December 2001 Archive Page

"It began as a fireside story spun by a Catholic dad. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings became a great epic that has inspired conversions, steeled young people in virtue, and changed lives — including mine." John Zmirak --The Lord and the Ringcatholic.net)

"There's only so much time. And there are so many great books. And every year more books are published, some of which will be great. Reluctantly, the reader begins to acknowledge the appalling necessity of choosing to read certain good things and not other good things." --Reading AnxietyNat'l Post)

Hundreds of websites that used to give their content away for free are now charging for their services. This weblog chronicles the changes. --The End of Free

Yelling out of cars, turning your speakers out the window to blast your music onto the street, setting off M-80 firecrackers, firing automatic weapons into the air—these are all well and good. But none of them create a merry atmosphere of insouciance and bonhomie quite like a revving motorcycle. --Wow, Check out that Motorcycle Revving!b>  (The Onion)

You have not truly lived, until you have seen Star Wars rendered as ASCII animation.  The FAQ page includes the answer to "Why (oh, God why)?"

is an open-source encyclopedia. If it doesn't have an entry for something, you can write it yourself! --Wikipedia

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse... [More or Livingston? Authorship uncertain.] --"A Visit from St. Nicholas"

Very sad: "Sixteen mothers, all of whom were pregnant on Sept. 11 and lost their husbands in the terrorist attacks, and their babies are photographed with news anchor Diane Sawyer." --Sept. 11 Widows with NewbornsAP via Yahoo!)

Programming bugs have bedeviled many a scientific researcher. Now, some researchers in Japan have programmed a bug. Thanks to a surgically-implanted device, scientists can control the motion of "Robo-roach." --Weird ScienceGuardian)

"An experiment to uncover the world's funniest jokes has found that some computer-generated gags can be more amusing than those thought up by humans." --What Kind of Murderer has Moral Fibre?New Scientist)

Children born to high-tech nerds appear more likely to show signs of a behavioral disorder similar to autism. Silicon Valley cases are booming. --The Geek SyndromeWired)

"We are confident that you will have many years of trouble-free enjoyment if you carefully read these instructions and follow them." (Note: Anybody who bothers to read instructions at all is probably already grouchy and impatient.) --IMPORTANT! PLEASE READ CAREFULLY!

"Does Jackson's effort remain reasonably true to Tolkien's richly imagined universe? And will filmgoers not inculcated with the lore of Middle Earth enjoy it anyway? The answers, happily, are 'probably' and 'definitely.'" --Ring: One for the BookWired)

Search an index of 6000 frequently-updated weblogs, news summaries, and opinion pages; or, see a list of the top 40 pages cited by the 'bloggers who create Internet buzz. My new second-favorite website (after google). --DayPop.com

Over a century before Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds" hoax, the New York Sun's moon hoax claimed that an astronomer discovered life on the moon. The website also describes many other hoaxes  --Museum of Hoaxes

(book review) : "...the activity stilled, the cars, houses and workplaces buried beneath layers of volcanic ash, the artefacts of a single moment preserved. What could we learn...?" --Imagine Silicon Valley Buried Like Pompeii

"Much web design has suffered from an over reliance on graphic design principles. Too many graphic designers have tried to force the Web to be what it is not..." --Information Architecture vs. Graphic DesignNew Thinking)

"My cookies, cakes, and brownies are always the highlight of our church bake sales, and everyone says so," said parishioner Connie Barrett, 49, openly committing the sin of pride. --All Seven Deadly Sins Committed at Church Bake SaleSatire from The Onion)

"From Oklahoma City to New York, we've turned violent human loss into epic narratives of suffering and patriotism. Does this help people heal or hurt them?" --Trauma CultureSalon)

An informal 1998 survey by John Rhodes yielded the following advice: create your content first, then design your website; keep your design simple; use proper grammar. --How to Gain the Trust of Your UsersWebWord)

"For a game that is so unfair, stylistically inconsistent, and frustrating, it has been tremendously influential.  This was the first of its kind -- using words to create a rich simulated world.  Nobody had seen anything like it; it spread quickly across the Internet." Dennis G. Jerz [Recently updated.] --Colossal Cave Adventure

--All Your Usenet Are Belong to Wesley Crusher

Google has extended its history of newsgroup postings all the way back to 1981. "Most who posted to Usenet back in its glory days were probably unaware that they were creating an archive documenting the most significant moments of the late 20th century." --Google's Gaggle of DiscussionsWired)

How many Internet memes can you cram into one weblog posting? --All Your Wesley Crusher Are Belong to Taliban

"If the poet's own performance is too perfect—if she seems to get every bit of substance out of the poem—then maybe she didn't put enough in to begin with." Adam Hirsch --Hearing Aid a href="http://www.slate.msn.com/?id=2059241">: Sometimes poetry should be seen but not heard (Slate)

"The World Trade Center attack inspired a lot of Web-publishing of independent, personal accounts."  What can weblogs and online diaries teach us about online journalism? --What does Sept 11 teach us about online journalism? (TheMorningNews.org)

Uh... no.  That already is college.com. --"This will be college.com. Contact us."

A medical student was scanning the dense prose on the copyright page of his textbook, when he read the word, "congratulations".  He now owns a '65 Thunderbird. --Read Your Textbooks!Boston Globe)

"Why bother to code a clever and long-lived virus when a stupid one that spreads for an hour or two gets just as much attention from antiviral experts and the media?" (Uh-oh! An anti-virus company's marketing flack warns that Goner is coming back! Better pay big bucks to the anti-virus companies, to protect you from clicking on a strange file attached to an unsolicited, and barely literate, e-mail!) --'Goner' Today, and ForgottenWired)

"Sitting by the window of his study on a summer day in the early 1930s, a thin-faced Oxford professor let his mind wander from correcting papers and into a world that would become Middle-earth." Pamela S. Turner --Visit the Birthplace of Middle-EarthCSM)

A flashback to the Silicon Valley excesses of 1998, before the bubble burst: "There are headhunters who handle only Cobol programmers from Singapore, and headhunters who specialize in luring toy-company executives, and, I've recently learned, a headhunting firm that helps other headhunting firms hunt for headhunters." Po Bronson --Is the Revolution Over?Wired)

Wil Wheaton, the actor whose Star Trek character inspired the newsgroup alt.ensign.wesley.die.die.die, has long been geekdom's favorite whipping boy. "But now, thanks to a self-coded, shamelessly dorky website, many of the same folks who loathed Wheaton on the show are finding out he's a whole lot like them in real life." --Wheaton's Trek to Respectability (Wired)