A quarter-billion copies sold worldwide as kids raced to discover lost civilizations, navigate black holes, and go in search of … the Yeti. This summer, eight of the original titles return to bookstores, revamped with 21st-century references (cell phones!). Will they become popular again? — Michael Reilly If you think nostalgia will help the books…
Don’t call me “Honey.” Call me “Smart Girl.” —Carolyn Maureen Jerz (age 4).Cute vs Brainy (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) How perceptive children are, at an early age. Of course, next week she’ll be back to “My name is Sally. My family was killed in a car crash. Can I be your new girl?” or “I want to…
—Online chess video about two pawns that fall in love (Chess Maniac) This was a cute computer-generated story. It’s about six or seven minutes long. I wish I knew more about it. Similar:Churnalism SearchAt the University of Virginia, one summe…CultureYour Frustration Is the Product (Intrusive marketing on publisher websites)You read two paragraphs and there’s a bo…BusinessMaybe…
It’s only made worse by the lame assignments many comp instructors assign (or are forced to assign): 1. A turning point in my life! (Get ready for five hundred essays about, “The time I got drunk? And almost had a wreck? And now I realize how precious life is?” or 2. My personal hero! (Get…
There are still people who think disposing of the trash in a regular, professional and safe manner is more important than writing deep and penetrating pieces of literature – which nobody reads anyway. They admire carpenters who can build good houses to live in, gardeners who can make trees and flowers grow, farmers who can…
“In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world’s worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE],” the sheet said. The Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, told the Web site that a colleague was making a joke in a draft that was then mistakenly released.…
Katharine Close, an eighth-grader at the H.W. Mountz School in Spring Lake, N.J., is the first girl since 1999 to win the national spelling title. She stepped back from the microphone and put her hands to her mouth upon being declared the winner. She recognized the word as soon as she heard it. “I couldn’t…
The codes, called captchas, are also showing up more often amid a boom in new Web services, ranging from blogging tools to social-networking sites. The trickiest ones “make you not want to go to those sites anymore,” says Scott Reynolds, a 29-year-old software architect in Ocala, Fla., who lambasted the devices on his blog last…
Over the past six weeks a Western security force has effectively taken over the small African nation of Namibia. A beach resort in Langstrand in Western Namibia has been sealed off with security cordons, and armed security personnel have been keeping both local residents and visiting foreigners at bay. A no-fly zone has been enforced…
“It shows that these forgotten people of the ’90s had many of the same concerns as modern man, such as b-days, and slow periods at work,” Caspari said. “The presence of the archaic slang verbalization ‘what’s up’ appears to indicate that they cared about the immediate welfare of others in their closely knit community, much…
Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom is a very exciting book. It captures an important set of developments — how new information technologies make it easier for individuals to collaborate in producing cultural content, knowledge, and other information goods. It draws links across apparently disparate subject areas to…
In “Are Elite Universities Losing Their Competitive Edge?,” the scholars examine evidence that the Internet — by allowing professors to work with ease with scholars across the country and not just across the quad — is leading to a spreading of academic talent at many more institutions than has been the case in the past.…
Two types of participation made it more likely students would end up at elite colleges: yearbook or school newspapers and “hobby clubs.” (The authors regretted that there was no breakdown on the impact of various hobbies, so it is unclear if photography clubs do better or worse than chess or other topics.) Numerous activities had…
This finding suggests that not only do students underuse formal office hours, but that the very presence of such a schedule inhibits them from seeking out the instructor at other times as well. This finding has important implications for college-level instructors everywhere, depending on their goals. Instructors wishing to minimize contact with students should schedule…
With their mouths largely shut but their laptops and flip phones open, teenagers’ bedrooms are beginning to sound like the library. So is the dinner table. On her show May 10, Ellen DeGeneres ribbed guest Lindsay Lohan: “Every time I’ve seen you, you’re out with eight or nine girls, having dinner. You’re all sitting around…
The Nintendo Amusement Park is a first attempt at making a life-size re-creation of Super Mario Bros. Players strap into a powered bungee system that lets them jump 12 feet in the air, collect coins and snag magic mushrooms. It’s hoped it will eventually be expanded into a full Mario Bros.-style obstacle course. —Nintendo Amusement…
Each scenario offers a simple Sim-City style visual depiction of its urban center that allows you to plan tactics and assess trends, but everyday events are usually planned and occur within the game’s menus, charts, and lists. Some scenarios offer maps that depict infrastructure, agricultural, or natural resources that can be targeted. There’s a ton…
Ahmadinejad: Why must the German people be humiliated today because a group of people committed crimes in the name of the Germans during the course of history? SPIEGEL: The German people today can’t do anything about it. But there is a sort of collective shame for those deeds done in the German name by our…
A California appeals court has smacked down Apple’s legal assault on bloggers and their sources, finding that the company’s efforts to subpoena e-mail received by the publishers of Apple Insider and PowerPage.org runs contrary to federal law, California’s reporter’s shield law, and the state Constitution. Apple had also claimed that the inside information “could have…
Cartoons abstract from real life in much the same way philosophers do. Homer is not realistic in the way a film or novel character is, but he is recognisable as a kind of American Everyman. His reality is the reality of an abstraction from real life that captures its essence, not as a real particular…