April 2002 Archive Page

"Bad names have played a tremendously powerful role in the history of the world and in our own individual development. They have ruined reputations, stirred men and women to outstanding accomplishments, sent others to prison cells, and made men mad enough to enter battle and slaughter their fellowmen." -- Institute for Propaganda Analysis (1938) --Propaganda Techniques: Word Games -- Name-Calling

See 1,247 vibrant engravings—many in color—from the classic 1918 publication, as well as a subject index with 13,000 entries ranging from the Antrum of Highmore to the Zonule of Zinn. --Gray’s b>Anatomy of the Human Body (Bartleby.com)

A follow-as-you-go tutorial, the Inform Beginner's guide creates three small games of increasing depth. No previous experience of computer programming or interactive fiction design is assumed. This book (available for free as a PDF)  concludes with helpful summaries and reference tables. Firth and Kesserich (edited by Jerz). --Learn the Text Adventure Programming Language Inform(IF Library)

--Blue Moon e-zine is looking for a literary blogger.

>open curtains
As you part the curtains, you see that it's a bright morning, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the meadows are blooming, and a large yellow bulldozer is advancing on your home. --The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyDouglasAdams.com)

is -- besides being further evidence that the Internet spells the end of society as we know it -- a novelty service that allows customers to e-impregnate a person of their choice.  The recipient will receive an e-impregnation notice and learn who e-impregnated them, as well as an update on their virtual pregnancy every two weeks (via email).... --eBunintheOven.com

"Although Internet resources may be freely available, there is a lack of certainty that they will be available for students next month, next semester or next year." Markwell and Brooks --Broken Links: Just How Rapidly Do Science Education Links Disappear?via Wired)

Excellent example of an ad hominem attack, courtesy of The Onion.

(autistics.org) 
This web page is a step-by-step set of instructions advising autistic boys how to manage an important social ritual.  Janet Villar --Asking a Girl on a Date

Women's magazines regularly fabricate stories about you-know-what: "Many writers, editors and fact-checkers involved with these sex articles (most of whom asked that their identities be protected with the top-secrecy accorded CIA sources) agreed that the editorial standards for them are abysmal." --Faking It: Sex, Lies, and Women's Magazines (Columbia Journalism Review)

: Is environmentalism a science or a political movement?  "The world’s ecosystem is breaking down. We are fast approaching the absolute limit of viability, and the limits of growth are becoming apparent. We know the Litany and have heard it so often that yet another repetition is, well, almost reassuring. There is just one problem: it does not seem to be backed up by the available evidence." Bjørn Lomborg. [Scientific American offers a rebuttal.] --The Skeptical Environmentalist

Online waiver forms are not very useable. "Real users, not lawyers, need to write the forms. Then they need to redesign the sites so that the consent forms are visual, not legalese text blocks." Interview with readability expert Mark Hochhauser.  --Stop! Look Before You Click!C|Net)

"We have recently become aware of the fact that our previous list management service erroneously failed to oversee certain remove requests. We deeply apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and would like to offer all of our valuable customers another chance to unsubscribe from our services." A Second Helping of Spam

"Poised between media, blogs can be as nuanced and well-sourced as traditional journalism, but they have the immediacy of talk radio. Amid it all, this much is clear: The phenomenon is real. Blogging is changing the media world..." Andrew Sullivan --Weblogs Are to Words What Napster Was to MusicWired)

"A number of concerned British Harry Potter fans have spoken out against the Bible, claiming that the holy text of the Christian Church can cause serious damage to children.... The tales of Jesus turning water into wine are fairly harmless, but there is a serious risk of children drowning if they try to walk on water....”  --Harry Potter Fans Warn Against Dangers of the Bible (Satire from The Chaser)

The geekiest, most elite programming language, UNIX, seems to be associated with a love of words.  "Working on the command line, hands poised over the keys uninterrupted by frequent reaches for the mouse, is a posture familiar to wordsmiths (especially the really old guys who once worked on teletypes or electric typewriters). It makes some of the same demands as writing an essay. Both require composition skills. Both demand a thorough knowledge of grammar and syntax. Both reward mastery with powerful, compact expression." Thomas Scoville --The Elements of [UNIX] Stylevia KairosNews)

"Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter..." Tom Wayman --Did I Miss Anything? (Question frequently asked by students after missing a class.)

"[A]t the University of Virginia today I regularly teach the introductory comparative literature survey, which begins with the Iliad and the Odyssey and runs through all the traditional great authors, such as Virgil, Dante, Cervantes, Goethe, Austen, and Dostoevsky... why am I now writing about Gilligan´s Island and Star Trek?" Paul Cantor --The Art in the PopularWilson Quarterly)

"Babies are leaning their native language before birth. This is made possible by the development of hearing as early as 16 weeks gestational age. A mother's voice reaches the uterus with very little distortion as the sound waves pass directly through her body." David Chamberlain --Life Before Birth (birthpsychology.com)

Review of a production of Hamlet told with no dialogue: "like a beautifully choreographed nightmare, it fuses movement, music and light into a haunting series of images that summon the very heartbeat of the story."

--Sinetic's Hamlet: The Rest Is SilenceWashPost)

"There are two kinds of science-fiction reader, who in their extreme forms constitute disjoint reading populations. A pure Population One reader wants scientific ideas and will be tolerant of other flaws provided those ideas are present. A pure Population Two reader will tolerate (or fail to notice) scientific errors but insist on literary virtues. You can tell which population you belong to from what follows..." --High-Tech Futures: How 'hard sf' keeps the science in science fictionWashPost)

Don't let the harsh title turn you off -- Gerry McGovern is absolutely right when he points out that the Internet needs simpler design: "[T]here is a much greater need for simple web design today than there was in 1996. Back then we had pioneers and early adopters who tended to hunger for the new and exciting. Today, the vast majority of people on the Web do not see themselves as pioneers." --Design for Stupid Peopleb> (New Thinking)

For a print columnist who writes, oh, say, twice a week to sniff at those who pump out ten tons of spirited commentary for free reminds me of some baggy-pants third-rate vaudevillian rolling his eyes at the people streaming into a nickelodeon. Oh, sure, they have moving pictures of a train robbery, but nothing beats a pie in the face. -- James Lileks --The newspaper is a lecture. The web is a conversation. (Bleat)

"Welcome to Blogistan, the Internet-based journalistic medium where no thought goes unpublished, no long-out-of-print book goes unhawked, and no fellow ''blogger,'' no matter how outre, goes unpraised." Alex Beam

--In the world of Web logs, talk is cheapb> (Boston Globe)

"'Ah, it was a bunch of boring stuff,' said a slouching, mumbling Geremek, 17, at a press conference shortly after his return from the future Monday. 'It totally blew.'"

--Sullen Time-traveling Teen Reports 23rd Century SucksThe Onion)

(Wired) 
Multiplayer online games face a barrier in Europe and Asia: many people who live in the same time zone don't speak the same language, so it's hard for them to interact with each other. A universal translator may be the solution. (I linked to this article mostly because I was amused that, this article about online pidgin English quotes an analyst named Billy Pidgeon. --DGJ) --Online Games Go Multicultural

"EthnoQuest takes students to Amopan, a fictional eastern Mexican village... The game starts with students' assuming the roles of grant-writing ethnographers and follows them as they complete reports detailing their anthropological research."

"Every now and then, though, pieces like 'Fun is Hard to Find' arrive, like anachronistic throwbacks, to remind us that some writers and editors in the newsrooms of America still can't get the Web straight, still think it's a passing fad -- and still, in some cases, can't wait to dig its grave." Scott Rosenberg --Where are the Mahirs of Yesteryear? (Salon)

"When all is said and done, what is the role of journalists in breaking news? Are journalists relics of a golden era, now useful only as a conduit to pass along the whispers of the hive-mind to the unplugged masses? Or have we been reduced to Stamps of Approval, as we validate blog-based trends with the imprimatur of the New York Times or the Washington Post?" John Hiler --Borg Journalism (MicrocontentNews)