Monthly Archives: August 2010

The Emperor’s New Interface

A beginning-of-the-semester raft of posts is on the way. Let me start off with a little appetizer of outrage before I get on to the long-winded equivocating, though. It seems like most librarians are willing to kiss and make up … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Intellectual Property | Comments Off on The Emperor’s New Interface

Tomato Tomatoe

I’ve got a steady flow of tomatoes from the garden now, though I’ve lost a few to blossom-end rot this year, I think because it’s been so hot and relatively dry. So far I’ve made a spicy wine-and-tomato sauce with … Continue reading

Posted in Domestic Life, Food | 11 Comments

Geeking Out About Dragons and Alt-History

I’ve talked about Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series before, which is an alternate history focused on the premise that many of the major governments of the world between 1600-1800 have had access to intelligent dragons as military, economic and cultural resources. … Continue reading

Posted in Books, Popular Culture, Sheer Raw Geekery | 3 Comments

Evidence Is Old-Fashioned?

So, more wailing and gnashing of teeth about Andrew Breitbart. The New York Times has a piece on plagiarism that reviews an increasingly prominent argument that contemporary college students simply don’t know that copying the words of another writer verbatim … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Politics | 10 Comments

I Want My AuthenticiTV

I largely believe in the everyday critical capacity of contemporary audiences. In many ways, I think cultural consumers today are the most sophisticated in human history. To some extent, that’s because their toolkits, both intellectual and technological, have a lot … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Consumerism, Advertising, Commodities, Politics, Popular Culture | 3 Comments