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:The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure BooksI didn’t realize how involved the childr…AwesomeThe…
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:Facebook Ad…
“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:Why Hoboken is Throwing Away All of its Student LaptopsUntrained teachers. Damage-prone machine…CybercultureHow’s newsgathering during COVID-19 at…
He taught ethics classes in California! LA Times —Law School Dean Fired for Plagiarism Similar:Latest on Napster(See also: Digital Hollywood- No Resolut…Current_EventsSo We're Supposed to Be "Amazed" or "Surprised" That Tween Boys Won't Slap a Girl?What Happens When Clickbait Headlines Av…CultureResponding to Literature at the College LevelA new handout, based on the opening lect…AcademiaThe dress…
“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:Okay yes, this affirmation does matter to me and it will go into my annual review for next…Marked 832 AP English essays in…
“[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:Have 40 years of mobile phones given literature bad lines?The X Files did a good job of embracing …CybercultureAlways Bet on…
“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:Making Connections in Virtual One-ShotsI often invite my colleague Kelly Clever…AcademiaThe dawn…
“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:Ethics (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 5, Episode 16) Leaky cargo barrel-1, Worf-0.Rewatching ST:TNG Worf is paralyzed i…CulturePrime Stage Theatre Makes A Statement With Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” For Carolyn Jerz,…
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:I Made a Cheerful Maze Game in Scratch Well, it’s cheerful unle…CybercultureThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy – About the game30th anniversary refit of…
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:Texas School Censors All Of ‘Huck Finn’ Except The N-Words (Satire from The Onion)Is it only a matter of time until this p…BooksTuxedo Pooh Reads Oscar Wilde I spent an hour…
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:[E-Mail is for Old People]…
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:Bogus hit-and-run story about Vice President Kamala Harris created…
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:Fascinating details in…
(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:Obamacare's broken website…
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:80 Days: "1872, with a steampunk twist. Phileas Fogg has wagered he can circumnavigate the…I…
“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:I'm just getting around to watching this speech from Arnold Schwarzenegger. Impressive!I really never paid much attention to Sc…AestheticsI Never Would Have…
“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:Set Phasers to Teach!Fans of Star Trek have thus already been…AcademiaLet’s Make the Academic Job Market More HumaneIt’s…
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…
The second most popular form of entertainment after television, video games have rapidly become the largest segment of the entertainment industry. Mounting evidence lends support to what parents have suspected all along — violent videogames encourage violent behavior. Contemporary Pediatrics Similar:1 small shirt for a man, 1 giant leap backward for women: ColumnIdea for a…