"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:Gil Gerard (1943-2025) I built a model of the two-pronged Sta…CulturePreview of "The Fantasticks" (thanks, Tribune-Review, for covering the arts community)For Luisa, Jerz’s…
(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:Three-dimenstional…
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:Letter to the editor: Setting record straight on Seton Hill newspaperHere’s my letter responding to an recent…AcademiaPeople hate reading instructions, and will only glance at them after they are…
"[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:Male Supporting Characters in Recent Disney Princess Films Dominate the DialogueThe silly click-baity headline in the Wa…BusinessHighlighters and Intellectual Growth in CollegeTucked away in this article on how to av…AcademiaMake…
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:John…
“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:NASA! Mars!! Panorama!!! Video!!!! Audio!!!!!New video from NASA’s Mars 2020 Persever…AwesomeA Video Game About Changing What Happens In Shakespeare's HamletElsinore is a game…
“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:Why ‘Cats’ the Movie Fails So FlamboyantlyI can’t seem to get into superhero movie…AestheticsShakespeare…
“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:Text Wrangler Discontinued (Free…
“[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:The Physics Behind Traffic JamsIn between today’s various events, I das…CultureTom Wayman's FAQ on "Did I Miss…
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:Bill Murray Admits A Painting Saved His LifeDuring a February press conference in Lo…AestheticsFlorida Woman Bites CamelIdentifying…
FlingTheCow.com: A catapult… a target… a cow. Don’t just sit there… fling the cow! Similar:Why are we so bored?On average we spend six to seven hours i…CultureRIP Metaverse, we hardly knew yeI am curious enough about cockatoos that…AcademiaLotteries: America's $70 Billion ShameCan this be true? People spend more mone…BooksThe Importance of Writing Skills in Tech-Related…
“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:Reading fiction early in life is associated with a more complex worldview,…
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:'Facebook is simply not cool anymore' to teens, study findsTeens also don’t…