No, he was not squashed by a falling safe or run over by an Acme Indestructo Steel Ball. Jones created the Road Runner and Coyote cartons. Rules from that series: “No dialogue ever, except ‘beep beep.” “No outside force can harm the Coyote — only his own ineptitude or the failure of the Acme products.”…
A palindrome is a word or phrase that reads the same backwards and forwards: "Madam, I’m Adam." Nick Montfort & William Gillsepie have written a whole palindrome story. —2002: A Palindrome Story Similar:How to Use the Feynman Technique to Identify PseudoscienceSimon Oxenham quotes physicist Richard F…CultureEssay on how much a professor learned about teaching from…
“The day I came home for Christmas vacation my parents and I were sitting in the kitchen, I looked at them and said, ‘I’m pregnant. Just kidding, I want to change my major.’” Jeanine Savageau —Changing Majors: Junior Realizes Journalism Isn’t for Her (UWEC Spectator; registration required) Similar:How The Language Of Special Education Is EvolvingThe words…
“The year 2002. The 20th day of the 2nd month, 2002. And, on the 24-hour clock, at two minutes after 8 p.m., harmony. 2002.” —2002 2002 2002 (Toronto Star) Similar:Toasty Warm Bed (designed by drunk AI neural net)AestheticsRoyalty: For the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, y…When I lived in Canada,…
"Traditional publishers… couldn’t understand his willingness to surrender his ‘authority’ over his own work by letting others participate. Nor could they understand his desire to ‘devalue’ his copyright by posting a whole book online." —A Footnote to E-book History (Wired) Similar:The disastrous voyage of Satoshi, the world’s first cryptocurrency cruise shipLast year, three cryptocurrency enthusia…BusinessHow…
“Alongside the boom, however, there have recently been a few faint signs of backlash. As increasing hordes take on the task of trying to keep new sites looking nice, sounding original and free from banalities, more hordes just seem to fail.” —Blah, Blah, Blah and Blog (Wired) Similar:Facebook does not care about truth. Facebook wants…
“…I think the wonder of our aesthetic or religious sense, or musicality, is increased by the fact that it depends on three pounds of jelly in our head.” —Interview with Oliver Sacks (neurologist and novelist) Similar:Dissecting a Frog: How to Write a Humor PieceAnalyzing humor, as E.B. White famously …AmusingChoiceScript tutorial for making casual, phone-friendly,…
“I was eight years old when my parents bought these for me, and I can still remember those chewy little peanut butter sticks more vividly than almost anything else from my childhood. I’ve wanted more of them for three decades!” —Space Food Sticks Similar:Face of The Enemy (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 6, Episode 14) Troi…
Kathleen, I wanted to do this in this most potentially embarassing way possible, and I figured doing it here and now, in front of a quarter of a million strangers was as good a way as any. CmdrTaco —Geek in Love (Slashdot) Similar:‘WarGames’ and Cybersecurity’s Debt to a Hollywood Hack After finishing his synopsis, Reagan…CyberculturePagers,…
A short series of philosophical exercises, in a futuristic setting, which asks you to evaluate different definitions of personal identity. (Do you step into a spacecraft that has a 50% chance of killing you, or have your whole body scanned, destroyed, and re-constructed somewhere else three minutes later?) At the end, your choices are analyzed.…
“I have lost all touch with reality, and only live to comment on the comments that other bloggers have made in reference to my notes about their comments. Is anybody out there?” —Blog ad Nauseam (The Weekly Standard) Similar:Why did I only blog 3 times in June 2001?What was I doing during the summer of…
“It may sound far-fetched, but a U.S. federal court will hear preliminary arguments next week to determine if this most elemental of Internet activities is the business property of a lone company, protected in the form of a patent.” —British Company Claims Patent on Hyperlinks (Wired) Similar:My 20-year-old Java Program Is Was Broken!So a harmless…
What’s it like interviewing college students at job fairs? "What a snooze. By the sixth interview of the day I vow that I’ll hire anyone who can make me remember their name, and I’ll sign over my 401(k) to any candidate who can make me laugh." Erin Cronin —Honesty, Shining Throughb> (WashPost) Similar:I Never Would…
(Word Circuits): Hypertext poetry by Stephanie Strickland —The Ballad of Sand and Harry Soot Similar:I let her tend the rabbits.Great production of a very moving story….BooksMy copy of Plotkin's Hadean Lands arrived today. Current_EventsErmahgerddon: The Untold Story of the Ermahgerd GirlDeciding against the coonskin cap, Golde…AmusingAssassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of AustriaOn 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz…
"Calling the theological giant’s stranglehold on the religion industry ‘blatantly anti-competitive,’ a U.S. district judge ruled Monday that God is in violation of anti-monopoly laws and ordered Him to be broken up into several less powerful deities." —Judge Orders God to Break Up into Smaller Deitiesb> (TheOnion) Similar:"Gen Zers know the difference between rock-solid news…
"Write simply. Keep headings, summaries, sentences, paragraphs and documents short. Get to the point. Then stop." Gerry McGovern —The Need for Simple English on the Web Similar:New NASA Astronaut Wrote a Limerick to Get Hired “There was a lot of writing involved…AmusingIn Ferguson, Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery gives account of his arrestComedian Robin Williams…
"Poor sad Mac, born in a plastic age. / A time when the world still thought in beige. / Crafted and molded just like a piece of art. / An orphan, abandoned. It’s enough to break your heart." [Which column would you put this one in? Sometimes I wonder why I continue to split my…
Kaycee Nicole, an attractive student dying from leukemia, shared her ordeal via on online diary. Her mother started a companion diary. Web surfers became close friends with this family through email, chatroom, and even phone conversations. The New York Times even quoted Kaycee about college life. When she finally died, her online friends grieved like…
Yahoo recently ran a story about a man suffocated by a stripper’s breasts… but it was a hoax first published in a tabloid. You may have heard recent reports about the airliner passenger stuck to a toilet seat. (MSNBC, BBC, CNN) Note that no names or dates are given. It’s a hoax. (Unless it’s a…
What is life like for a person who has trouble recognizing human faces? —Face-blindness Similar:How Literature Became Word Perfect There can be no true distinction drawn …CybercultureDo Cultural Critics Have Any Value Left?[T]he Internet has dramatically changed …AestheticsOn Immigration, Poetry Isn’t Policy, but Poetry Matters, by David French, National ReviewThe conservative National Review offers…