—Writing (in) Cyberspace Hyperpacket (Arizona State University) A good collection of resources, compiled by Katherine Heenan. Similar:Quebec teen discovers ancient Mayan ruins by studying the starsThis sounds like the plot of a Young Ind…CultureThe Best Word Book Ever, 1963 and 1991.As a child, I obsessed over many Richard…BooksBlind-accessible audio adventure Grail to the Thief seeks crowdfundingGrail…
Meetings are often routine if not downright boring. How many journalists have counted up the number of hours wasted in a career sitting at night week after week, month after month, with a bunch of dull politicians? As opposed to the worthwhile hours they might spend in a local tavern engaged in lofty conversation over…
As Cicero put it, Socrates was always “pretending to need information and professing admiration for the wisdom of his companion”; when Socrates? interlocutors were annoyed with him for behaving in this way they called him eiron, a vulgar term of reproach referring generally to any kind of sly deception with overtones of mockery. The fox…
The combination of prolificacy and inattention to accuracy that characterizes this process is highly suggestive of the modern pedagogic technique known as “journaling.” For decades, (following, we are probably meant to assume, some breakthrough research at a school of education somewhere) young students have been not merely encouraged but required to fill pages of their…
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But can IF ever be great art, the type which people go back over and over to read or play? A similar question would be: can computer games ever be as evocative or lasting as cinema? While these forms have undeniably not produced anything as transcendent as a Bergman film or a Nabokov novel so…
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From then on, I never had another forlorn afternoon. And to think, from that first fateful day when I decided I would be known as the half-elf wizard Vendel, I was joining a revolution. But what exactly were we transforming? To put it simply, Dungeons and Dragons reinvented the use of the imagination as a…
This glossary is an ongoing volunter project that aims to define terms that have developed special meaning among those who write, play, and study interactive fiction (which in this case means a specific kind of parser-based computer game, not literary hypertext). The wiki philosophy is that any page in a wiki text is part of…
I know that Ms. J.K.Rowling provided the approximation of the value of a Galleon (“about 5 pounds, but the exchange rate varies”), in an interview, but I think it is off a tad. This is not Ms. Rowling’s fault, but it is the fault of Scholastic Books. The price tag on my copy of Quidditch…
So, is the academic attention to blogs the same as “selling out,” the way punk-rockers sold out when they received public acclamation rather than evoke the sensation of disgust? The attention given to weblogs in the media, elevating blogs to journalism or at least commentary, is one way of colonizing the field. If blogging can…
Firefox 1.0 has excellent bookmark-management features, some of which were present in earlier versions of the browser. Users can, with one click, sort bookmarks according to site name, location, date last visited, etc. The newest bookmark feature is Live Bookmarks, which allows users to browse RSS feeds from their favorite websites directly from the site’s…
After Nixon crushed McGovern in the 1972 election, the film critic Pauline Kael made a remark that has become a touchstone among conservatives. “I don’t know how Richard Nixon could have won,” she marveled. “I don’t know anybody who voted for him.” While the second sentence indicates the sheltered habitat of the Manhattan intellectual, the…
Some students who were willing to give interactive fiction a chance felt frustrated by the postmodern structure of Photopia. Others who reported being extremely frustrated by IF nevertheless put in significant effort trying to solve the game. For the next exercise, students were asked to choose four games, play each for just fifteen minutes, choose…
After repeating some of Wonkette‘snumbers, Sullivan mused, “A Kerry landslide? Could be. Could be.” He cautioned the numbers could be misleading, even as he was publicizing them. This is the kind of stuff we used to run in my aforementioned school paper, when the speculation surrounded who was going steady. The difference is that the…
Colleges have spent millions on “smart classrooms” packed with the latest gadgets to assist teaching — computerized projection systems, Internet ports at every seat, even video cameras with motion detectors that can track the movements of a lecturer. But colleges have spent far less time and money giving professors the skills to use even the…
A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous…
Each year, on the day after Christmas, scholars and teachers of Modern Languages convene for their annual North American conference. At that conference, countless job interviews take place — an early step for some toward achieving a coveted academic position. 9interviews.com documents the progress of nine such scholars, each one committed to attaining a place…
Many people come here, just as many people seek out the stage, because they know it is a place where they won’t have to grow up too quickly, where the fickleness and irresponsibility of youth are a way of life. Pasts and past relationships are shed like so much old luggage. The unspoken, winking conviction…
And for roughly thirty years, almost any description of mailing lists of any length has mentioned flaming, the tendency of list members to forgo standards of public decorum when attempting to communicate with some ignorant moron whose to stupid to know how too spell and deserves to DIE, die a PAINFUL DEATH, you PINKO SCUMBAG!!!…