I created a new handout that focuses on the efficient use of quoted material in MLA-style papers. Some of this material used to be part of a more general handout on using sources, but I think it will be more useful if I pull it out and create a new handout. An MLA-style paper does…
Philipp Lenssen and I had a bit of fun imagining what an early, early draft of the Google home page might have looked like. Similar:I worked in a video store for 25 years. Here’s what I learned as my industry died.If you’re actually in a video store, the…CultureBabel (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 5)…
Engadget: That’s right, the first 2600 units rolled off the assembly line in October of 1977, delighting both children and kids at heart with games like Pitfall and Pole Position, and helping distract the nation after the untimely death of the King, the tragic crash of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane, and Pele’s retirement. So here’s to…
Space.com: Fifty years ago this week, Sputnik Chief Designer Sergei Korolyov watched as a modified Russian missile launched into space from Kazakhstan’s lonely steppes carrying a very special payload. Sputnik 1 (“traveling companion” in Russian) was about the size of a basketball and weighed about 180 pounds. It was equipped with two radio transmitters and…
http://ifcomp.org/comp07/download.html Similar:In April, 2001 I was blogging about interactive fiction, Roget's Thesaurus, John Lennon, H… A student newspaper article about in…BooksInternet Explorer cheated its way to the top, and I won't miss itI started teaching myself HTML in earnes…AcademiaWhy Fears of Fake News Are OverhypedFacebook seems to have made changes that…CultureSorry, Wrong NumberNumerical errors usually…
ArsTechnica: Rumors of Google’s plans to create a virtual world that rivals that of Second Life have popped up once again over the weekend. The company could now be collaborating with Arizona State University to test the 3D social network, which may be tied into Google’s current applications of Google Earth and Google Maps. I…
Daniel Radosh brings to the mainstream press (New York Times) an argument that games researchers have been making for years. If games are to become more than mere entertainment, they will need to use the fundamentals of gameplay — giving players challenges to work through and choices to make — in entirely new ways. The…
The marketers and programmers at Google’s Blogger.com are not speaking with each other much, or so it would seem. The folks in charge of the home page love verbs. Here’s a thumbnail I cropped from the blogger.com home page. Verbs, verbs, everywhere verbs! Create! Publish! Go! Post! Interact! Take a tour! Name your blog! Okay,…
For me, that was the laugh-out-loud moment in this clip. Situation In Nigeria Seems Pretty Complex Similar:The Business 9 Women Kept A Secret For Three Decades, by Lori Weiss Over the next three hours, The 9 Nan…AmusingInternet Explorer and Murder Rates: More Fun with Causation and Correlation IE.png – mlkshk.AmusingAll Sheep MatterCultureKafka Meets Charlie BrownThis…
This editorial from Pepperdine shows good, clear writing, unlike the four-word CSU editorial that has been in the news recently. It emphasizes the fact that the editorial does not simply contain a vulgar charge aimed at the president, but that… When students at Colorado State University in Front Collins opened the Sept. 24 issue of…
A scene from Ridley Scott’s youth, via Wired: The air smelled like toast. Toast is quite nice, but when you realize it’s steel, and it’s probably particles, it’s not very good. Crossing the footbridge at night, you’d be walking above the steel mill, crossing through the smoke, dirt, and crap, looking down into the fire.…
Wired teases a bit, so that the ending is actually kind of anti-climactic, but it’s a wonderfully geeky puzzle. From ISS, orbiting 220 miles above the surface of the Earth, the qibla (an Arabic word meaning the direction a Muslim should pray toward Mecca) changes from second to second. During some parts of the space…
AP | Guardian The morgue scene couldn’t have been more grim: As doctors worked to retrieve evidence from 33 bodies riddled with gunshots, they were unnerved by the ringing of victims’ cell phones, signaling loved ones seeking reassurance they would never get. This haunting detail offers, after several months, a fresh perspective on the VA…
NYT: a student helps a security guard tackle a student carrying a rifle: The scene at the university yesterday underlined how campus security has been rethought in this country since April, when a gunman killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. Instead of fleeing out of classrooms and onto the street, students at St. John’s were…
Full transcript, the very end of which is Columbia’s Bollinger having the last word: I’m sorry that President Ahmadinejad’s schedule makes it necessary for him to leave before he’s been able to answer many of the questions that we have or even answer some of the ones that we posed to him. (Laughter, applause.) But…
I missed this when it came out during a recent rush of newshole fodder about Anna Nicole Smith. It is predictable yet slightly amusing for the first minute and a half, but be sure to watch past that point — I’m still recovering from my coughing fit. Similar:The girl will be performing as the Dew…
For me, this was the money quote in this Chronicle article about a study on the college admissions process: I have never wanted anything in my life as badly as I wanted to get into that college. … That is not how it should be.” Similar:Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore. Even in English Class.…
The New Atlantis The structure of social networking sites also encourages the bureaucratization of friendship. Each site has its own terminology, but among the words that users employ most often is “managing.” The Pew survey mentioned earlier found that “teens say social networking sites help them manage their friendships.” There is something Orwellian about the…
From the AP, via Editor and Publisher: Colorado State University’s student newspaper has lost $30,000 in advertising and had to cut pay and other budgets by 10 percent because of fallout from the use of a four-letter word in an editorial about President Bush, the Coloradoan reported Saturday. In large type, the editorial included the…
Images of Journalists in Popular Culture (PDF) A newsroom is always filled with fast-talking, bright people whose main work is to speak to strangers, investigate a situation, get answers, develop a story. Since reporters are always finding out something about someone, they create countless stories with good beginnings, middles, and endings. The newspaper gave the…