The Hewlett Foundation is offering $100,000 to anyone who can create an “automated essay grader” (and in the process cost thousands of TAs their jobs).
Computers Grading Papers?
The Dead Author’s Home
J.D. Salinger‘s house is on the market and generating plenty of buzz, but before you make an offer consider “what does it mean to want to live in a dead writer’s house? When does fandom devolve into idolatry?”
Neil Gaiman Lane
The Ocean at the End of the Lane is now an actual lane. Neil Gaiman’s hometown, Portsmouth, England, named a bus lane after his novel last Sunday. Sadly, the magical Hempstock family doesn’t live at the end of it.
Many Unusual Deaths
Wikipedia Find of the Week: List of unusual deaths. For example, “Draco, Athenian law-maker, was smothered to death by gifts of cloaks showered upon him by appreciative citizens at a theatre on Aegina.”
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“QB or not QB”
Is Rick Reilly’s poem about Tim Tebow so terrible that it could’ve sent “a shockwave through time, producing reverberations before it ever happen[ed]?” Matt Ufford thinks so.
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Garth Greenwell on Being a Mystery to Yourself
Garth Greenwell discusses the narrator of his two novels, who repeatedly "undergoes a process of coming into self-knowledge."
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Sunshine Journalism
California seems to have it all: Hollywood, the sun, vineyards, and more. Yet it doesn’t have a weekly magazine. California Sunday will change that by launching a magazine delivered on digital platforms daily and in local print newspapers every Sunday. Bonus: They’re hiring.
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Men Crying Over Poetry
A new anthology celebrates poetry “that moves men to tears,” and it includes the likes of Jonathan Franzen, Ian McEwan, and Salman Rushdie. Meanwhile, for BBC Newsnight, Clive James gets choked up while reading Keith Douglas’s “Canoe.”