Distraction in Real Time

One of the things about necessity and the motherhood of invention is that such notions can be misogynistic.  Cramming for finals or writing a resarch paper on a last-chance all-nighter is what it is, but at some point the parenting metaphors invite questions of neglect.  Consider, for instance, the idea of displaying two blank spaces in HTML.  It can be done, but you must type or macro a particular markup.  And, well, eventually the marketplace did get around to certain aspects.

Dangerous obscurity

Let us pause, for a moment, to consider the wisdom we might glean from Twitter. Or, as Mark Sample puts it:

The new 7th edition of the MLA Handbook *still* does not know how to cite videogames.

No, really, that’s actually someone’s real tweet. But here’s the thing: It’s not crazy. One of my favorite dialogues on freedom takes place between a nano-enhanced supercop and a black Australian bartender named Isaac at a Triad-operated nightclub in Hong Kong amid a nanotechnological plague, in the video game Deux Ex.