“A number of concerned British Harry Potter fans have spoken out against the Bible, claiming that the holy text of the Christian Church can cause serious damage to children…. The tales of Jesus turning water into wine are fairly harmless, but there is a serious risk of children drowning if they try to walk on…
The geekiest, most elite programming language, UNIX, seems to be associated with a love of words. “Working on the command line, hands poised over the keys uninterrupted by frequent reaches for the mouse, is a posture familiar to wordsmiths (especially the really old guys who once worked on teletypes or electric typewriters). It makes some…
“Everything. A few minutes after we began last time a shaft of light descended and an angel or other heavenly being appeared and revealed to us what each woman or man must do to attain divine wisdom in this life and the hereafter…” Tom Wayman —Did I Miss Anything? (Question frequently asked by students after…
“[A]t the University of Virginia today I regularly teach the introductory comparative literature survey, which begins with the Iliad and the Odyssey and runs through all the traditional great authors, such as Virgil, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, Austen, and Dostoevsky… why am I now writing about Gilligan´s Island and Star Trek?” Paul Cantor —The Art in…
“Babies are leaning their native language before birth. This is made possible by the development of hearing as early as 16 weeks gestational age. A mother’s voice reaches the uterus with very little distortion as the sound waves pass directly through her body.” David Chamberlain —Life Before Birth (birthpsychology.com) Similar:New NASA Astronaut Wrote a Limerick…
Review of a production of Hamlet told with no dialogue: "like a beautifully choreographed nightmare, it fuses movement, music and light into a haunting series of images that summon the very heartbeat of the story." —Sinetic’s Hamlet: The Rest Is Silence (WashPost) Similar:One of the benefits of teaching at a small college, with small classes…In…
"There are two kinds of science-fiction reader, who in their extreme forms constitute disjoint reading populations. A pure Population One reader wants scientific ideas and will be tolerant of other flaws provided those ideas are present. A pure Population Two reader will tolerate (or fail to notice) scientific errors but insist on literary virtues. You…
Don’t let the harsh title turn you off — Gerry McGovern is absolutely right when he points out that the Internet needs simpler design: "[T]here is a much greater need for simple web design today than there was in 1996. Back then we had pioneers and early adopters who tended to hunger for the new…
For a print columnist who writes, oh, say, twice a week to sniff at those who pump out ten tons of spirited commentary for free reminds me of some baggy-pants third-rate vaudevillian rolling his eyes at the people streaming into a nickelodeon. Oh, sure, they have moving pictures of a train robbery, but nothing beats…
"Welcome to Blogistan, the Internet-based journalistic medium where no thought goes unpublished, no long-out-of-print book goes unhawked, and no fellow ”blogger,” no matter how outre, goes unpraised." Alex Beam —In the world of Web logs, talk is cheapb> (Boston Globe) Similar:After some long-delayed recabling, these are the bits I culled from my work setup.PersonalSocial Media…
"’Ah, it was a bunch of boring stuff,’ said a slouching, mumbling Geremek, 17, at a press conference shortly after his return from the future Monday. ‘It totally blew.’" —Sullen Time-traveling Teen Reports 23rd Century Sucks (The Onion) Similar:‘Snow White’ gets a new musical There’s a buzz of excitement this week…Culture“The Cowherd Who Became a…
(Wired) Multiplayer online games face a barrier in Europe and Asia: many people who live in the same time zone don’t speak the same language, so it’s hard for them to interact with each other. A universal translator may be the solution. (I linked to this article mostly because I was amused that, this article…
"EthnoQuest takes students to Amopan, a fictional eastern Mexican village… The game starts with students’ assuming the roles of grant-writing ethnographers and follows them as they complete reports detailing their anthropological research." Similar:Gettysburg Address event marks 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s historic speechOn the Civil War battlefield where Presi…CultureSteve Strauss: Why I Hire English MajorsDoing…
“Every now and then, though, pieces like ‘Fun is Hard to Find‘ arrive, like anachronistic throwbacks, to remind us that some writers and editors in the newsrooms of America still can’t get the Web straight, still think it’s a passing fad — and still, in some cases, can’t wait to dig its grave.” Scott Rosenberg…
I spent some time today getting reacquainted with some old friends: the Texas Instruments 99/4a (1979), the Atari 800 (1980), and the Commodore C 64 (that I took to college with me my freshman year, 1986). (Thanks for the link, Bruce.) —OldComputers.com Similar:Facebook just dealt another potentially lethal blow to local journalismFacebook will pay some…
“When all is said and done, what is the role of journalists in breaking news? Are journalists relics of a golden era, now useful only as a conduit to pass along the whispers of the hive-mind to the unplugged masses? Or have we been reduced to Stamps of Approval, as we validate blog-based trends with…
"Storytellers – specialists in the art of conveying human emotions — rule this future. And in this future, everyone is a storyteller. Everyone creates the collective experience. Everyone creates the collective intelligence." Dale Peskin —Preparing for the Coming Era of Participatory News (Online Journalism Review) Similar:The Horror… The Horror! How Music in Horror Games Effects…
“Just 11 years after it was born and about 6 years after it became popular, the Web has lost its luster. Many who once raved about surfing from address to address on the Web now lump site-seeing with other online chores, like checking the In box.” —As the Web Matures, Fun is Hard to Find…
“The instructions in this manual explain more about how to get fired than about how to succeed at work…. For instance, employees are asked to follow ‘rules’ that include stealing, disobedience, and excessive absenteeism (or should they have been termed ‘actions that may result in termination’?).” (Suggested by Jason Amdor.) —Worst Manual Contest (Technical Standards,…
(NPR) —100 Best Fictional Characters since 1900 Similar:Why Marlon Brando’s Streetcar Co-Stars Couldn’t Stand Him Williams’ last play, The Glass Me…CultureI Love Books: A Campus Library EvolvesI love books. I love smelling them, t…AcademiaA WWII Propaganda Campaign Popularized the Myth That Carrots Help You See in the DarkYet another widely held cultural myth fa…CultureWhat does a…