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…
You will need the following items, depending on what you plan on doing with the orange: 1. Oranges, lots of them in case you are hungry or if you mess it up. 2. Two bowls, one to peel them over and one to put them in. It’s important to peel them over a bowl because…
Theory vs. Craft in Computer Game StudiesJerz’s Literacy Weblog) In a comment attached to my blog entry on The Muse of the Videogame, Eyejinx makes an excellent point, an excerpt from which is below: Unless and until those involved in game studies seriously work with the development process (and perhaps the developers themselves), any proposals…
Soon Phyllis has figured out how to use Ellery’s credit cards, order a cookbook and prepare a purée of parsnips for the neighbors. “Phyllis was grandstanding as a newlywed,” Ellery tells himself. “Was that good or bad?” Either way, it’s all too appropriate to the six-person dinner party under way. It later turns out that…
The Catholic Education Office abandoned plans last year to challenge sex discrimination laws after it agreed to add an additional 12 female-only scholarships to balance plans to offer 12 male-only scholarships. —Samantha Maiden and Paige Taylor —Grant to lure male teachers (News.Com.Au) Becasue a scholarship program designed to increase the number of male teachers was ruled…
The game press does a piss-poor job of covering the culture of games — from Games That Teach to local LAN parties. Instead, the delve into the intricate details of each game — which is clearly important from a game play standpoint. However, the culture at large is at least as important as the game…
Sadly, commercial publishing threatens the very system it exists to support. When expensive commercially published materials cannot be bought, when university presses cannot afford to publish monographs for junior faculty, everyone suffers. Students and scientists cannot gain access to badly needed materials; scholars cannot get tenure for lack of that first published monograph. The modern…
An online survey of 2,755 musicians and songwriters shows they are quite divided in their opinions about the impact of music file sharing by Internet users. There is no clear consensus regarding the effects of online file-sharing on artists. Some 35% of this sample agree with the statement that file-sharing services are not bad for…