"The Internet makes it ungodly easy now for people who wish to be lazy," says a librarian in this article about the pitfalls of relying on the Internet for research. —Point. Click. Think? (WashPost) You can often find good information online, but novices should know how to recognize a peer-reviewed journal. Similar:As I was preparing…
"In an age of big-budget titles and state-of-the-art technology, Skotos wants to revive the old text genre." Brad King [See also the sidebar: "Games Started Off Without a Bang."] —No Bells, No Whistles: Just Games (Wired) Similar:No, Running Online Classes Isn't CheaperA good response to the myth that the lab…Academia‘Chronicles of Prydain’ Movie: Disney Acquires…
"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:Wikipedia:VisualEditor – Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaWikipedia is testing a visual editor, in…Cyberculture5 Characteristics of Successful Work Groups (at Google)Google’s internal study…
"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:A Man, a Plan, a Pointless(?) ProgramI…
“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:Pipe Trouble’s government woes highlight gaming illiteracyInteresting discussion of a political ho…CultureYou Must Not ‘Do Your…
"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:I gave my class a Poem to read. The author's Name — I hid.I gave my class…
"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:How Humans Respond to RobotsThe play that coined the word “robot,” K…AestheticsThe daughter (giving the piggyback ride in pic 2) doing a thing…
(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:Chess…
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:Why fake news worksFake news works on our emotions, usually…CybercultureMe (glares in iambic pentameter)Me: I need to post the opening lecture f…AcademiaWriting for the Godless: Flannery O’Connor on Dogma,…
"[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:A ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ Lesson for the Digital AgeIf we were surprised Tuesday night, it w…CultureI‘m interviewed in this podcast on one of my favorite plays, Rossum‘s Universal Robots.March 29th,…
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:dungeon.jpg…
“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:People with autism spectrum disorder avoid eye contact because it causes anxietyMy culture has taught me that eye contac…CultureAddressing Our Biases: Medieval BathingDid…
“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:One of the benefits of teaching at a small college, with small classes…In a…
“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:The Boat (Graphic Novel)My…
“[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:Take a look at the moon tonight!I wish I had the time or energy to get o…AestheticsStudents…
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:Anonymous comment cards from student journalists at the end of the second week. These folks are amazing!…
FlingTheCow.com: A catapult… a target… a cow. Don’t just sit there… fling the cow! Similar:Star Wars: The Last Jedi abuse blamed on Russian trolls and 'political agendas'More than half of the hostile responses …CultureFlorida Woman Bites CamelIdentifying her as a “Florida woman,” as…AestheticsAllergic to Grammar ErrorsSource: Cyanide & Happiness (Explosm…AmusingBREAKING: British Burn Washington … 2…