“These are desperate times, and desperate times call for desperation. Therefore, it is with a heavy heart that I am duty-bound to alert America to the clear and present danger posed by Mel Brooks. I first became suspicious of Mr. Brooks when the Enron scandal broke. My suspicions only grew as other examples of “aggressive…
Have you ever noticed that the letters “Tri” in cursive look an awful lot like “Fu”? Patricia Breen apparently didn’t when she designed this “???ck or Treat” Christmas ornament. —They Should Have Used Another Typeface (Nieman Marcus) This is better than the urban legend about the Nieman Marcus cookies. Similar:Stephen Coles’ The Anatomy of Type,…
Most of my students probably know about my odd fascination with the Gund toy “Rainbow Hector.” My sister sent me the above link, which includes a story about a musical group in Trinidad, which includes a member named Gary Hector, who has a 10-year-old daughter named… you guessed it… Rainbow. (See the caption at the…
“I confess I sometimes don’t know whether to be happy or depressed when I dip into Sims world. Sometimes you get the sense that these Sims fanatics are compensating online for the needs that aren’t met in their real lives…. But the other and more positive sensation you get in Sims world is that some…
“Would I open a huge document-say a PDF book chapter from Amazon? I don’t know. What do I want on my computer versus what do I want bookmarked access to? I don’t know. Here’s what I do know: I need help in managing my attachments and getting more value from the megabytes of media material…
“Developing fixed-size Web pages is a fundamentally flawed practice. Not only does it result in Web pages that remain at a constant size regardless of the user’s browser size, but it fails to take advantage of the medium’s flexibility. Nonetheless, Web site creators continue to develop fixed pages.” James Kalbach —The Myth of 800 x…
“The book describes a bizarre situation in American universities in which academics in various (mostly new-minted) fields such as Cultural Studies, Literary Theory, and Science Studies, plus a few more familiar ones such as Sociology, Comparative Literature and the like, make a career of writing about science without taking the trouble to know anything about…
“Two Columbia University undergraduate students were arrested Monday for allegedly using high-tech transmitters and walkie-talkies to cheat on the Graduate Record Examination.” —2 Students Arrested for Alleged High-Tech Cheating on GREChronicle) Similar:Death of NFL inevitable as middle class abandons the gameLike vegan pizzas and secular Christmas …BusinessMcCain's 2008 Concession Speech: Republicans interrupt their candidate's concession…
“[O]nly about one in seven — 13 percent — of Americans between the age of 18 and 24, the prime age for military warriors, could find Iraq. The score was the same for Iran, an Iraqi neighbor.” That’s bad enough, but 11% couldn’t even find the United States! —Global Goofs: U.S. Youth Can’t Find IraqCNN)…
Here’s a good introduction to a famous controversy over the discovery of the structure of DNA: “The victors were James Watson and Francis Crick, who together with Maurice Wilkins shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for crossing the finish line first. The loser was Rosalind Franklin, who produced the x-ray data that most strongly supported the…
“To feed my craving for modern first editions, including my beloved Williams and Jenningses, takes a fifth of my income – more than I spend on food or my children. I have lost entire weekends in a haze of book fairs and pilgrimages to remote bookshops (which typically prove to be closed). Friends and family…
“[W]hen The New Yorker called him out on how he can say that other people’s aging mothers should be put down like old horses but that his own should receive only the very best care in an expensive nursing home, [bioethicist Peter] Singer replied, ‘Perhaps it’s more difficult than I thought before, because it is…
“Only William Shatner, who exists in the strange non-realm of absolute self-importance and constant self-mockery, could impart that marvelous unconscious irony to what would otherwise be a dull-witted, mechanical loser.” Tom Maxwell —Officer Down! A Deconstruction of T.J. HookerMorphizm) Similar:Fanciful Fun in Theatre Factory’s “The Fantasticks”A great review from Pittsburgh in the Ro…CultureLiteracy Debate: Online,…
You’ve “seen” them. Maybe on a sign at the “grocery” store, maybe in an ad in your “local” newspaper. Perhaps even in a “memo” that circulated throughout your company. They’re quotation marks, and they turn up in the strangest of places. —Gallery of “Misused” Quotation Marks“Found”) Found “on” Jenny Anderson’s link “page”. Similar:Brian Williams is…
“Americans have had a latent fear of catastrophic computer attack ever since a teenage Matthew Broderick hacked into the Pentagon’s nuclear weapons system and nearly launched World War III in the 1983 movie WarGames. Judging by official alarums and newspaper headlines, such scenarios are all the more likely in today’s wired world. There’s just one…
“A deal struck between Sims publisher Electronic Arts and the fastfood mega-corporation allows Sims players to open up their own McDonald’s kiosk and improve their game stats by consuming McD’s greasy goodies. While news of this groundbreaking sponsorship deal fades quickly from memory, failure to address this latest barrage in the war on ad-free gaming…
“If you’ve recently created your first website and you’re getting ready to submit it for a class assignment, then this page is for you. Follow this checklist before you submit your project, and you’ll avoid many of the simple technical issues that might prevent your instructor from accessing or fully appreciating your content.” —Newbie Web…
“A Tablet PC is about the size of a legal pad and includes a digital pen for handwritten data entry and navigation. Its advocates say it will be just the thing for the most mobile workers, including those who work standing up and those who just don’t like to type. But naysayers point out that…
“Ever since Martel won Britain’s prestigious Man Booker Prize last month for ‘The Life of Pi,’ charges of plagiarism and intellectual theft have swirled around him. But as damning as the accusations may sound, the controversy reflects more poorly on those who have propagated it than on Martel. The brouhaha provides less insight into the…
“The overriding principles were of simplicity and speed, oft-expressed in the maxim ”the story is the star.’ Anything that would distract from that, either in terms of the attention a member of editorial staff would be able to give it, or the attention a user would give it, was pretty ruthlessly discarded. The other thing…