A friend recently asked on her blog what fictional characters we (her readers) relate to. Two that immediately came to mind for me were Helen Narbonic (from Narbonic) and Agatha Clay (from Girl Genius). Both are female mad scientists from webcomics, which got me wondering what other female mad scientists I might be missing out
At the intersection of current affairs and computational linguistics, Language Log’s Philip Resnik has written a thought-provoking piece about how events in Egypt are fueling a shift in computational linguistics. He calls it the “social media revolution”, and main idea is that whereas current computation techniques are good at dealing with large, clean data sets
[The following email was sent on November 4th. The webmaster apologizes for forgetting to post it to the blog until just now. You have one week left to vote.] The HRSFAns constitution calls for an election “The Election Chair shall announce a date and time for counting ballots in November, and shall distribute ballots to
Take a look at this gorgeous photo series from The Boston Globe, featuring “balloons of all shapes, sizes and purposes – ranging from a child’s toy to a football-field-sized research instrument”. It’s such a simple theme, but so beautifully executed.
If you’re looking for ways to spice up your book storage, here are two fun ideas from Lifehacker: For the gravity defying, there’s an Invisible Floating Bookshelf: Or if you’re just out to confuse people, try the Inverted Bookshelf:
This Saturday, April 3rd, is International Pillow Fight Day! In cities all around the world, people will gather for massive public pillow fights. The facebook event for my local pillow fight in San Diego has over 5000 attendees registered. I can’t wait!
Vericon is this weekend! Vericon is a science-fiction, fantasy, gaming, and anime convention featuring many events and distinguished guest speakers. It has been held annually at Harvard University since 2001. The tenth Vericon will take place on Friday-Sunday, March 19-21, 2010. The convention is sponsored by the Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association (HRSFA), an undergraduate student
To the dismay of linguists everywhere, it is once again National Grammar Day. Yes, you read that right: dismay. As my colleague Gabe explains on his blog Motivated Grammar: My problem with National Grammar Day (and most popular grammarians in general) is that it suggests that the best part of studying language is the heady
HRSFANS member Neil S. has just returned from a trip to visit his family in rural India, and has a really interesting blog post with photos from and thoughts about his adventures. I particularly enjoyed hearing Neil’s perspective on life there because he’s simultaneously part of the family, and an observer from modern urban America.
danah boyd is a researcher specializing in social issues surrounding new technology, particularly social networking. In a recent blog post, she discusses differences in the cultures of Facebook and Twitter status updates. She points out that despite their superificial similarities, these two networks have different norms with respect to the directionality of communication: Facebook’s social
