To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing…
Materials that could jump-start organic evolution have shown up in interstellar dust clouds and dusty planet-forming discs around many stars. These findings fuel an increasingly strong suspicion that the raw material of planet Earth was primed for life. —Robert C. Cowen —Outer space: not so lifeless after all (CS Monitor) Similar:Man Infected with Ebola Misinformation Through…
“There’s a silence in the family,” says a newsreader, “because they’re glued to the box”. An arts producer tells me that sleeping habits have changed: “Now people stay up late to watch their favourite programmes”. Another explains how the main family room pre-TV would have seats facing inwards to ease conversation with family and friends…
Blogging is dead, long live blogging. I suspect that over the next few years we will see a lot of calls suggesting that blogging has died, and I suspect that in a sense they will be right. The act of keeping a “Weblog” as a separate entity will become something of an anachronism. The broader…
Today Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and in some areas a month marked with celebrations, guest speakers, picnics and family gatherings. It is a time for reflection and rejoicing. It is a time for assessment, self-improvement and for planning the future. —Juneteenth Happy Juneteenth.…
Weblogs, Comments, and Law (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) IANAL (“I am not a lawyer”), but here are some links I found interesting. While a newspaper has a responsibility to check the accuracy of letters to the editor, if person A were to start a cafe, and person B walked into the cafe and made statements that the…
A 24-foot sailboat was raised Thursday from the murky depths of Monterey Harbor by divers who filled its hull with pingpong balls. —Kevin Howe —Sunken boat raised by pingpong balls (Monterey Herald) Similar:An Hour of Monastic Silence in Media Studies Class (plus an awesome drum solo)I announced that my 300-level Media and …AcademiaAmbiguous language in journalism:…
We highlight U.S. prisoner abuse because the photos aren’t too offensive to show. We downplay Saddam’s abuse precisely because it’s far worse — so we can’t use the photos. And that sets the stage for remarks like Sen. Ted Kennedy’s claim that Saddam’s torture chambers have reopened under “U.S. management.” —Deborah Orin —Reporting for the…
SHU Blogs Down The SHU blogs are down. I exchanged three e-mails with the sysadmin yesterday, who described the problem as something minor, that a reboot would fix. I haven’t heard back from him since yesterday afternoon and don’t know what to say. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed. Update: The sysadmin writes, Argh! The…
What If… There Were No IF? An Alternative History of Games, sans Crowther’s Colossal Cave (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) During a break in the Princeton video game conference a few months ago, David Thomas asked me, what would computer games be like today if Will Crowther hadn’t created Colossal Cave Adventure? I pulled Nick Montfort into the…
They circle in front of the motion detector, the doors open, and the birds fly through and take lunch up to the kids that are nesting in the building. Then it’s back to the door, buzz by the motion detector — and fly through again to hunt for more food. —Birds Learn to Operate Automatic…
The 363-foot-long behemoth has lain on its side in front of JSC since 1977, a favorite sight of tourists, but also a victim of the elements. —Apollo moon rocket to get face-lift (CNN) The Houston Space Center was one of the places I visited on my honeymoon (10 years ago next month). If I recall correctly,…
Rich, beautiful, coastal types are liberal precisely because their lives are so wonderful. They want to preserve their lives exactly as they are. If I were a rich movie star, I’d vote for peace and poverty relief. War and domestic insurrection are the greatest threats to their already-perfect lives?why mess with it? This rational fear…
The way that desks and chairs are arranged in a professor’s office send subtle signals. If you use your desk to block your doorway with a confrontational barrier like they do at, say, a police station, well then you’re not only being uninviting, you’re also responsible for all those nervous tics the students make when…
Winer, who has offered free hosting to bloggers for the past four years, has promised to make exportable copies of blog contents available to the blogs’ owners at their request. He says it will take at least two weeks to provide copies of the blogs’ contents. Meanwhile, the affected bloggers cannot access their work, a…
Slow-motion Nightmare (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I had a busy day yesterday, with adventures that included diving fully-clothed into a large kiddie pool to retrieve my 2-year-old daughter, who had slipped and was floating face down, unable to straighten herself out. An older girl had taken my daughter’s hands and lured her to the center of the…
Children as young as seven in one British school are using weblogs as part of their normal routine, and are doing better than non-webloggers as a result, their teacher says. Weblogs, easy-to-use personal journals published on the internet, get children more interested in school work they might otherwise have disliked, says junior school teacher John…
While hardcore online gaming remains the preserve of young men, research firm Screen Digest found that “bored housewives” are fuelling the growth of other games offered on the net. —Net games lure ‘bored housewives’ (BBC) It’s not clear from the article whether the term “bored housewife” is used in the report, or whether it was just…
The bad words we removed, meaning that “The meteor is going to be pissed” was changed to “The meteor is going to be mad.” Howie Rubin of Jaleco (the company that was going to publish the game under license) advised us the that the baddest bad word is Kill. The central activity in most Nintendo…
Want to play a game that involves Monty the Mole? Commander Keen? David “Knight Rider” Hasselhoff? With RoN you can. The fact that anyone can freely contribute to the series means that its potential for growth is unrivaled. Indeed, at the time of writing this article, there have been over sixty RoN games. Even King’s…