"…in the past three months, the pent-up thirst for knowledge and modern skills has transformed the capital. Dozens of storefront language and computer skills centers have sprung up, and last week several thousand young people showed up to take entrance exams at the newly revived university." —With War Over, Afghans Battle Ignorance (WashPost) Similar:Microsoft Publishes…
My student Matt Hoy sent me this link. Thanks, Matt! —Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Similar:Does the phrase "based off of" make you shudder… or shrug?Jerz > Writing >&nb…AcademiaVictorian Literature for Accounting MajorsIf I can get the English majors in my ne…AcademiaStudents Don't Read Syllabi, Exhibit 58623https://twitter.com/ConnorMEwing/status/…AcademiaMy 20-year-old Java Program Is Was Broken!So a harmless little Java program I…
(New Yorker) Manhattan treasure hunt: "Across the street, a writer for ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’ and a crossword virtuoso named Ellen Ripstein are scrutinizing graffiti in a phone booth. Catercornered to them, the editor of the Wall Street Journal crossword is standing beside a professional palindromist who is riffling through a bin of…
"The history of teaching teems with machines that have jammed and stained. Who can forget that buried next to the ditto are the old-fashioned 8and 16-millimeter film projectors?" —Jamming Together: Remembering the Dittob> (Chronicle) Similar:Pac-Man”The kids who grew up steering Pac-Man a…DesignCanon Australia video: 1 man; 6 backstories; 6 photographers; 6 photosCanon Australia wants to…
No, he was not squashed by a falling safe or run over by an Acme Indestructo Steel Ball. Jones created the Road Runner and Coyote cartons. Rules from that series: “No dialogue ever, except ‘beep beep.” “No outside force can harm the Coyote — only his own ineptitude or the failure of the Acme products.”…
A palindrome is a word or phrase that reads the same backwards and forwards: "Madam, I’m Adam." Nick Montfort & William Gillsepie have written a whole palindrome story. —2002: A Palindrome Story Similar:JANE EYRE Steps In and Out of Darkness at PICTJane Eyre is not a two-person show, and …AestheticsThe Unstoppable Rise of the Digital Content…
“The day I came home for Christmas vacation my parents and I were sitting in the kitchen, I looked at them and said, ‘I’m pregnant. Just kidding, I want to change my major.’” Jeanine Savageau —Changing Majors: Junior Realizes Journalism Isn’t for Her (UWEC Spectator; registration required) Similar:Portofess”If people can confess on Oprah, Phil an…EthicsContext for…
“The year 2002. The 20th day of the 2nd month, 2002. And, on the 24-hour clock, at two minutes after 8 p.m., harmony. 2002.” —2002 2002 2002 (Toronto Star) Similar:Two Steps Down the Interactive Fiction RoadWonderfully detailed analysis of two gro…AestheticsGoogle responds to streaming report with shruggie GIFThe Daily Dot proceeded to shrug the GIF…AmusingWhat It…
"Traditional publishers… couldn’t understand his willingness to surrender his ‘authority’ over his own work by letting others participate. Nor could they understand his desire to ‘devalue’ his copyright by posting a whole book online." —A Footnote to E-book History (Wired) Similar:International Studies Association proposes to bar editors from blogging “I think it’s a really strange…
“Alongside the boom, however, there have recently been a few faint signs of backlash. As increasing hordes take on the task of trying to keep new sites looking nice, sounding original and free from banalities, more hordes just seem to fail.” —Blah, Blah, Blah and Blog (Wired) Similar:King Hedley II ( #AugustWilson #CenturyCycle, 9 of…
“…I think the wonder of our aesthetic or religious sense, or musicality, is increased by the fact that it depends on three pounds of jelly in our head.” —Interview with Oliver Sacks (neurologist and novelist) Similar:Flannery O'Connor reading "A Good Man is Hard to Find"It’s striking to hear her audience erupt…Aesthetics5 Ways to Avoid Being…
“I was eight years old when my parents bought these for me, and I can still remember those chewy little peanut butter sticks more vividly than almost anything else from my childhood. I’ve wanted more of them for three decades!” —Space Food Sticks Similar:The Future of College Is Facebook Meme GroupsInteresting to see how large…
Kathleen, I wanted to do this in this most potentially embarassing way possible, and I figured doing it here and now, in front of a quarter of a million strangers was as good a way as any. CmdrTaco —Geek in Love (Slashdot) Similar:NASA Communicates with Ailing Voyager 1 SpacecraftI remember staying up well past my…
A short series of philosophical exercises, in a futuristic setting, which asks you to evaluate different definitions of personal identity. (Do you step into a spacecraft that has a 50% chance of killing you, or have your whole body scanned, destroyed, and re-constructed somewhere else three minutes later?) At the end, your choices are analyzed.…
“I have lost all touch with reality, and only live to comment on the comments that other bloggers have made in reference to my notes about their comments. Is anybody out there?” —Blog ad Nauseam (The Weekly Standard) Similar:Journalism by the Numbers (a pedagogical play in one scene) #math (Lights up on a college journa…CultureScrooge…
“It may sound far-fetched, but a U.S. federal court will hear preliminary arguments next week to determine if this most elemental of Internet activities is the business property of a lone company, protected in the form of a patent.” —British Company Claims Patent on Hyperlinks (Wired) Similar:Page Weight MattersUnexpected consequences, when a develope…CybercultureBrian Williams is…
What’s it like interviewing college students at job fairs? "What a snooze. By the sixth interview of the day I vow that I’ll hire anyone who can make me remember their name, and I’ll sign over my 401(k) to any candidate who can make me laugh." Erin Cronin —Honesty, Shining Throughb> (WashPost) Similar:What Could Have…
(Word Circuits): Hypertext poetry by Stephanie Strickland —The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot Similar:One Child, One Laptop … And Mixed Results In PeruBecause you couldn’t go online, everythi…CybercultureAI crawlers destroying websites in hunger for contentTraffic on my website has plunged over t…BusinessThe Article is Dead. Long Live the ArticleTake the background paragraph. It ill-se…CultureThat…
"Calling the theological giant’s stranglehold on the religion industry ‘blatantly anti-competitive,’ a U.S. district judge ruled Monday that God is in violation of anti-monopoly laws and ordered Him to be broken up into several less powerful deities." —Judge Orders God to Break Up into Smaller Deitiesb> (TheOnion) Similar:Business as Usual #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5,…
"Write simply. Keep headings, summaries, sentences, paragraphs and documents short. Get to the point. Then stop." Gerry McGovern —The Need for Simple English on the Web Similar:What’s Wrong With Being From the South? Just Ask an Academic in the NorthAs an American studying in Toronto durin…AcademiaSplit Infinitives in English: Not Actually Wrong, But UnwiseThe rule…