Even before the election, a new political word had begun to take hold of the party, beginning on the West Coast and spreading like a virus all the way to the inner offices of the Capitol. That word was ”framing.” Exactly what it means to ”frame” issues seems to depend on which Democrat you are…
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has demonstrated the seriousness of its commitment to digital media by reaching a deal to buy Intermix Media Inc. for $580 million in cash…. The announcement — one of the biggest commitments to the Web by a big media conglomerate in recent memory — underscores how important online advertising has become…
On Saturday, the National Governors Association released the results of a poll of 10,000 teenagers (16-18 years old), including both students in high school and those who had dropped out. Significant numbers of students reported that high school was not challenging enough and that they were willing to take on more work. —Scott Jaschik —High…
All this week the BBC News website is speaking to people whose creativity has been transformed in the digital age. From blogging to podcasting, millions of ordinary people are becoming writers, journalists, broadcasters and film-makers thanks to increasingly affordable and accessible tools. —Darren Waters —Digital Citizens: The film-maker (BBC) Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary. Similar:Fie upon…
Computer technology is an invaluable supplement for research, but it becomes inefficient when it is used as a substitute for the hands-on investigation of the stacks. In any large, old library, there are unknown quantities of printed materials that cannot be found in electronic catalogs. Some of them were missed during the shift from cards…
Journalists are worrywarts. We worry about toxins in the drinking water, graft at City Hall, opposition leaders in countries you’ve never heard of and the rotator cuffs of journeyman pitchers. We worry about greenhouse gasses, decorum in the Senate, childhood obesity, abandoned pets and the fall lineup on ABC. If there’s an asteroid headed in…
The British suicide bombers and the Iranian nuke demands are genuine crises. The Valerie Plame game is a pseudo-crisis. If you want to talk about Niger or CIA reform, fine. But if you seriously think the only important aspect of a politically motivated narcissist kook’s drive-thru intelligence mission to a critical part of the world…
Everyone that plays video games knows Grande [sic] Theft Auto and it’s [sic] reputation for violence, especially GTA 3, GTA: Vice City and now GTA: San Andreas. Lately, however, GTA:S.A. has come under more fire than its predecessors and it’s all because of something called the “Hot Coffee Mod.” Apparently the .mod,which unlocks minigames that…
One minute, I’m watching families talk about how they don’t know how to buy school clothes for their kids on their minimum wage salaries; the next, I’m watching spoiled 18 year olds watching martial arts films on their $1000 toys, under the pretense of taking notes in a classroom. —Mike Arnzen —Getting By In Class…with…
“Psychiatrists believe that these auditory hallucinations are caused when the brain spontaneously activates, creating a false perception of a voice,” says Professor Hunter of the university’s psychiatry department. “The reason these voices are usually male could be explained by the fact that the female voice is so much more complex that the brain would find…
– You are Albus Dumbledore, a great wizard. You find yourself in a small room. There are exits to the north and west. There is a table in the corner. > Examine table – On the table is a wand and a suspicious pipe > Smoke pipe – As you begin to smoke the pipe…
—Scrollbars (Leegte.org) Interesting sculptural installation that uses Windows scrollbars. Via the very interesting Information Aesthetics. Similar:In May, 2002, I was blogging about… typefaces in period movies; poets Paul Dirac and Ste…In May, 2002, I was blogging about …ArtSet Phasers to Teach!Fans of Star Trek have thus already been…AcademiaThank you, anonymous donor of Mardi Gras candy.Okay, on closer inspection…
She banned competitive activities during school hours. —The Evil of Excellence (JoanneJacobs.com) There’s a good discussion sparked by an American School Board Journal article (the content of this URL will probably change when the next issue comes out) that strongly discourages any kind of competition in the classroom. Even a teacher who praises “Madison” for cutting…
Managers had held out hope, however slim, that they might be able to launch Discovery within a few days. But with engineers no closer to figuring out why the fuel sensor malfunctioned Wednesday – a potentially deadly problem – NASA had no choice but to call for a lengthy standdown. NASA is up against the…
Ku Klux Kryptonite (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Are comic books suffering because they are trying to emulate the action of videogames, rather than the edgy, thought-provoking content that only a fringe medium can provide? In a striking series of radio episodes in the 1940s, Superman took on the Ku Klux Klan, after activist Stetson Kennedy spent time…
In a meeting today, I learned that there is such a place as the ?blogosphere.? I thought the speaker was joking, and so appropriately, I giggled. The stern look I received in response jolted me to the realization that not only was this not a joke, but that I was the fool for not knowing…
Like you, I haven’t seen the film, but I have read the script, I’ve talked to a lot of people who worked on the set, and I’ve seen the raunchy t.v. commercial. Frankly, I think the whole project shows an arrogant disrespect for our show, for our cast, for America’s families, and for the sensibilities…
Washington loves farce the way Vienna loves the waltz. It once extravagantly inflated a sex act into the impeachment of a president, and it has now reduced the momentous debacle of the Iraq war into a question of what Rove or someone else said to a reporter on the phone. Soon, the question will turn…
“Middle world is like the narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum that we see,” he said. “Middle world is the narrow range of reality that we judge to be normal as opposed to the queerness that we judge to be very small or very large.” He mused that perhaps children should be given computer games…
In general, the more code you put into making the page look a certain way, the more time a user spends wondering why the page hasn’t loaded yet. For example, the store locator page that started me on this month’s topic was packed with large menus carefully rendered in alternating color schemes. Every menu had…