Blog Juice for Educational Technology

Slate has some fun covers of old tomes online. Some of these are really funny, and others actually look like they may help sell some ink and paper. I especially like the cover for the Iliad! Read about it here.

Anyone think a video game might be a small contributing factor here given what the mother said (in the title of my post)? Modesto Eight-Year-Old Steals Teacher’s Minivan:

An 8-year-old boy swiped his teacher’s car keys and took her minivan for a joyride, cruising safely home and into the record books as the city’s youngest auto thief, police said.

Since no one was hurt, it’s kind of funny. But scary since I have 6 1/2 year old (who, by the way, is not playing Grand Theft Auto yet, but he does like Unreal Tournament 2004).

And yes, I dugg this.

Well, looks like JibJab has done it again–check out Matzah, another satirical FLASH from the folks that brought us This Land. I’m not sure what to make of this one yet. It’s probably much funnier if you know about Jewish traditions–it reminds me of Weird Al’s parody “Pretty Fly for a Rabbi.”

Here’s a fun blog containing a plethora of poems celebrating the absurdity of English spelling. You may have heard some of these before, but they’re still fun and good grist for FYC. What’s your favorite?

For those that enjoy the Internet April Fool’s jokes, Wikipedia and Urgo each maintain a list.

Via Slashdot, The Cure for Information Overload. Just follow the meme.

In a press interview earlier today, game player and game reviewer blacklily8 admitted that his avatar on World of Warcraft has been using virtual steroids for the last two years:

I took my lead from Barry Bonds and the MLB. Virtual performance enhancing drugs are the only way in today’s MMORPG environment to gain the experience points necessary for maintaining my character’s stats in WoW. But let me state clearly that I’m not the first to do this; there are others in virtual RPG environments who have been using the same cheat to keep up with the competitive world of online game play.

While blacklily8 was unwilling to comment on any others involved in this controvery, rumor has it that a mysterious Dr. B. is at the center of this virtual societal problem. This leave us to wonder whether former US Senate members will step forward to investigate this issue?

I’ve been trying for a long time to get people in Rhet/Comp to switch to OpenOffice. Well, now it should be easy since they can continue to serve their beloved Microsoft. Slashdot reports that Microsoft Buys OpenOffice. Won’t be long and OO will drop the OpenDocument standard in favor of Microsoft XML. That’ll give everyone the sort of vendor lock they are used to.

There’s an interesting link on Boing Boing today to this Photoshopping Contest for remixing WWII propaganda posters. Some of the entries are funny, some profound, some offensive, and others just plain silly. At any rate, it’s grist for viz rhet. I can’t help but think how fun it’d be to give an assignment like this to a class. Only trouble is, I don’t know Photoshop. Hmm…

Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You is a quick read. It’s a few days’ worth of tub & toilet reading for folks like me who do 90% of their reading in the bathroom–the only room in their house without a computer or TV. EBiGfY is fun, well-written, and self-described as an “old-fashioned work of persuasion” (meaning that you’re not going to get the other side of the argument.) The basic idea is that popular culture media (television shows, videogames, films, the internet, etc.) have been steadily increasing in complexity (but not necessarily sophistication) since the 50s. He calls this “The Sleeper Curve,” a joke borrowed from a Woody Allen film. Johnson reveals that TV shows now have more characters, threads, and subplots. Games are so complicated you need a strategy guide just to beat them. Films haven’t changed as much as the rest of pop culture, but even there we can see how the LotR trilogy is far more complex than Star Wars. Not to put to find a point on it, kids and couch potatoes are sucking wholesome Vitamin D milk from their boob tubes.

A few months ago I picked up The Island of Lost Maps to an Amazon order so that I would qualify for super saver postage rates. It was being hocked as part of Amazon’s often amazing under $5 book section. What’s surprising is that this bargain book turned out to be much more enlightening and interesting than the books I had ordered.