—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:Grandpa Joe's Candy Store.Sugar rush at Grandpa Joe’s Candy Store….AestheticsShen Yun Chinese dance troupeOne of seven touring groups devoted to s…ArtBeatrix Potter-pinching and Žižekian swipes: the strange world of book theftsWe caught a…
—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:We don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.A chemist celebrates the liberal arts. …AcademiaHow important is the look 'n' feel of your website?”The look…
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? (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…
In the past year, newsrooms have begun to treat convergence differently, to see it as a solar system of loosely connected functions, rather than a hard-wired fusion of media. As bloggers and independent niche online publishers attract fast-growing audiences, media executives feel pressed to invest in experimentation. They seem more aware that prizes go to…
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…
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:Presidential RhetoricCulturePesky journalists, always showing up to document atrocities.No Democratic president should send in t…CultureDuring a modest snowfall, I’m passing the time in a public place where someone else has tu…Stay…
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…
“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 File this under “What took you so long?” Similar:If you like to play with words, good newsI wish there were a secret day between F…CultureVisiting my parents. Admiring their original Hallmark Enterprise Christmas ornament. I ask…AmusingThe Six Things That Make Stories Go Viral Will Amaze, and Maybe Infuriate, YouOverblown Headline…
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:Teenage Usability (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)Teens often work on…
THOUSANDS FEAR FOR THEIR HEARING, FLEE FOR THEIR LIVES! The infamous Ballet mécanique is coming to Washington, DC, but not in any way it’s been heard before. And it’s not going to be for just one performance…it’s going to be played over 30 times. George Antheil’s 1925 masterwork, which was never heard in its original…
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…
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…
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 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:Treasure peaceful moments in a turbulent world.AestheticsAnti-Semitic Times…
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 (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.…
—Ten Things About Ten Things About Writing (Paperback Writer) A top ten list of top-ten lists about writing. (A former student of mine, Kathy Kennedy, wrote “Short Stories: 10 Tips for Novice Creative Writers” as part of a technical writing class.) Similar:Pittsburgh in the Round review of The Outsiders”It’s due to a slew of rich, physically…
More fossil fuels are used in packaging the water. Most water bottles are made with polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic derived from crude oil. ”Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year,” Arnold said. Worldwide, some…