Most academic slide shows are dreary affairs. Our students might as well be writing “I will not think outside the box” on the blackboard 100 times. Imagine a conference in which every presenter spoke for exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Is it heaven, or is it a pecha-kucha night? That would leave a lot…
Nick Yee (The Daedalus Project) writes an 8-part post (this quote is from part 2) responding to media reports about “internet addiction.” High school and college students on football teams regularly die during practice (1, 2, 3), but their deaths are dealt with by the media with a very holistic perspective. The media questions whether…
Jennifer Reeger of the Tribune-Review (Pittsgurgh) reports on my colleague’s local (Westmoreland County) history book. “Thank God we do have this beautiful building,” said Mike Cary, professor of history and political science at Seton Hill University and an editor of a book on the courthouse’s history. “People remember Greensburg — they remember that dome when…
The student paper at Southern Illinois University publishes an analysis, assisted by an anonymous source, of evidence of plagiarism in the dissertation written by the SIU president. “I could have made a mistake,” Poshard said. “I’m not saying I didn’t.” The Daily Egyptian recently obtained copies of Poshard’s dissertation and original works from a source…
Nick Montfort, Grand Text Auto: Leonard Cohen Manhattan: Taken. Berlin: Taken. Similar:700-year-old picture of 'Mickey Mouse' found in Austrian church”Walt Disney first sketched his characte…ArtOrson Scott Card Builds an EmpireVideo games are a viable storytelling me…CybercultureThe Perfect Mate (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 21) Picard fails to bore an em…Rewatching ST:TNG A fussy ambassa…AmusingEnsign…
Morris Dickstein: Book review editors often have difficulty convincing their bosses that the news about books is in the books themselves, not in mega-buck contracts, bestseller chitchat, and profiles of famous authors. Truly conscientious reviewers are not exactly a beloved breed: authors sensitive to criticism detest them, publishers would love to coopt them, and academics…
Via MetaFilter: You’ve got just over two weeks to make it to the John Henry celebration in Leeds, Alabama, where some folks believe the legendary steel driving contest actually took place. Maybe you already made it to John Henry Days in Talcott, West Virginia (or read a fictionalized account), where some more folks claim the…
David Lazarus describes the Time Lady’s end in California. “It was always there,” said Orlo Brown, 70, who for many years kept Pacific Bell’s (and subsequently SBC’s) time machines running in a downtown Los Angeles office building. “Everybody knew the number.” Richard Frenkiel was assigned to work on the time machines when he joined Bell…
Sean McBride: The problem I discovered was that one of the thin walls between the holes had broken and bent down, forming a ramp. When I plugged the DVI adapter into my computer, two of the pins went into the same hole, and the projector could no longer understand the output from my computer. However,…
This evening, I was out in the yard playing with the kids, when they noticed the full moon rising above a house a little ways down the street. Similar:The chief engineer has a forward-facing station, on a platform above the technical staff c…PersonalA Successful Failure: The TI-99/4A Turns 40My family had one of these when…
Rachel Buchanan: It has all happened so fast. In the 20th century, media evolved through a series of technological landmarks that seem stately in comparison: first radio waves across the Atlantic in 1901; television invented, 1926; television transmission begins in Australia, 1956; CNN begins, 1980. From there, change is compressed. In 1992 the Mosaic browser…
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AP: A court on Friday fined a 15-year-old schoolboy for posting a video on YouTube of his teacher singing karaoke without her permission and claiming she was a lunatic. In the first case of its kind in Finland, Nurmes District Court found Toni Vesikko guilty of intentional defamation and fined him $120. He also was…
Elia Powers: Housing officers divided students into living groups, based upon major, age and other factors. So students who saw their list of 25, 50 or 75 (depending on the group) potential roommates already knew that those included would likely live on the same floor or at least in the same residence hall. It was…
Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d do some more work on the Wikipedia entry for Colossal Cave Adventure. Similar:STEM Education Won't Solve the World's ProblemsI love STEM. My SAT score for math was e…AcademiaNovel defined: a term used by some students to mean “any text we study in English class”AcademiaSpent a half hour taming this tangle of…
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It’s funny, because it’s true…. David Galef satirizes the humiliation humanities professors have to go through when requesting research funds: To Professor Michael Wall, Chair, English Department: This has to do with the travel budget for the coming academic year. As we discussed last spring, I need something on the order of $700 for the…
Roy F. Baumeister One can imagine an ancient battle in which the enemy was driven off and the city saved, and the returning soldiers are showered with gold coins. An early feminist might protest that hey, all those men are getting gold coins, half of those coins should go to women. In principle, I agree.…
One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and seniors were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices. The survey reveals a nation whose book readers, on the whole,…
Some acted selflessly, rushing to the aid of other characters even though that meant they risked infection themselves. Others fled infected cities in an attempt to save themselves. And some who were sick made it their mission to deliberately infect others. —BBC Wikipedia has a good collection of background resources on “corrupted blood,” the virtual…