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:Disaster (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 5) Picard Trapped in Elevator with Wee…Rewatching ST:TNG A character-based b…AmusingWhen the art director was too cheap to buy the graphic designer a protractor.AestheticsTexas School Censors All Of ‘Huck Finn’ Except The N-Words (Satire from…

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…

New Model 500 height adjustable workstation: ideal for standing, seated or supine work positions.

—New Model 500 height adjustable workstation: ideal for standing, seated or supine work positions. (Office Organix) Strap me down, slap an IV in my arm, and I’ll get all my work done — all of it! Similar:Boston bombings: Social media spirals out of controlA thoughtful analysis. Problem-solver…CultureIn February, 2001, I was blogging about computer nostalgia, Napster,…

Pac-Man Bathroom

—toxickaty —Pac-Man Bathroom (Flickr | toxickaty) Awesome. Similar:He couldn’t get over his fiancee’s death. So he brought her back as an A.I. chatbotThe death of the woman he loved was too …CybercultureKorean News Station Pokes Fun at KTVU with Fake American Pilot Names After Southwest Airli…This is certainly a joke, but it’s funni…AmusingWhy You Hate Google’s…