RoboCop, Ph.D

It’s hard to imagine what freshmen think when they wander into Professor Banzai’s lecture hall. Weller reports that he loses a lot of students after the first class. “They thought they were going to get the easy A from old RoboCop,” he says with a laugh. The 450-page course reader tells them otherwise. Those who…

Preface to Lyrical Ballads

I have said that Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till by a species of reaction the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually…

A Stand Against Wikipedia

While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it, the history department at Middlebury College is trying to take a stronger, collective stand. It voted this month to bar students from citing the Web site as a…

[Hand-made Star Wars]

—[Hand-made Star Wars] (YouTube) Very dorky, but in a totally awesome, very cool way. Similar:What Borges Learned from CervantesBorges reinvented Don Quixote as a playf…BooksWhy It’s So Hard For Foley Artists To Make Footstep SoundsAccording to Foley artist Stefan Fratice…AestheticsWell-chosen wordsWhy is English spelling such a tangle? I…BooksD&D-Themed movie Zero Charisma pits Nerds vs. HipstersMy wife…

A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope

Han and Luke get medals but Chewie doesn’t. Actually, Leia offers him one but Chewie turns it down. He got one of those things from Yoda about 20 years ago, but there’s no way he can tell her that. —A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope (Mornignstar) A great little detail that really helps this…

Of thought and metaphor

Even something as seemingly straightforward as asking for the salt involves thinking and communicating at two levels, which is why we utter such convoluted requests as, “If you think you could pass the salt, that would be great.” Says Pinker: “It’s become so common that we don’t even notice that it is a philosophical rumination…

Pac-Man Bathroom

—toxickaty —Pac-Man Bathroom (Flickr | toxickaty) Awesome. Similar:Melissa Terras Reports Her Success in Making Digital Humanities More InclusiveA pleasant little success story. “TEI” i…AcademiaLego faces are getting angrier, study findsThe headline is hype. How about “Lego fa…AestheticsOnce again, The Onion gets it right: Clinton Not Expecting To Collect White House Security…Once again, The Onion gets it…