“Take the Quiz now and find out where you fit on the political map!” —World’s Smallest Political Quiz (Advocates for Self-Government) I enjoyed taking this little quiz, then I played with it a little to see how it works. My own score was centrist with libertarian leanings, but I can see too many weaknesses in the…
“WatchBlog is a multiple-editor weblog broken up into three major political affiliations, each with its own blog: the Democrats, the Republicans and the Third Party (covering everything outside the two major parties).” —WatchBlog: 2004 Election News, Opinion and Commentary (WatchBlog) This looks interesting — a three-column blog — Democrat on the left side, Republican on the…
“TV3 has apologised after a graphic labelling US President George W. Bush a ‘professional fascist’ flashed up during its primetime news. | The baseline graphic, which was supposed to have promoted an upcoming weather bulletin, was aired to 360,000 viewers halfway through Wednesday night’s news.” —New Zealand Newscast Accidentally Labels Bush ‘Professional Fascist’ (NZ Herald)
“When I was studying at York, reading the plays was part of the curriculum, and then, in the summer, there were a selection of the plays performed in the street (perhaps 15?), conveniently available to watch. Now that I am at Toronto, there are still medieval play recreations regularly available to watch, since the PLS…
“In fact, our language is littered with words that once used to be brands. Escalator, pogo, gunk and heroin are all examples, as is tabloid, which was originally registered by a drugs company in 1884 and came to mean ‘small tablet’.” —Google Calls in the ‘Language Police’ (BBC) This is a light-weight riff on the observation…
The ancient ossuary (“bone box”) marked with an inscription identifying the occupant as “James, brother of Jesus” has been officially declared a fake: “The varnish covered large areas of the ossuary surface and the patina had burst through the varnish in many places. Both varnish and patina coated a rosette inscribed on the other side…
“To some, a blog is the software and the user’s experience with the software, and because of that they focus on the technology that makes blogs possible. | To others, blogs are experiential in terms of an individual’s relationship to a blog as relationship, whether as an individual or one of a community.” —Talk about…
“He had found the route after discovering a forgotten map in public archives which revealed the secret access from the monastery attic. | The map was a key exhibit in the trial. The attic, reached by a daring climb up exterior walls, led to a steep, narrow stairway and then the secret chamber. A hidden…
Margaret Atwood recalls encountering Animal Farm” as a girl: “I mistook it for a book about talking animals, sort of like Wind in the Willows. I knew nothing about the kind of politics in the book – the child’s version of politics then, just after the war, consisted of the simple notion that Hitler was…
“Who would have guessed, when this New Hampshire YMCA camp was founded in 1905, that anyone would even have to think about an electronics policy?| But in today’s world, where some teens are more tech-savvy than their parents, and they often won’t leave home without their electronic toys, that’s reality. And camp directors are having…
The Corpus Christi Play was an annual outdoor event, involving hundreds of actors; it was already a long-established tradition by the end of the 14th century, and continued until suppressed by the Protestant Reformation in the late 16th century.” —Medieval ‘Body of Christ’ PlayLiteracy Weblog) Today is the day the medieval church would have celebrated…
Google is Already Spidering my New SiteLiteracy Weblog) My digital move from UWEC to Seton Hill is happening much faster than I had anticipated. My UWEC weblog, which changed several times a day, seems to have encouraged Google’s spiders to check out a good chunk of my website on a regular basis. The cache was…
“Professors are ‘in the gist business.’ But a vernacular sound bite, no matter how strategically placed in a text or a lecture, won’t help students parse scholarly discourse. More important, getting students to write about what they know does not necessarily make them more adept at writing about more “traditional” academic subjects.” Glenn C. Altschuler…
“Microsoft, which has been talking tough on spam, is putting its money where its mouth is. The company revealed Tuesday that it has filed 15 civil suits in the United States and the United Kingdom against spammers who it says have sent more than 2 billion unsolicited messages to users of Microsoft’s MSN and Hotmail…
Will Gayther, the CS student who has written the weblog sofware I use, writes: Holy !@#!, it actually works! It’s actually alive! The blog actually works! And gives decent performance! (“gives decent performance”, I bet Dr Jerz will love that english!…need to get to sleep…) Wow! PS: I, Will Gayther, am of course the author…
“Norma McCorvey, the woman whose 1973 U.S. Supreme Court case helped make abortion legal in the United States, today petitioned to overturn the historic Roe v. Wade decision. Known for years as just Jane Roe, McCorvey (pictured right) filed the below affidavit in support of a motion in U.S. District Court in Dallas. McCorvey, 55,…
On Barger, Books and BlogsLiteracy Weblog) Unless I’m mistaken, Jorn Barger doesn’t seem to have updated his Robot Wisdom weblog in weeks (yeah, yeah, I’m the pot, he’s the kettle, I know). The 2 Blowhards critique of book culture reminds me of “Theory: Write a web-book in a day“, a usenet posting by Jorn Barger.…
“Biographies? Serious travel books? Moneylosers for most of their authors. How so? Well, say you’re lucky and your agent nails a $100,000 contract for you for a biography you’re dying to write. Sounds good, huh? But run the math: First, subtract the agent’s fee (10-15%), and then subtract taxes. You’ve got to write the book…
“Like automakers that moved production from Michigan to Mexico or textile firms that abandoned the Southeast for the Far East, service firms are now shifting jobs to cheaper locales like India and the Philippines. It’s not just call centers anymore. Indian radiologists now analyze CT scans and chest X-rays for American patients in an office…
“Eurobloggers who wish to use their real names may be out of luck. For better or for worse, Europe lacks a First Amendment and the respect for limited government, private property and free enterprise that America still enjoys. And Europe sure doesn’t have a Judge Stewart Dalzell, who correctly predicted seven years ago that ‘the…