Michael Kinsley made me laugh a decade ago when he argued against Web populists replacing professional writers, saying that when he goes to a restaurant, he wants the chef to cook his entree, not the guy sitting at the next table. I’m not laughing anymore: When there are millions of aspiring chefs in the room…
Expiry Date for Courses (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) In my in box today, a question to ponder. What courses from your program should not be accepted for transfer credit after 10 years have passed? If you started a science major 10 years ago, and took some foundational courses, and then dropped the major, how much of what…
While it is important to understand how the culture that led to the creation of a particular work differs from the culture in which you are reading that work, you should understand that a work is a particular author’s personal, creative, artistic representation of reality. Even when basing a story on a fictional event, authors…
With upswept roofs and, often, curvaceous, geometric shapes, and bold use of glass, steel and neon, it decorated many a motel, coffee house and bowling alley in the 1950s and 1960s. It epitomises the spirit a generation demanded, looking excitedly towards a bright, technological and futuristic age. As it became clear that the future would…
Modern American celebrity culture has certainly magnified the latest incident: Woodruff is recognizable, relatable, respectable. He was selected for his job as co-anchor not just for his undoubted journalistic credentials but also because ABC decided he was the kind of person Americans would want to welcome into their homes every night. His injury, therefore, feels…
It has been one year since the “Great Video Game Experiment” was started at the public library where I work. And in those twelve months I’d have to say it has gone as good as anyone could have hoped. In the end, the numbers don’t lie, and a success is all this experiment can be…
Meaning Usually refers to one’s family. Sometimes used (as in Shakespeare’s original) to denote all living creatures. Origin From Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Clown: I have been, madam, a wicked creature, as you and all flesh and blood are; and, indeed, I do marry that I may repent. —Flesh and Blood (The Prhase Finder) Er, no, that’s not…
I panicked and tried to pat out the fire with my hands but the brittle, dry macramé cord was fully ablaze within a few seconds. All I could do was stand there and scream for help. The owl was now a fireball which was scorching my wall and dropping cinders onto the carpet. —Macramé Disaster (Catenema)…
Media studies students – sometimes stereotyped as studying “Mickey Mouse” degrees – are among the most employable of any graduates, says a major survey. —Media students ‘most employable’ (BBC) An interesting detail to keep in mind as I put together my plan for a “Disney Worldview” course for next January. Via Color in a Lurid World.…
For crying out loud, I‘m middle class. I went to a school most people would call posh. But if I came home and said to my wife that I wanted a beverage, or asked her to pass the condiments, she?d punch me. When I travel, I don’t need to be treated like Hyacinth Bucket. I…
If there is any general lesson about Bayosphere, it’s that citizen journalism at the community level needs less high-flown rhetoric and more street-smart testing. The model for what works in content remains to be finished. Citizen journalism is not a failure. But there needs to be a more engaged relationship between the proprietors and impresarios…
—Galleries — Bridge Drawings (Ex Astris Scientia) A very cool collection of cut-away schmatics of the various designs of the bridges for Star Trek. Starts with the bridge as it appeared in the Star Trek pilot episodes, the original series, the movies, and various refits of the same set for the various Federation starships encountered throughout…
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.” —We will never forget them… (MetaFilter) A thread devoted to the 20th anniversary of the loss of the Space Shuttle…
So The Movies — set in an unnamed city where they make movies, decorate with palm trees and assign sycophants to celebrities — is a fictionalized simulation of a real place that simulates fiction while fictionalizing the real world. […] Activision and its partner Lionhead Films encourages the uploading and sharing of your creations, so…
Like any red-blooded hacker, Mozart adored mathematics as a child (and gambling as an adult), found word-play irresistible (email would have been perfect for him) and loved setting himself puzzles. His Musical dice game uses dice throws and pre-composed short fragments of music to form compositions created by random numbers; the challenge was writing fragments…
The first thing that occurred to me was the similarity between the bridge on the Enterprise and a small theater. The view screen made an obvious film screen and the seating centered around the command chairs and behind would fit well in the small space I had. I therefore decided to make my theater into…
“I love awakening the passion for drama and storytelling in the children,” Komarek said. “Nothing’s been finalized, but I’m eyeing Aristophanes’ Frogs. I love the dislocation of verse in the play’s stichic passages, and the kids love animals.” —Second-Graders Wow Audience With School Production Of Equus (The Onion (Satire)) Weird. Weird, weird, weird. Similar:Language Log »…
“Truth no longer matters in the context of politics and, sadly, in the context of cable news,” said Aaron Brown, whose four-year period as anchor of CNN’s NewsNight ended in November, when network executives gave his job to Anderson Cooper in a bid to push the show’s ratings closer to front-runner Fox News. Brown said…
Though there is a rich history of pseudonymity in American journalism, there is none of anonymity. It has long been understood that if the publisher of a reputable periodical grants a writer use of a pseudonym, then that publisher knows the writer’s true identity and takes responsibility — legal and otherwise — for that writer’s…
In 1985, Buckles wrote “Interactive Fiction: The Computer Storygame ‘Adventure,’ ” a scholarly look at the early text-based game Adventure and the people who played it. Buckles was hardly a devotee of the game herself, and the topic didn’t have a lot to do with her main area of study at UCSD, which was German…