<> !*”#^”`$$-!*=@$_%*<> ~#4&[]../|{,,SYSTEM HALTED Translation: “Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash, Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash, Bang splat equal at dollar under-score, Percent splat waka waka tilde number four, Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash, Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH.” —Fred Bremmer and Steve Kroese —Stuck Shift Key Poetry (Net Funny) This interesting bit…
She asked how I was adjusting to the “difficult” corporate world after coming from the “less stressful” academic world. It was all I could do to keep from bursting out laughing. Let’s see: I’m only working five days a week. At night, I am not furiously preparing a lecture for the next day. And I…
With the media opera R.U.R., we want to appreciate the Czech author Karel Capek (Czechia’s Goethe) and his importance for the European cultural expression. It is he who in R.U.R. used for the first time the expression robot, derivated of the Russian word “robota” = work. R.U.R. is a classic of science fiction literature and…
Some have at first for wits, then poets pass’d, Turn’d critics next, and prov’d plain fools at last; Some neither can for wits nor critics pass, As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass. Those half-learn’d witlings, num’rous in our isle As half-form’d insects on the banks of Nile; Unfinish’d things, one knows not what…
The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things. The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings…
Some of the new questions in a very young field: How do you judge a game? As you would a novel? Should we think up a whole new vocabulary for evaluating games? What do the social dynamics of online worlds — those massively multiplayer games — tell us about human behavior? In Copenhagen, Denmark, the…
Assumption, though, is too mild a word when it comes to the belief in mental health. The taken-for-granted-ness of this idea ranks with God, romantic love, the nuclear family, the goodness of free markets and the wickedness of Communism. For most people, suggesting that mental health might not exist would be like telling the kind…
Now, as much as I love books, I love computers, too. Computers are fundamentally different from modern books in the same way that printed books are different from monastic Bibles: they are malleable. Time was, a “book” was something produced by many months’ labor by a scribe, usually a monk, on some kind of durable…
Ancient catapults were state-of-the-art weapons of unequalled power?but how powerful were the military engineers who created them?… The fearsome machines terrorized battlefields and sieges until the proliferation of gunpowder. Their power was impressive and terrifying. Roman catapults could hurl 60-pound (27-kilogram) boulders some 500 feet (150 meters). Archimedes’ machines were said to have been able…
When the newest cheating scandal surfaces at some prestigious southern university known for its military school style “honor code,” the headlines leap across the tabloids like stories on child molestation by alien invaders. It’s almost never suggested that all this might be something other than a disaster for higher education. But that’s exactly what I…
A scheduled quiz on As You Like It sprang And caught some students unprepar’d today. Soft-hearted me! I bargained with them thus: They’ll blog in verse (as Shakespeare would have done), And I will grant them an exten-si-on. Similar:Googling Is for Old People. That’s a Problem for Google.When I ask my students to use…
In these movies, priests are suicidal, corrupt and/or lascivious. Nuns are heartless and sadistic. Before you run to your keyboard: yes, I’m aware of scandals, past and present, involving the church. And yes, some of the films listed above are powerful, important works based on true stories. But a lot of this stuff is just…
[I recently received the following e-mail… –DGJ] Dear Sir: I am presently working on a science fair project for my school. I found your article, Instructions: How to Write for Busy, Grouchy People. I was hoping you could expand on that a little more for me. I am in the 7th grade. My project this…
The shooter, officer Richard S. Neri Jr., is white. The victim, Timothy Stansbury Jr., was black. Scientific research has a say here too, probing whether our rawest reflexes can be primed by modern fears based on race. —Erik Baard —Misfire: Why Brain Structure Makes Unintended Shootings Inevitable (The Village Voice) Similar:Dax (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1,…
[A]t least two transformations appear to distinguish the production of new-media news from the typical case of print and broadcast media: The news seems to be shaped by greater and more varied groups of actors, and this places a premium on the practices that coordinate productive activities across these groups. This, in turn, seems to…
It’s not just that so many denizens of the Net are barking loonies; that’s equally true of the general population. But too many Netters are still a demographically narrow slice of the electorate. They’re too young to vote, too broke to contribute to campaign funds, and too busy downloading pornography to care much about upholding…
Jill Drake, from Tenterden, Kent, will fly to Los Angeles and scream for an hour to promote Disneyland’s new Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. —Terror task for screaming champ (BBC) Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary. Similar:The Decline and Fall of the English MajorThis essay is yet another reminder of ho…AcademiaWriting, Coding and Education: Why They MatterBack…
Rebellion in American Lit Class!Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) I’ve got a tough crowd in my American Literature class. When I opened the discussion of The Great Gatsby with the question, “How was Gatsby great?” the students in their small groups overwhelmingly decided that he wasn’t great at all. A few mentioned favorably his love for Gatsby…
[I]t seems the media (TV and newspapers) are just now picking up on the “Beyonce Knowles as Lois Lane” rumor from earlier this week, and even though the rumor has been shot down as being false, various TV news programs and newspapers are running with the story. It also appears that Johnny Depp is not…
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