Links for 2011-08-01

(The semi-automatic method I’ve been using to post Links Dumps has broken, so here’s a hand-edited version of what I’ve tagged for the last few days. Suggestions of alternative automated ways to post tagged links are welcome in comments.)

• Text Editors in The Lord of the Rings — Crooked Timber

  "vi: Moria

  Like Fangorn, ancient and deep, with hints of the long labor of a great people. There is, supposedly, a monumental city of stone down here somewhere but it’s so dark I can’t see a damn thing. No, wait! A shaft of light illuminates some runes! They read as follows:

  ^C^C^X^X^X^Xquit
  qQ!qdammit[esc]qwertyuiopasdfghjkl;
  :xwhat

  The Wizard translates: “We cannot get out! We cannot get out! They are coming!”"

• From the Archives, 1998 | Tooth and Claw
  "Back in the late ’90s, when I edited the Village Voice’s coverage of the emerging culture of the internet, I commissioned an experiment. Austin, my lead writer, would hide out in his Brooklyn apartment and see how long he could survive using only the internet as his portal to the world–for sustenance, companionship, entertainment, information. Today, when trying to avoid the internet is a far bigger challenge, it’s hard to fathom that this piece ran just 13 years ago."
• www.austinbunn.com/articles.php?target=marooned.html
  "November 10 – 16, 1998

  There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality… –
  Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

  One Wednesday, I holed up in my apartment- no radio, no television, no phone, no contact. Just me, my ThinkPad, and a 28.8 connection.

  It was a test. A study published by Carnegie-Mellon suggested that access to the Net caused family ties to atrophy and social lives to erode. Here was the final proof that the Net was scrambling your orgones. But the subjects in this "Net Bummer" sample were all first-timers. Newbies. No wonder they were cranky- they were lost. (A writer in a recent issue of the Brit mag The Face tried surviving solely on the Net from Wales and ended up sneaking off to the pub or cowering in Compuserve chat.) But what would happen if you were a native, if you knew the shortcuts, arcades, and butt-cheap falafel joints of that electronic city? Would you also encounter the same dunning, depressive force?"

• Colson Whitehead’s ongoing series from the World Series of Poker: Parts 1-4 – Grantland

  "I have a good poker face because I am half-dead inside. My particular combo of slack features, negligible affect, and soulless gaze had helped my game ever since I started playing 20 years ago, when I was ignorant of pot odds and M-theory and three-betting, and it gave me a boost as I collected my trove of lore, game by game, hand by hand. It had not helped me human relationships-wise over the years, but surely I am not alone here — anyone whose peculiar mix of genetic material and formative experiences had resulted in a near-expressionless mask could relate. Nature giveth, taketh, etc. You make the best of the hand you’re dealt."

• Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards

  "A Framework for K-12 Science Education identifies the key scientific practices, concepts and ideas that all students should learn by the time they complete high school. It is intended as a guide for those who develop science education standards, those who design curricula and assessments, and others who work in K-12 science education.

  The framework organizes science education around three dimensions:

  Scientific and engineering practices. […]
  Crosscutting concepts. […]
  Disciplinary core ideas. The framework identifies ideas in four disciplinary areas – life sciences; physical sciences; earth and space sciences; and engineering, technology, and the applications of science. […]"