Google Inc., the leading online search engine company, will open a new engineering and research office in Pittsburgh next year to be headed by a Carnegie Mellon University professor, the company announced Thursday. The facility will be charged with creating software search tools for Google. It is expected to create as many as 100 new…
In the new world of interchangeable, interdependent entertainment modules – athlete performs four songs on soundtrack to movie based on videogame! – a football injury can have unexpected repercussions. I’m here looking for some insight into the growing practice of adapting games into movies. There are plenty of them – Double Dragon, from Gramercy Pictures,…
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively. —Internet encyclopaedias go head to head (News @ Nature.com) Wikipedia stood up fairly well against…
“I will NEVER EVER DO THIS EVER AGAIN and I am once more terribly sorry… Please let me go for I am terribly sorry!!! I’m only a kid! Help me out. I just want to go home. I did this not knowing of the serious penalty that lies behind it. Please! Please! Please!” —Jonathan Baldino…
Many American academic libraries have sought to provide journals in both print and electronic formats for the past 5 to 10 years. The advantages of the electronic format have been clear, so these were licensed as rapidly as possible, but it has taken time for some faculty members to grow comfortable with an exclusive dependence…
Interview with open ended questions and, as with all interviews, use silence on your part to lead the subject to jump to unexpected comments. Most people cannot stand silence, so they will move in to fill it. Great salespeople know this and they use it to close sales. The salesman who closes the sale is…
Interwoven into the scarf material are pixels containing red, blue and green light-emitting diodes (LEDs), so adjusting the brightness of each type of diode turns the scarf a different overall shade. —Chameleon scarf coordinates with your outfit (NewScientist.com (will expire)) O brave new world, that hath such gadgets in it! (I Googled for photos but I…
In the 40 years since Derrida paid that visit to Johns Hopkins, succeeding generations of scholars have had time to fall in love with theory, fall out of love with it, and learn how to live with it. As in any long-term relationship, there’s a continuing re-evaluation and reimagining of what works and what does…
They enjoy learning. For nearly all professors, the chance to review and expand their own youthful education in a variety of fields is a treat that almost transcends the educational needs of their children. Mathematicians, for example, relish the chance to reread the literature they half-missed when they were mastering geometry, and English professors, like…
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…