What’s the point? What adult has the time to master this stuff? Could it ever be worth it? Recently, I’ve decided the answer is yes, even if you’re reduced to tears by a hellish game, it can be worth it to plug through. Why? For the same reason it’s often worth struggling through many other…
A blog is a Web site with regularly updated chronological entries containing commentary, opinions, lies, rumors, half-truths and innuendos. More importantly, it’s where you can express your opinions, make comments, spread rumors, tell lies, create fiction and bore the world with your thoughts on just about any subject. […] In a lot of ways, reading…
The Unbearable Lightness of Being had a remarkable success when it was published in English in 1984 (this autumn will see an anniversary edition from Faber). Here was an avowedly “postmodern” novel in which the author withheld so many of the things we expect from a work of fiction, such as rounded characters – “It…
Imagine how quickly the slaughter of innocents at My Lai would have become known had it been captured by a palm-sized digital camera (or phone) instead of reported by letter. What does this mean for journalism? First, it converts all camera-toting participants of an event into potential irrefutable witnesses and therefore sources. Second, these witnesses…
Shovel Ready I recently heard our dean of academic affairs use the term “shovel ready” to refer to the progress of a campus construction project. I’d never heard that term before… A group of English faculty members experimented with remediating it to mean “ready to dig your own grave,” but I don’t think that meaning…
Sheet music began to have cars on the cover almost as soon as the automobile was invented. Some songs, like The Swagger Two-Step, didn’t have lyrics, and so the car on the front, along with the opulently dressed couple, seem to have been part of the illustrator’s attempt to make the tune symbolize wealth and…
The admission, during an interview with CNN, undermined Moore’s claim that Disney was trying to sabotage the US release of Fahrenheit 911 just days before its world premiere at the Cannes film festival. Instead, it lent credence to a growing suspicion that Moore was manufacturing a controversy to help publicise the film, a full-bore attack…
Beyrle hid in a hayloft near a farmhouse for a few days until around Jan. 15, when a Soviet tank brigade came by. “I went down with my hands up and said, ‘Amerikansky tovarishch, Amerikansky tovarishch,’” Beyrle recalled, using two of the few Russian words he knew: American comrade. Beyrle managed to convince the brigade’s…
Because digital cameras have features like automatic focus, they have made it easy for anyone to take technically good photographs. “You no longer have to have someone standing in bright sunlight to get a good picture of them,” Howe said. Combine that with Internet connections that have made it easy to send pictures in seconds,…
After a couple of hours of subscribing to favorite feeds, your news grazing habits will be changed forever. Just as TiVo lets you watch TV more efficiently, RSS readers do the same by letting you scan your favorite blogs and news sites faster or letting you cast your net over a wider range of material.…
Shields’ artfully monogrammed wardrobe and journalistic wiles do little to prevent her from falling into one of the most common traps faced by journalists: getting abducted by circus folk and forced to wear a skimpy costume, a fate that routinely befell Edward R. Murrow. —Brenda Starr (1989) (The Onion AV Club) This review of this Brooke…
From the “Throwing it Out There to See What Sticks Deptartment” here are some very raw thoughts about the various types of Weblog posts for teachers and students and where they fit on my very indistinct blogging scale: Posting assignments. (Not blogging) Journaling, i.e. “This is what I did today.” (Not blogging) Posting links (Not…
A student survey recently found that nearly two-thirds of students spent 15 hours or fewer per week doing coursework, and about 20 percent of both freshmen and seniors claimed to spend fewer than five hours per week. —Computer virus eat your term paper? You’re not alone (Bellingham Herald/AP) A puffy little piece like this just hits…
As a graduate student in 1980, Ms. Buckles became captivated by computers, and spent three to four hours a day using e-mail, a form of communication little known at the time outside universities and government. Although she didn’t play Adventure, she saw it as an emerging literary form that deserved attention, and she began interviewing…
I remember people saying that I would miss high school so much when I left. They were wrong in my case. I don’t miss it. I didn’t belong there–I never did, but I can say that I belong at Seton Hill. I have loved every moment, learning not only from books and blogs, but from…
Somewhere, beneath the cover of an innocuous-looking retail operation, those with true Power have built a facility to imprison forces man was not meant to know . . . things we were never meant to comprehend. The Ark of the Covenant. The Crystal Skull. Alien spacecraft . . . and aliens. Documentation of conspiracies and…
Right now, roses can be grown in lots of different shades, including pink, yellow, peach, and even green. But blue roses can only be created artificially; one way is to fresh cut flowers and put their stems in blue-colored water. This is not permanent, and doesn’t create a true blue rose. —Karen Lurie —Roses are…
So IF has certain intrinsic design difficulties, a built-in awkwardness in the way it represents spatial navigation and the inconsistency with which it handles language. And yet it continues to draw devoted practitioners and interactors. It is, in Montfort‘sview, a still vibrant tradition. Why does IF work despite these design difficulties? Perhaps the answer lies…
While there might be a future for narrative and new forms of storytelling in this cornucopia of new digital and cultural formats, the largest potential seems to be in new types of games, forms that blend the social and the aesthetic in creative ways and on an unprecedented scale. As a new generation of gamers…
Excuses remind me of The Trouble with Tribbles from the early Star Trek series: a space trader, Cyrano Jones, gives Uhura a purring ball of fluff known as a tribble. Charmed by the creature, Uhura takes it back to the Enterprise. However, as McCoy soon learns, tribbles are born pregnant and the more they eat…