Google has reversed the economy of links; linking to a document makes that document more valuable to page-ranking systems. “The link has a clearer value to B than the content of Bs page has to me or to my readers. I pay B for Bs content with my link.” Jill Walker —Links and Power: The…
"Realizing he hadn’t eaten since lunch, the Ph.D candidate picked up the Burrito Bandito menu. Before he could decide on an order, he instinctively reduced the flyer to a set of shifting, mutable interpretations informed by the set of ideological biases—cultural, racial, economic, and political—that infect all ethnographic and commercial ‘histories.’" —Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out…
"[W]omen have been systematically misled into overestimating their chances of dying of breast cancer in order to prepare them to accept mammography." [A review of the book Reckoning with Risk.] —Crunched by Numbers (The Spectator) Similar:Opinion: A deceptively edited video of Joe Biden signals what’s coming (Washington Post)Critical thinking skills and basic textu…AcademiaMisleading Publisher Email…
Bulwer-Lytton wrote a novel that infamously began, "It was a dark and stormy night." His name lives on in the title of an annual bad fiction contest. This year’s winner: "On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet-paper roll…
"Mr. Lomax was a musicologist, author, disc jockey, singer, photographer, talent scout, filmmaker, concert and recording producer and television host. He did whatever was necessary to preserve traditional music and take it to a wider audience." (Jon Pareles) —Folklorist Alan Lomax Dies (NY Times) Similar:Coding Bootcamps and the New For-Profit Higher EdThere are actually a…
“Weblogs are growing up…. They’re not yet fully utilized in the news industry, but elsewhere weblogs are a common and widely used new piece in the Internet publishing puzzle.” Weblogs: Put Them to Work in Your Newsroom (Poynter Inst.) The social and literary importance of the weblog phenomenon extends far beyond commenting on the news,…
“Usability expertise is mainly an issue of talent and experience rather than theory. Much of usability work requires pattern matching, which is why it’s so dependent on brain power and past experience: Once you observe slight traces of a usability issue in users’ behavior, you must deduce the underlying implications for design.” Jakob Nielsen —Becoming…
Yahoo has admitted that it has been changing some of the words inside attachments accompanying messages sent to users of its web-based e-mail system. —Yahoo Admits Mangling E-MailBBC) Similar:Excessive Copyright Strikes Again in 2016Current US law extends copyright for 70 …BusinessSlashes in Legal WritingI’m not a student. I found your we…BusinessMicrosoft Research Launches Code Hunt…
"The Internet makes it ungodly easy now for people who wish to be lazy," says a librarian in this article about the pitfalls of relying on the Internet for research. —Point. Click. Think? (WashPost) You can often find good information online, but novices should know how to recognize a peer-reviewed journal. Similar:Taking Harassment Seriously Requires…
"In an age of big-budget titles and state-of-the-art technology, Skotos wants to revive the old text genre." Brad King [See also the sidebar: "Games Started Off Without a Bang."] —No Bells, No Whistles: Just Games (Wired) Similar:Over time, Google has made paid ads harder to spot In 2007, Google changed the long…BusinessHow Facebook is killing…
"In an amazingly short time, software has become critical to almost every aspect of modern life… Yet much software simply doesn’t work reliably." Charles C. Mann —Why is Software So Bad? (MIT Tech Review) Similar:Students are trusting software like this to do their work. The technology will continue t…CultureInequity and BYODIf we are really wanting…
"Seniors in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, with mild to moderate memory loss, are writing Web logs to help them make sense of their daily lives. And the activity, they say, is slowing the onset of their symptoms." Mark Baard —Blog to Cope With Alzheimer’s Fog (Wired) Similar:Ben Franklin Sings about Your Rights as…
“Design matters, but which design is preferable depends upon the occasion, the context, and above all, upon my mood… Why do I own several teapots? Because I like them.” Don Norman —Emotion and Design: Attractive Things Work Better (jnd.org) Similar:Bird flight simulator. The boy goes for altitude and distance, the girl does stunts.In the bird-flight…
"The phrase ‘Half the world has never made a phone call’ or some variation thereof has become an urban legend, a widely believed but unsubstantiated story about the nature of the world." Clay Shirky —Half the World shirky.com) Similar:Kids Today: A Response to Mark Bauerlein (from "Dean Dad")Mark Bauerlein’s essay “What’s the Point…AcademiaHow’s newsgathering during…
"This site is a repository for pictures of do not enter signs. Since this is one of many international roadsigns the collection is diverse in geographical context." James Canavan —Do Not Enter!donotenter.com) Similar:Chess tournament in Monroeville. Two losses, two wins.The boy’s personal best in terms of win-…CultureFYI, 13yo skool grl is nu US txt mssg…
(The Economist) “…goes roughly as follows. The QWERTY design (patented by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and sold to Remington in 1873) aimed to solve a mechanical problem of early typewriters. When certain combinations of keys were struck quickly, the type bars often jammed.” But the real problem is that “economists seem to adopt bogus anecdotal…
"n d beginning God creatD d heaven & d earth. & d earth wz w/o form, & void; & darkness wz upon d face of d deep. & d Spirit of God moved upon d face of d H2Oz. & God z, Let der b light: & der wz light." [See Wired article on the…
"[T]hey ship 45,000 copies, and only 15,000 of the games allow you to proceed past the beach. That’s it. No refunds, either. You get off the landing craft; your screen goes black; your computer seizes up and cannot be rebooted. Game over, man." James Lileks —Good Definition of a “Realistic” War Game (The Bleat) Similar:The…
Richard S. Wallace has created Alice, an artificial life form that gets along with people better than he does. —Approximating Life (NY Times — registration req’d) Similar:How important is the look 'n' feel of your website?”The look ‘n’ feel of your website is im…BusinessThe Zombie Argument that Refuses to DieThe idea that generations of Shakespeare…AcademiaInteresting…
"[U]sers—confounded by too many choices—fail to take advantage of their office equipment’s power-saving features." —One researcher’s unlikely crusade: to overthrow the on/off button. (Technology Review) Similar:Whoops, I Accidentally Used a Photo of Donald Trump in this Blog Post on Richard IIIHum de dum. Not paying any attention to …CultureVandal scratches Poe phrase into car at…