditor and columnist Jonah…
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:Gettysburg Address event marks 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s historic speechOn the Civil War battlefield where Presi…CultureEmily Dickinson Manuscript for "The Chariot"A new Emily Dickinson archive is online….CultureAnother section of a #steampunk control panel. Useful for a cutaway…
Modern recreation of the 1958 video game “Tennis for Two” (Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories) Similar:Lighten Up (an illustrator explores the racial politics of skin color in comics)Lighten Up — The Nib — Medium.Aestheticsink: Inkle's open source scripting language for writing interactive narrativeGearing up to teach “Digital Storytellin…CybercultureWhy We Dug AtariGame collectors have their story, too.…
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…
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:Farewell Internet Explorer: You Weren't All BadThe main reason I still dislike Internet…BusinessSnow White: The Musical Opens Fridayhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiIRCoHoN…AestheticsWhat's next in game narrative, with Emily Short Something that I…
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:Adding detail to a #steampunk…
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…
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…
From the New York Times blog, The Lede: In the four-missile version of the image released Wednesday by Sepah News, the media arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, two major sections (encircled in red) appear to closely replicate other sections (encircled in orange). (Illustration by The New York Times; photo via Agence France-Presse) Latest update at…
From Shelly Weaver (of Seton Hill’s entrepreneurial center), a brief introductory article. On the subject of social networking, what you don’t know can hurt you. These networks create opportunities for businesses that would not previously have been conceivable. One avenue to approach is to follow blogs and ‘doers’ in your industry as well as that…
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…