What will be the contributions of a large bunch of people, who could have blogged on their own if they wanted to, but were motivated to do so by the Arianna Huffington brand name? I briefly checked out The Huffington Post today. I was never too impressed by the collective achievements of the celebrity intellectuals…
I take the view that computer languages, robot ethics, method acting, and biomechanics are the main ingredients that fused, in the 1950s, to become the cultural meme we call Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short. None of those ingredients was wholly new at that time: biomechanics and the Method – first known as the Stanislavski…
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire Crouch…
—Hawaiian Good Luck Sign (USS Pueblo.org) Communist North Koreans captured the U.S.S. Pueblo, imprisoned its crew, and began using them for propaganda purposes, coercing them to write apologies and trotting them out at press conferences that North Korea used to its advantage. The October 18, 1968 issue of Time revealed that the men of the Pueblo,…
—Bad Timing In the Worst Way (BreakTheChain.org) How strange… when I catch a glimpse of the Twin Towers in the background in Sesame Street videos that we taped years ago, or on the cover of a Curious George book, I still cringe. But for this ad, I felt a pang of sympathy for the advertising designer,…
Tom Bosley Haunts Me (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I’m laid up in bed, having gotten my usual end-of-semester cold a week and a half early. (Last time at least it had the courtesy to wait until a few hours after I submitted final grades to start hammering me into submission.) It suddenly occurred to me, from out…
Like many developments in the history of computing, some of the ideas for a GUI computer were thought of long before the technology was even available to build such a machine. One of the first people to express these ideas was Vannevar Bush. In the early 1930s he first wrote of a device he called…
Put bluntly, failure attracts more money than success. Politically, failure becomes a reason to demand more money, smaller classes, and more trendy courses and programs, ranging from “black English” to bilingualism and “self-esteem.” Politicians who want to look compassionate and concerned know that voting money for such projects accomplishes that purpose for them and voting…
Two and a half decades later, as the little yellow notes celebrate their silver anniversary, it‘seasy to forget what a recent innovation they are. Thanks to their material simplicity, they seem more closely related to workplace antiquities like the stapler and the hole-punch than integrated chips. Instead, they?re an exemplary product of their time. Foreshadowing…
Prof Roy Spencer, at the University of Alabama, a leading authority on satellite measurements of global temperatures, told The Telegraph: “It’s pretty clear that the editorial board of Science is more interested in promoting papers that are pro-global warming. It’s the news value that is most important.” He said that after his own team produced…
College administrators have been enthusiastic supporters Eve Ensler‘splay The Vagina Monologues and schools across the nation celebrate ?V-Day? (short for Vagina Day) every year. But when the College Republicans at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island rained on the celebrations of V-Day by inaugurating Penis Day and staging a satire called The Penis Monologues, the…
The appeal of the blogs? Humor seems to be the biggest attraction. Ironic detachment from the news, an ability to deflate egos and refreshing, undisguised opinion are also valued. All are antithetical to most news organizations. American newspapers traditionally and scrupulously segregate fact-based reporting from opinion by designating pages for each. Radio and television try…
“May the cutest kitten win…” —Kittenwar Similar:A gangway, flanked by still more #steampunk control panels, leads forward from the chief e…AestheticsWhat is a CRT and Why Don't We Use Them Anymore?I remember when I started seeing politic…Aesthetics"A Mushroom at Last… A Mushroom Forever"I asked my 10yo why she was moping. “…AmusingWhy Computers Will Never Write…
Parenting technique is highly overrated. When it comes to early test scores, it’s not so much what you do as a parent, it’s who you are. It is obvious that children of successful, well-educated parents have a built-in advantage over the children of struggling, poorly educated parents. Call it a privilege gap. —Dubner and Levitt…
An analysis of the language used in real estate ads shows that certain words are powerfully correlated with the final sale price of a house. This doesn’t necessarily mean that labeling a house “well maintained” causes it to sell for less than an equivalent house. It does, however, indicate that when an agent labels a…
In interviews, Margaret Edson has expressed mild surprise that critics have not paid more attention to the religious aspect of her play. “The play is about redemption, and I’m surprised no one mentions it. Grace is the opportunity to experience God in spite of yourself, which is what Dr. Bearing ultimately achieves” (Martini 24). Despite…
BreakAway has collaborated with the nonprofit group Believe in Tomorrow to create Splash, which helps pediatric cancer patients cope with painful treatments by donning headsets for a virtual scuba dive. CyberLearning Technology sells a $548 game system to treat kids with attention deficit disorder in more than 80 therapy clinics. It uses neurofeedback sensors to…
The later spinoffs were much better performed, but the content continued to be stuck in Roddenberry’s rut. So why did the Trekkies throw themselves into this poorly imagined, weakly written, badly acted television series with such commitment and dedication? Why did it last so long? Here’s what I think: Most people weren’t reading all that…
The kind of writing valued by the SAT reflects a set of assumptions about writing?and about ?good? writing?that we find problematic and which diverge from what the best current scholarship tells us about the nature of writing. Although it is possible that the new SAT will promote more writing instruction, preparation for the test…
Over the last 50 years, we’ve had to cope with an explosion of media, technologies, and interfaces, from the TV clicker to the World Wide Web. And every new form of visual media – interactive visual media in particular – poses an implicit challenge to our brains: We have to work through the logic of…