First-person Tetris. // Pong reinvented. // Print your own 3-D objects. // Turn any flat surface into a touch screen. // News Update! One of these. (h/t, Coudal) // The Museum of Useful Things. // Permanent glasses. // Tape installations. // The possessions of William Burroughs. // A spot of Armstrong & Miller. // Alligator bread. // The Grand Canyon. // A database of dreams. // The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. (h/t, MeFi) // Enhance grid 17. // Sushi etiquette. // Will it waffle? // The modern way to stun your lobster. // And, sadly, this never got built.

For some reason this tickled me. I think it’s chiefly due to John Hurt (far right). Sort of Alien meets Man at C&A.

More. Via Nerd Boyfriend.

Heather Mac Donald on theories of crime.

If poverty is the root cause of lawlessness, why did crime rates fall when joblessness increased?

KC Johnson on academic groupthink. 

Essay after essay in the NEA’s annual higher-education publication complains about how professors lack respect from the public, without ever pausing to consider how the image of colleges and universities as the bastion of out-of-touch ideologues might have caused the problem.

Candace de Russy on Sociology 101.

It seems rather foolish to remain optimistic about the future of this nation when millions of its most “educated” are systematically being taught to loathe it.

Greg Lukianoff on campus censorship and learned intolerance.

Until 2007 Western Michigan University’s harassment policy banned “sexism,” which it defined as “the perception and treatment of any person, not as an individual, but as a member of a category based on sex.” I am unfamiliar with any other attempt by a public institution to ban a perception, let alone perceiving that a person is a man or woman. Even public restrooms violate this rule. […] These codes not only chill free expression by warning students of serious consequences for controversial speech — or even normal, everyday speech — but they also systematically miseducate kids to believe that free speech goes only as far as the most sensitive person in the room can handle.

And it’s worth bearing in mind that “sensitive” may actually mean passive-aggressive or dishonest, or the person with the weakest argument. 

College students are placed in an unenviable position. They are constantly urged to argue, debate, discuss, question, and analyse the most important issues of the day, but they also often know stories of other students who were punished for taking the “wrong side” of an argument. […] When students come to believe that censoring rival points of view is not only permissible but laudable, the potential damage goes far beyond campus. Our colleges and universities produce our scientists, our business leaders, our lawyers, and our legislators. The habits formed in college inevitably seep into the other major social institutions.

As usual, feel free to add your own.

It took 800 exposures, three nights and a rented room.

Emily said yes.