If what we today know as “Wikipedia” had started life as something called, let’s say – “Jimbo’s Big Bag O’Trivia” – we doubt if it would be the problem it has become. Wikipedia is indeed, as its supporters claim, a phenomenal source of pop culture trivia. Maybe a “Big Bag O’Trivia” is all Jimbo ever…
Scientists are no different in their level of objectivity than are other professionals. They are careful in the analysis of evidence and in the procedures applied to arrive at conclusions. With this admission, it may seem that this myth is valid, but contributions from both the philosophy of science and psychology reveal that there are…
A man who posted false information on an online encyclopedia linking a prominent journalist to the Kennedy assassinations says he was playing a trick on a co-worker. Brian Chase, 38, ended up resigning from his job and apologizing to John Seigenthaler Sr., the former publisher of the Tennessean newspaper and founding editorial director of USA…
Doctor Says Long-Term Video Game Playing Is Likely Cause A central Iowa mother woke up over the weekend to find her daughter having a seizure. After a trip to the emergency room, a family learned that the cause was most likely from playing video games too long, Des Moines television station KCCI reported. Doctors said…
Wee, sneaky, glowrin, vill’nous thiefies, O, how ye filch in half a jiffy! —Holy Tango of Literature What poets and playwrights would write about if they wrote about anagrams of their own names. The above is from “Robber Runts,” by Robert Burns (not). I had heard of “Toliets” by T.S. Eliot, but I didn’t see…
Folding seems clear; you might fold a card to fit in an envelope, or a pocket. But you’re not supposed crease these cards; that would jam the machine. Punch cards aren’t to be used in your ways, for your purposes, but for those of the company that issued them. “Spindle” is the word that most…
In the modern retelling, the Cat in the Hat indeed comes back…but with a vengence! Wearing a full-body mech suit and accompanied by his Thug 2 and Thug 1, the Cat comes back to go head-to-head with the bon mot spouting goldfish. Invariable, the goldfish will triumph over the Cat (as Order must triumph over…
“Let’s walk around looking for people who are laughing to themselves because of something they’ve just thought of,” I say. “When we find them, you take their photograph and I’ll ask them what they were thinking about that was so funny.” —Jon Ronson —The tickle inside (Guardiian) There aren’t actually any pictures on the website, but…
In a larger university context, I can’t be open and honest, I fear, because of my lack of tenure, lack of position, lack of a terminal degree. I’m reminded often that only those with tenure have the freedom to “take risks” with students because with tenure, one has some protection if the risks don’t work…
Beldner, an artist, teaches a St. Mary’s College class called “Pranks: Culture jamming as social activism.” Among his students’ projects this term was the distribution of a news release touting a fictional bar to be opened near the Moraga campus. The news release was sent to the Times, the Associated Press and several other Bay…
First come the television weather forecasters, with their fancy Doppler radar and satellite imagery, warning of deep snow. Then come the shoppers with their double coupons and grocery lists, seeking the essentials: bread, milk and toilet paper. So it was yesterday at local grocery and hardware stores as local residents stocked up on supplies, preparing…
McAlhany described Alpizar as carrying a big backpack and wearing a fanny pack in front. He says it would have been impossible for Alpizar to lie flat on the floor of the plane, as marshals ordered him to do, with the fanny pack on. “You can’t get on the ground with a fanny pack,” he…
Pac Man today has been tossed into the “Retro” bin and is avoided by teens who think it lame, slow, boring and ugly. May as well call Akira Kurosawa’s Ran crap because it’s 20 years old, or write off all black-and-white movies because they lack “realistic” coloration, right? […] [T]oday’s teens grew up in a…
—Gillespie & Montfort’s ”The Executor” (BathHouse Magazine) An intriguing piece of very short fiction, written by two authors who alternated sentences. The presentation works with color and type size in a simple but effective way. It’s not long, and has a creepy but oddly touching payoff. Similar:U Michigan's North Quad Complex: A Media CathedralThe North Quad…
I’m using this sabbatical to work on a longer, more complex novel than I’ve ever written before. Even though I’m giving my writing, and my child, more of myself than they’ve ever had before, they both cry out for more. “Mommy, I wish you were there when we sing “Come In, Grown-Ups,” my daughter says,…
[Blogging] makes everyone a producer of news, for one thing. Not everyone does create news, some just transport them also. Every blogger does a bit of both, I guess. And that adds up to a sort of global brain, which digests ideas or discovers facts and such. The speed and variety of this conversation might…
What I have done is taken two blog entries from the same story: The Yellow Wallpaper. I have taken one blog from when I was a freshman, and another blog from this year’s American Literature course. I feel that these essays are written from two completely different people. I am going to leave both of…
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that allows anyone to contribute articles, is tightening its rules for submitting entries following the disclosure that it ran a piece falsely implicating a man in the Kennedy assassinations. Wikipedia will now require users to register before they can create articles, Jimmy Wales, founder of the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Web site,…
Abortion, legalised throughout the United States by the Supreme Court’s Roe v Wade ruling in 1973, prevents unwanted pregnancies from becoming unwanted children. Higher abortion rates from the 1970s onwards thus help to explain why crime rates fell in America about two decades later. That’s the theory. But a paper published last week? by Christopher…
# If neither player makes a mistake, the game is drawn (but we knew that already). # This is an exercise in examining the objective properties of a game. There are two interesting sides to this: # 1) The objective properties of Tic Tac Toe really matter for our enjoyment of it: It is a…