“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:Chipping away at Pygmalion and GalateaPygmalion is a legendary sculptor (whose…ArtNgram for "postpartum depression,"…
“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:College Professors Hate Sharing These Mind-Blowing Study Tips (#3 Made Me Cry) Read the syllabus. Read the syllabu…AcademiaTwitter suspends Trump's accountTwitter suspended Donald Trump’s account…Current_EventsIncoming Seton Hill…
“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:Opinion: A deceptively edited video of Joe Biden signals what’s coming (Washington Post)Critical thinking…
A lake. A salt mine. An oil drilling rig. A lack of communication. You figure it out. —Peaceful Lake Peigneur Turned into Maelstrom Similar:They grew up in a mostly analog/paper world and squirmed with joy the first time they clic…Today’s students have many strengths. Th…AcademiaLife in Code and Software (Open Humanities Press)This book explores the…
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:Ground-nesting Yellowjacket WaspsWhile my 16yo son was mowing the lawn wi…CultureVictorian Literature for Accounting MajorsIf I can get the English majors…
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:Standardized Test Scores Don't Really Measure…
“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:About the Sinkhole in the Adjunct Faculty Lounge, and Other Mid-Semester AnnouncementsI…
“[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:Coding Sucks: Why a Job in Programming Is Absolute HellI enjoyed the essay, but the truths…
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:Copy Of The Scarlet Letter Can't Believe The Notes High Schooler Writing In MarginsBaffled that the young reader for some r…AmusingHide and Q (TNG Rewatch, Season 1, Episode 9) Riker, buffed…
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:How 'A Wrinkle in Time' Changed Sci-Fi ForeverI read this book for the first…
“[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:Nerdy Rainbow Loom CraftingMy wonderfully geeky…
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:Meme alleging Trump said “Africans Are Lazy, Good…
Digital cameras are great, because you can preview the shots immediately, and delete the ones that aren’t any good. “But if a photographer is focused on getting three, four or five pictures to the news desk as quickly as possible, he is not just getting rid of the rubbish; he’s not entering the alternative viewpoint…
Like the dystopian autocracy depicted in George Orwell’s novel 1984, Microsoft has a policy of eliminating “offensive” words from its official dictionary. (A Slashdot poster asks, “Do we really want to trust Microsoft to make decisions on our behalf regarding our use of language?”) —Bowlderlized by Microsoft (NY Times — registration req’d) Similar:Courage Wolf: Write…
Charging that Microsoft has started hijacking browser users who mistype an address (users are sent to a Microsoft page rather than shown a generic error message), Yahoo! has started doing some hijacking of its own. Microsoft has started excluding non-MS users from parts of its website (which, thanks in part to the hijacking described above,…
“Boilerplate was a mechanical man developed by Professor Archibald Campion during the 1880s and unveiled at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.” A remarkably convincing fake website by Paul Guinan. —Boilerplate: Mechanical Marvel of the Nineteenth Century Similar:What Borges Learned from CervantesBorges reinvented Don Quixote as a playf…BooksWhat employers really want? Workers they don’t have to…
: I have no idea how useful this article really is — it’s a classic case of “I found it on the Internet.” (A few posters have evaluated this article on MetaFilter.) —“Real” Deal about Nuclear, Bio, and Chem Attacks Similar:My Daughter's Synesthesia: "S" Is Always Red, and "T" Is Lime GreenAccording to a color-picking…
What’s up with public high school students? “They’ve had careful self-esteem training since they were 2. They’re told exactly what to feel about everything and they have to be happy all the time,” says researcher Elinor Burkett. —School Daze in America (Wash Times) Similar:Students whom I haven't met yet… Students whom I haven’t met yet,…