Your Linguistic Profile: 55% General American English 30% Yankee 10% Upper Midwestern 5% Dixie 0% Midwestern What Kind of American English Do You Speak? —What Kind of American English Do You Speak? Similar:I just had some fun spotting a possible source of the word "dongle" (the plug-in security …The word “dongle” has long existed as…
PR is not dishonest. Not quite. In fact, the reason the best PR firms are so effective is precisely that they aren’t dishonest. They give reporters genuinely valuable information. A good PR firm won’t bug reporters just because the client tells them to; they’ve worked hard to build their credibility with reporters, and they don’t…
—The Perfect Prescription (New York Metro) New design for pill bottles, improving legibility and adding several other features. Similar:Jimmy Maher's Appreciation of Infocom's Classic Sherlock Text AdventureI learned a lot while reading this enjoy…BusinessifMUD IF discussion | Emily Short's Interactive StorytellingEmily Short on the limitations of parser…CybercultureIn August, 2000 I was blogging about poetry, presidential wordplay,…
In the early days of the telephone, the problem of speaking level was widely noted and discussed. The technological innovation was clever: a small amount of a person’s voice was fed back to the earpiece, and people then naturally adjusted the loudness of their spoken voice to produce a comfortable level of feedback in the…
In the interests of teaching kids not to be gluttons, CTW has transformed Cookie Monster into just another monster who happens to like cookies. His trademark song, “C is for Cookie” has been changed to “A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food.” And this is a complete and total reversal of Cookie Monster’s ontology, his telos,…
The distractions of constant emails, text and phone messages are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis, according to a survey of befuddled volunteers. Doziness, lethargy and an increasing inability to focus reached “startling” levels in the trials by 1,100 people, who also demonstrated that emails in particular have an addictive, drug-like…
Tradition has it that William Shakespeare was born on 23rd April, three days prior to his baptism recorded at Holy Trinity Church in 1564. The 23rd April is also the date of his death in Stratford aged 52. Shakespeare�s birthday was first celebrated in 1824 with a procession through the streets to Holy Trinity Church,…
[A] de-emphasis in the academy in recent years on the formal elements of poetry, in favor of the social, legal, historic, and cultural background to literature, has meant that even doctoral candidates in English need not concern themselves overly with poetic form. Another quick but, I think, telling example: I was serving on a panel…
I am BOTH a teacher who gets papers from students AND a freelance writer who is receiving solicitations for writing them for students. (If I were truly entrepreneurial, I would design a paper so difficult that students would be likely to turn to professionals for “work for hire,” then take their job offers under a…
Nogroski presented his results before the entire fifth-grade science community Monday, in partial fulfillment of his seventh-period research project. According to the review panel, which convened in the lunchroom Tuesday, “Otters” was fundamentally flawed by Nogroski’s failure to identify a significant research gap. “When Mike said, ‘Otters,’ I almost puked,” said 11-year-old peer examiner Lacey…
The Wall Street Journal on April 11 wrote that ?despite the occasional controversial article, many of the reader-written sites look more like church bulletin boards than, say, the New York Times.? Let‘snot dismiss church bulletin boards. When I wrote editorials in Omaha, Neb., I watched a Republican candidate win his way into Congress via a…
Every grader of blue books was once a writer of blue books, so it might help to think about the process from that end. I remember, with particular shame, a certain undergraduate essay exam of my own for a course in “Modern Moral Philosophy.” The professor was Philippa Foot, who must have been in her…
When was the last time you stretched your arms, locked your fingers together with palms facing out, and executed a satisfying snap before channeling your energies into a one-on-one encounter? I am not referring to the clicking of a mouse button, which is about as immersive as punching a warm soda from a vending machine.…
Theater owners are in three different businesses: showing movies; showing advertisements–previews, which must be shown as part of their contract, don’t generate any revenue–and selling popcorn and soft drinks. The only business that makes a profit for them is the third, so it makes sense to cater to teenage males, who gobble the most popcorn…
M: An argument isn’t just contradiction. A: It can be. M: No it can’t. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. A: No it isn’t. M: Yes it is! It’s not just contradiction. A: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position. M: Yes,…
You can’t consider yourself a moral person and at the same time allow the field of education to replace well-designed instruction on tough and important material (what it takes to sustain a democracy, how to read accurately and with deep comprehension) with superficial coverage of dumbed-down subjects. You can’t spend your life in silence, smiling…
Of course, computer games and the machines they run on have changed enormously since Zork first appeared in 1980. But I can’t say that the games are any more entertaining. Playing Zork and some of the other games of the day that were called “interactive fiction” was like reading a “Lord of the Rings” book…
For the few seconds between the announcement that Ratzinger was named pope, and the announcement of his choice of name, the Wikipedia entry was titled Pope Joseph… I just happened to catch it on the fly (it was changed before I could update it)… —Stephen Downes, in a comment. —How the Community Can Work, Fast (Dan…
OTBs, or “Outside The Boxers,” as they call themselves, are unconventional thinkers who believe “there are no stupid ideas,” Lessjo says. “We really just wanted to know what would happen if Civil War soldiers fought the crew from ‘Star Trek.’ You never see that in the movies or TV reruns.” —Tim Chitwood —A battle outside…
“God forbid, if someone shot the President, which network would you turn to? It will be cable, the Internet–something other than General Hospital being interrupted.” —Sam Donaldson, former ABC News anchor —Donaldson: Network News Dead (BroadcastingCable.com) Similar:The Irreversible Damage of Mark Zuckerberg’s SilenceWired, obviously having worked on a thin…BusinessPreschoolers Outsmart College Students In Figuring Out GadgetsThis…