Gamers are unequivocal: “Dying gives a game meaning”, say posters on the PC Advisor forums. Markus Montola, a researcher at Tampere University in Finland, takes this further: “You have a motivation – to avoid being annoyed by dying. Motivation is what makes the game meaningful.” Pete Hines – vice-president at Bethesda, the developer behind the…
Similar sites have captured the imagination of ordinary users with a so-called “citizen” brand of journalism, but NowPublic is gaining attention for the size of its fast-growing army of 118,000 members who write and post news stories, cellphone camera pictures, and videos from 3,600 cities in over 140 countries. “Think of us as a new…
First Amendment lawsuits by student journalists at public universities become moot when the plaintiffs graduate, according to a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. —Scott Jaschik —Loss for the Student Press (Inside Higher Ed) That sounds very disturbing. Similar:Scammer tricks YouTuber who exposes scams to delete his anti-scammer channelThis one is…
An ideal example of abandonment is the relationship between Linus and The Great Pumpkin. Every Halloween, Linus faithfully waits by a pumpkin patch, in the hopes that he will be blessed with the holy experience of a visitation by The Great Pumpkin. Of course, The Great Pumpkin never shows up, and He never answers Linus’…
Statistics collected over two decades show an alarming decline in the performance of America’s boys–in some respects, a virtual free fall. Boys were doing poorly in school, abusing drugs, committing violent crimes and engaging in promiscuous sex. Young males lost ground by many behavioral indicators at some point in the 1980s and ’90s: sharp plunges…
The filmmakers hope that “Paradise Lost” will prove enticing to Christian audiences. Mr. Hazeldine said he read “several theological tomes” because “I’m adapting Milton, and then Milton’s kind of adapting Genesis, and I wanted to make sure that for the faith audience, I guess, that they will see it more as ‘The Passion of the…
The power class was buzzing around in the sky, watching the ruination of someone’s life way down below – making buckets of cash by broadcasting someone else’s tragedy, then – WHAM – the real bursts into their own life, they become the live tragedy – but we’re still viewing the whole thing through the lens…
Sometimes called the reptilian brain because its basic structure dates back to our reptile ancestors, the brain stem is largely devoted to our most primal instincts, far removed from the complex, higher-brain skills that allow us to understand humor. And yet somehow, in this primitive region, we find the urge to laugh. —Steven Johnson —What’s…
Scholars have a vast range of opportunities to distribute their work, from setting up web pages or blogs, to posting articles to working paper websites or institutional repositories, to including them in peer-reviewed journals or books. In American colleges and universities, access to the internet and World Wide Web is ubiquitous; consequently nearly all intellectual…
Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he abandoned his studies to form the rock group Queen. —Queen guitarist to complete doctorate (AP | Yahoo! (will expire)) This brightened my day. Similar:My college writing students are out making short videos responding to a prompt.While my students are out of the…
Now, I love black backgrounds more than anything else in the design business, and yet I was still very surprised to acknowledge how dark theatrical posters are and that, specifically, in this context, the top 25 grossing movies of all time across all ages didn’t run a very wide gamut. Only at the tot level…
Once you put in several hours flailing around learning how to function in Second Life, there isn’t much to do. That may explain why more than 85 percent of the avatars created have been abandoned. Linden’s in-world traffic tally, which factors in both the number of visitors and time spent, shows that the big draws…
Breaking News: Something Happening In Haiti —Breaking News: Something Happening in Haiti (The Onion (Satire)) Great commentary on the accelerated news cycle. Similar:Multimodal Composing, Sketchnotes, and Idea GenerationUsing the mixed media of sketch notes, a…AcademiaJournalism ethics and the elephant in the room.The point of “the Rosenthal Rule” is not…CultureThe Best of Both Worlds, Part 1 (…
The car could be up on blocks and be just as astonishing. | It goes to show you how we in the press so often miss the big stories that are right under our noses. There is a famous journalistic legend about the time a young reporter covered the Johnstown flood of 1889. The kid…
“At first I didn’t believe a seagull was capable of stealing crisps. But I saw it with my own eyes and I was surprised. He’s very good at it.” —Seagull becomes crisp shoplifter (BBC) Very strange. My brother-in-law Robert sent it to me. Similar:Another social media post attacks journalists for doing their jobs — Updated Elijah…
—Statetris (mapmsg.com) Like Tetris, but with American states. Similar:Beard Typeface GuideChristian Goldeman felt compelled to mat…AestheticsPsychology Today: Dreams: Night SchoolJay Dixit, in Psychology Today, surveys …GamesReading Game/Text: EverQuest, Alienation, and Digital Communitiesthough Limbaugh is wrong to decide that …CybercultureThe Myth of North America, in One PaintingFascinating art history — a thoughtful …AestheticsIf you win the very…
“I have never forgotten the magic night that my own father, like his father and his father’s father before him, gently woke me, bundled me up in a warm blanket and quietly led me outside to see the Northern Lights for the first time,” said the elder Meier, dejectedly sipping a cup of hot cocoa…
An armed gang of four kidnapped one of the world’s top RPG gamers after one criminal’s girlfriend lured him into a fake date using Orkut, Google’s social network. After sequestering him in Sao Paulo, they held a gun against the victim’s head for five hours to get his password, which they wanted to sell for…
Barker: “I think that Roger Ebert’s problem is that he thinks you can’t have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written ‘Romeo and Juliet’ as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn’t taken the…
As I see it, a good reporter is like a pinball in play, always gathering, writing, revising, gathering, writing, revising–until time runs out. The job is as simple, and as hard, as that. The advice here is based on the teachings of reporters I admire. It is also based on conclusions I have drawn during…