“A newspaper reporter questioned the practicality of the Internet bookmobile. Wouldn’t it be better to print materially more cheaply at a central location and then distribute them normally through book stores, online sales, or libraries? … The bookmobile reminded me of an itinerant vegetable cart which is a now a rarity in the United States.…
“Virtually every encyclopedia or textbook etymology of the word ‘robot’ mentions the play R.U.R. Although the immediate worldwide success of the play immediately popularized the word (supplanting the earlier ‘automaton’), it was actually not Karel Capek but his brother Josef, also a respected Czech writer, who coined the word. The Czech word robota means ‘drudgery’…
“The genesis of Churches ad hoc was the photograph I made of a cross that seemed to rise up out of a tree. The cross, located in a park overlooking Eugene, Oregon, created a controversy regarding the separation of church and state. Proponents of the cross called it a war memorial. Others saw it as…
“Catholic church authorities were displeased by passages in Copernicus’ text that seemed to contradict Scriptural teachings. But, the Inquisition decided not to ban De revolutionibus outright because its observations might be needed in the future to adjust the Gregorian calendar. Instead, a Papal decree in 1620 demanded alterations in ten specific places in the text.…
“Hi! I’m Sally, and I’m Johnny… Welcome to our website: Black People Love Us! We are well-liked by Black people so we’re psyched (since lots of Black people don’t like lots of White people)!! We thought it’d be cool to honor our exceptional status with a ROCKIN’ domain name and a killer website!!” —Black People…
“You are a games theorist. Your object is to defend games (and yourself) from the imperialism of a thousand theories. Navigate the four levels of narratology, psychology, film theory, and pathology. Control the spaceship with your mouse.” —Game LiberationJesper Juul)
“The toy area has its own distinct odor: sort of a musty, mildewy, plastic, sour-milk, baby-vomit, metallic, rotting-cloth smell… It isn’t quite the smell of evil-just despair.” —Goodwill Toy Section Most Depressing Thing EverOnion)
“Telemarketers make use of a telescript – a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer. It is this imbalance, most of all, that makes telemarketing successful. The EGBG Counterscript attempts to redress that balance.” Martijn Engelbregt —Anti-telemarketing Script (EGBG)
“When cell phones started ringing during Peter Telep’s classes at the University of Central Florida, the English instructor came up with an unusual solution: He gets to answer the call…. ‘This is the English teacher, and we’re busy right now.’” Amy L. Edwards —Cell Phones are no Class Act, Teachers SayOrlando Sentinel)
A fan of the multiplayer role-playing game EverQuest opines about a cheat in which players can create loads of in-game money: “I am not an economist, but if one person in a month can create as much as the ENTIRE economy can in a day, there is going to be huge, post WWI-like German inflation…
“This program takes lessons learned from the classic I Love Lucy TV show and uses them as a discussion starter for small group study!” —“I Love Lucy” Bible Study” Words fail me.
“Those pieces are short, rarely more than 200 words, and offer links to other Web sites or news reports. The discussions then can go on for hundreds and even thousands of postings by readers, offering comment, argument and further research. Those who want to post without using their names are allowed to, but the system…
“Last week I was with one of my summer interns in the lobby when a receptionist complained that her printer wasn’t working. The intern horsed around with it and discovered a pen stuck inside the printer… So he grabs a piece of paper and starts scrawling on it…” See image: “Whitespace in Document Design: Why…
“When the phone rings at Kennedy Space Center’s public affairs office, the caller might just communicate with aliens. Or have psychic powers. Or see UFOs. Whether they’re hiding in a phone booth from perceived pursuers or trying to sell a space rock, the callers want to talk to NASA, the space agency, the ultimate authority…
“He steadily brings us through the history, citing the magic squares of China, the first puzzle magazines in the 18th century, the 19th-century American crazes (when pros began to make a living at it), and the 200 million Rubik’s Cubes sold in the 1980s. Enigmas, charades, riddles, anagrams, cryptograms, rebuses, duck-rabbit images, mathematical brain-crushers, Chinese…
“Now you hear a low hum, and over the horizon appears a flying machine. You press the button of a box near by and a radio signal flashes to the machine. The aircraft, looking oddly like a horizontal electric fan, drones toward you. When the pilot is directly overhead, all forward movement of the machine…
“This Web site and its associated mailing list are devoted to recently coined words, existing words that have enjoyed a recent renaissance, and older words that are being used in new ways.” Here’s an example: technopolis, nounThe sum total of the technological infrastructure of a society. —Random WordsWord Spy)
A wire story consists of one voice pitched low and calm and full of institutional gravitas, blissfully unaware of its own biases or the gaping lacunae in its knowledge. Whereas blogs have a different format: Clever teaser headline that has little to do with the actual story, but sets the tone for this blog post.…
“Any data that’s public, and that Google can see, is hardly worth storing and organizing. We simply search for what we need, when we need it: just-in-time information management. But since we don’t admit Google to our private data stores — Intranets [1] and mailboxes, for example — we’re still like the shoemaker’s barefoot children.…
“40 percent of the most frequent PC game players are 35 or older, according to the Interactive Digital Software Association, a game industry group…. Computer games have been around for about 25 years, and many younger baby boomers encountered them during their teen years.” —Older Gamers Now the NormMostly AP)