O proud left foot, that ventures quick within Then soon upon a backward journey lithe. Anon, once more the gesture, then begin: Command sinistral pedestal to writhe.Shakespeare’s ‘Hokey Pokey’ (Google It) Via Karissa Kilgore. Originally from a Washington Post contest. I’m sure the link has vanished by now.
A single sheet looks pretty much like ordinary paper. But the ink can be rearranged electronically fast enough to show video movies. —Philip Ball — Electronic paper reaches video speed (Nature)
There are two very different reasons why papers like the Times default to the opposing view format for covering a subject. One is that fights make good stories, and the easiest fights to cast and cover are ones with only two sides…. The second reason that journals, and journalists, default to the Opposing View format…
Microsoft is closing internet chat rooms because their misuse by spammers, paedophiles and others is damaging the reputation of its MSN service and the internet as a whole. —Chris Nutall —Microsoft to curb chat room abuses (Financial Times)
J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism Hildy, You’re a Newspaperman: Collecting Screen Scribes (“One film I never see on anyone’s list is “Doctor X,” an uneven 1930-something thriller in which the reporter not only climbs a drainpipe to look in a window, but crawls under a sheet to impersonate a corpse (complete with toe-tag) and…
A U.S. court in Oklahoma has blocked the national “do not call” list that would allow consumers to stop most unwanted telephone sales calls, the Direct Marketing Association said on Wednesday. —Judge Blocks ‘Do Not Call’ Law (AP/Arizona Central) Breaking news. Starting next week, it would have been illegal to call people on that list. Curse…
The Keyword Variation Checker is a tool I wrote using the Google Web API. It will go through all kinds of variations of a given keyword and google the result. All that was needed is a little text-file with possible endings for a word from a free dictionary I found online. For example, the word…
In honor of Mike Arnzen’s unmasking of a plagiarist, here are a few recent blog entries on academic dishonesty: Blair Hornstine (Plagarizing Valedictorian Kicked out of Harvard) (For those who think plagiarism isn’t serious) Worse than a Plagiarist.. a SPAMMING Plagiarist! (what it feels like to have your work appropriated — the evildoers did give…
Chemtrails: 18,600 hits on Google. A lunatic fringe of dittoheads, convinced Doom is wafting down on the populace via 747s and DC-10s. A whole subculture of contrail conspiracy freaks. God bless ’em, at least they’re looking up. —Matt Rasmussen —Contrails (Orion Online)
“English books and maps published through the 19th century generally spelled the country’s name as Corea, as did the British government in laying the cornerstone of its embassy in Seoul in 1890. But some time in the early 20th century, the spelling Korea began to be seen more frequently than Corea, a change that coincided…
Despite its high visibility, I have not been able to authenticate “May you live in interesting times” as an ancient Chinese curse. —Stephen E. DeLong —Get a(n Interesting) Life I am tempted to comment “Somebody has too much time on his hands,” but the irony of typing that into my weblog would probably be too…
Here I was in a place where the jungle goes all the way to the ocean, with only a strip of beach dividing the two. Sand crabs, hermit crabs, and crab crabs skitter across the path, and lizards are pretty common. If you look up you likely see white faced monkeys, and iguana are common…
“A Sept. 21 item in the Metro in Brief column about a woman fatally shot in Prince George’s County and a child who was wounded incorrectly reported the woman’s age, the child’s sex, the child’s location at the time of the shooting, and the street on which the shooting occurred. A correct account of the…
I had to laugh; well, of course this is why the Saudis hate us. Look at this: a beer garden, games of chance, rock music, hot dogs, teen girls with bare midriffs, purple hair, exposed bra straps and you-go-Jesus! baseball caps – and it’s a Catholic Church Fair. Of course, this is why I love…
It’s true — we learn far more than we are ever able to use…. This may seem harmless, but does it, in fact, hinder our ability to produce? Does all this learning and all the attention span we spend on new technologies detract from what we should be doing in the here and now? How…
I spend an awful lot of time reading textbooks and novels and student papers — and I have sacrificed reading and writing about the art and craft of teaching. I want to more self-consciously research and study pedagogy, learning from the experiences and speculations of others. Even the very definition of the “scholarship of teaching”…
The [1938 Homes & Gardens] article depicts Hitler in glowing terms, such as the “Squire of Wachenfeld,” and extols him as a talented architect, decorator and raconteur who “delights in the society of brilliant foreigners, especially painters, singers, and musicians.” —Old Hitler Article Stirs Debate (Wired) The above article provides some context for what came across…
For the last few months, I have been pondering the question why the present Pope is so keen on making saints — at least 465 at the last count and some 1,300 beatifications, more than all the canonisations and beatifications in the preceding 400 years. —Anne Sebba —Go Straight to Heaven (Spectator) Once again, satire mazine…
The fact is, in science fiction you can have any kind of reading experience you want–the highest art of the word, pure escapism, rattling good stories, dreamy tea drinkers musing on matters of great significance. Explore your favorite political/moral/religious stance. It’s the literature of ideas, isn’t it? —Rose of Charon —SF’s Death Greatly Exaggerated (Rose of…
Comments can now be made on weblog entries. Come on, post a comment and help break the system in! Comments Added to Weblog! (Will Gayther) This entry posted by Will Gayther