“Last week I was with one of my summer interns in the lobby when a receptionist complained that her printer wasn’t working. The intern horsed around with it and discovered a pen stuck inside the printer… So he grabs a piece of paper and starts scrawling on it…” See image: “Whitespace in Document Design: Why…
“When the phone rings at Kennedy Space Center’s public affairs office, the caller might just communicate with aliens. Or have psychic powers. Or see UFOs. Whether they’re hiding in a phone booth from perceived pursuers or trying to sell a space rock, the callers want to talk to NASA, the space agency, the ultimate authority…
“He steadily brings us through the history, citing the magic squares of China, the first puzzle magazines in the 18th century, the 19th-century American crazes (when pros began to make a living at it), and the 200 million Rubik’s Cubes sold in the 1980s. Enigmas, charades, riddles, anagrams, cryptograms, rebuses, duck-rabbit images, mathematical brain-crushers, Chinese…
“Now you hear a low hum, and over the horizon appears a flying machine. You press the button of a box near by and a radio signal flashes to the machine. The aircraft, looking oddly like a horizontal electric fan, drones toward you. When the pilot is directly overhead, all forward movement of the machine…
“This Web site and its associated mailing list are devoted to recently coined words, existing words that have enjoyed a recent renaissance, and older words that are being used in new ways.” Here’s an example: technopolis, nounThe sum total of the technological infrastructure of a society. —Random WordsWord Spy) Similar:The Woman in BlackLast night’s preview…
A wire story consists of one voice pitched low and calm and full of institutional gravitas, blissfully unaware of its own biases or the gaping lacunae in its knowledge. Whereas blogs have a different format: Clever teaser headline that has little to do with the actual story, but sets the tone for this blog post.…
“Any data that’s public, and that Google can see, is hardly worth storing and organizing. We simply search for what we need, when we need it: just-in-time information management. But since we don’t admit Google to our private data stores — Intranets [1] and mailboxes, for example — we’re still like the shoemaker’s barefoot children.…
“40 percent of the most frequent PC game players are 35 or older, according to the Interactive Digital Software Association, a game industry group…. Computer games have been around for about 25 years, and many younger baby boomers encountered them during their teen years.” —Older Gamers Now the NormMostly AP) Similar:Gettysburg Address event marks 150th…
“In 1929 James Thurber and E.B. White posed a deep question: Is sex necessary? Seven decades later, the answer remains shrouded in mystery. But thanks to the work of yesterday’s Nobel laureates and others, we have gained some understanding of a related question: Is death necessary? The answer appears to be yes-because of sex.” Jim…
Somebody posts, on a website for freelance writers, an offer to pay $40 for someone to write a very specific essay that looks very much like an academic assignment. The student leaves his name, UWEC e-mail address, snail mail address, and telephone number. One of the freelancers who reads that message board decides to let…
“Technology pioneers typically get steamrollered, then look on helplessly from the sidelines as a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies make billions. First movers, the theory goes, are too smart for their own good, churning out gizmos that are too expensive or too complex for the average consumer’s taste.” Brendan I. Koerner —TiVo, We Hardly Knew Ye: Sorry…
“As a longtime [Volkswagon] Bug devotee, I knew the car’s origins, but the depth of Hitler’s involvement in the design detailed here gave me pause. And Patton explains the strange paradox of why Americans were so ready to accept a product from their sworn enemy: VW’s innovative Jewish ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, was willing…
“I still can understand people like Pete Seeger joining the Party back in the 30’s during the Depression, when it looked like unregulated capitalism had cruelly immiserated America, when racism and lynchings reigned down South and it looked (looked, I said) as if the Soviet Union was the only force willing to stand up to…
“For some reason, everyone seemed to know that Disney is the one company you don’t want to cross. Even if the person you’re consulting can’t point to specific cases, he or she has heard things. Scary things. Severed horse head on the bed pillow, that kind of thing.” —Careful What You Wish Upon a Star…
“The exchange of love letters was central to the courtship of my grandparents (who were separated by the First World War) and of my parents (who were separated by my father’s service after the Second World War). By the time that my wife and I were courting, we handed our love letters back and forth…
“Standing on the Earth at the base of this ‘beanstalk’ it would look unusual but simple, a cable attached to the ground and going straight up out of sight. Now even the youngest of you reading this manuscript will know that a rope can not simply hang in mid-air, it will fall. This is true…
NASA’s description of the stunning video is hardly enticing. “For the first time, a camera mounted to the space shuttle’s External Tank offered a view of the ride to orbit. In this video, the first two minutes of ascent show Space Shuttle Atlantis’ nose and belly, with one Solid Rocket Booster on the extreme left…
“For decades, responsible journalists refused even to cover public-opinion polls. Then, in a turnaround, they began to conduct them and treat their findings as hard news. Now the process has come full circle: Journalists appear to be using polls to generate the conclusions they want and to validate their own pre-existing theses and hypotheses.” Dick…
“Astronomers announced today the discovery of the largest object in the solar system since Pluto was named the ninth planet in 1930. The object is half the size of Pluto, composed primarily of rock and ice, and circles the sun once every 288 years. ” —800-Mile-Wide “Object” Found in Solar SystemNat’l Geo) Similar:People Thought an…
“Last year Wooten founded The Disciples of Bob Barker in an effort to spread the joy of the beloved game show ‘The Price is Right.’ Since then, the club has gained official status [at U.Va.]. ‘I can’t believe it either,’ Club President Wooten remarked… ‘and you can quote me on that.’” —All About Bob [Barker]Cavalier…