With great anticipation, I contacted the project manager — let’s call him A.H. — who would copy-edit my manuscript and, I genuinely hoped, find ways to improve it. I had no idea things could go so wrong. as he kept the schedule. … For the book to be published on schedule, I would have needed…
“I moved away bravely because I did not want to be blown up.” –Peter Jerz, age 5, playing “Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter.” Similar:Books Wield a Dangerous PowerWhile we might point to violent video ga…BooksYoungster in a tight spot has an inspirationhttps://twitter.com/TheFigen/status/1550…AwesomeMixed ReceptionThis activity is set in a research group…AcademiaEvolution of Gambling: Pay by…
—Nerds and Geeks (Kairosnews) Over on KairosNews, blacklily8 playfully taunts editor Charlie, “Can you tell me what the difference is between a geek a nerd? You seem to be the expert!“ I had a minute before heading home for the day, and thus spake Google: http://jargon.watson-net.com/jargon.asp?w=geek http://jargon.watson-net.com/jargon.asp?w=nerd The Jargon Lexicon notes that the word “nerd” probably…
Howard Dantzler stood among a sea of people on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., 40 years ago today. | He was 29 years old then. He had been in the service. He had earned a master’s degree. | But he was not free. —King speech still rings true for retired professor (Tribune-Review) A man looks…
Like most new college students, Carabella will spend the week before the start of classes doing routine tasks that we take for granted: opening a bank account, receiving new checks, using a credit card, and shopping at a grocery store that has a “club card”. She will learn how such simple activities can have major…
[W]ith the Mona Lisa, the Madonna was among only a handful of paintings known to be authentic Leonardo works. | The thieves arrived just before 11am. They were flamboyantly dressed, polite and personable until the moment one of them presented a knife to a woman tour guide who had led them to the Madonna. —…
At around 11 o’clock that morning Lewis departed from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with a a party of eleven men. They arrived shortly after at Bruno’s Island which was a mere 3 miles from Pittsburgh. Once ashore Lewis demonstrated his airgun to the men, while citizens watched. However, one citizen accidentally caused the gun to discharge, sending…
Usually, the bears would come to greet him within a day or two of his arrival, sniffing his scent in the air, nuzzling his footprints and then making contact.|This year, there was nothing. But there were fierce snowstorms and he thought they might be keeping the bears away. He travelled far and wide, looking for…
“[E]excuse me, I just got my sight back last week after being totally blind for 43 years. Could you help me figure out what I am seeing?” — Mike May —Mike’s Journal (Sendero Group) A fascinating excerpt: I found it very distracting to look at people’s faces when I was having a conversation. I can see…
‘What Some Might Call Evil’ This morning I was listening to the local National Public Radio station on the way in to work, and heard a feature filed by a reporter who is travelling with the Pittsburgh Symphony in Salzberg, Germany. The reporter interviewed a member of the orchestra — possibly a violist, though I…
How two 1940s conservative Australian poets tried to mock modernism by submitting the works of fake poet Ern Malley to the Angry Penguins literary magazine. When the truth emerged, the magazine’s editor was pilloried — and the fake poet became a star. —Ern Malley: The Poet Who Never Lived but Who Lives On… (ErnMaley.com) Here’s a…
Such concerns about donations have been raised in fields of study as diverse as auto engineering and medicine, but Microsoft‘sdonations are a special case. Because students are likely to keep using the technology after graduation, they help to maintain Microsoft‘ssoftware industry dominance. — Ariana Eunjung Cha —Microsoft‘sbig role on campus : Donations fund research, build…
Slashdot Takes ‘Gullible’ out of Dictionary Geek community website Slashdot has posted a link to “Why computer virus writers are useful and we should thank them“, which purports to be a transcript of a teleconference with “Samuel D. Forrester, one of the most famous immunologists in the world”. Journalism 101… check your sources. I’ll help…
We reached our intellectual adulthood with daily close-ups of the inequality in a nation that was founded on the commitment to equality for all. So we are inclined to side with the powerless rather than the powerful. If that is what makes us liberals so be it, just as long as in reporting the news…
NASA mission managers fell into the habit of accepting as normal some flaws in the shuttle system and tended to ignore or not recognize that these problems could foreshadow catastrophe. This was an “echo” of some root causes of the Challenger accident, the board said. —Shuttle [Columbia] Report Blames NASA Culture (MSNBC) This suggestion comes from…
Yet even though Mr. Crowley had moved mountains on the scientific and business fronts to get the treatment into testing, he couldn’t seem to speed the drug to his own rapidly weakening children. When he sold his company, he gave up control of the medicine they needed. The shortage of the drug, conflict-of-interest questions and…
Witty, ironizing Rorty, Fought he metaphysics grey. Joshing gently with the haughty, He commended Dewey’s way; Dewey who – he too the sort he (Rorty) wrought a giant from – Redescribed the true, for taught he Pragmatism with aplomb. —Roaming in Thought [after reading Rorty] (Normblog) A selection from a larger poem (by an undisclosed author)…
The Dutch PC-Active magazine has done an extensive CD-R quality test. For the test the magazine has taken a look at the readability of discs, thirty different CD-R brands, that were recorded twenty months ago. The results were quite shocking as a lot of the discs simply couldn’t be read anymore. —CD-Recordable discs unreadable in…
Next to page views and hit counts, the blog indexes are a good way to see if your story has people talking — with either good or bad feedback. Plus, marketing folks at media companies are starting to watch them, and PR people are using them to track companies and product releases, according to David…
I am cutting the whole thing into paragraphs, using my very sharp scissors. I will read a paragraph at the time. I will read it disjointed and jumbled, and see what I can do about the argument before me, without linking it to the devastating argument over or under on the page. Doing this I…