—Pope John Paul II and jerz My sister sent me a link to the Amazon.com page for this book… I’m honored. Similar:‘Heil Trump’ and an anti-gay slur were scrawled on an Indiana church right after Trump’s e…A well-written news story, covering a se…CultureClever Modernization of Hamlet: Polonius with an iPhoneI teach Shakespeare in a literature…
But even still I wrote about work inbetween pictures of me drinking, opiononated rants on creationism and conservation, I use the words cunt and twat and fuck. I joke about kicking babies and coat hanger abortions. I wax poetic about spring breaks past and Zombie movies. Once I made it up to the meeting they…
In what might be a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, a Pennsylvania lawyer is suing the publisher of the rapidly growing online world Second Life, alleging the company unfairly confiscated tens of thousands of dollars worth of his virtual land and other property. —Kathleen Craig —Second Life Land Deal Goes Sour (Wired) Similar:The Case for Banning Laptops in the…
Sure, Leonardo studied birds in order to design a flying machine. But if you built it and jumped off the side of a mountain, they’d be scrapping you off the bottom of the valley. Of course very few people could have painted “Mona Lisa.” But hell, anybody can come up with a device permitting you…
Casual Game: The Game uses a special wireless-control wand covered with buttons. Using this control, your job is to scan through a large number of audio-visual “entertainment streams” to find the one you enjoy the most. Once you’ve picked one, you can control the volume of the audio, the brightness of the screen and, for…
If you’re stuck, shut down the word doc you’re working on and start again, from scratch, in an email (putting the name of a close friend in the “To:” field can help). —Matt Weston —Write how you speak (Business Bricks) While I don’t think the adage “write how you speak” applies universally, it makes good sense…
—Key & Compass – IF Games Index This is an incredibly efficient, beautifully constructed index to interactive fiction games, with icons indicating platform, awards, and additional information. I wish I could click on the award icon and be taken to a list of other games that shared the same award. Actually, clicking on any icon…
The disasters that have occurred so far have been on the local or regional level. They have been horribly damaging to lives and properties in the regions in which they occurred, but they have not been the paradigm-shifting harbingers of doom that the pessimists, like Kunstler, continually warn about. In fact, so far the pessimists…
First and foremost, e-mail lacks cues like facial expression and tone of voice. That makes it difficult for recipients to decode meaning well. Second, the prospect of instantaneous communication creates an urgency that pressures e-mailers to think and write quickly, which can lead to carelessness. Finally, the inability to develop personal rapport over e-mail makes…
Even though I had to use many strategies to sell semiconductors in Silicon Valley, it was nothing compared to the brain power I’ve had to use to teach a subject to college students well. A decade ago, I found advertising challenging. Dreaming up new ways to sell a product or service to corporate executives was…
“If you walk into a roomful of middle school girls and say ‘Do you want to learn how to program a computer?’, only a few hands will go up,” says Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Randy Pausch. “But if you walk in and say ‘Do you want to learn how to tell a story…
—MySpace: The Movie (YouTube) I just watched MySpace: The Movie. (Above link goes to the version on YouTube, which is more accessible, but the filmmaker’s site is davidlehre.com.) The cross-dressing gag is just juvenile, and the editing in that skit needed to be tighter. Overall, though, this little collection of skits is a good window into…
The city’s 23-year-old mayor took down his profile on MySpace.com after his occupation ended up reading: “malebigalow.” Ryan Bingham said he didn’t post that information — an apparent reference to the 1999 movie “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo” — and he doesn’t know who did. —Mayor pulls MySpace.com page after job shows up as ‘malebigalow’ (Boston.com |…
With the seconds ticking down to a studio discussion about a court case involving Apple Computer and The Beatles’ record label, a floor manager had run to reception and grabbed the man, thinking he was Guy Kewney, editor of Newswireless.net, a specialist internet publication. Actually, he was a minicab driver who had been waiting to…
You’re sick, so you stay with your germs in bed. I’ll get you some trail mix so you don’t go poking around the hearse. — my wifeFreudian Slip (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Yes, she really said “hearse.” I’m not that sick, but it’s true that I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. I have…
In a sense, the world of online collaboration is discovering what artists have always known: Rigid conventions are often crucial to producing art. Novels, poems, and oil paintings are really just structural devices that take an artist’s zillion competing ideas?an internal, self-contradicting mob?and focus them into a coherent work. Mind you, online collaborators are finding…
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. Why would I go and do that? What are you, stupid? That is so stupid. —Delicious Pundit —Chris Berman Slash Poetry (Deadspin) Student Matt Hampton sent me this link. Thanks for the laugh, Matt! Similar:Students say "math class is stupid and boring," and they are right. –Mathematician Paul L…I…
“A lot of students in their early education do not get a very good grounding from their instructors about when it’s acceptable to use somebody else’s material,” says Jane Kirtley, who teaches Media Ethics and Law at the University of Minnesota. “There’s also a sense among students today that if it’s something they can find…
In some respects, the students are right: Professors are to blame. We cultivate students’ unmerited pride with high praise for mediocre work. And we tolerate all of the other sins by abdicating responsibility for the culture of our classrooms. Again and again, I have heard students say their classes are so easy that almost no…
In any field, it’s important to keep track of the underdogs — the new developments and theories, the older hypotheses once thought exhausted of information. Doesn’t matter if you’re in writing, physics, psychology, or athletics, keeping a broad horizon pays off. That’s what I’m doing here — showing you the underdogs of gaming. You might…