"This will be college.com. Contact us."

Uh… no.  That already is college.com. —“This will be college.com. Contact us.” Similar:Blogging is NOT Analog Writing in Digital SpacesBlogging in education is about quality a…CybercultureWhat happens if you hide everything on Facebook? I tried it for a day.Spoiler: not much really happened. Telli…AmusingMy laptop hard drive is full & my comfort-food shelf is emptyMy…

Read Your Textbooks!

A medical student was scanning the dense prose on the copyright page of his textbook, when he read the word, “congratulations”.  He now owns a ’65 Thunderbird. —Read Your Textbooks! (Boston Globe) Similar:Enterprise-D Blueprints As a newlywed, when my in-laws were …Books5 of the Fiercest One-Liners in HistoryYes, the Spartans’ one-word response to …CultureThe Digital-Humanities…

'Goner' Today, and Forgotten

“Why bother to code a clever and long-lived virus when a stupid one that spreads for an hour or two gets just as much attention from antiviral experts and the media?” (Uh-oh! An anti-virus company’s marketing flack warns that Goner is coming back! Better pay big bucks to the anti-virus companies, to protect you from clicking…

Visit the Birthplace of Middle-Earth

“Sitting by the window of his study on a summer day in the early 1930s, a thin-faced Oxford professor let his mind wander from correcting papers and into a world that would become Middle-earth.” Pamela S. Turner —Visit the Birthplace of Middle-Earth (CSM) Similar:Vortex (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 12) Rogue spins a tale…

Is the Revolution Over?

A flashback to the Silicon Valley excesses of 1998, before the bubble burst: “There are headhunters who handle only Cobol programmers from Singapore, and headhunters who specialize in luring toy-company executives, and, I’ve recently learned, a headhunting firm that helps other headhunting firms hunt for headhunters.” Po Bronson —Is the Revolution Over?Wired) Similar:'Peter Pan Live'…

Wheaton's Trek to Respectability

Wil Wheaton, the actor whose Star Trek character inspired the newsgroup alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die, has long been geekdom’s favorite whipping boy. “But now, thanks to a self-coded, shamelessly dorky website, many of the same folks who loathed Wheaton on the show are finding out he’s a whole lot like them in real life.” —Wheaton’s Trek to Respectability…

Wild America – a short story by Jayne Loader. Welcome to Wild America! Do you need instructions? YES You are living in the richest kingdom in the world, where others have found fame and fortune, though it is rumored that some who enter here are never heard from again. Where would you like to begin…

The Machine Stops

(short story by E.M. Forster, 1909)      I want to see you not through the Machine,” said Kuno. “I want to speak to you not through the wearisome Machine.”      “Oh, hush!” said his mother, vaguely shocked. “You mustn’t say anything against the Machine.”      “Why not?”      “One mustn’t.”  —The Machine Stops Similar:Pagers, Pay…

Reading Hypertext and the Experience of Literature

“In a study of readers who read either a simulated literary hypertext or the same text in linear form, we found a range of significant differences: these suggest that hypertext discourages the absorbed and reflective mode that characterizes literary reading.” (Miall and Dobson) —Reading Hypertext and the Experience of Literature (Journal of Digital Information) Similar:During…

The Near Enemy of the Humanities is Professionalism

English studies after Sept 11: What’s the point? “The theoretical models that have dominated English and the related disciplines in the last two decades are especially effective tools (along with the institutional factors that have always existed) for creating demoralization.” Lisa Ruddick —The Near Enemy of the Humanities is Professionalism (Chronicle) Similar:CEO’s brutalist office, for…

Dammit, Dave

What if David Mamet rewrote 2001: A Space Oddysey?  (Warning: offensive language.) Bowman: It’s just… how do I say this. These dead crewmembers. Hal: I don’t follow you. Bowman: These crewmembers here that were in cryogenic suspension. That are now dead. Hal: Oh yes. That was self-defense. Bowman: Hal, look at me. What am I,…

Experts Rip Cloning 'Story'

You may have heard news stories trumpeting a great scientific breakthrough in the controversial practice of cloning human beings. Some critics claim that reporters, looking for easy stories to publish after a holiday weekend, put too much faith in a company’s press release. —Experts Rip Cloning ‘Story’ (Wired) Similar:Donald Trump Is a Broken Man (Assessment…

The Like Virus

Everyone’s, like, using it all the time, but David Grambs is all, like, “What price is literate, listenable English paying for its increasing currency?” —The Like Virus (Vocabula Review) Similar:Journalists Verify ClaimsConfirm what your sources tell you. Fact…CultureWhat Borges Learned from CervantesBorges reinvented Don Quixote as a playf…BooksHad a great time with AmLit students at…

Bumper Bites

“[S]hort and pithy, bumper stickers are a literary genre ideally suited to hurried Americans who may nevertheless feel morally obligated to express opinions… They allow us to state the thesis without the supporting paragraphs…”  Tina Bennett-Kastor —Bumper Bites (Vocabula Review) Similar:Medea at Seton Hill University.CultureEnjoying more live theater.CultureJerz Nerdcation 2013On a visit to the Washington…

The Internet Under Siege

“Under the guise of protecting private property, a series of new laws and regulations are dismantling the very architecture that made the Internet a framework for global innovation.” Lawrence Lessig —The Internet Under Siege (Foreign Policy Magazine) Similar:ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web Think of ChatGPT as a blurry jpeg…CybercultureWatching ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’…

Manos: The Hands of Fate

“Seldom mentioned, hardly ever seen, exactly the kind of movie that, yes, a fertilizer salesman named Hal P. Warren would decide to make, one fine summer in 1966.” (Manos available on DVD!) —Manos: The Hands of FateReviewed by Mimosa) Similar:A selfie with a Chekov action figure after learning of Anton Yelchin's deathCurrent_EventsAstronauts cloaked Klingon space…

9/11: The Psychological Aftermath

“Before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, anxiety-related disorders cost the U.S. $42 billion a year in medical and work-related losses. Now mental health professionals can only make educated estimates of how many more of us will be affected in the near future…” —9/11: The Psychological Aftermath (Scientific American) Similar:Progress…

Puzzle World

“Most of the puzzles in Puzzle World fall into the Put-Together, Take-apart, Interlocking or Impossible Object categories because this is where most of the high-quality handcrafting takes place.” —Puzzle WorldJohn Rausch) Similar:Earth doesn't need more 'successful people'.The plain fact is that the planet does n…Aestheticswhen someone say ur joke louder than u and get all…

MacDonald's Soliloquy

(rec.humor.funny) [random joke] “Is this a burger which I see before me, The soft bun in my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I eat thee not, and yet I want thee still.” Gregory Lam —MacDonald’s Soliloquy Similar:MLA Citations: Your attention to detail establishes your credibilityAfter marking a set of bibliography exer…AcademiaHumanities research is groundbreaking,…

The Tyranny of Nicespeak

“The likes of my colleagues no longer thought of this new tongue as an alien one, into which they translated thoughts originally composed in a more familiar idiom. They had become native speakers.” Deborah Cameron  —The Tyranny of Nicespeak (New Statesman) Similar:Because words matter, old sport.AcademiaExploring Myst's Brave New World”We wanted a true persistent world.…