It’s a dangerous mistake to believe that statistical research is somehow more scientific or credible than insight-based observational research. In fact, most statistical research is less credible than qualitative studies. Design research is not like medical science: ethnography is its closest analogy in traditional fields of science. —Jakob Nielsen —Risks of Quantitative Studies (Alertbox) Note… he’s…
Scientists have cast doubt on the well-established theory that a single, massive asteroid strike killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. New data suggests the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, supposedly created by the collision, predates the extinction of the dinosaurs by about 300,000 years. —Dinosaur impact theory challenged (BBC) Other cosmic news: Mars “soaking wet…
So why this terror of the new medium? I don’t think it has much to do with the concern to protect the weak and feeble-minded potential murderers out there. This is all about money. Television is one of the media which has the most to lose, as statistics show that games take time away not…
The electric shock hadn’t hurt Jeremy very much, but he had bumped his head on a metal leg of the auditorium seats which he fell into. I had told him to ham it up when I applied the electrode of my violet-ray machine to his outstretched hand, but this was much more than I expected.…
From Yahoo! News: Update: Torill responds.The Importance of PunctuationJerz’s Literacy Weblog) Bork bork bork! Similar:You come very close to successfully combining argument and explication here… I recently came across a box of old wr…AcademiaSchisms (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 5)Rewatching ST:TNG Riker is having troub…DesignFormer Setonian editor-in-chief Amanda Cochran visits my journalism class…
44% of Internet users have created content for the online world through building or posting to Web sites, creating blogs, and sharing files In a national phone survey between March 12 and May 20, 2003, the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that more than 53 million American adults have used the Internet to…
While no replacement for writing articles and books, and no one is going to get tenured or promoted through blogging (at least not today); but what I’ve called a serious blogger would get a big plus on the positive side on the ledger from me when it gets to merit review time! Failing to reward…
I reworked the draft, adding some charts and tables to demonstrate that the program wouldn’t require any new dollars. But mostly I substituted abstract nouns for concrete ones, stuffed sentences with nominalizations, and replaced active verbs with passives, violating the rules of writing that students in the M.F.A. program would be expected to follow. —Dennis…
Sensory Immersion vs. PainJerz’s Literacy Weblog) My son got a splinter in his hand this weekend. He wasn’t too happy when my wife told him she’d have to remove it with a needle. I suggested that maybe I could try tweezers first. “What are tweezers?” he asked. “Kind of like little pliers,” I said. I…
Dog Canto         Outside… il conformista                walk milkbone                                        roll-over                                        il conformista        Sit! sit!                il conformista        Paw! paw!                il conformista                                roll-over il conformista…        Good doggy.        Good good doggy.                                Fidelius. Brian Stefans —Il Conformista (Poem for a Dog) (Free Space Comix: The Blog) A poem that uses only words that a (particular) dog understands. Found via GrandTextAuto. Similar:Reading fiction early in life is associated with a more complex worldview, study…
The ability of players to interact with games has fundamentally changed them, Lowood said. Computer games, once seen as commercial products or a one-way communication between designer and player, are now seen as a much more open kind of medium that people can contribute to in other ways, he said. “So much of the content…
Most non-arcade games that retain a rabid fan base years after they’ve become technically obsolote fall into one of two categories. They have a obsessively complex world that’s been built up around them (Nethack, say, or tabletop roleplaying games), or they have a simple rule set with much greater depth in the gameplay and strategy…
At Home What do the marketing droids think the audience that comes to see Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” will want to spend money on? What previews will I have to sit through? I stayed home with the kids while my wife went to see an afternoon showing. Soon it will be my…
Let’s assume that you have a brilliant Idea. Let’s say a sitcom about a group of different people living under the same roof. Or a story about a police unit who dedicate their lives to solving crimes. Or maybe some other equally original idea that demonstrates how creative and innovative sort of a person you…
Games Galore Two interesting Slashdot threads… one is “Gaming Academia Gets More Mainstream Press“, a response to the recent NY Times article on the upcoming Princeton conference, and another is discussion of Magic Words: Interactive Fiction in the 21st Century, a beautiful nine-part article on interactive fiction, featuring interviews with Emily Short, Stephen Granade, Andrew…
We and our colleagues at The Princeton Review have spent many years training students to take the SAT II, and have carefully analyzed the College Board’s essay-grading criteria. To receive a high score a student should write a long essay of three or more paragraphs, with each paragraph containing topic and concluding sentences and at…
“Games are big, big objects,” said Barry Atkins, who teaches in the English department at Manchester Metropolitan University in England. “The days when you could play a couple of hours of Myst and write about it are over.” | Dr. Atkins admitted that he didn’t finish Half-Life before writing about it in his 2003 book,…
U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige today [Feb. 23] issued the following apology for his remarks about the NEA. “It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA’s Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind’s historic education reforms. I also said, as I have repeatedly, that our…
—Netstore USA (opengroup.com) Buy my book, Technology in American Drama, 1920-1950… Priced at just $197.70! Outside of the US, that’s $216.60, or about a dollar a page! Order now! Sheesh! At that price, with the royalties I’ve earned so far, I could buy THREE WHOLE COPIES! Oh, wait, they already charged me for the advance copies…
Below the Sinkhole You are about 75 feet into the cave. There is a dim light at the east of the passage. There is a methamphetamine lab here! >EXAMINE LAB Nothing extravagant — about average for this area. You see some cookware, solvents, and acids. Looks like someone has just finished cooking. >_ —There is…