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…
In his office with its towering view of midtown Manhattan, Pearlstine boasted that if I’d been writing for Time or Fortune, or any other Time Inc. publication, he would have backed me all the way to the Supreme Court. “We take the First Amendment very seriously around here,” he said. I couldn’t help but recall…
According to the students, the less they were taught, the better. But I knew better. And I had been on the receiving end of some of these half-taught students. One of my colleagues at a large community college in California had confessed that he passed any student who would sit through his course. With no…
Community voices have always contributed to local and national papers. Citizen journalism is different. It often covers a wide territory from soliciting arts and entertainment coverage to providing the angle on the city council budget that the cub reporter might have missed. The London attacks moved the trend to a new level. Web sites from…
Media firms should be able to protect their copyrights. And without any copyright protection of digital content, they may be correct that new high quality content is likely to dry up (along with much of their business). Yet tech and electronics firms are also correct that holding back new technology, merely because it interferes with…
Self-reflection is a hallmark of many teachers’ blogs, according to the creator of weblogg-ed.com — the first stop for most teachers who want to try blogging. But thinking of them only as online journals shortchanges the medium, said Will Richardson, the nationally known lecturer on the topic who runs the site. “More and more teachers…
In some cases, a Google search of the candidate’s name turned up his or her blog. Other candidates told us about their Web site, even making sure we had the URL so we wouldn’t fail to find it. In one case, a candidate had mentioned it in the cover letter. We felt compelled to follow…
Observation is good. If you want to write about caves, go look in one. If you’re actually an adventurer, and not a wimp like me, go caving. Report back. We’re curious what it’s like beyond the handrails. —Andrew Plotkin —Likely To Be Eaten By A Bottomless Pit (rec.arts.int-fiction) When I read this Usenet posting in 2001,…
The unmanned probe of the Deep Impact mission collided with Tempel 1, a pickle-shaped comet half the size of Manhattan, late Sunday as thousands of people across the country fixed their eyes to the southwestern sky for a glimpse. —NASA Cheers Probe’s Direct Hit on Comet (AP|MyWay) Similar:STAR TREK's Still as Relevant on the 50th AnniversaryIn…
Homeless and broke at age 53, he allowed the domain registration for robotwisdom.com to lapse and can’t afford to re-up it. He has abandoned his Chicago apartment and is staying on Andrew’s floor while he tries to get back on his feet. He’s looking for work – sort of. After a few hands-in-pockets attempts at…
States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing probably hurt taxpayers even more. The National Commission on Writing, in a report to be released Tuesday, says that good writing skills are at…
Spacewar! was conceived in 1961 by Martin Graetz, Stephen Russell, and Wayne Wiitanen. It was first realized on the PDP-1 in 1962 by Stephen Russell, Peter Samson, Dan Edwards, and Martin Graetz, together with Alan Kotok, Steve Piner, and Robert A Saunders. […] The “a”, “s”, “d”, “f” keys control one of the spaceships. The…
Fubon said that the trader was unfamiliar with new computer systems and will be fired. —Bad keystroke leads to $251 million stock buy (News.com) What kind of an interface lets a worker spend $251 million with a single keystroke? The real problem here isn’t the worker — it’s a whole inhuman mindset that expects human beings…
My 7-year-old son envisions random evildoers coming into our house and abducting him — and we don’t let him watch TV news. But how can anyone miss the danger teases that blast through prime time like buckshot? And while we debase ourselves by playing voyeur to the pain of families immersed in tragedy, we ignore…