“Everyone admits that polygraphs are unreliable. So why are government employees subjected to tests that can ruin their careers?” Brendan I. Koerner —Lie Dectector RouletteMother Jones) Similar:the history of computer games: from 'pong' to 'pac-man'”in the beginning, there was nothing. we…CybercultureThere are many Star Wars references in Dani Girl, so I made this tribute to…
From reason 5:”I’ve heard of teams using all their planning time doing research (typically resulting in a panic attack when specs are due), when instead they should be using at least half of their planning time generating ideas and prototypes and applying the research to actual new decisions.” From reason 13: “There is a difference…
“Many people believe that the general use of the term ‘man’ is offensive, or at least inaccurate. Phrases like ‘no man is an island’ or ‘every man for himself’ seem to exclude women. Unless your goal is to offend or annoy your audience, you should follow the conventions they expect.” D.G. Jerz —Gender-neutral LanguageUWEC) While…
“Last year, I decided to dive headfirst into the realm of the unwashed masses by attending a professional football game. What better way to experience the hive mind than by communing with 70,000 drunken, frostbitten Americans who are only too happy to blow their meager wages cheering on their date-raping, steroid-enhanced gridiron heroes?” —I’ll Try…
“The Media Lab’s main goal, obviously, is to create a working environment that early-’90s corporate guru Tom Peters called ‘WOW!’ Both the lab’s aesthetics (rooms full of Legos!) and its guiding principle (have fun!) reminded me of a fantastic dot-com during the boom years, albeit without the free food and soda.” Annalee Newitz —Techsploitation: The…
Publish as fact only that which you believe to be true. If material exists online, link to it when you reference it. Publicly correct any misinformation. Write each entry as if it could not be changed; add to, but do not rewrite or delete, any entry. Disclose any conflict of interest. Note questionable and biased…
“Often, sites present what appears to be objective information, but they actually have a commercial motive. Researchers cited the example of a life insurance site that purports to offer objective rate comparisons, but instead only functions as a referral site for agents of the company that operates it.” —Study: Net Credulity Gap GapesWired) See the…
“Jonathan Harris, the flamboyantly fussy actor who portrayed the dastardly, cowardly antagonist Dr. Zachary Smith on the 1960’s sci-fi show ‘Lost in Space,’ has died. He was 87.” —Danger Will Robinson! Jonathan Harris Dies!CNN) Similar:from “The Poet” by Ralph Waldo EmersonThe poets made all the words, and theref…AestheticsPart of my daily routine is practicing German…
“Fifty to ninety percent of the world’s languages are predicted to disappear in the next century, according to the The Rosetta Project, a collaborative, open-source endeavor by language specialists and native speakers around the world who are creating a ‘near permanent’ archive of the world’s languages. ” Kendra Mayfield —Word Up: Keeping Languages AliveWired) Similar:Sesame…
“[T]he story remains a contest between Moby Dick, the thinking man’s whale, in his ‘pyramidal silence’, and Captain Ahab, the thinking whale’s man. For Melville, as for Chase, malice is the authentic mark of the whale’s intelligence.” Jeremy Harding reviews four recent books that reflect on Melville’s Moby Dick —Call Me Ahab (London Review of…
“Mid-terms have now stretched to basically 5 or 6 weeks (almost half the semester), and consist of little more than hell. And, on top of it all, we have to go class and try to keep up on our daily class work and readings. I am not super-man! I am not even She-ra! I am…
“When the novel comes to an end, I feel a certain letdown, a loss of contact. It is natural to want to recapture that feeling by reading other works by the same author, or by corresponding with him/her directly. All of this seems perfectly reasonable—I should know, since I have had these feelings myself! But…
“Not only was there a halo around the Sun–the so-called ’22° halo,’ which sky watchers often see–but also there was an enormous ring of light running parallel to the horizon at the same altitude as the sun. It was like a giant angel’s halo suspended above my town, interrupted every 120° by a brighter splash…
“We all laughed when Alan Sokal wrote a deliberately silly paper entitled “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”, and managed to get it accepted by a refereed journal of social and cultural studies, Social Text. But now I hear that two brothers have managed to publish 3 meaningless papers in physics…
“But these 60-some full-color plates are, most likely, not the reason you’d want to own Clown Paintings. I mean, if you’re like me, you spend a little too much time every day trying to avoid clowns, so why would you want to bring a bunch of pictures of them into your home? (Except maybe to…
A small Swedish company posted its quarterly earnings on its website, without any password protection, but without publicizing the URL. A Reuters reporter guessed the URL and found the report before it was supposed to be released. Now the reporter is being sued for Hacking a URL, which is a fundamental navigation technique that many…
“Techniques for managing information are the new critical ‘meta-skills’ needed to stay current (and hopefully sane). Gurus urging ‘simplicity’ and ‘turn off technology’ (while very sage advice) miss an important point: nothing is slowing down. What we need is simplicity in how we manage information, not simplicity by ignoring or turning off information.” gsiemens —The…
Follow-Up: A history professor ‘s controversial claims about the origins of gun culture — and his inability to back up those claims using scholarly methiods accepted by his peers — cost him his job. A passage from Emory’s official investigative report (a PDF document) — “Taking all this into account, we are led to conclude…
“Star Trek originally got it right. In early episodes, when something exploded in outerspace, it made no sound. That’s because there is no air in outerspace to transmit sound…. Yes, an explosion probably would create an expanding cloud of gases which would eventually impact a spaceship in its path. However, in the vacuum of space…
“When writing, don’t try to edit as you go. Say what you want to say, unencumbered by the constant commentary from that fussy little editor swimming around inside your head. First, get it all down. Then, have at it, keeping what works and bug-zapping the rest. By separating writing and editing functions, you can convince…