"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:How the printing press changed “you”: when reading changed, so did writingThis was before the printing press, so b…BooksGoogle Docs "Writing to Learn"…
(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:It…
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:Parallel structure in writing: Use it!These comic panels cover the issue well….HumanitiesJournalism students guiltily ignoring the "no electronic devices" note in the program duri…That moment when you see a…
"[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:She’s on her way to the @thepublicpgh for two shows today as Margot in Dial M for Murder.She’s on her way to the @thepublicpgh fo…AestheticsBlood & Laurels : Emily Short's…
The Method of Lies vs. the Method of Truth: “The sincerity of the propagandist is no protection; some of the worst excesses in history were engineered by persons motivated by zealous belief.” Julian Simon Note particularly the (unsourced) quotation from Stephen Schneider, describing how environmental scientists manipulate the media in order to get attention: “[W]e…
“It’s very enjoyable to visit a website that works, where everything just clicks for you. In contrast, a user interface that doesn’t do things the way you want feels sluggish, unpleasant, and possibly even hostile, despite the designer’s no doubt sincere attempt to invoke positive emotions.” Jakob Nielsen —User Empowerment and the Fun Factor (Alertbox) Similar:Thoughtful…
“Despite the best efforts of poets, emotions are largely beyond words, and this is another reason why, in Kagan’s view, psychology and psychiatry have stalled.” Peter Watson —Why Psychology has FailedNew Statesman) Similar:In September, 2003, I was blogging about the emerging fad of internet plagiarism, ethnical…In September, 2003, I was blogging about…CultureClose Reading of Sonnet…
“When Socrates was asked where he came from, he did not say, ‘From Athens’, but ‘From the world’, an attitude that our own reading and travels may encourage.” Alain de Botton —A Journey and a Book are Perfect Companions (Times Online) Similar:Tom Bissell writes a letter to Niko Bellic about Grand Theft Auto VI haven’t…
“The kids who grew up steering Pac-Man around his dot-filled maze have grown up to make video games one of the biggest slices of the entertainment-industry pie. Yet no game to date has come close to dominating the popular landscape the way Pac-Man did in the early 1980s.” Chris Green —Pac-Man (Salon) Similar:Infographics: the PowerPoint of…
“[T]he war on terrorism is unlike any other war in its dependence on intelligence, and the interrogators and “document exploitation” teams in Afghanistan occupy a crucial front.” —Greg Miller, Intelligence Officers Read Between the Enemy Lines (LA Times) Similar:Interface (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 3) LaForge, using experimental augmen…Rewatching ST:TNG The cold open featu…AmusingLiberal…
A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is an unconstitutional “endorsement of religion” because of the addition of the phrase “under God” in 1954 by Congress. —Lawmakers Blast Pledge Ruling (CNN) Similar:Advice for My Conservative StudentsA professor who had been a conservative …AcademiaMy buddy JTK helps me make…
FlingTheCow.com: A catapult… a target… a cow. Don’t just sit there… fling the cow! Similar:Mars Panorama — 10yo with iPad Pretends Her Bed Is NASA Roverhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4rCkr0oA…Current_EventsIn Pittsburgh, science gets playfulImagine: sharing a secret with a friend …AestheticsThe Case Against High-School Sports”I’ve been in hundreds of classrooms,” s…CultureNYT newsroom integration memoBy integrating the newsrooms we plan…
“Dr. Seuss makes Horton the sort of agent… who dominates stories from Beowulf to Braveheart, powerful, generous, and resourceful; and he makes Horton’s goals unmistakable, admirable, and urgent: the struggle not to be cast out of his community, the survival of a whole people.” Brian Boyd —The Origin of Stories: Horton Hears a Who (Philosophy…
“I had seen a 9-year-old boy blowing away guards with a shotgun in a preview version of State of Emergency, an ultraviolent Rockstar game that encourages players to smash shop windows and assassinate executives in an urban street riot. ‘That’s not cool,’ he said flatly. ‘We’re not about cute games for kids.’” Logan Hill —Why…
“Um … there’re these psychologists, right? And they’ve, uh, come up with, like, the idea that ‘um’ and ‘uh’ are really words, which speakers, um … use to highlight their conversational problems. Ok?” John Whitfield —‘Er’ Cautions Listeners to Stay on Side (Nature) Similar:Research Poetry (communicating research results and expressing their significance through …For an…
The complex sociology of a college dorm: “‘We play video games at least half the day,’ says freshman Tyler Manker. He’s exaggerating. A little. He estimates that he spends five hours a day playing video or computer games, two hours watching TV or videos, and an hour on the Internet. Oh, yeah—he also spends three…
“I strongly believe that Toast is the very thread which holds together the uneasy seams of modern society. Therefore, it seems only appropriate that I pay some sort of homage to this humble Slice of Heaven.” —Dr. Toast’s Amazing World of Toast See also: weather-forecasting toaster; toaster art; “Flying Toasters” (a short story); “When Flying…
“What is in common between faith and programming?… both are about truth.” Hierodeacon Makary —Orthodox Faith and Computer Programming (Pravda) A thought-provoking little article, but even more surprising is its source. Yes, that’s Pravda, the official publication of the Communist Party in Russia. Similar:The president of the US bonds with Vladimir Putin over journalists: "Get…