: "No more blog blog blog!" — line not quite spoken by Captain Kirk ("Miri," Star Trek). —William Shatner’s Weblog Similar:The Quality of Life (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 9) Boxy bots start to skive…Rewatching ST:TNG During a poker game…EthicsSarek (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season Three, Episode 23) Aging with Dignity and Vulcan Min…Rewatching ST:TNG…
"Not telling someone where you got your information from is a kind of power stroke, effectively sealing your book off from any possible scrutiny, debate or challenge." Kathryn Hughes —The re-vision thing: Why are contemporary biographers and historians so afraid of footnotes? (Guardian) Similar:Always Bet on TextGraydon Hoare offers a rousing hymn to t…CybercultureA hedge…
In 1085, William the Conqueror commissioned the Domesday Book. In 1986, the BBC spent £2.5 million to create an electronic version. While William’s original is still in fine shape, there are no computers capable of reading the laser discs on which the BBC version was published. —Ancient Domesday Book Outlives Electronic Versionb> (Ananova) Similar:The End…
(ZDNet) "The only way to explain Microsoft’s decisions over the past couple of years is to say that they know their packaged software business is doomed," says open-source advocate Eric Raymond. —Cheap PCs will doom Microsoft Similar:Kids Whose Parents Limit Screen Time Do Worse in College, New Study Shows “Parents normally set these ru…AcademiaNASA has…
: Plants are psychic. The Russians are interfering with the weather. An early USENET conspiracy theorist from UWEC was once responsible for generating nearly 90% of Internet news traffic. —Robert E. McElwaine from the UWEC is an "Internet Legend" Similar:One Does Not Simply: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Internet MemesWhen we envisioned a…
"…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:Pope Leo…
My student Matt Hoy sent me this link. Thanks, Matt! —Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog Similar:What Can You Do With An English Degree? | Seton Hill UniversityOne of our seniors interviewed recent gr…AcademiaAssassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of AustriaOn 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinan…CultureFour Academic Plagiarists You've Never Heard Of: How Many More Are Out There?Stealing…
(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:Museum of Endangered SoundsImagine a world where we never again hea…AestheticsAI researchers find AI models learning their safety techniques, actively resisting…
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:Today's students aren't growing up reading "man" for "mankind" — and they notice when the… I’m about 1/4 through teachi…AcademiaLong Live The English…
“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:Incoming Seton Hill Students Pick Up Their MacBooks and…
“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:For News Outlets Squeezed From the Middle, It’s Bend or BustHundreds of thousands of people on Faceb…BusinessCDC Website Publishes, Removes Updated Coronavirus Guidelines Friday the CDC released…
"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:On Stephen Hawking, Vader and Being More Machine Than HumanIn one version of Hawking’s eulogistic…
“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:Death Comes for the Microbot — Flash Fiction…
“…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:There Is A Difference Between Middle Grade and Young Adult Lit, and It Does Matter Adolescence took a long time to…
“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:Half a Life (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 4, Episode 22) Lwaxana Meets…
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:Benedict XVI (Pontifex) on TwitterJohn Paul II was a master of communicati…Current_Eventswhen someone…
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:Because Internet: the new linguistics of informal EnglishI’m planning to begin my online Shakespe…CultureMa Rainey's Black Bottom…