Parchmap is a wonderful expansion to the interactive fiction player Parchment. It adds a visual auto-mapper to Infocom-style games, including those created with Inform 7. You can jot notes on the map, too! My own 2001 IF-Comp entry, “Fine-Tuned: An Auto-mated Romance,” is one of the 217 stories available on the Parchmap site. Similar:I…
It’s weird that in the Narnia board game, the Pevensies compete against each other. I thought it would make sense that they would have to work together to defeat the White Witch, but no. Why do they all work against each other? In the book, Edmund betrays his siblings — but they don’t betray him!…
Forget for a moment that the picture is among the most famous in US history, or that the photographer—a 21-year-old Kent State journalism student named John Filo—risked his life to document the tragedy. Consider what the photo captures: Our own military occupied a public university and then opened fire on a crowd of unarmed citizens—students…
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Rewatching ST:TNG Engineering schlub Lt. Barclay gets zapped by this week’s Space Thing, which makes him smart, charming… and also dangerous. Stumbling through a friend-zoning scene from the play Cyrano de Bergerac, actor Dwight Shultz deliberately flubs a dramatic line and fails to shove a prop to the floor on the first try, masterfully embodying…
A student newspaper article about interactive fiction (quoting Emily Short and me) Blaming Roget’s Thesaurus Finding the URL of a framed HTML document My visit to the John Lennon Artificial Intelligence Project HarperCollins re-issuing the works of C.S. Lewis Dave Winer on “The Web is a Writing Environment“ Similar:Now I can relax a bit. (But…
How dare President Biden be invoked by a British tabloid that rather creatively linked a scholarly study to a plan Biden floated during the Democratic primary. How dare Biden be implicated in a Fox News graphic that falsely lists cutting beef sales by 90% as a requirement of Biden’s “climate requirements.” How dare Biden be…
I love watching my daughter perform. Here she is doing some short tap routines. The last two also incorporate her interpretation of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 60, “Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by TapTitansToday (Official) (@taptitanstoday) Similar:NASA astronaut: Russians were ‘blindsided’ by reaction to…
When my wife and I were grad students in Toronto, my sister would fill up VHS tapes with episodes of Babylon 5. When the tape was full, she’d send it off. (Together with some Mystery Science Theatre 2000.) What that means is that, though the episodes aired weekly, I binge-watched them. (I assume they were…
We’re talking about elite students here landing jobs in highly desirable firms. These are Deresiewicz’s “Excellent Sheep.” We can presume that their educations have been rigorous as they’ve climbed to the top of the meritocratic heap. If these young professionals can’t write well, who can? And if they’re not writing well, why not? My belief…
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Just in case you haven’t been thinking lately about the passionate accusations of massive voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election (which led led to the Jan 6 storming of the Capitol Building), here’s an article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Note that the Post-Gazette editorial page endorsed Trump in 2020. Massive voter fraud? This author,…
I remember when I started seeing political cartoons that began depicting office workers using flatscreen LCDs instead of bulky CRTs. I inherited a handful of CRTs as people I know upgraded. I still haven’t bought a new LCD TV — I’ve inherited several hand-me-downs from family members. The next time I offer my course on…
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I didn’t share this miscaptioned photo, but each time I’ve seen it before on social media, I’ve accepted it as true. This time I checked. According to Snopes, Prince Phillip did not prank the Queen of England dressed as a palace guard. That’s ceremonial attire he has worn in public on several occasions, and the…
A very moving performance. So many characters, so many carefully choreographed moments. The camera work and visuals, the timing… all so very impressive. What an exhausting performance this must have been! So well directed and performed. Similar:Fascinating, and very sad, story behind an iconic National Geographic photo.Fascinating, and very sad, story behind …AestheticsContemptible and Exploitive…
Scene: writing classroom. Me: (setting up a lesson about correlation vs causation) What would you say if I told you that ice cream attracts sharks? Student: I’d say you’re an idiot. Class: (chortles and gasps) Student: (looks worried) Me: Don’t worry, this is definitely the highlight of my teaching day.…