"In an amazingly short time, software has become critical to almost every aspect of modern life… Yet much software simply doesn’t work reliably." Charles C. Mann —Why is Software So Bad? (MIT Tech Review) Similar:Apple's iPad turns 5: Has it lived up to Steve Jobs' 2010 keynote?[Jobs] was right to leave out the produc…BusinessCover your…
"Seniors in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, with mild to moderate memory loss, are writing Web logs to help them make sense of their daily lives. And the activity, they say, is slowing the onset of their symptoms." Mark Baard —Blog to Cope With Alzheimer’s Fog (Wired) Similar:10 top writing tips and the psychology…
“Design matters, but which design is preferable depends upon the occasion, the context, and above all, upon my mood… Why do I own several teapots? Because I like them.” Don Norman —Emotion and Design: Attractive Things Work Better (jnd.org) Similar:Into the depths of code. Algorithmic archaeologies and cave fantasies in video gamesThe full article (by…
"The phrase ‘Half the world has never made a phone call’ or some variation thereof has become an urban legend, a widely believed but unsubstantiated story about the nature of the world." Clay Shirky —Half the World shirky.com) Similar:In February, 2001, I was blogging about computer nostalgia, Napster, a horror typing game,…In February, 2001, I…
"This site is a repository for pictures of do not enter signs. Since this is one of many international roadsigns the collection is diverse in geographical context." James Canavan —Do Not Enter!donotenter.com) Similar:Interesting use of A.I. in a radiology journalMedical doctors and scholars Raneem Bade…AcademiaBusiness is the most popular college major, but that doesn’t mean…
(The Economist) “…goes roughly as follows. The QWERTY design (patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873) aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters. When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars often jammed.” But the real problem is that “economists seem to adopt bogus anecdotal…
"n d beginning God creatD d heaven & d earth. & d earth wz w/o form, & void; & darkness wz upon d face of d deep. & d Spirit of God moved upon d face of d H2Oz. & God z, Let der b light: & der wz light." [See Wired article on the…
"[T]hey ship 45,000 copies, and only 15,000 of the games allow you to proceed past the beach. That’s it. No refunds, either. You get off the landing craft; your screen goes black; your computer seizes up and cannot be rebooted. Game over, man." James Lileks —Good Definition of a “Realistic” War Game (The Bleat) Similar:Closing…
Richard S. Wallace has created Alice, an artificial life form that gets along with people better than he does. —Approximating Life (NY Times — registration req’d) Similar:Russian troll factory paid US activists to help fund protests during electionRussian trolls posing as Americans made …CybercultureThe Myth of MultitaskingPsychology Today summary of research tha…HealthR.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)…
"[U]sers—confounded by too many choices—fail to take advantage of their office equipment’s power-saving features." —One researcher’s unlikely crusade: to overthrow the on/off button. (Technology Review) Similar:In July, 2002, I was blogging about military close reading, weblogs in journalism, UX evan…In July, 2002, I was blogging about …CybercultureWhere is the comma in "God Rest Ye Merry,…
The Method of Lies vs. the Method of Truth: “The sincerity of the propagandist is no protection; some of the worst excesses in history were engineered by persons motivated by zealous belief.” Julian Simon Note particularly the (unsourced) quotation from Stephen Schneider, describing how environmental scientists manipulate the media in order to get attention: “[W]e…
“It’s very enjoyable to visit a website that works, where everything just clicks for you. In contrast, a user interface that doesn’t do things the way you want feels sluggish, unpleasant, and possibly even hostile, despite the designer’s no doubt sincere attempt to invoke positive emotions.” Jakob Nielsen —User Empowerment and the Fun Factor (Alertbox) Similar:I‘m…
“Despite the best efforts of poets, emotions are largely beyond words, and this is another reason why, in Kagan’s view, psychology and psychiatry have stalled.” Peter Watson —Why Psychology has FailedNew Statesman) Similar:What Can You Do With An English Degree? | Seton Hill UniversityOne of our seniors interviewed recent gr…AcademiaI absolutely adored Spock. Loving Dad…
“When Socrates was asked where he came from, he did not say, ‘From Athens’, but ‘From the world’, an attitude that our own reading and travels may encourage.” Alain de Botton —A Journey and a Book are Perfect Companions (Times Online) Similar:Part of my daily routine is practicing German for about 15m per day. With…
“The kids who grew up steering Pac-Man around his dot-filled maze have grown up to make video games one of the biggest slices of the entertainment-industry pie. Yet no game to date has come close to dominating the popular landscape the way Pac-Man did in the early 1980s.” Chris Green —Pac-Man (Salon) Similar:Pioneering Harvard Blog Site…
“[T]he war on terrorism is unlike any other war in its dependence on intelligence, and the interrogators and “document exploitation” teams in Afghanistan occupy a crucial front.” —Greg Miller, Intelligence Officers Read Between the Enemy Lines (LA Times) Similar:An interesting analysis of Trump's rhetorical strategy.In the Washington Post, Greg Sargent ana…CultureMy 4Cs StoryI chaired a…
A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is an unconstitutional “endorsement of religion” because of the addition of the phrase “under God” in 1954 by Congress. —Lawmakers Blast Pledge Ruling (CNN) Similar:Witness Accounts in Midtown Hammer Attack Show the Power of False Memory Two people who saw a…
FlingTheCow.com: A catapult… a target… a cow. Don’t just sit there… fling the cow! Similar:The Interactive Fiction CompetitionDownload and Play The Games of the 2014 …Current_EventsWhat Khan Academy's Fun, Free Learning Empire Has to Do with Dystopian Social Control Over the Christmas break, I’ve been ch…AcademiaCollege student makes masks for the deaf & hard of hearing Other…
“Dr. Seuss makes Horton the sort of agent… who dominates stories from Beowulf to Braveheart, powerful, generous, and resourceful; and he makes Horton’s goals unmistakable, admirable, and urgent: the struggle not to be cast out of his community, the survival of a whole people.” Brian Boyd —The Origin of Stories: Horton Hears a Who (Philosophy…
“I had seen a 9-year-old boy blowing away guards with a shotgun in a preview version of State of Emergency, an ultraviolent Rockstar game that encourages players to smash shop windows and assassinate executives in an urban street riot. ‘That’s not cool,’ he said flatly. ‘We’re not about cute games for kids.’” Logan Hill —Why…