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:Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play?PersonalAt Home In Fantasy's Nerd-Built WorldsIn other words, more than the profound l…AestheticsSinéad O'Connor's…
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…
Similar:Phoenix journalist admits 'bad reporting' in claiming White House press censorshipNEWS FLASH: If your sources are an off-t…Current_EventsComfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. –Mr Dooley on the function of journali…“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the c…CultureThe poetry of deafnessMy auditory processing disorder makes it…AestheticsPositive Feedback on a Blogging AssignmentA former student who is…
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:There, in my morning snapshot of the kids home-schooling in the kitchen, is the cable I sh…EducationWhy NORAD Tracks SantaThe call had come in on one of the top s…AmusingA friend asks: "Would it be bad form to point…
The Wilhelm Scream is a sound effect that appears in many action films, as an in-joke among sound designers. Similar:Filmmakers fighting “Happy Birthday” copyright find their “smoking gun”Who owns the copyright to the “Happy Bir…BusinessMe: Carolyn, are you ok? Carolyn:Just reminding myself that I am a gift.AmusingDesiderata (Nerdy Inspiration)This is a little story about an…
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…
1. What Berlin wall?35. Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.43. Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.53. Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.55. MTV has never featured music videos.66. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they…
Here’s a collection of teaching tips for the first day of classes brought to us by Honolulu Community College (check their reference lists for more good sources, too). The Pig Personality Profile [try here — DGJ] is frivolous fun, but probably a good icebreaker and something I might even use when I teach Memoir Writing…
A large majority of video games sold in the UK receive a rating under the voluntary Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) system, but some games, about 6-7% of the total, are referred to the BBFC. In determining what classification to give, the BBFC employs much the same approach as it does to films and DVDs. However,…
Today we drove to the Thunder Mountain Lenape powwow, which was full of color and music. There were two drums — that is, groups of singers who sat around the same drum, chanting in rhythm. Dancers mostly moved around the circle. The younger the dancer, the fancier the footwork and the more the likelihood of…
I wouldn’t actually call it a site redesign, since I just selected a canned template supplied by MT. There are many things I love about the interface, and there are many things that annoy me to no end. I’d like to give people the option of filling out a CAPTCHA and publishing a comment right…
I’ve been experimenting with MT4, and have in fact imported 5 years of blog entries from the indie software created by my former student, Will Gayther. I got used to the particular rhythms of Will’s software, which was very fast and configurable. But I got tired of having to fight the spammers on two different…
SOMETIMES there is a huge disconnect between the people who make a product and the people who use it. The creator of a Web site may assume too much knowledge on the part of users, leading to confusion. Software designers may not anticipate user behavior that can unintentionally destroy an entire database. Manufacturers can make…
Because so little primary historical work has been done on the classic text computer game “Colossal Cave Adventure”, academic and popular references to it frequently perpetuate inaccuracies. “Adventure” was the first in a series of text-based games (“interactive fiction”) that emphasize exploring, puzzles, and story, typically in a fantasy setting; these games had a significant…
The internet news audience — roughly a quarter of all Americans — tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance. —Internet News…