Cranky avant-garde novelist Kurt Vonnegut on George W. Bush: “He’s in the same business I’m in. He’s telling stories. It turns out this is the simplest of all stories to tell. I mean, I want to hold attention when I write something. What he wants to be is interesting. And revenge is interesting. I’ve said…
“Almost all the varieties of banana grown today are cuttings – clones, in effect – of naturally mutant wild bananas discovered by early farmers as much as 10,000 years ago. The rare mutation caused wild bananas to grow sterile, without seeds. Those ancient farmers took cuttings of the mutants, then cuttings of the cuttings.” James…
“I have seen one of the finest instances of user interface design ever, and I saw it in the men’s room at Schipol airport in Amsterdam. In each of the urinals, there is a little printed blue fly…If they had put big circular targets, and arrows with a little printed message “pee here!” (like it…
On Jan 17, 1998, maverick webmaster Matt Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story on his weblog. (Actually, Jorn Barger coined the term “weblog” only a few weeks earlier, so I doubt anybody used that term for Drudge’s website back then.) Drudge has posted an understandbly self-congratulatory piece about his website. To refresh your memory, here’s…
“When humans use a personal computer, we enter into the computer’s world. If it can’t do something, or if it crashes, too bad; we have to deal. But a robot enters into our world. If floors are uneven, if legs get in the way, if lighting conditions change, the robot has to deal.” George Musser‘s…
“[T]he promise of a pill for every ill remains, as it always will, unfulfilled. Anyone who had read his Shakespeare would not have been surprised by this disappointment. When Macbeth asks a physician: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the…
“Hundreds of thousands of books, movies and songs were close to being released into the public domain when Congress extended the copyright by 20 years in 1998…. [That] would have cost entertainment giants like the Walt Disney Co. and AOL Time Warner hundreds of millions of dollars. AOL Time Warner had said that would threaten…
Women in Bangladesh who fold their saris filter out more of the disease-carrying organisms that cause cholera than the women who filter through unfolded cloths, or who don’t filter at all. While folding saris to make eight layers filters out almost all of the harmful organisms, this method means that women gathering water had to…
“At one time, voices glanced against its metal walls. Dates were made here, secrets exchanged. Once people lined up, shifting from foot to impatient foot, pointedly lifting their watches, Hey, lady, how long you gonna talk? “But today, the pay phone by the Rodman’s grocery store at Randolph and Selfridge roads in Wheaton stands empty,…
“A serious literary magazine published by a hospital? Sounds unlikely. But the Bellevue Literary Review, published by the New York University department of medicine at Bellevue Hospital, is drawing on a long literary heritage. Bellevue has nursed William Burroughs, Eugene O’Neill and many other close-to-the-edge writers and artists. Danielle Ofri, the review’s editor-in-chief and a…
“Israeli geologists say a purportedly ancient stone tablet detailing repair plans for the Jewish Temple of King Solomon is genuine… Our findings show that it is authentic… If officially authenticated, the find would be the first piece of physical evidence backing up biblical texts. It could also intensify competing claims to the site in Jerusalem’s…
“Pooh would no doubt scratch his fluff-stuffed head in disbelief at what’s going on. Shirley and her daughter, Pati, are embroiled in an epic legal battle with the Walt Disney Co. over the merchandising rights to the world’s most beloved bear. Shirley’s former husband, Stephen Slesinger, acquired the merchandising rights to Winnie the Pooh in…
“From an educator’s perspective, games may be the most fully realized educational technology produced to date. Tom Malone (1981) showed how games use challenge, fantasy, player control, and curiosity invoking designs to create intrinsically motivating environments. More recently, Lloyd Rieber (1996) has argued that digital games engage players in productive play — learning that occurs…
“Why is this a hobby horse of mine? Largely because I’ve been trying to promote the idea that games are an artform since I was a teenager, when I first started designing them professionally. Also because the rest of the world, both inside and outside the game industry, is starting to realize the validity of…
“Most writers know the value of an informative title, but many beginning web authors don’t know that each web page needs two kinds of titles. The in-context (IC) title always sits at the top of a page, with the rest of the document immediately beneath it…. The out-of-context (OOC) title is frequently displayed by search…
“The commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of August 16, 1977 seemed more than anything a media mirage churned up by Graceland smoke machines. A Graceland spokesman had recently discussed the problem facing the operation: if Elvis Presley was indeed immortal, his fans were not. Many of Elvis’s original fans were dying off; if the enormously…
“The main conclusion by DCSD [Danish Committee on Scientific Dishonesty] finds that my book is ‘clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice’ because of systematically biased selection of data and arguments. But since the DCSD has neglected to take their position on the technical scientific disputes their conclusions are completely unfounded. The DCSD…
“Some people prefer ‘sneakers’ to ‘running shoes,’ others ‘soda’ to ‘pop.’ But it’s in Montreal – where many people use the French ‘liquor douce’ instead of ‘soft drink’ – that some Canadian language scholars are really bubbling with enthusiasm over the nature of English. ‘It’s so special because it’s the only major city in North…
“Music, a social and artistic activity of the first importance, inevitably makes its way, often quite a substantial way, into literature of all kinds. Monographs have been, or could be, written on music in Jane Austen’s novels, or Thomas Hardy’s, or J. B. Priestley’s, or on music in Galsworthy’s FORSYTE CHRONICLES, to name a few…
“An act of reading electronic language involves: Setting up an electronic language environment; Selecting particular input into the electronic text; Receiving the output; Analyzing what the electronic text does.” —Someone Writing about Their Reading of GoogleTechnacy Weblog) I’m reminded of Espen Aarseth’s definition of Cybertext — a system that includes not only the array of…