The books are written by a small stable of independent authors, who receive 50 percent royalties, a rate unheard of in traditional publishing. Edited collaboratively over the Net, the books are published “within moments of going to press” as small, downloadable PDF files. Costing $5 or $10, the books come with free updates for readers…
I just got an e-mail from someone I knew in elementary school. She and I were often rivals for class reading contests and vocabulary quizzes and such. I considered a friendly rivalry, though I remember her as mature and well above my own lowly social status. I always thought she was smart and nice, and…
If your IF game has a story, your scene descriptions should serve the story. If you want to give your game atmosphere, broaden your use of sense details within your scene descriptions to include sounds, smells, and even textures, instead of just sights. If you want your game to have a strong narrative voice, scene…
[E]ach student blog was given a set of categories. If students had already had blogs before class began, these categories could have been added to their existing blogs: ewriting: agenda item – outside reading ewriting: agenda item – student assignment(s) ewriting: assignment submission ewriting: general discussion / announcement non-ewriting (for students who did not create…
One member of staff, who did not want to be named, said: “East Kilbride managers were at a training day when it was announced they would replace good morning with Mahna Mahna. “The staff had just returned from lunch and all the managers were in a training room, sitting in a semi-circle and looking really…
No two signatures by one person are exactly the same in style, so the new technique involves making a 3D model of the pressure applied when a person writes. The model translates the writing into an image showing dips and furrows of the sample so that anomalies can be detected. Conventionally, handwriting has been analysed…
According to Canadian texts (six are cited), the United States planned to conquer and annex Canada during the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War and at various points in between. During the Cold War, the United States repeatedly bullied Canada into supporting its aggressive military policies. Canadian officials hoped that NATO would evolve…
I warn my students not to freak out when they see a lot of ink in the margins of their papers. I explain my golden rule: “You put effort in, writing to me? I put effort in, writing back to you. That’s the respect writers give each other.” Whenever I’ve watched my under-confident students in…
WICHITA, KS?Delivering the central speech of his 10-day “Solution For America” bus campaign tour Monday, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry outlined his one-point plan for a better America: the removal of George W. Bush from the White House. “If I am elected in November, no inner-city child will have to live in an America…
For almost an hour Saturday morning, the Associated Press reported that a 22-year-old San Francisco man, Benjamin Vanderford, had been beheaded in Iraq. The report of Vanderford’s death was based on a 55-second video clip that Vanderford and two friends had faked and distributed via the Internet. The story also was picked up by the…
To those who roll their eyes at retro gamers, I say, “What is really so great about the games you are playing?” Is there really that much difference between Soul Calibur II and International Karate? We are still mashing buttons and kicking people in the groin. Why did your game take years to produce? I…
Editors say stars do their own writing but are subject to editing like any freelancer. Keys says she tends to “overwrite. I want to get every nuance in there.” Stiles’ Guardian article needed “a couple of rewrites,” the actress says, “but they were good suggestions, and I didn’t mind doing them. … I have a…
At my first mock job interview with a faculty member from my home institution, I was informed that I would appear “too white.” (My dissertation examined the uses of rock music and culture in American prose literature of the last 50 years, and white men have created the lion’s share of the source material.) Having…
In the latest attempt by the scientific community to offer algebraic explanations for the seemingly inexplicable, mathematicians have come up with a formula for the best kind of scary movie. Using the equation (es + u + cs + t) squared + s + (tl + f) / 2 + (a + dr + fs)…
Schmexas Hold-em Schmipitor (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) Grrr…. On blogs.setonhill.edu, over 400 comment spams for some gambling game I’ve never played and some drug I’ve never heard of. Thank goodness for MT-Blacklist. Similar:Think Like A Journalist | Kelsey Samuels | TEDxPlano CultureFormer Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed [a Certain Political Slant] NewsOne day when I was an…
President Bush made a simple but unfortunate mis-statment on Thursday that will haunt him in the press and on late-night T.V. talk shows for weeks to come. But what he said is not near as amazing as the blatant twists put on it by big news media to make it even more direct and daunting…
A movie trailer for Halo 2 that flashed “www.ilovebees.com” for a split second led the curious to a beekeeping site that seemed to have been hijacked by a sentient virus. Puzzles at the site are so intricate that they must be solved by people working together at ARG sites like www.unfiction.com. For example, sets of…
I know I’m not alone in committing identity theft against my imaginary selves. Since no studies exist, I took an informal poll involving 50 friends and colleagues and, although I admit it’s not very scientific, it was revealing. More than half of respondents admitted they invent some or all of the information they provide to…
John Paul wants to make “the Holy See’s solicitude felt in the world of sports,” the Vatican said. The pontiff has given the weeks-old department its marching orders. Among the directives, the Vatican said, is fostering a “sports culture which promotes a vision of sports activity as a means of integral personal growth and as…
Now teens and twenty-somethings generally do not set a fixed time and place for a meeting. Rather, they initially agree on a general time and place (Shibuya, Saturday late afternoon), and exchange approximately 5 to 15 messages that progressively narrow in on a precise time and place, two or more points eventually converging in a…