"w00t" crowned word of year by U.S. dictionary – Yahoo! News

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:Do television and electronic games predict children’s psychosocial adjustment?Wow… what a drab, unquoteworthy, unsou…Academia35% of my site visitors right now are using mobile devicesThis year I have…

Spider Attacks Space Shuttle

Footage from a NASA camera, via CBS: Similar:Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance, lost since 1915, is found off Antarctica An expedition that set out in search of…AwesomeFCC Approves Net Neutrality Rules For 'Open Internet'Verizon and Comcast lobbyists hang their…BusinessCNN Profiles Former White House "Chief Calligrapher"Today was the last day of the manuscript…AestheticsSpace Shuttle Challenger (Destroyed 28…

Nobel winner blames cultural decline on "blogging and blugging"

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…

Frotzophone

Adam Parrish: The Frotzophone is an interface for making music with interactive fiction. The topography simulated in the game is used to generate sound, as is the player’s path through the game. A Frotzophone “performance” looks just like playing a text adventure; but in addition to playing a game, you’re also playing music. Here’s a…

Battle of New Orleans

This morning when my nine-year-old son got up, he buried his nose in a book on the War of 1812, and every so often he shared some detail: “Did you know the British liked to shoot together? They would say, ‘Ready! Aim! Fire!’”  He knew that the Battle of New Orleans was a decisive American…

The Cult of Kindle

ZDNet explores the public reaction to Amazon’s new e-book reader. I don’t usually judge things by how they look but this thing, in my opinion, is ugly in a way that I thought was exclusive to the Zune. Weighing up the pros and cons, I’d come to the conclusion that the Kindle has already hit…

Facebook Founder Sorry For Bad Job With Beacon

Heh. Lightweight. That’s funny. Via Information Week. Zuckerberg said that when Facebook considered Beacon it hoped to let people share information across sites with their friends. He said it had to be clear and easy to control, while also being “lightweight so it wouldn’t get in people’s way as they browsed the Web.” Similar:Ground-nesting Yellowjacket…

Oxford University Fines Students For Facebook 'Flour' Photos — Social Networking

Information Week: One of the most prestigious U.K. universities has begun to scan the social networking sites seeking snapshots and other evidence of misbehavior that qualifies for formal disciplinary action. Students at Oxford University are outraged that school leaders are scanning Facebook and disciplining students based on what they find there. Similar:ALL ABOUT 'ARCHIE' -…

Here Comes Another Bubble – The Richter Scales

Similar:Candy Land Was Invented for Polio Wards It is a game absent strategy, requi…AestheticsMy 1951 day DuoLingo streak was fun, but… Ever since DuoLingo announced it…BusinessQ-Less (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 6) Shenanigans with Vash and QRewatching ST:DS9 In the teaser, Bash…DesignOpinion | Fake News Comes to AcademiaThe three academics call themselves “lef…AcademiaLiberal Arts…

Caught in the Web

Inside Higher Ed offers short stories on two student papers that are struggling to keep their administrations at bay: At Oklahoma State University, the editors of the Daily O’Collegian, the more than 80-year-old campus newspaper, have for several weeks refused to let the articles they write for the print publication appear on ocolly.com, the newspaper’s…