Lauren Collins (The New Yorker) Teen-age identities mutate so quickly online, and can be masked so easily, that by the morning after Megan was pronounced dead Josh Evans had vanished from MySpace. It wasn’t until a month after her death that a neighbor named Michele Mulford told the Meiers that Curt and Lori Drew, who…
Leigh Alexander tries to quit gaming for a week. How long does she last? What I did learn – and this was the primary aim – was just a little bit more about why I play, and what gaming means to me, does for me. I thought that without games, the world might open up…
It’s always hard for the kids to make the transition to “Daddy is working” when, from their perspective, it looks like I’m just tapping away at my computer, as I often do in my spare time. When my wife interrupted me to ask me to get something down from a high shelf, I had just…
Jay Dixit, in Psychology Today, surveys research that considers dreams to be the brain’s training grounds for real-world emergencies. The idea that dreams are a dojo for perfecting waking activities fits well with what is already known about practice. Mental rehearsal through visualization improves skills, enhances learning, and changes the brain, polishing performance in almost…
After watching the children until about 2pm today, I rousted my wife from the bedroom so she could give them a late lunch. While I was fiddling with my blogging templates and sort of puttering around until it was time to go to campus (I’m volunteering to serve dinner to the students during the big…
NY Times: On one hand, as children we’re taught that everyone makes mistakes and that the great thinkers and inventors embraced them. Thomas Edison’s famous quote is often inscribed in schools and children’s museums: “I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.” On the other hand, good grades are…
The article has a great illustration — a defenestrated couch on the ground outside the psych building. Patricia Cohen, NYT. For decades now, critics engaged in the Freud Wars have pummeled the good doctor’s theories for being sexist, fraudulent, unscientific, or just plain wrong. In their eyes, psychoanalysis belongs with discarded practices like leeching. But…
Clive Thompson, from Wired: I know I’m the underdog; I know I’m probably going to get killed anyway. I am never going to advance up the Halo 3 rankings, because in the political economy of Halo, I’m poor. Specifically, I’m poor in time. The best players have dozens of free hours a week to hone…
Bill “Calvin and Hobbes” Watterson reviews the new Charles “Peanuts” Schultz biography in the Wall Street Journal. Lucy, for all her domineering and insensitivity, is ultimately a tragic, vulnerable figure in her pursuit of Schroeder. Schroeder’s commitment to Beethoven makes her love irrelevant to his life. Schroeder is oblivious not only to her attentions but…
Josh Olsson relates a fascinating tale of internet deception in the LA Weekly. “Audrey, this is Harlan Ellison. It’s imperative that I talk to you and Tania as soon as possible about Josh. I’m very worried. Tania’s on her way to your house right now, and I’d like the two of you to come here.”…
Newsweek: The assumption that all videogames are toys for children rather than entertainment for a variety of different audiences is one of our pet peeves. It may seem innocuous, but it’s not only the foundation of continued attempts at the state and national level to regulate the sale and marketing of videogames, it’s also an…
The New Atlantis The structure of social networking sites also encourages the bureaucratization of friendship. Each site has its own terminology, but among the words that users employ most often is “managing.” The Pew survey mentioned earlier found that “teens say social networking sites help them manage their friendships.” There is something Orwellian about the…
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, via Miki Louch. When he was a boy, Dr. Pausch said, he had a concrete set of dreams: He wanted to experience the weightlessness of zero gravity; he wanted to play football in the NFL; he wanted to write an article for the World Book Encyclopedia (“You can tell the nerds early…
Here’s a collection of teaching tips for the first day of classes brought to us by Honolulu Community College (check their reference lists for more good sources, too). The Pig Personality Profile [try here — DGJ] is frivolous fun, but probably a good icebreaker and something I might even use when I teach Memoir Writing…
The internet news audience — roughly a quarter of all Americans — tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance. —Internet News…
Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley hypothesis states that, as artificial beings get closer to resembling real humans, the slightest errors or inaccuracies can shift our responses from empathy to disbelief and even disgust. It’s why, in Toy Story, we love Woody and Buzz Lightyear, but are totally unmoved by Andy, their human owner. This is something…
Vicary and Fraley modeled their study on a 1979 Random House interactive fiction series, “Choose Your Own Adventure,” which allowed the reader to select from multiple options at critical points in the story. Each choice directed the reader to a new scenario. This approach appealed to the researchers because earlier studies of individual behavior in…
The study had youngsters sample identical McDonald’s foods in name-brand and unmarked wrappers. The unmarked foods always lost the taste test. Robinson said it was remarkable how children so young were already so influenced by advertising. The study involved 63 low-income children ages 3 to 5 from Head Start centers in San Mateo County, Calif.…
Not knowing what they could and should do to plan for the future was a constant refrain among the undergrads. Whether or not college faculties and administrators are comfortable acknowledging that a majority of students have enrolled because of their belief that a college degree will lead to an attractive and secure career, the fact…
It isn’t clear whether Linden Lab simply took the Woodbury island offline, or actually destroyed the software behind it. Dori Littell-Herrick, an assistant professor and chairwoman of the animation department, said she believed it was the latter. If so, the university would need to build another island if it re-established a presence in Second Life.…