“[S]hort and pithy, bumper stickers are a literary genre ideally suited to hurried Americans who may nevertheless feel morally obligated to express opinions… They allow us to state the thesis without the supporting paragraphs…” Tina Bennett-Kastor —Bumper Bites (Vocabula Review) Similar:Apology of Socrates, By PlatoAristotle classified Plato’s work, repre…AestheticsAvoid static, wordy nominalization. Prefer compelling verbs.New…
“Under the guise of protecting private property, a series of new laws and regulations are dismantling the very architecture that made the Internet a framework for global innovation.” Lawrence Lessig —The Internet Under Siege (Foreign Policy Magazine) Similar:The Value of Truth:Â We are living through an epistemological crisis. In the jargon of academia, the study…Academia"Cool" Rosetta…
“Seldom mentioned, hardly ever seen, exactly the kind of movie that, yes, a fertilizer salesman named Hal P. Warren would decide to make, one fine summer in 1966.” (Manos available on DVD!) —Manos: The Hands of FateReviewed by Mimosa) Similar:Has life in the age of casual magic made moviegoers numb to the amazing?This is one…
“Before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, anxiety-related disorders cost the U.S. $42 billion a year in medical and work-related losses. Now mental health professionals can only make educated estimates of how many more of us will be affected in the near future…” —9/11: The Psychological Aftermath (Scientific American) Similar:My…
“Most of the puzzles in Puzzle World fall into the Put-Together, Take-apart, Interlocking or Impossible Object categories because this is where most of the high-quality handcrafting takes place.” —Puzzle WorldJohn Rausch) Similar:Astronauts cloaked Klingon space patch: Star Trek-inspired emblem revealed The current commander of the Internati…AestheticsThe Sword of Kahless #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode…
(rec.humor.funny) [random joke] “Is this a burger which I see before me, The soft bun in my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I eat thee not, and yet I want thee still.” Gregory Lam —MacDonald’s Soliloquy Similar:Liberal Arts Classes Could Teach Neil deGrasse Tyson a Thing or Two about the Path from Da… Your…
“The likes of my colleagues no longer thought of this new tongue as an alien one, into which they translated thoughts originally composed in a more familiar idiom. They had become native speakers.” Deborah Cameron —The Tyranny of Nicespeak (New Statesman) Similar:First Day in the Theatre for Twelfth Night (May 3-12) Daughter: (is sad her…
“Under every scenario used in the study, the winning margin remains less than 500 votes out of almost 6 million cast.” —Florida Recounts Would Have Favored Bush (Washington Post) Similar:Put up the Hoop Sooner: 10 lessons of parenting from one wise guy who's done doing the dad…Earlier today, we dropped our daughter o…AcademiaMars Panorama –…
“So who is this mysterious kingmaker who changed the world from her shadowy government bureaucracy? Has she seen any good movies lately? Is her marriage happy? America wants to know. America needs to know!” —Official Terry LePore Ballot Designer Fan Page Similar:UVA administrator awarded $3M in Rolling Stone caseJurors awarded a University of Virginia …AcademiaAt…
A lake. A salt mine. An oil drilling rig. A lack of communication. You figure it out. —Peaceful Lake Peigneur Turned into Maelstrom Similar:The Pointlessness of UnpluggingWhat sex was for the Puritans, technolog…Current_EventsYellow Journalism Did Not Cause the Spanish-American War (Role of Sensationalized Headlin… When a correspondent sent to Cuba to c…AestheticsRobot wars: 100 years…
Coca-Cola spent $750,000 to develop a procedure to serve carbonated beverages in space. Pepsi filmed a $5 million commercial aboard Mir. And then there’s “Final Frontier Beef Jerky.” —A Brief History of Space MarketingSpace.com) Similar:Kickball Ice Cream Maker Is Both a Stupid and Awesome Idea$35 Kickball Ice Cream Maker does exactl…Aesthetics‘Chronicles of Prydain’ Movie: Disney…
Hmm. Jakob Nielsen writes a column with a headline that implies you are being inhumane if you don’t make your web pages accessible to the disabled. Jakob Nielsen‘s company is selling a 148-page report on making web pages accessible to the disabled. Coincidence? (Nielsen is smart. He’s doing good deeds. He’s giving away lots of…
“Everything, everything, everything boils down to the heart, and poetry is a vehicle of clarity, an articulate and strong voice screaming through the static and white noise.” -Frank Matagrano, a poet featured on Jan Carroll’s poetry weblog. —And Now It’s Dark: Three poets talk about poetry after September 11, 2001 Similar:Why Study Humanities? What I Tell…
“Corporate English obscures reality by excluding people.” While this article is marked as “commentary,” I find it ethically unsound for its author to suggest that magazine writers should intentionally insert biased language that promotes a pro-union / anti-business point of view, on the grounds that “corporate English commonly portrays economic processes as if they just…
Novell releases a survey showing that British companies lose billions annually due to spam. Guess who sells a product that helps companies filter out spam? “Surveys are a time-honoured PR tactic for getting coverage in hard-to-reach publications.” —Junk Mail Costs Lives (The Register) Similar:Special ed teacher quits: ‘I just cannot justify making students cry anymore’The…
“[L]anguage is often under-estimated, under-valued, and under-funded. How many times have we seen companies import bland, cheap information instead of hiring talented, knowledgeable writers to write fresh, original, interesting content?” Julia Hayden —Language: The Ultimate User InterfaceA List Apart) Similar:My understanding of biased polls is… (choose one) AmusingMicrosoft Publishes Garbled AI Article Calling Tragically Deceased NBA…
Ever been frustrated by a “404: File Not Found” message? Did you ever stop to wonder how the web server feels? —File Not Found! Similar:Amusing Reference to ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ Imagine a scenario in which circumstan…AestheticsAttached (#StarTrek #TNG Rewatch, Season 7, Episode 8) Picard and Crusher are telepathical… Rewatching ST:TNG Picard and Crusher…AmusingAlways Bet on…
Eugene Schlanger is a corporate lawyer and a respected poet. “Poets today tend to write to audiences of other poets. It’s unfortunate. You have poets celebrating pure emotion, but it’s not grounded in anything.” —Wall Street Poet Takes Stock of LifeSunSpot.net) Similar:Well-chosen wordsWhy is English spelling such a tangle? I…BooksShow, Don’t (Just) Tell (New Example)I…
“[M]ost tragedies are caused not by hate-filled maniacs, but by small, unnoticed failures in complex systems. A badly trained worker makes a tragic error; an oversight by an engineer produces a fatally flawed component.” (Review of Inviting Disaster.) —When Malfunction and Error Meet: a Compendium of Disasters (Boston Globe) Similar:Ultimate Infographic Design Guide + Design…
Which is real and which is fake? The website behind curtain number one? Or the website behind curtain number two? Read about The Yes Men, who use a fake World Trade Organization website to trick the organizers of an international conference. (See: “Evaluating Online Sources.“)Parody? Activism? Lies? Similar:Karate, Wonton, Chow Fun: The end of 'chop…