“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…
“He had a maturity beyond his age.” — security guard Jason Armstrong —Man dies in 11-storey fall (Ottawa Sun) The quote above is applied to a university student who accidentally hurled himself over a balcony. The student was an engineering major, who apparently wasn’t clear on the concept of momentum, as he charged a balcony railing…
Part of Maloney’s job is to evaluate books on the sleeper list and decide whether they go to the bargain basement sale or get a second chance. “It’s a really hard thing to get rid of a book,” Maloney said. “A big, big consideration for us is just space. Our juvenile fiction shelves are packed…
Two different things seem to have happened at the same place and time, according to the “spin” placed on two different reports from competing local papers. Post-Gazette to seek wage concessions (Tribune-Review, reporting on its competition) The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is gushing red ink, prompting workers to vote today on wage and benefits concessions designed to save…
Fantasy worlds created by virtual reality have been shown to provide a novel form of relief to patients suffering from intractable pain…. “My pain when the nurse is changing my bandages is consistently extreme… But during the time I was in VR, I was pretty much unaware that the nurse was even working on my…
I can still taste the beer. I say this is a whole new kind of tired not because of the physical effects of my hangover. Believe me, that’s not new at all. What’s new is that I’m tired of this kind of tired. I’m tired of being fuzzy for the first half of each day.…
—Star Trek Action Figure Collection (NubiNubsUniverse.com) The really sad thing: I recognize most of these characters. Okay, the aliens from “Star Trek: The Next Generation” sort of blend into one another, but for the classic series, the episodes have been so firmly imprinted on my brain for decades that I can name most of the characters…
The L.A. Times (‘free’ registration required–thus my extensive quoting) has story about how: the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control recently declared that American publishers cannot edit works authored in nations under trade embargoes. Although publishing the articles is legal, editing is a “service” and it is illegal to perform services for embargoed…
—Technovelgy: Inventions from Science Fiction Novels and Books There’s no good blurb on this site, but it features news of technological advances that have been predicted in science-fiction. For instance, here’s the listing of real inventions first mentioned in Fahrenheit 451. Pretty cool. Similar:Google's AI could probably beat you at AtariWhat’s significant in this story…
[O]n Feb. 20, 1954 — President Dwight Eisenhower interrupted his vacation in Palm Springs, Calif., to make a secret nocturnal trip to a nearby Air Force base to meet two extraterrestrial aliens. Or maybe not. Maybe Ike just went to the dentist. There’s some dispute about this. —Peter Carlson —Ike and the alien ambassadors (M$ NBC)…
Computers and Composition Online is the refereed online companion journal to Computers and Composition: An International Journal, now in its 21st year and published by Elsevier. Our goal is to be a significant online resource for scholar-teachers interested in the impact of new and emerging media upon the teaching of language and literacy in both…
Leadholder can be broadly defined as any durable instrument that is designed to hold and be refillable with consumable pieces of graphite so that the graphite can be conveniently used for drawing or writing. Within this definition there are subsets such as porte-crayons, mechanical pencils, and drafting leadholders. This website is primarily concerned with drafting…
All of this carrying on is fine, but if Spike really wants shows men like to watch, they’ve missed a few great concepts. Here are ten new programs that appeal to real men: The Explosion Show – Every week, the hosts fill some interesting object with black powder and then, well, you get the idea……
A 40-plus-year-old A-list actor pondering whether or not to appear in a game? Heck, even Roger Moore would have been loathe to actively participate in what was once the perceived domain of momma’s boys. “Traditionally, Hollywood signed away rights without any expertise or any idea of the plot lines,” said industry analyst P.J. McNealy. Several…
“Beauty provoketh thieves sooner than gold.” — Rosalind, As You Like ItAs You LIke It @ Seton Hill UniversityJerz’s Literacy Weblog) I asked students in three of my classes to attend Seton Hill University’s production of As You Like It. I thought the casting was very well done. With her hair pulled back in a…
The magnitude of these effects is also somewhat alarming. The best estimate of the effect size of exposure to violent video games on aggressive behaviour is about 0.26 (Fig. 2). This is larger than the effect of condom use on decreased HIV risk, the effect of exposure to passive smoke at work and lung cancer,…
More than 150 Lego builders and collectors converged on Portland over the Presidents Day weekend for BrickFest PDX, a celebration of all things Lego. While plenty of individual work is on display, the big draw is the chance to interact with like-minded folks…. In one of the smaller conference rooms, a team of 10 guys,…