“Persuasion in itself is obviously not new. From Cicero’s oratory to modern TV commercials, communicators have tried to persuade audiences. What’s different is that websites and other computerized designs are going beyond one-way rhetoric and becoming interactive. For most people, doing something is much more engaging and thus potentially more compelling and persuasive than passively…
“Such manuals are written at a tenth-grade reading level on average, according to a new study, while data suggest that nearly a quarter of U.S. adults read at or below a fifth-grade level, and at least 25 percent read at about an eighth-grade level.” —Car Seat Instructions too ComplexMSNBC) Thanks for the link Mark. Similar:In…
“A smart shopper can buy a 5-pound bag of Gold Medal flour for 69 cents. That’s enough to feed three people for a day – 7,500 easy-to-digest, relatively nutritious, and potentially tasty calories. All for less than 0.7 percent of an average American’s income.|Compare this American to one of our ancestors half a millennium ago,…
“My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4, we used 2go2 NY 2C my bro, his GF & thr 3 : kids FTF. ILNY, it’s a gr8 plc.”|[T]he 13-year-old’s teacher could not decipher what the youngster had written. “I could not believe what I was seeing. The page was riddled with hieroglyphics, many of which I simply…
An excellent collection of images by a futurist illustrator. The website itself is rather difficult to navigate. First, it uses frames. Second, nothing happens when I click on the images that are supposed to be “portals”. Third, there’s really no text anywhere that I could quote in order to introduce the content of the site.…
“The SCI FI Channel has cast the key roles of Starbuck and Apollo for its upcoming original miniseries Battlestar Galactica, based on the 1978-’80 TV series. Oregon native Katee Sackhoff (Halloween Resurrection), 22, will play a female Starbuck in executive producer Ronald D. Moore’s reimagination of the series, SCI FI announced.|Meanwhile, British actor Jamie Bamber…
“The Congress Online Project will release its 2003 report about congressional Web sites on Monday, March 3. This report names the winners of the Congress Online Gold, Silver, and Bronze Mouse Awards and provides guidance to congressional offices on how to improve their own Web sites. We don’t want to give away any secrets until…
Rosemary Frezza wants to make sure Literacy Weblog readers get their Peeps fixes: Lord of the Peeps (just what it sounds like — Middle Earth with Peeps), PeepHenge (work it out) and Captain Kirk chatting up a green dancer in Star Trek Peeps.PeepsE-Mail) Similar:NYT: G.W. Bush is "super-overexposed" and "so far to our right" –…
“Ashcroft has assigned two attorneys to investigate the case of a Texas Tech University student who is miffed that Professor Michael Dini required biology students seeking his recommendation to get an A in his class, know him well and – here’s the rub -‘affirm’ that there is a scientific answer to the question of how…
“And now with Blogger, they can watch the people who are building the pages that comprise Google’s map to gain knowledge about their map that they can’t get from scraping.” Jason Kottke —Google is Not a Search CompanyKottke.org) Similar:Fact Check: No, an NPR story on the Trump supporters' attempted coup dated January 6, 2021…According to…
“It moved silently through the living[room] and drifted to the staircase. Gliding wraithlike over the staircase it then entered the bedroom where my wife and I lay sleeping peacefully….On this occasion I awoke to the sense that there was a large menacing presence approaching me silently out of the gloom, so I opened my eyes,…
“Hence its note to Word Spy, an online dictionary that compiles and defines new words popping up in the media. At issue is this Word Spy entry: ‘google (GOO.gul) v. To search for information on the Web, particularly by using the Google search engine; to search the Web for information related to a new or…
Legendary scientist James Watson advocates therapies or screening to elimiate low-intelligence people from the population. That’s called eugenics, an ideology that the Nazis were happy to adopt for their own purposes. Watson also wants to breed prettier girls. Apparently, even the most brilliant scientists can say things that are not only stupid, but also racist…
“The cardiac unit at Derriford Hospital, the biggest hospital in the South West, is one of the most modern in Britain. It is equipped with three up-to-date operating tables costing about £50,000 each. | The tops of the tables slide on to the electronically operated base so that the patient does not need to be…
“That happened to Cornell University on Wednesday: It sent welcoming letters to 1,700 high school students who had submitted early-decision applications, including nearly 550 who had already been rejected in December. ‘Greetings from Cornell, your future alma mater!’ the e-mail letter began… Within a couple of hours the university followed with an ‘oops’ letter, admitting…
“Just as Icarus did not heed his father?s warning to stay away from the sun, NASA engineers ignored warning signs before and after liftoff that the shuttle was doomed to burn up when it re-entered the atmosphere. Like Icarus, they were guilty of hubris. | But the hapless engineers are not the only ones to…
The lone link on this page disappears when you try to click it. Actually, your browser automatically loads another page that is completely blank. That link is labeled “FAQ”. I’m sure the most frequently asked question on this page is “What the…!?” –DGJ —From the “I Don’t Get It” DepartmentPurple) Similar:Cursor*10Great free Flash game, emulated…
“Similar-looking drug brand names can confuse doctors, nurses and pharmacists, causing patients to get the wrong medicine…. A patient confusing lente with Lantus could end up with his or her blood sugar seriously out of whack. Doctors insist that errors like these can be corrected if caught early enough.|The simplest way of fixing the problem…
“Media mega-star Oprah Winfrey?s announcement that ?I‘m back in the business of recommending books?but with a difference,? drew a standing ovation from an audience of America?s leading publishers… [T]he new book club will focus on literary classics because ?I cannot imagine a world where the great works of literature are not read.? Her hope, she…
“In this time of great sadness about Fred Rogers’ death, we understand that parents may be concerned about how to approach the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood series and our Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood Website with their children. We here at Family Communications have given this a great deal of thought and have talked with our colleagues in…