I am Brazilian!I’m here on tourism!I really feel bad and sorry for what they’ve done to this the World Trade Center!!This is such a blessed country!God bless America!God bless this land!I’ve always loved America!I wish this was my country!!!! I just love the States!via E-mail) E-mail I got from someone who read my tribute to…
Not! The headline says “Millions Behind Bars,” but paragraph 4 says there are 1.3 million in prison. The lead paragraph counts not only prisoners but also those on probation or parole, to come up with a total six times larger. —Report: Millions Behind Bars in U.S. (AP)) 1.3 million is still a staggering number, but…
“For six years in the 1990s, Lewis was a principal member of the MIT Blackjack Team, an infamous cabal of hyper-geniuses and anarchistic whiz kids who devised a method of card counting that took the gaming world completely by surprise. ” Ben Mezrich —Hacking Las Vegas (Wired) Similar:Text Adventure Geeks Rejoice: Major Inform7 UpdateI have final…
“The aim of this essay is to explore the complex relationships that exist between Monkey Island, Postmodernism, Cultural Materialism, Roland Barthes’ concept of the Death of the Author and the twin phenomenon’s of corporate capitalism and globalisation. I shall attempt to resolve the antagonisms that exist by analyzing the Monkey Island texts using the tools…
Two short items appeared recently in Associated Press reports. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – One of four Democrats seeking a Sarasota-area congressional seat sued an opponent over the punctuation in her name. Patrick Feheley objects to his rival being listed as Candice Brown-McElyea because if left hyphenated, the name would appear before Feheley’s on the ballot. A…
“In a surprising departure from other findings that point to a warming planet, a NASA researcher has found that the amount of ice in the Antarctic increased from 1979 to 1999, as measured by satellites.” —Antarctic Sea Ice Increases over Past Two DecadesSpace.com) It’s not too surprising if you’ve read anything by Julian Simon. Similar:STEM…
The recording industry blamed cassette tapes for killing disco in the 70s. Along came MTV, which found a brand new way to make money off of music. The recording industry is blaming file-sharing for the slumping sales in teen pop. Sound familiar? Mark Jenkins —Hit Charade: The music industry’s self-inflicted woundsSlate) Similar:And so it begins.BooksThe…
“One by one, the [waste-bearing] casks smack into the Moon. The soft deep lunar regolith in the impact area should ensure proper waste burial. Plowing into the lunar surface at high speed, the waste would be buried under several feet of glassified regolith…” —Moon Seen as Nuclear Waste Repository (Space.com) Space:1999. Moonbase Alpha… Nuclear Waste…
“Tiny text tyrannizes users by dramatically reducing task throughput. IE4 had a great design that let users easily change font sizes; let’s get this design back in the next generation of browsers.” Jakob Nielsen —Let Users Control Font SizeUseIT.com) This apparently the Week of Cute Headlines. Why not “Tiny text type terribly trashes task throughput”?…
“What happens to friendship when everything goes wrong all the time? Laurel and Hardy perpetually get in each other’s way, they get on each other’s nerves, and while the general battle is against humiliation, they are always busy with the effort to extricate themselves from the fine mess they bring about in one another’s lives.…
“They wanted to have an intelligent discussion, to avoid sensationalism, to give me a chance to make my arguments. They would have some representatives of the games industry and someone from one of the media reform groups. One producer almost convinced me that “Donahue” was a serious news discussion program.” Henry Jenkins —Ambushed on “Donahue” (Salon)…
“What is a hoax, exactly? When does a good deal become too good to be true, and where does belief end and credulity begin?” Thomas Hayden —The Art of the HoaxUS News) Similar:Don't Like Hamlet? Now's Your Chance To Rewrite It”It’s not really fair to say, ‘Look at t…CultureHistorians Admit To Inventing Ancient GreeksI knew…
“We asked police why we were being arrested, and they said, `Everybody is receiving equal treatment from the Houston Police Department tonight.’ It didn’t matter what you were doing; they arrested you.” —450 peaceful teens arrested in K-Mart raid (Houston Chronicle) Similar:The Value of Truth:Â We are living through an epistemological crisis. In the jargon of academia,…
“Welcome to the world of a half million (and counting) Weblogs, where anyone can instantly publish his passions and favorite Weblinks. And the fun’s just begun.” Steven Levy —Living in the Blog-osphereNewsweek) Levy is a computer historian and insightful observer of geek culture. Similar:My #AugustWilson #Steampunk NightmareToday is my last official day teaching a…AcademiaJerz Nerdcation…
Latest weapon against junk e-mail: poetry. —Haiku’da Been a Spam Filter (Wired) The title of the article wins the prize for “Most Obscure Reference to Marlon Brando.” Similar:Boston Herald Guild Members Boycotting Twitter After Reporter SuspendedMembers of the Herald’s editorial guild …Current_EventsI Quit Liking Things On Facebook for Two Weeks.She stopped liking, and started commenti…CybercultureConfronting the…
“The passion, if not the logic, of her argument is clear and perhaps casts a new light on the deliberate destructiveness of the motives that lay behind her literary innovations. She was nothing if not a great hater of all that had gone before her.” Theodore Dalrymple —The Rage of Virginia Woolf (City Journal) Dalrymple is…
"Before the Internet, the only opportunity most students had to speak with their professors was during scheduled class sessions or office hours. Now, more professors can be in touch with students at any time — morning, noon, and night, seven days a week." [The article focuses mostly on courses that meet only online, but this article…
"First released in 1989, HyperCard still has a fiercely dedicated following despite no meaningful update in about 15 years." —HyperCard Forgotten, Not Gone (Wired) Similar:Busy NYC Restaurant Solves Major Mystery by Reviewing Old Surveillance Restaurant studies surveillance foot…BusinessMy Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook DataThe Cambridge Analytica scandal is drawi…AmusingParable of the Polygons – a playable…
The second issue of Game Studies is out. Similar:Ukraine’s Three-to-One AdvantageThe author notes that he can’t confirm w…CultureIn November 1999, I was blogging about books, camomile tea and Skylon 4, the death of Star…In November 1999, I was blogging about …CybercultureNational Science Foundation announces plan for comprehensive public access to research res…This is good news.…
“D[ungeons]&D[ragons] sort of came about after a monster marathon week of reading Conan novels, eating popcorn until it was coming out of my ears-no I was not on drugs-and we got the idea to do something in a dungeon.” —Dave Arneson Interview (GameSpy) A “monster marathon”… ha, ha. Similar:New handout: "The Shape of an Academic…