“We thought it would be a great idea to hook up two instances of the A.L.I.C.E chat bot to each other, despite pleb’s pleas that it would have a catastrophic effect on the universe. The results are amusing, you can see them below.” Alice1: You can download me for free!Alice2: No I don’t think I…
“[A] tenured professor of history sent a young Air Force Academy cadet some e-mail containing inflammatory, anti-military comments. Professor Peter N. Kirstein, an avowed pacifist, quickly apologized to the cadet and to the Air Force Academy for his e-mail message, but in the meantime thousands of other interested parties have taken offense.” —“Furious” Peter N.…
“To appear on the construction site drinking a beverage that is both calorie- and caffeine-free would be an emasculating blow to my carefully cultivated image as a burly, rough-and-tumble working-class type,” Burdon said. “The sight of me consuming such a soft drink would diminish the respect I enjoy from my professional peer group by casting…
“So far, however, I have not seen a book that explains how to build crummy, dysfunctional Web sites that chase away customers and produce no useful results. Of course, there is no shortage of sites of this kind out there, but until now there has never been a systematic, comprehensive guide to how to create…
A linguistics professor was lecturing to his class one day. “In English,” he said, “A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative.” A voice from the back of the room…
“navigate Avoid the verb navigate to refer to moving from site to site, page to page within a site, or link to link on the Internet (or on the desktop or in other applications, as well). Instead, use explore to mean looking for sites or pages generally, move to or move through to refer to…
“Walt Disney first sketched his character in 1928 but an Austrian art historian spotted an uncannily similar drawing. The painting, which has been dated back to the early 14th Century, is in the Community Church in Malta, Carinthia. Next to a large sketch of St. Christopher is a clear drawing of the mouse.” —700-year-old picture…
“This psychological battle between intellect and intuition was played out in almost every episode of Star Trek in the characters of the ultrarational Mr. Spock and the hyperemotional Dr. McCoy, with Captain Kirk as the near perfect synthesis of both. Thus, I call this balance the Captain Kirk Principle: intellect is driven by intuition, intuition…
An in-depth analysis of the research of Elisabeth Targ. “None of the patients knew which group they had been randomly assigned to, and thus whether they were being prayed for. During the six-month study, four of the patients died – a typical mortality rate. When the data was unblinded, the researchers learned that the four…
“It was there we all huddled in the concrete-block laundromat while the storm passed overhead, with lightning so continuous, the ground was lit up like high noon. What we didn’t know then was that there was a tornado passing directly above us, one that had touched down just a few miles away, then lifted up…
Religion and science: “As recently as the ’70s, intellectuals assumed that hard science was on track to resolve the two Really Big Questions: why life exists and how the universe began. What’s more, both Really Big Answers were assumed to involve strictly deterministic forces. But things haven’t worked out that way. Instead, the more scientists…
“When workers willfully become less productive, the economy of the household suffers,” Browning said. “But in a society where a range of ability naturally exists, someone is bound to object to picking up the slack for others and end up getting all pissy, like Josh does.” —Marxists’ Apartment a Microcosm of Why Marxism Doesn’t WorkThe…
Bob Bailey traces the spread of the popular “7 plus or minus 2” meme: “I have had people tell that [Miller’s] ‘Magic 7’ paper is the reason why the local telephone number has seven numbers. This is not true. I have had others tell me that the ‘Magic 7’ paper is the reason they: place…
“If we improved all the intranets in the world to the usability level achieved by the best 25% in our study, the world economy would save $311,294,070,513 per year for the sixteen test tasks alone. Adding the likely savings from company-specific tasks leads us to an estimated $600 billion in total annual productivity improvements.” Jakob…
Grounded airplane or abandoned missile silo… there’s no place like home.Housing OptionsVarious) Similar:Captain Gearhart found some stairwell problems on his latest #Unity3D tour of his #Blender… AestheticsChapbooks — the latest assignment in my “History and Future of the Book” class.Students have already done a 400-word sp…AcademiaHide and Q (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 9) Riker,…
“‘Frog sex malformities linked to weedkiller, study says’ was a popular media story last week. University of California junk scientist Tyrone Hayes once again tried to link the widely used herbicide atrazine with deformed frog sex organs and allegedly declining frog populations. Hayes’ one-page write-up of his latest scary ‘research’ appeared in the Halloween issue…
“CNN sucks. It’s not even news anymore; it’s entertainment. I was trying to watch the news the other day when I decided to turn on CNN and 45 minutes later I came away with the following facts: Actress Winona Ryder has been charged with shop lifting. It’s shark week on the Discovery Channel. The world…
“If you work in an office with lots of people, chances are that you work with a person who hangs pictures up that their kids have drawn. The pictures are always of some stupid flower or a tree with wheels. These pictures suck; I could draw pictures much better. In fact, I can spell, do…
—How Catholics Know They’re Driving Too Fast (Peugot?) Sent by Rosemary Frezza. Thanks for the laugh! Similar:News Feed FYI: Click-baitingIt’s hard for me to think of Facebook as…BusinessMy big acting moment in this scene is declining a drink. #indie #filmAmusingThree different sized buildings. Still working on variations for the biggest one. #blender…Three different sized buildings.…
A recent marketing research poll suggests that marketing research polls are a waste of time, since “people don’t know and can’t know how and why they do things.” —Marketing Polls a Waste of Time?Marketing Research News) Note: There’s a huge difference between a poll (in which you simply ask people’s opinions) and usability testing (in…