Publisher sales reps inform Wal-Mart buyers of games in development; the games’ subjects, titles, artwork and packaging are vetted and sometimes vetoed by Wal-Mart. If Wal-Mart tells a top-end publisher it won’t carry a certain game, the publisher kills that game. In short, every triple-A game sold at retail in North America is managed start…
The Times article adds, from the CIRP survey, that the proportion of students who applied to 12 or more colleges increased by 50 percent from 2001 to 2005. The article does not go on to note that the 50 percent increase brought the percentage from 1.4 to 2.1. Most of the students who are using…
On one level, blogs are little more than personal journals posted on the Internet for all to see. They provide a forum for teachers to share ideas with colleagues around the world or simply talk about themselves and others. But under a wider lens, the sometimes funny, sometimes searing blogs paint what may be the…
Michael Smith, professor in Temple University’s College of Education and coauthor of Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys, said the language of crisis was overblown but noted that the facts are plain: Boys read later than girls and lag them in both reading and writing across grades. They read fewer books, and value reading less. “If…
“We found that men do not regard books as a constant companion to their life’s journey, as consolers or guides, as women do,” said Prof Jardine. “They read novels a bit like they read photography manuals.” Women readers used much-loved books to support them through difficult times and emotional turbulence, and tended to employ them…
He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. —Robert Frost —Birches (Bartleby) When I was…
Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society’s continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say “how silly to judge climate change over such a…
Half-Life 2 Mod: Week 7 — Gleaming Translucent Chandeliers, Detail of Railing, Heavy Object Designing (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) This week I finally managed to make my chandeliers look decent. Previously I had placed an invisible light-emitting entity inside a solid translucent block, but that unfortunately left the outside edges of the block looking very dark. So…
Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests. —!!! BREAD IS DANGEROUS !!! Similar:Vaccine hesitancy morphs into hostility, as opposition to shots hardens What began as “vaccine hesitancy” has …CulturePrepare for the Ultimate GaslightingThoughtful essay from Julio Vincent Gamb…BusinessWhy Are Babies So Dumb If Humans Are…
My Students Impressed Me Today (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) In my “Intro to Literary Study” class, I assigned Arthur Miller’s recent play, Resurrection Blues. At the beginning of the class term, I told my students that it wouldn’t be in the bookstore yet because Amazon.com said the book wouldn’t be published until early February, just a few…
Also known as yupster (yuppie + hipster), yindie (yuppie + indie), and alterna-yuppie. Our preferred term, grup, is taken from an episode of Star Trek (keep reading) in which Captain Kirk et al. land on a planet of children who rule the world, with no adults in sight. The kids call Kirk and the crew…
According to the nonprofit Electronic Literature Organization, within the broad category of electronic literature are several forms and threads of practice, including hypertext fiction and poetry, on and off the Web; kinetic poetry presented in Flash and using other platforms; computer art installations, which ask viewers to read them or otherwise have literary aspects; conversational…
In 1969 the US Senate had a hearing on funding the newly developed Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The proposed endowment was $20 million, but President Nixon wanted it cut in half because of the spending going on in the Vietnam War. This is an video clip of the exchange between Mr. Rogers and Senator Pastore,…
The Bob Ross game will utilize the unique inputs that the Nintendo DS and Nintendo Revolution have that can truly immerse the players while they learn to paint like Bob Ross and can play the addictive and fun games that we have planned for the title. I believe that Bob Ross Inc’s and AGFRAG Entertainment…
—Evolution of the Latin Alphabet (Evolution of Alphabets Page) A very interesting animated GIF that shows how the Latin alphabet (which is basically the modern English alphabet) developed from the Phonecial alphabet. Similar:The Best Argument for Studying English? The Employment NumbersWhile health science majors and engineer…AcademiaSocrates envisaged a time when we would forget how to remember.From…
—how to make 3D lemurs out of clay (Google) According to my server log, someone came to my site after searching for “how to make 3D lemurs out of clay.”I was curious… and I used my finely honed Google searching skills to find “miniature lemur sculpture.” I’m not sure that I’m a better person for having…
Games today are many times more complex than games were even a few years ago. Recreating every three-dimensional point of a complex cave environment is going to take an artist several orders of magnitude more time than dropping a few rough dots on an Atari 2600’s 196×160 screen and calling it a cave environment. Similarly,…
Prices will be roughly comparable to DVDs — $20 to $30 for new releases, $10 to $16 for catalog titles. Now doesn’t that bother some of you? I‘m sure it bothers exhibitors, those that own multiplex cinemas. —Scott Rosenberg —Movie downloads an evolutionary idea? (Monsters and Critics.com) Similar:Time lapse movie shows exoplanets orbiting star HR8799, 133…
Email as a collaboration tool sucks. Everyone knows this. Everyone says it. Everyone writes about it. And everyone agrees that its inefficient, it’s chaotic, its silo’ed and its full of spam. Yet, in spite of these shortcomings, we can assume with confidence that email is still the preferred method of “collaborating” and sharing information with…
Andrew Swinand, executive vice president at Starcom Worldwide, a major advertising-buying agency, said during a panel discussion that newspapers could do more to harness their presence online, such as getting more participation from audiences. Swinand also said his firm would like to buy advertising across newspaper websites but had difficulty doing so, and had to…