Someone bought a collection of old slides from a second-hand shop, scanned them and posted them online, then got in touch with the photographer — who had tossed them into a trash bin 30 years ago. I was an artist in Vietnam and served with the Department of Information, Mac Headquarters. During my time there…
In the New York Times, Maureen Dowd reflects on the show biz writers’ strike. Hillary Clinton had the bad luck to fumble a debate before the writers’ strike knocked late-night comics off the air. “I shudder to think what’s happening to all the kids who keep in touch with world news by listening to reports…
I spent a few minutes enjoying Homestarrunner’s Peasant Quest. The text-and-image hybrid is not something I played as a kid — I guess I just missed that stage. Similar:Script: Prospero Makes a Circle on the Beach. Scene Designer: "How?"I was amused by this little note on the …AmusingI should be writing my "Fake News" paper…
Well, Google didn’t say “glarbifulous” on its own, but I had a good reason to search the internet for a nonsense word. In order to confirm my feeling that the Associated Press’s preference for “Web log” is far less popular online than the traditional “weblog,” I did a quick Google search. 12,900,000 Google hits for…
According to Rebecca Blood, in early 1999, Jesse James Garrett posted a list of 23 web sites that posted links and brief commentary. The Wayback machine’s archive of Garrett’s site returns this list from early 2000. badlands bump camworld flutterby genehack gulker hack the planet honeyguide jjg.net infosift linkwatcher metalog ltseek macronin nowthis obscure store…
WCBS-TV: The spam scam involves users unknowingly sending their MySpace friends e-mails and posting comments on their profiles that plug a ploy for the supposedly free gift card that they’ll never actually see, touch, or spend. In fact, to lead the younger members on, the ads are written in “kids-speak.” One such posting starts off…
Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, spoke at Stanford last June: Entertainment promises us a predictable pleasure–humor, thrills, emotional titillation, or even the odd delight of being vicariously terrified. It exploits and manipulates who we are rather than challenges us with a vision of who we might become. A child who…
Clive Thompson, from Wired: I know I’m the underdog; I know I’m probably going to get killed anyway. I am never going to advance up the Halo 3 rankings, because in the political economy of Halo, I’m poor. Specifically, I’m poor in time. The best players have dozens of free hours a week to hone…
Scott McLemee writes about an intellectual brownout that came to him during a party, when he was asked to comment on a book he knew well. People who consume two or three books a month, for example, might be less susceptible to moments of total overload than those who read two or three a week.…
Patti Dobranski, Tribune-Review “The secret state police were at the door. They came to arrest my father. On Nov. 9, at 8:30 p.m., I lost my German citizenship. I said ‘Let’s get out of this hellish country.’ I just wanted to go somewhere else.” But Nov. 9, 1938, was more than Blaustein’s personal hell. It…
In The Escapist, Tom Rhodes takes a stab at W.B. Yeats/Gordon Freeman slash crit. It’s more of a nice try than a slam dunk; yes, it’s possible to make these connections, and the insights are, well, insightful… but what the article lacks is an argument for why this interpretation is necessary, why it offers a…
On Grand Text Auto, Andrew Stern writes a good post about the distinction between character-driven games and purely linear narrative (which makes for a poor gaming experience). No one can disagree that games should be “player-driven”, another way of saying games with high agency. I take a purist’s view on this; I quickly lose interest…
There’s not a whole lot more to this short article from the Press Gazette, but it’s another sign of Google’s power: Google is “hugely dangerous” and is one of the major preoccupations of News Corp, according to the editor-in-chief of Times Online. Anne Spackman, speaking as part of a panel about the future of newspapers…
Cringely Google Personalized Search now uses the terms from previous searches to help fine-tune the next search, which seems good in principle, but if someone searches first on “childcare” then later on “insurance” they are likely to be served ads for insurance for children, which might not interest them at all. There are other issues…
From Inside Higher Ed: An Enthusiast’s View of Academic Blogs A Skeptic’s Take on Academic Blogs Similar:No results found for "officer on leave after video allegedly shows him pulling gun on unar…What is the story behind this image? Wha…Current_EventsEven in the U.S., Chinese Students May Have Tiananmen ‘Amnesia’But now that he was at college in…
Spit & Polish: When this game was first released in 1880 it was so hugely popular in taverns and inns that the bank of England was forced to mint more threepenny bits to keep up with demand. Gotta love the mustaches and bowler hats. Similar:A Matter of Perspective (ST:TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 13) Multiple-POV…
Anthony Grafton, in The New Yorker The hype and rhetoric make it hard to grasp what Google and Microsoft and their partner libraries are actually doing. We have clearly reached a new point in the history of text production. On many fronts, traditional periodicals and books are making way for blogs and other electronic formats.…
In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jonathan D. Silver waxes poetic: Where do all the pumpkins go, post Halloween’s big costume show? Are they left to rot and molder, as the weather trends ever colder? Or is there some more organized scheme, to dispose of leftovers that aren’t the crop’s cream? Wherefore do they, might they go?…
Jessica Mintz writes of University of Washington-Bothell professor Martha Groom’s Wikipedia assignment: “I would find these things on Wikipedia,” she said, and would think, “Gosh, this is awfully thin here. I wonder if my students could fill this in?” Wikipedia has been vilified as a petri dish for misinformation, and the variable accuracy of its…
Kate Luce Angell writes an entertaining feature on my next-door officemate and his work in Seton Hill’s Writing Popular Fiction MA program. Award-winning author and Seton Hill University professor Michael Arnzen demonstrates that in horror, as in life, it’s often the little things that matter most. Take his short-short piece “Nightmare Job #3,” which begins…