“Without links, you might as well pile all the billions of documents on the Web into one huge container. Link management is therefore an important part of running a Web site.” Gerry McGovern, ClickZ —Broken Links and Poor Information Architecture Design Similar:Why did I only blog 3 times in June 2001?What was I doing during…
Helvetica Bold Oblique was the big winner at Tuesday’s 73rd Annual Fonty Awards, taking home 11 statues, including those for Best Sans Serif and the highly coveted 2001 Best Font prize. Satire from The Onion —Helvetica Bold Oblique Sweeps Fontys Similar:PAC-MAN: The Untold Story of How We Really Played the GameA fascinating study of the…
Dimitri Sklyarov is an unlikely poster boy for American freedom. The Russian programmer was arrested after he spoke at the “Def-Con” hacker convention in Las Vegas about a program, offered for sale by his employer Elcomsoft, which cracks the encryption in Adobe’s e-book software. The Irish Times —Confusion Over Free Speech and Copyright Similar:NASA |…
“While the lack of interest in buying electronic books may baffle some big publishers, the tepid demand comes as no surprise to some bibliophiles.” NY Times (requires free registration) —Forecasts of an E-Book Era Were, It Seems, Premature Similar:King Hedley II ( #AugustWilson #CenturyCycle, 9 of 10)August Wilson’s Century Cycle > Spoi…BooksBanned Books Week |…
He taught ethics classes in California! LA Times —Law School Dean Fired for Plagiarism Similar:Invasive Procedures (#StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch, Season 2, Episode 4) A disgruntled Trill stea…Rewatching ST:DS9 The station has bee…EmpathyPerspective | After a stunning news conference, there’s a newly crucial job for the Americ… I have always taken a neutral stan…CultureHow newsroom managers…
“Handwriting is a basic skill that serves us all our lives. Unfortunately, a problem that primarily affects boys is rarely on anyone’s list of educational priorities.” Christina Hoff Summers —The Write Stuff Similar:Writing for the Godless: Flannery O’Connor on Dogma, Belief, and the Difference Between Re…I’m not teaching her time period this te…Books"I’d never heard…
“[O]nce you have observed that the other is typically portrayed as lazy, dirty, stupid, crafty, womanly, passive, rebellious, sexually rapacious, childlike, enigmatic and a number of other mutually contradictory epithets, it is hard to know what to do next apart from reaching for yet another textual illustration of the fact.” London Review of Books —The…
Too much information? “[T] this weed in our informational landscape has just sprouted–it is only about 50 years old. Up until then, more information was almost always a good thing.” David Shenk —Data Smog Similar:Facebook’s Instant Articles restore subscription options they previously strippedThe ability to serve content faster than…BusinessTo Apple, Love TaylorApple changes its plans,…
“Log onto almost any college Web site and you’ll see the same beautiful students talking about their beautiful campuses and how much they learn. But there are no numbers, no studies, no objective measurements.” —Wash. Monthly —What Do the US News Rankings Measure? Similar:Education: Teaching teachers how to teach readingI’m definitely seeing students in my…
“Hey, all you crafty, capable women wearing chunky, horn-rimmed glasses (this year) and doing your brainy chick thing…” Hank Stuever, Wash. Post —Velma Rules — Jinkies! Similar:KLINGON STYLE (Star Trek Parody of PSY – GANGNAM STYLE)Silly fun, just in time for the 25th ann…AestheticsThe six wives of Henry VIII, in pie chart formIf you’ve ever…
Failed to Practise What It Preached The magazine that chronicled the excesses of the dot.com revolution did not spot the extravagances that led to its own downfall. Mark Tran —Industry Standard Similar:Twittering The MachineI’ve never been a phone guy. My vo…Academia"Gen Zers know the difference between rock-solid news and AI-generated memes. They just do…Over the…
Include Your Children when Baking Cookies New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half —Real Headlines Similar:Support the arts in your community! @geyer_pac Hello Dolly!AmusingSeton Hill graduates its last "New Media Journalism" major this year.The English program is not going anywher…AcademiaAuthor Says a Whole Culture—Not a Single…
Despite the technological hoopla, nobody’s paying attention to e-books but the courts. “Digitizing the printed page has put the very nature of books up for grabs, unleashing heated battles among writers, readers, librarians and technologists over who should control electronic books.” Chicago Tribune —E-Books Solving a Problem Consumers Don’t Have. Similar:Apple faces threat of legal…
Not-Work: “CNN acts like they’re the network of record in Millennial America, just because of their award-winning Gulf War coverage. That was so 10 years ago, and people only watched because there was no MSNBC back then.” The Onion —CNN Should be Named the Crappy News Similar:700-year-old picture of 'Mickey Mouse' found in Austrian church”Walt…
At first, Huck Finn said “as if” instead of “like,” “wasn’t” and not “warn’t,” and described a night sky “sprinkled”–not “speckled”–with stars. A new edition of the American classic traces Mark Twain’s efforts to refine the speech of his most famous character. LA Times —A New Read on Huck Finn’s Distinctive Voice Similar:In a hole…
(Watch them instead.) “Create a few alternative designs, show them to a group of users, and ask which one they prefer. Wrong. If the users have not actually tried to use the designs, they’ll base their comments on surface features.” Jakob Nielsen —First Rule of Usability? Don’t Listen to Your Readers. Similar:Journalism, Fake News,…
At a graveyard near where Beatrix Potter (author of the “Peter Rabbit” stories) spent her youth: “Names on headstones included Mr Nutkin, Mr McGregor, Jeremiah Fisher, Tommy Brock – and even a Peter Rabbett.” BBC —But what about Jemima Puddle-Duck? Similar:In Ferguson, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery gives account of his arrestComedian Robin Williams and…
“A modern language changes when we change it, and the metaphor that makes it autonomous only obscures our real task, which is to consider just how and why we change it.” Mark Halpern Similar:Watching ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ with 18,000 teenagers was one of the most profound theate…The arts are vital to our lives as…
“Author Jessica Kingley expressed regret Monday that she had ‘pretty much used up all the hardship‘ from her early life in her recent first novel Bitter Root, leaving her nothing to write about for her follow-up book.” The Onion Similar:What Grammar and Style Checkers MissTeaching students to write does not mean…AcademiaIs AI making us less…
That said, we’ve decided to acknowledge our very favorite Web sites—five each in 10 subject areas—with the Scientific American.com Sci/Tech Web Award. It is an eclectic mix—from the practical to the academic to the downright silly. Among this year’s winners are sites that decode computer acronyms, explain group theory, unravel the genome, track chemistry in…