News I saw on theonering.net (via Slashdot) has LOTR fans unclenching their hairy, unshod toes and reaching for the tobacco jar: The two “Hobbit” films – “The Hobbit” and its sequel – are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, with pre-production beginning as soon as possible. Principal photography is tentatively set for a 2009 start, with…
I know what you’re thinking, but my story is that I’m gathering information for a research project on gender in science fiction. Yeah, that’s it. Similar:Gil Gerard (1943-2025) I built a model of the two-pronged Sta…CultureEx-Pope Benedict says the Selfish Gene is science fiction. He's half rightThe Selfish Gene is a brilliant phrase. …AcademiaProto iPads…
Advice from GameCareerGuide.com resembles what I tell my English literature majors about why they are expected to study and benefit from literary works that they might not choose to read for their own pleasure. (The same goes for students in my Video Game Culture and Theory course.) Before you begin down this path there is…
Anna L. Mallory (Roanoke Times): The game, a takeoff on programs popular before the Internet and Nintendo, blends social-networking and choose-your-own adventure tools. It allows players to not only play games but also create and share their own adventures in user-submitted fictional lands. Mallory also includes some quotes from former Infocom Imp Steve Meretzky on…
In Wired, Jenna Wortham focuses on what blogs typically look like to journalists. Blogs are re-shaping not just news and entertainment, but also publishing, politics and public relations. Robert Scoble, Microsoft’s most famous blogger, is widely credited with putting a human face on the giant company and facilitating an exchange between customer and corporation. Matt…
Filing this MetaFilter thread on movies about journalism. Similar:How journalists should handle racist words, images and violence in CharlottesvilleI have covered protests where people sho…Current_EventsNPR quits Twitter after being falsely labeled as 'state-affiliated media'NPR will no longer post fresh content to…BusinessSetonianThe first issue of the student paper is …Current_EventsDear readers: Please stop calling us ‘the…
The American Scholar: One of the students sticks his or her head out the passenger window and serenades — or accosts — the startled pedestrian with some passionately recited lines by Walt Whitman or Pablo Neruda. The kid pops back in, rolls up the window, and the van takes off in search of the next…
For Jorn Barger, who coined the word “weblog” in December of 1997, outbound links are key to the formula that makes a weblog useful to readers: 2. You can certainly include links to your original thoughts, posted elsewhere … but if you have more original posts than links, you probably need to learn some humility.…
Katie Haegele quotes Chris Joseph: “It seems most people these days equate literature with the novel, which is obviously a relatively recent form, and then judge all other literature by that standard, which is a terrible measure of digital literature,” Joseph said in an e-mail interview. “My feeling is that younger audiences already do accept…
I’m misquoted on your December press page. What I wrote was When students are writing about some areas of popular culture, user-authored sites such as Wikipedia and Urbandictionary, or game databases like MobyGames are actually far more useful than academic sources (which take months or even years to appear). http://jerz.setonhill.edu/weblog/permalink/banning-wikipedia-at-school-go/ But the quote appears as…
From the Google Blog, a preview of Google’s mashup of Wikipedia and About.com: The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names…
Blogged as a reference, for the next time I have to introduce students to semiotics (ytmnd.com). Similar:Academics work to detect ChatGPT and other AI writingToday I met a class of English majors wh…AcademiaHow to Annoy Your Parents (Smurfs, Tweety, Jar-Jar and Ewoks) http://www.youtube.com/wat…AmusingI have two scenes in a horror film. My head appears in…
Why does this happen? For some reason, perhaps the oddity of ordering milk from an online bookseller, has attracted a large number of spoof reviews — Lovecraft, Coleridge, romances, haiku. Here’s a bit of Tuscan Whole Milk flash fiction: This milk was so good, I passed out. When I woke up 3 weeks later, apes…
movabletype.org As of today, and forever forward, Movable Type is open source. This means you can freely modify, redistribute, and use Movable Type for any purpose you choose. This is a good thing. MT had previously had a policy that you could make changes to the code but you couldn’t redistribute those changes. MT has…
Yahoo! | AFP: The Greek myth that ancient Spartans threw their stunted and sickly newborns off a cliff was not corroborated by archaeological digs in the area, researchers said Monday. Like the myth about lemmings hurling themselves to their death, this new detail, found from a study of bones found iat the base of the…
News.com.au Det-Sgt Jeff Maher of the homicide squad confirmed that a Google Earth satellite mapping van had been filming the area for up to a week. He said the images captured by satellite could hold some clues to the gruesome murder. “They (Google Earth) have had a van in the area for the last week,”…
Yahoo | Reuters “w00t,” an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary. Similar:2020, In One Photo. ("Come join us!")AmusingWhy I Was Wrong About Liberal-Arts MajorsIt’s a little bit shallow and solipsisti…AcademiaSchiller schools internet on correct Apple device plurals, but…
Karissa sent me this story from Macworld: Eight consumer and public-interest groups filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, saying mobile phone providers should not be able to block text messages from political groups and advertisers. […] If the FCC grants the petition, it would open up mobile phone networks to millions of…
Footage from a NASA camera, via CBS: Similar:She doesn't have keys or a phone or an ID. Why does my tween need a purse?To stash her Lemonheads and Smarties. ht…AmusingApocalypse Rising #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 1) Sisko Infiltrates a Klingon…Rewatching ST:DS9 Worf and O’Brien wa…MediaLeftovers from the food my colleagues brought in to…
Doris Lessing doesn’t like those silly bloggers one bit, as interpreted here via commentary from Ars Technica: Computers and the Internet and the television have wrought a revolution on ways of thinking and spending leisure time, and Lessing doesn’t believe that society as a whole has really thought through the implications of these changes. “And…