“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:What the ‘Grievance Studies’ Hoax Means As the hoaxers explained in Areo, they …AcademiaOscar Wilde and the Importance of Being Earnest (Part 1 of 2)https://youtu.be/tF4ndwOoPPsCultureWriting, Coding…
“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:Journalists…
“[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…
“If you persist, you are about to read a theoretically-inflected critique of what some people call ‘codework.’ Potentially codework is a term for literature which uses, addresses, and incorporates code: as underlying language-animating or language-generating programming, as a special type of language in itself, or as an intrinsic part of the new surface language or…
Inaugural adresses of the presidents; a letter from Columbus, letters from a Civil War soldier from Iowa, and the letter of transmittal introducing the Constitution. This up-to-date site has an archive spanning from the Magna Carta (1215) to Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address. —US Historical DocumentsU of Oklahoma) Similar:A quick Sunday visit to…
“Librarians have degrees. They go to graduate school for Information Science and become masters of data systems and human/computer interaction. Librarians can catalog anything from an onion to a dog’s ear. They could catalog you. Librarians wield unfathomable power. With a flip of the wrist they can hide your dissertation behind piles of old Field…
“Nerve activity in the teenaged brain is so intense that they find it hard to process basic information, researchers say, rendering the teenagers emotionally and socially inept… The team found the speed at which people could identify emotions dropped by up to 20 per cent at the age of 11. Reaction time gradually improved for…
“The Web site Arts & Letters Daily returns today, following its purchase by The Chronicle of Higher Education.” —Arts & Letters Daily to Resume Publication After Purchase by The Chronicle (Chronicle) O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Similar:What Do Happy Teens Do? Hint: It doesn't involve their phones.I was surprised to see how closely happi…CultureDesigning Cabinets in…
“ANCHOR: Now, this breaking news. Something has reportedly happened. Details are sketchy, and we really don’t have any idea of what it might be, but let’s show these impressive aerial shots from our helicopter. Now let’s go to our correspondent in the field to tell us that he doesn’t know anything. Bob? ” Howard Troxler…
“More than 30,000 employees at Indian call centers, among whom Radhika becomes Ruth and Satish becomes Steve, are told to adopt American names and say they are calling from a U.S. city in order to put their American customers at ease. Their training includes a smattering of U.S. history and geography, along with speech therapy…