You may have heard news stories trumpeting a great scientific breakthrough in the controversial practice of cloning human beings. Some critics claim that reporters, looking for easy stories to publish after a holiday weekend, put too much faith in a company’s press release. —Experts Rip Cloning ‘Story’ (Wired) Similar:The Formation of LoveRelationships start with a…
Everyone’s, like, using it all the time, but David Grambs is all, like, “What price is literate, listenable English paying for its increasing currency?” —The Like Virus (Vocabula Review) Similar:Happy St. Crispin's DayHere’s my rendition of the famous “band …CultureWhat Causes the Smell of New & Old Books?Generally, it is the chemical breakdown …AestheticsFirst Stanford…
“[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:Star Trek: "Wink Of An Eye"/"The Empath"Amusing, if cynical, reaction to some of…AmusingSomething to Ponder…
“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:Fox apologizes for "error" in news story that created the impression Eagles players knelt …Context matters. Good journalists…
“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:Jack Rollins-Frosty the Snowman I voiced Jack Rollins, writer …HistorySound Design and the Wilhelm ScreamAhh-aaggh! https://www.youtube.com/wa…AestheticsApocalypse…
“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:7…
“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:The Real Reason Why You Can't WriteHave you ever stopped to think about wha…AcademiaIn September 1999 I was blogging about Tom Stoppard, techno-utopianism, voice-recognition…
(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:Controversial Content in YA Literature: A College Professor and Homeschooling Parent Answe…I received this comment on my blog:…
“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:I assume the police report didn't specify what kind of underwear, because this headline…
“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:Major benefits for students who attend live theater, study findsI wonder what additional measurable bene…CultureHarper Lee to publish new novel, 55 years after To Kill a…
“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:"I don't view Shakespeare's work as intimidating anymore." — midterm reflection from coll… “It…
A lake. A salt mine. An oil drilling rig. A lack of communication. You figure it out. —Peaceful Lake Peigneur Turned into Maelstrom Similar:Every day on my fantasy #neovictorian interplanetary cruiser features glowing green ether … In the backstory for the interactive…AestheticsFacebook Spot-tests New Local News FeedI have no reason to trust Facebook to fi…BusinessTechnology…
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:Your Brain Does Not Work Like a ComputerThe brain-as-computer is a powerful meme…HealthA Successful Failure: The TI-99/4A Turns 40My family had…
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:They called it a "flashlight" because…
“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:Journalists: The "Enemy of the American People"; Also, an "Accountability" PollI seem…
“[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:Two Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbots Talk and Argue with Each OtherSounds like a typical grad school…
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:Seattle Times ‘Outraged’ FBI Created Fake Web Page, News Story To Catch SuspectThe FBI fabricated a story to look like …CybercultureMisSpelled: Premiering Oct 1In this podcast series, I voice a mage…
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:Salman Rushdie: how Cervantes and Shakespeare wrote the modern literary rule bookBy a set…