“Once you get into space, you check to see if any tiles are damaged. If enough are, you have a choice between Plan A and Plan B. Plan A is hope they can get a rescue shuttle up in time. Plan B is burn up coming back. | But let’s not worry about the tiles.…
“But here’s the dirty little secret that may go farther in explaining why usability stinks: Most developers and designers don’t give a rat’s ass about it. The developers want the thing to have lots of features, so usability is the designers’ problem. The designers want the project to look great, so how it works is…
“Hello from above our magnificent planet Earth.|The perspective is truly awe-inspiring. This is a terrific mission and we are very busy doing science round the clock.|Just getting a moment to type e-mail is precious so this will be short, and distributed to many who I know and love.|I have seen some incredible sights: lightning spreading…
“As students, they were members of free-speech movements; now that they’ve earned tenure, they have become advocates of speech codes. Radicals when they were on the bottom, they’ve become censors when they’re on top. And they see no discrepancy in their actions.” Daphne Patai —The Great Tattling Scare on Campuses (Chronicle) I recently had a very…
“But however it may be in the art gallery, in moral issues we often cannot agree to differ. Agreeing to differ with Genghis is in effect agreeing to tolerate fox-hunting, and my whole stance was against that. Moral issues are frequently ones where we want to coordinate, and where we are finding what to forbid…
“The Fake CNN News Generator was online only a week, but generated a lot of controversy after ersatz news stories were picked up by local outlets and reported as real. Phony stories about the death of musician Dave Matthews, or the Olsen twins attending local universities, for example, appeared in a number of local newspapers,…
I built a bloated icebox made to store my ripe ingredients. Its shelves are crammed with shrunken tentacles, and scalps are jammed beside the vats of larva, pulp, and gore. The handle’s slick. It’s hard to shut the door against the swelling mold. It must be slammed. This foul refrigerator of the damned will always…
“Horror is the genre of the jolt, the shock, the spark. The horror story’s conflict is always a matter of life and death, but death — even to an undead creature — always comes as a surprise. The climax of a horror tale is almost unilaterally a killing blow, catching someone or something unaware. Death…
“[I]ndividuals randomly assigned to write about emotional topics evidence improved physical health compared with those who write about superficial topics…. [F]lexibility in the use of common words — particularly personal pronouns — when writing about traumatic memories was related to positive health outcomes.” R. Sherlock Campbell and James W. Pennebaker —The Secret Life of Pronouns:…
“By providing a basic FAQ addressing what are expected to be the most common questions asked by persons new to the sci.space.* heirarchy and/or those regulars who are only now finding out about the tragedy, it is hoped that the degradation of the groups’ signal-to-noise ratio that usually follows events of this nature will be…
“NASA warned members of the public Sunday against trying to sell purported Columbia debris on eBay, as local law enforcement agencies struggled to cordon off and protect the hundreds of pieces of wreckage.” —NASA: No Debris Sales on EBayWired) Similar:I’m a High Schooler. AI Is Demolishing My Education. AI has transformed my experience of ed…BooksRethinking…
“Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) members in Nacogdoches, Texas, have been assisting local emergency management officials and NASA to locate and catalog debris from the Columbia shuttle.” —Texas Amateurs Aid in Shuttle Debris Recovery, CataloguingNat’l Assoc. for Amataur Radio) My wife and I were married in Dallas and honeymooned in south Texas, which included visits…
“The year is around 1952, the dead of winter in Chicago. I’m 18 years old, bucking the fierce winds off Lake Michigan and the below-zero temperature as I head across the parking lot to attend classes at the University of Illinois at Navy Pier. I wait freezing while a Cadillac approaches, a yellow convertible with…
“It baffles me that so many people would believe that the page is true, enough to be on TV 13, TV 18, I-94, and the Carp. I thought that in college we are supposed to learn to question what we see and read, and this page have proved to me that we don’t.” Benjamin Williams…
“The Geezer loves film noir. These dark, taut, black and white films give the lie to the illusion that the forties and fifties were upbeat, positive decades. I like that.” The Geezer —The Geezer Speaks WeblogGeezerSpeaks.com) An amusing personal website… and by a Geezer, too. Similar:My son just handed me my serving of noodles in…
Your name is Masakati, which means “White Queen” in the language of the Scorpion People. You were named this before you were hatched, when the serpent witches foretold to your mother Essekunit, the Tangeri Queen, that her child would be as great a ruler as had been not seen in this Age: that you would…
“It has been confirmed that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, two of the richest teens in America, have decided to attend University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire, WI beginning in the Fall of the 2003-2004 academic year.” —Olsen Twins Set to Attend University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire, WICNN?) Why the awkward passive that conceals who…
Interesting discussion of grade inflation, party skewed by early comments that claimed that engineering and other technical majors are immune from the pressures that cause humanities professors to inflate student grades. Sparked by a Washington Post article that few people on Slashdot seem to have read (that’s fine with me — most are drawing on…
“The chocolate-making capabilities of Wonka’s heavily fortified compound have long been a source of speculation. Wonka, defying international calls for full disclosure, has maintained his silence regarding his factory’s suspected capacity to manufacture confections of mass deliciousness….’Without full inspections, there’s no earthly way of knowing which direction Wonka’s going. Not a speck of light is…
“Leonardo figured things out by looking at them, thinking about them and taking them apart. That compulsion to tinker has led many modern hackers to claim Leonardo retroactively as one of their own.” —Da Vinci: The Pith Behind the ManWired) Nice backgrounder for the Da Vinci exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Similar:I'm Asking…