Margaret Atwood recalls encountering Animal Farm” as a girl: “I mistook it for a book about talking animals, sort of like Wind in the Willows. I knew nothing about the kind of politics in the book – the child’s version of politics then, just after the war, consisted of the simple notion that Hitler was…
“Who would have guessed, when this New Hampshire YMCA camp was founded in 1905, that anyone would even have to think about an electronics policy?| But in today’s world, where some teens are more tech-savvy than their parents, and they often won’t leave home without their electronic toys, that’s reality. And camp directors are having…
The Corpus Christi Play was an annual outdoor event, involving hundreds of actors; it was already a long-established tradition by the end of the 14th century, and continued until suppressed by the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century.” —Medieval ‘Body of Christ’ PlayLiteracy Weblog) Today is the day the medieval church would have celebrated…
Google is Already Spidering my New SiteLiteracy Weblog) My digital move from UWEC to Seton Hill is happening much faster than I had anticipated. My UWEC weblog, which changed several times a day, seems to have encouraged Google’s spiders to check out a good chunk of my website on a regular basis. The cache was…
“Professors are ‘in the gist business.’ But a vernacular sound bite, no matter how strategically placed in a text or a lecture, won’t help students parse scholarly discourse. More important, getting students to write about what they know does not necessarily make them more adept at writing about more “traditional” academic subjects.” Glenn C. Altschuler…
“Microsoft, which has been talking tough on spam, is putting its money where its mouth is. The company revealed Tuesday that it has filed 15 civil suits in the United States and the United Kingdom against spammers who it says have sent more than 2 billion unsolicited messages to users of Microsoft’s MSN and Hotmail…
Will Gayther, the CS student who has written the weblog sofware I use, writes: Holy !@#!, it actually works! It’s actually alive! The blog actually works! And gives decent performance! (“gives decent performance”, I bet Dr Jerz will love that english!…need to get to sleep…) Wow! PS: I, Will Gayther, am of course the author…
“Norma McCorvey, the woman whose 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case helped make abortion legal in the United States, today petitioned to overturn the historic Roe v. Wade decision. Known for years as just Jane Roe, McCorvey (pictured right) filed the below affidavit in support of a motion in U.S. District Court in Dallas. McCorvey, 55,…
On Barger, Books and BlogsLiteracy Weblog) Unless I’m mistaken, Jorn Barger doesn’t seem to have updated his Robot Wisdom weblog in weeks (yeah, yeah, I’m the pot, he’s the kettle, I know). The 2 Blowhards critique of book culture reminds me of “Theory: Write a web-book in a day“, a usenet posting by Jorn Barger.…
“Biographies? Serious travel books? Moneylosers for most of their authors. How so? Well, say you’re lucky and your agent nails a $100,000 contract for you for a biography you’re dying to write. Sounds good, huh? But run the math: First, subtract the agent’s fee (10-15%), and then subtract taxes. You’ve got to write the book…
“Like automakers that moved production from Michigan to Mexico or textile firms that abandoned the Southeast for the Far East, service firms are now shifting jobs to cheaper locales like India and the Philippines. It’s not just call centers anymore. Indian radiologists now analyze CT scans and chest X-rays for American patients in an office…
“Eurobloggers who wish to use their real names may be out of luck. For better or for worse, Europe lacks a First Amendment and the respect for limited government, private property and free enterprise that America still enjoys. And Europe sure doesn’t have a Judge Stewart Dalzell, who correctly predicted seven years ago that ‘the…
Would you use “anymore” as a synonym for “from here on” or “these days”? It’s a common regionalism here in Pennsylvania, where I’ve heard it from people with a wide range of educational backgrounds. (Thanks to Jim, the Electric Eclectic.) —Dialect Survey Results: Harvard) Similar:I regularly teach Uncle Tom's Cabin, but have never seen it…
“I’m looking for people who support people who use weblogs, in a context that is not about weblogs, if possible. For example, a history class where each student keeps a weblog. Teachers who manage classes with a weblog. My goal of course is to learn from them, and then figure out what the next steps…
“While I’m an admirer of Emily Short and Andrew Plotkin, I don’t see either of them shooting for literary effects — rather, they excel by exploring and extending the possibilities of IF. I think my list of ‘favorite IF authors’ would probably not contain any surprises, but I think Graham Nelson’s Jigsaw probably deserves a…
“In June 1999, Bhutan became the last nation in the world to turn on television…Bhutan’s isolation has made the impact of television all the clearer, even if the government chooses to ignore it. Consider the results of the unofficial impact study. One third of girls now want to look more American (whiter skin, blond hair).…
WebWasher Jumped the Shark?Literacy Weblog) For about five years, I’ve used WebWasher — a free program that blocks ads from web pages. Since then, it’s probably saved me several days of time that I would have spent waiting for ads to download or trying to figure out how to close an annoying pop-up without accidentally…
“I nonetheless found the darknet command line calm and comforting. Not threatening at all. I suppose it had something to do with the rhythms of the interaction, for while I knew the machine was capable of unleashing unthinkable power, I also knew it would sit dormant forever, waiting for my fingers to hit the keys.…
“Not only is the First Amendment pressed into service at the drop of a hat (especially whenever anyone is disciplined for anything), it is invoked ritually when there are no First Amendment issues in sight. | Take the case of the editors of college newspapers who will always cry First Amendment when something they’ve published…
Purple BarbieLiteracy Weblog) I recently re-read Brenda Laurel’s Utopian Entrepreneur, which got me thinking quite a lot about what the landscape of cyberspace will look like when my daugher Carolyn starts exploring it. And just now I found that the link to Brenda Laruel’s legendary “Purple-Moon” website forwards to a Barbie website. Of course I…