..the most evocative and atmospheric experiences were conveyed entirely through text. Text adventures, with their terse locations, thrived on the role of objects, which were there to be discovered, smashed, used, examined and combined: you find the lamp, but now you need the oil to fill it and the match to light it. Only then…
At one prestigious university, a sophomore imported 30 biology books from England this fall and sold them outside his classroom for less than the campus-bookstore price, netting a $1,200 profit. Next semester, if all goes well, he plans to expand the operation. | “The only difference is that they say `international edition’ in little print…
A professor agrees to review a manuscript that is under consideration for publication at a journal. He has promised to keep the paper and its contents absolutely confidential. When he reads it, however, he realizes that his student’s experiments will never work; the paper shows that they are futile. Does he keep mum, or does…
The author of one of the books I blogged wrote me an interesting reply, but sent it via e-mail. Can I place her comment in my blog comments without violating some written or unwritten code? —John SpurlockBlogging E-Mailed CommentsE-Mail) If I were to send a letter to the editor to a newspaper, I shouldn’t be…
Convincing medical school faculties that a professional actor can teach empathy to doctors might sound like a losing battle. However, the directors of many residency programs are starting to acknowledge that they need help in this area. New national requirements, recently set by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), list interpersonal and communication…
On the surface, it is hard to tell that the story labeled “Study: Fellatio may significantly decrease the risk of breast cancer in women,” isn’t real. The original Web version has the CNN.com banner along the top of the page, the stock CNN medical graphic along the right side of the article and credits N.C.…
You have now entered the Stephen Kings’ home page… a place for the many of us whose daily lives are defined by who we are not. —Oh the Horror! Being Stephen King From Mike Arnzen’s Goreletter. Similar:The Collaborator (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 24) Winn tasks Kira with inves… Rewatching ST:DS9 In a vision,…
1.) Weblogs deal in the golden rule, modified to read: link unto others as you would have them link unto you. 6.) The quality of any weblog in journalism depends greatly on its fidelity to age old newsroom commandments (virtues) like check facts, check links, spell things correctly, be accurate, be timely, quote fairly. And…
Putting computers in classrooms has been almost entirely wasteful, and the rush to keep schools up-to-date with the latest technology has been largely pointless. —Bob Blaisdell reviews Todd Oppenheimer’ s The Flickering Mind —Why Computers Have Not Saved the Classroom (CS Monitor) Oppenheimer argues that when technology is working, it is because enthusiastic teachers have made…
[A]ttractive professors consistently outscore their less comely colleagues by a significant margin on student evaluations of teaching. —Gabriela Montell —Do Good Looks Equal Good Evaluations? (Chronicle) Thanks for the suggestion, Jim. I mentioned about this article couple days ago in a comment I added to a post about ‘ bad genes,’ but it’s worth repeating as…
Parents have been advised to consider making their own babyfood after the discovery of a toxin linked to cancer in jars of manufactured food sold all over the world…. The European agency said that the toxin was getting into food through the plastic gaskets used to seal glass jars with metal twist-off lids, although experts…
Over the next few weeks I will be reading Right to Exist: A Moral Defense of Israel‘sWars by Yaacov Lozowick. This book was published last year in Israel and this year, by Doubleday, in the U.S. My plan is to provide not exactly a review of the book but a reflection on it as I…
[W]hen the results of his DNA test came back, he found himself staggered by the idea that though he still qualified as a person of color, it was not the color he was raised to think he was, one with a distinct culture and definitive place in the American struggle for social equality that he’d…
Grrr. I’ve spent several hours trying to get past the final stage of Neverwinter Nights. On every level of the game besides what I presume to be the final level, the game features a way to teleport from wherever you are fighting, back to a central area where you can rest, buy new supplies, and…
1.) The weblog comes out of the gift economy, whereas most (not all) of today’s journalism comes out of the market economy. 4.) In the weblog world every reader is actually a writer, and you write not so much for “the reader” but for other writers. So every reader is a writer, yes, but every…
From 1860 to 1940, Earth’s surface warmed about 0.4ºC. Then Earth’s surface cooled about 0.1ºC in the first four decades after 1940 and warmed about 0.3ºC in the next two. For those two most recent decades, temperature measurements of the atmosphere have also been available, and, while these measurements are subject to significant uncertainty, they…
Increased security on airlines has been a significant issue since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. In those attacks, 19 terrorists are believed to have snuck box cutters onto four commerical airplanes. —Feds Searching All Commercial Airplanes (FOX News) I’m telling myself that I’m not blogging this because in a few days my…
What does one do when the book is wrong? Should the book’s authority outweigh the professor’s? In the mind of the student, the book is usually the “law” of the class, in many ways, and the teacher the lawyer. Obviously, I can’t hold the student accountable for missing a question when the book mislead her…
Would today’s tykes tolerate the classic games you grew up with? Kids do say the darndest things… —Kids Play (EGM) The premise: force a bunch of tweens to play the games my generation grew up with. Just how badly do yesterday’s games suck… and how badly to today’s kids suck while playing them? The article is…
In the generic new remake of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” five kids — two girls, three boys — hop into a ’70s-era van and head to Dallas for a Lynyrd Skynyrd show. On the way, they stop to pick up a traumatized stranger, who promptly shoots herself in the head. With time still to make…