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Scandal in the World of Quiz Bowl

“Nerd culture” may be, at this point, thoroughly subsumed into the capitalist mainstream (see: The Big Bang Theory, the explosion of Comic-Con’s popularity, they’re seriously gonna make more Star Wars movies, etc.), but there’s still a group of geeks out there swapping obscure bits of knowledge for knowledge’s sake.

They’re high-level quiz-bowl players, and a recent cheating scandal has brought their insular world into major news sources’ spotlight in all the wrong ways.

Read Alan Siegel’s story at Slate for more surprisingly dramatic details, including the declaration that “[e]verything you touch you destroy.”

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via The Rumpus.net http://therumpus.net/2013/04/scandal-in-the-world-of-quiz-bowl/

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Netiquette from the early days

Been baffled recently by someone’s online behavior?

At Full-Stop, Helen Stuhr-Rommereim offers advice drawn from the book published by those who pioneered the internet in 1995. A tip from the document: “…people with whom you communicate are located across the globe…  Give them a chance to wake up, come to work, and login before assuming the mail didn’t arrive or that they don’t care.” In the age of instant gratification and stress that comes from places without wi-fi, we could do well to listen. 

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via The Rumpus.net http://therumpus.net/2013/01/netiquette-from-the-early-days/

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THE F-WORD & THE NEW YORKER

Mary Norris writes about the gradual inclusion of profanity in The New Yorker in this short piece, exploring questions on how one properly quotes Earl Sweatshirt, and whether or not the term “star fucker” is hyphenated.

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via The Rumpus.net http://therumpus.net/2012/07/the-f-word-the-new-yorker/