Audrey Watters

I fear I am "one of those people." On my desk sits a MacBook Pro. i've got my iPad propped up next to it, streaming Battlestar Galactica. My iPhone 4 is charging. And add to that now, my new Android phone. Well, it's new to me. Kin got the phone...

The Promise I made Isaiah a promise a while ago that we would stay in Eugene until he graduates from high school. And then, no matter what direction life takes him - work, college, travel - life will be taking me out of Eugene. Initially I thought I'd probably head...

Malcolm Gladwell's recent New Yorker essay "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted" has caused quite a stir. And I'm rather late to the commenting party, as smart people here, here, and here have already done a fine job of challenging some of the assertions Gladwell makes. Gladwell...

It's been over a year since I logged into World of Warcraft. Perhaps 2 years since I played EQ2. But lately, I've felt the urge to pick up an MMO again. Sorry, but Angry Birds just does not cut it. I mean, don't get me wrong. Angry Birds is fun....

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis -- now 70 years old -- contended the language we learn and speak impacts our conceptualization, our understanding of the world. And 30 years ago, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson argued that the "metaphors we live by" do a similar thing, shaping our perceptions, our expectations. 9...

You should have known when I decided to write about Russian Formalism and theoretical computer science -- that it was a sign there were things that I was furiously trying not to talk about. I mean, it's August, right? This is the month that reminds me that things fall apart....

The author of Morphology of a Folktale,Vladimir Propp was a 20th century folklorist who analyzed Russian folktales and argued that these stories could all be reduced to their simplest narrative components -- to the "31 functions" that are the building blocks of storytelling. Folktales needn't contain all 31, but they...

I wrote several popular posts this week, including my most successful post ever. It was my first Digg front page, and best of all, it was on the subject of education technology: "4 Tools for Teaching Kids to Code." I also had a great talk with NorthScale this week and...

I don't think you can tell it by looking at the content published to this blog this week, but I wrote a ton over the past seven days, much of it I'm damn proud of: Techmeme'd Scholars Build Blog-to-eBook Tool in One Week Venture Capital Human Capital Report Examines Who...

I realized as I went to write this, that I'd never been to Gawker before. I feel really slimy for having done so, because I just don't like that sort of, well, gawking. I don't care what Lindsay Lohan wore in court. I don't care that Reese Witherspoon went to...