Pick Up That Can

—Pick Up That Can (Concerned: The Half-Life and Death of Gordon Frohman) A comic strip using visuals created with the Half-Life 2 engine. Similar:A.I. Is Getting More Powerful, but Its Hallucinations Are Getting Worse The newest and most powerful technolog…BusinessABC News executive placed on administrative leave after reports surface of insensitive, ra…The Huffington Post reports that…

So *this* is what we're doing for Valentine's Day?

—So *this* is what we’re doing for Valentine’s Day? (CTRL+ALT_DEL) Okay, it’s a few days late, but it’s very sweet, in a geeky, retro way. Similar:Grandpa Joe's Candy Store.Sugar rush at Grandpa Joe’s Candy Store….AestheticsA Video Game About Changing What Happens In Shakespeare's HamletElsinore is a game where you play as Oph…CultureYour Letters Helped Challenger Shuttle…

Literacy Limps Into the Kill Zone

The very nature of e-mail (which, along with first cousins IM and text messaging, is an undeniably handy means of chatting) encourages sloppy “penmanship,” as it were. Its speed and informality sing a siren song of incompetent communication, a virtual hooker beckoning to the drunken sailor as he staggers along the wharf. But it’s not…

What's On Your Office Door?

—What’s On Your Office Door? (Pedablogue) Left to right: Pittsburgh goes blog wild! I’m not featured in this article, but my blog is one of the many that’s aggregated on this site. Rules Grammar Change and School ‘Fine’ U.S. Teens Report Grad Student Deconstructs Take-out Menu On the door itself — just the institutional nameplate, a…

A Win-Win-Win Situation

Tell your professors face to face every time you will be gone, I urged the baseball team, and express your eagerness to make up any missed work. Even more important, when you?re in class, show the professor that you are there to learn. Just as you know how to position yourselves on the diamond, learn…

The nesting of clauses that lay in the sentence that Cheney said

Why is Cheney snowcloning ‘The House That Jack Built’? —Benjamin Zimmer —The nesting of clauses that lay in the sentence that Cheney said (Lanugage Log) Similar:A selfie with a Chekov action figure after learning of Anton Yelchin's deathCurrent_EventsHandshakes Really Do MatterMonday night handshake/eye contact pract…CultureNorth Sea cod: Is it true there are only 100 left?A spokesperson…

Babylon 5's Katsulas Dies

Andreas Katsulas, the character actor known to SF fans as G’Kar on Babylon 5 and a familiar face from Star Trek and other SF&F TV shows, died Feb. 13 of lung cancer in Los Angeles, his agent, Donna Massetti, confirmed to SCI FI Wire. He was 59. —Babylon 5’s Katsulas Dies (SciFi.com) This man brought an…

Who Gets In? The key to admission remains a mystery

“Along with the Sphinx, the DaVinci code and Easter Island, college admissions is one of the world’s great mysteries,” said Mary Beth Kurilko, associate director of undergraduate admissions at Temple University. “I see it in the faces of the parents who hover around their children during our information sessions. They’re listening for it, leaning forward…

Dick Cheney Quail Hunt Game

—Dick Cheney Quail Hunt Game File this under “What took you so long?” Similar:Thank You, Verizon, for this Confusing ScreenA few weeks ago, I had to get a new cred…BusinessMicrosoft “lobotomized” AI-powered Bing Chat, and its fans aren’t happyMicrosoft limits long conversations to a…Current_EventsStudy finds AI tools made open source software developers 19 percent slowerCoders…

The Secret Cause of Flame Wars

The reason for this is egocentrism, or the difficulty some people have detaching themselves from their own perspective, says Epley. In other words, people aren’t that good at imagining how a message might be understood from another person’s perspective. —Stephen Leahy —The Secret Cause of Flame Wars (Wired) Similar:The Period, Our Simplest Punctuation Mark, Has Become…

Happy, Happy Poetry

The Swing Robert Louis Stevenson HOW do you like to go up in a swing,   Up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing   Ever a child can do! Up in the air and over the wall,   Till I can see so wide, Rivers and trees and cattle and all…

Better living through video games?

The York team recently compared 94 bilinguals and monolinguals between the ages of 30 and 80. It found that while both groups started showing cognitive decline by age 60, the rate of slowing for bilinguals was much slower. Now young people who play video games are showing this similar pattern of high performance in resisting…

Cubists Launch Unnavigable Web Site

The International Society of Cubists officially launched its Web site today, a brilliant rejection of natural form and perspective that metaphysically establishes the implication of movement, analytically redefines spatial relationships, and is an absolute bitch to navigate. “What the hell is this? I can’t tell how to get anywhere,” one of the site’s first visitors…

Superman to the rescue of Jesus

Superman will help teach British children about Jesus in state-mandated religious education classes, The Telegraph reports. —Superman to the rescue of Jesus (JoanneJacobs.com) I’m blogging this one not just because it’s odd enough to be interesting, but because of Joanne Jacobs’ final suggestion, just before “Posted by joannej”. Similar:Lawsuit Against Warner/Chappell Music Claims Happy Birthday Belongs…

The Professor as Instant Messenger

I regularly use computers in my classroom, and have long been a fan of the educational potential of online discussion groups. So I was completely taken aback a few months ago when a colleague informed me of something she had recently learned from her students: Teenagers no longer check their e-mail. I confirmed that in…

Blogging Slowdown

Blogging Slowdown (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I’m going to slow down my blogging here for a while, because I’m in the process of moving to a new server. I’ve got a backup of the site as of sometime yesterday, and I’m not sure whether I’ll be able to get another backup before the new site goes online.…