Helvetica Bold Oblique was the big winner at Tuesday’s 73rd Annual Fonty Awards, taking home 11 statues, including those for Best Sans Serif and the highly coveted 2001 Best Font prize. Satire from The Onion —Helvetica Bold Oblique Sweeps Fontys Similar:Do Cultural Critics Have Any Value Left?[T]he Internet has dramatically changed …AestheticsIn "World Drama" I'm…
Dimitri Sklyarov is an unlikely poster boy for American freedom. The Russian programmer was arrested after he spoke at the “Def-Con” hacker convention in Las Vegas about a program, offered for sale by his employer Elcomsoft, which cracks the encryption in Adobe’s e-book software. The Irish Times —Confusion Over Free Speech and Copyright Similar:Good example…
“While the lack of interest in buying electronic books may baffle some big publishers, the tepid demand comes as no surprise to some bibliophiles.” NY Times (requires free registration) —Forecasts of an E-Book Era Were, It Seems, Premature Similar:I Cannot Begin to Tell You How Proficient I Am in Microsoft WordIs this satire? It doesn’t…
He taught ethics classes in California! LA Times —Law School Dean Fired for Plagiarism Similar:Memory of Wrestler Yukon Eric”The year is around 1952, the dead of wi…HistoryThe Irreversible Damage of Mark Zuckerberg’s SilenceWired, obviously having worked on a thin…BusinessVandal scratches Poe phrase into car at dealershipLanguage nerds will appreciate this news…AmusingHow Zuckerberg’s Facebook is like…
“Handwriting is a basic skill that serves us all our lives. Unfortunately, a problem that primarily affects boys is rarely on anyone’s list of educational priorities.” Christina Hoff Summers —The Write Stuff Similar:Hospice/Honeymoon “Hospice.” Once the word is uttered a…CultureFor God's sake John, sit down!CultureWARNING: Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin have been stolen in UKOne of…
“[O]nce you have observed that the other is typically portrayed as lazy, dirty, stupid, crafty, womanly, passive, rebellious, sexually rapacious, childlike, enigmatic and a number of other mutually contradictory epithets, it is hard to know what to do next apart from reaching for yet another textual illustration of the fact.” London Review of Books —The…
Too much information? “[T] this weed in our informational landscape has just sprouted–it is only about 50 years old. Up until then, more information was almost always a good thing.” David Shenk —Data Smog Similar:Newly acquired technology for teaching writing in the age of AI. (Not for high stakes test…AcademiaStudents Are Using ChatGPT to Write…
“Log onto almost any college Web site and you’ll see the same beautiful students talking about their beautiful campuses and how much they learn. But there are no numbers, no studies, no objective measurements.” —Wash. Monthly —What Do the US News Rankings Measure? Similar:Thornton Wilder’s Optimistic Catastrophe: “The Skin of Our Teeth”From a review of…
“Hey, all you crafty, capable women wearing chunky, horn-rimmed glasses (this year) and doing your brainy chick thing…” Hank Stuever, Wash. Post —Velma Rules — Jinkies! Similar:I have a daughter who does things. If demon curses and buckets of stage blood are your thi…I have a daughter who does things. If de…AmusingParallel structure in writing:…
Failed to Practise What It Preached The magazine that chronicled the excesses of the dot.com revolution did not spot the extravagances that led to its own downfall. Mark Tran —Industry Standard Similar:‘I saw the possibility of what could be done – so I did it’: revolutionary video game The ….. Realising that statistics wasn’t for…CybercultureBad…
Include Your Children when Baking Cookies New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half —Real Headlines Similar:Churnalism SearchAt the University of Virginia, one summe…CultureThe ‘Cancelling’ of Flannery O’Connor? It Never Should Have HappenedI regularly teach Flannery O’Connor, and…AcademiaThe storage shelves of my fantasy steampunk CGI starship will…
Despite the technological hoopla, nobody’s paying attention to e-books but the courts. “Digitizing the printed page has put the very nature of books up for grabs, unleashing heated battles among writers, readers, librarians and technologists over who should control electronic books.” Chicago Tribune —E-Books Solving a Problem Consumers Don’t Have. Similar:Liberal Arts Majors Are the…
Not-Work: “CNN acts like they’re the network of record in Millennial America, just because of their award-winning Gulf War coverage. That was so 10 years ago, and people only watched because there was no MSNBC back then.” The Onion —CNN Should be Named the Crappy News Similar:Facebook exec erroneously cites The Lord of the Rings…
At first, Huck Finn said “as if” instead of “like,” “wasn’t” and not “warn’t,” and described a night sky “sprinkled”–not “speckled”–with stars. A new edition of the American classic traces Mark Twain’s efforts to refine the speech of his most famous character. LA Times —A New Read on Huck Finn’s Distinctive Voice Similar:Educated, uplifted, boosted,…
(Watch them instead.) “Create a few alternative designs, show them to a group of users, and ask which one they prefer. Wrong. If the users have not actually tried to use the designs, they’ll base their comments on surface features.” Jakob Nielsen —First Rule of Usability? Don’t Listen to Your Readers. Similar:An overnight traffic…
At a graveyard near where Beatrix Potter (author of the “Peter Rabbit” stories) spent her youth: “Names on headstones included Mr Nutkin, Mr McGregor, Jeremiah Fisher, Tommy Brock – and even a Peter Rabbett.” BBC —But what about Jemima Puddle-Duck? Similar:Actors can't play Hamlet as simply mad in world of mental health awareness, actor saysHow…
“A modern language changes when we change it, and the metaphor that makes it autonomous only obscures our real task, which is to consider just how and why we change it.” Mark Halpern Similar:About that Cough, Rough, Pony, Bologna MemeDo the spellings of cough & rough, p…BooksThe Most Unexpected Workplace Trend Coming in 2020: the…
“Author Jessica Kingley expressed regret Monday that she had ‘pretty much used up all the hardship‘ from her early life in her recent first novel Bitter Root, leaving her nothing to write about for her follow-up book.” The Onion Similar:Ermahgerddon: The Untold Story of the Ermahgerd GirlDeciding against the coonskin cap, Golde…AmusingI'm enjoying "William Shakespeare's…
That said, we’ve decided to acknowledge our very favorite Web sites—five each in 10 subject areas—with the Scientific American.com Sci/Tech Web Award. It is an eclectic mix—from the practical to the academic to the downright silly. Among this year’s winners are sites that decode computer acronyms, explain group theory, unravel the genome, track chemistry in…
The second most popular form of entertainment after television, video games have rapidly become the largest segment of the entertainment industry. Mounting evidence lends support to what parents have suspected all along — violent videogames encourage violent behavior. Contemporary Pediatrics Similar:Facebook’s News Feed: Often Changed, Never GreatI’ve never liked Instant Articles — Fac…BusinessWhy the Internet…