Miscellaneous Archives
October 15, 2007
■ “A buzzword is no black swan, but when one breaks out of the long tail into the short head and hits the tipping point it still makes me question the wisdom of the crowds. But because the world is flat, I’ve listed a freakonomical list of the lifespan of a buzzword. Purple cow.” [#]
October 5, 2007
■ “When Brian Marquis got a C instead of an A-minus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, he made a federal case of it. Literally.” [#]
■ Why Marrying For Money is Never a Good Idea [#]
September 23, 2007
■ “Zaki, Bennett points out, has been nothing but trouble since he moved here, which was several years after Bennett’s own arrival. ‘I’m one of the original property owners,’ says Bennett, who came to The Hamptons in 2001 from Chicago, where he had been a special-ed teacher and administrator. ‘Zaki was a resale.’” [#]
September 19, 2007
■ ““The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!” “ [#]
■ Civic Literacy Report - Civics Quiz: 88.3 [#]
September 17, 2007
■ I Am Making a Difference (Ftrain.com) [#]
September 3, 2007
■ “Here you will find some tips from Erik Spiekermann, designer of FF Meta™, Meta Design founder, co-author of “Stop Stealing Sheep”, and a FontShop founder, which will prevent some of the more obvious blunders.” [#]
August 31, 2007
■ “Every e-mail I send to anyone, regardless of subject or recipient, will be five sentences or less.” [#]
August 27, 2007
■ “Wiley S. Drake, a Buena Park pastor and a former national leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, called on his followers to pray for the deaths of two leaders of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.” [#]
August 26, 2007
■ 25 Worlds Weirdest Animals [#]
August 25, 2007
■ My Beer Pix: A tribute to the many beers I have known [#]
August 22, 2007
■ “Our fourth Mp3 Experiment was our biggest mission to date.” [#]
July 30, 2007
■ Recipe: Cold-Brewed Iced Coffee - New York Times [#]
July 24, 2007
■ “http://scottwesterfeld.com/blog/?p=225”>Here’s one the things I love about New York:” [#]
July 11, 2007
■ “a biomorphic creature which recalls the egypt god horus - a man with a falcon head.” [#]
July 6, 2007
■ “Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies. [#]
May 2, 2007
■ “In fact, many cultures consider smiths magical.” [#]
■ “To the wisest and most careful men in our greatest institutions of science and learning I have gone, asking each in his turn to forecast for me what, in his opinion, will have been wrought in his own field of investigation before the dawn of 2001.” [#]
April 20, 2007
■ The following risky activities, decadent foods, and otherwise foolhardy indulgences are detrimental to your health. You will, however, not perish in vain.” [#]
April 5, 2007
■ “We all know Boo Berry as the lovable spokesghost for General Mills’ Boo Berry cereal. But since he is a ghost, I can’t help but think about the fact that he’s dead. Or more specifically, he is the ghost of a dead man.” [#]
March 30, 2007
■ “But it is not always helpful in the kitchen. For one thing, short of a wine that is spoiled by age, heat or a compromised cork, there are few that I categorically would not drink. [#]
March 16, 2007
■ “A bit over 4,100 years ago, a man named Abram led his family from the city of Ur of the Chaldees to a new home in Canaan. Just two weeks ago, unfailing champion of liberalism Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. died. What’s the connection? Nothing. Everything.” [#]
March 12, 2007
■ “Beer-stained wooden tables and the smell of hops complemented a free-flowing, spirited debate among hip young people in scruffy beards and T-shirts. In 2007, this is church.” [#]
February 28, 2007
■ “This is a project visualizing the world map which many fools in the world imagine. If you can see this map comfortably, you are definitely a fool.” [#]
February 22, 2007
■ “A German paragliding champion has survived being sucked into a storm that pulled her higher than Mount Everest.” [#]
February 16, 2007
■ The Sheila Variations: Heart-achey beauty of libraries [#]
February 15, 2007
■ “My father turned me on to an enjoyable way to improve at a foreign language: read Harry Potter in translation.” (And article that led to this more in-depth piece talking about the role of fiction reading in language learning. And, while I’m tossing out links on the topic, Lifehacker has a nice collection of tips on language learning.) [#]
■ “Based on good and bad examples of etiquette we’ve witnessed, this guide has been compiled to help the tourist and veteran alike in navigating New York in the best possible manner.” [#]
February 2, 2007
■ “Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.” [#]
January 30, 2007
■ “The best place in the world to live? For the second year running in our annual Quality of Life Index, we say: France. At the other end of the Index, again for year number two, Iraq scores the fewest points and ranks as the world’s worst place to be.” [#]
January 26, 2007
■ “It seems to me that if you’re a designer, a proper designer not someone who learnt Photoshop in between phone calls, then design runs through your veins like Pantone 7418. But more than that, it’s there in every aspect of life. You can’t stop looking at things through your designer eyes.” This seems equivalent to me to the way reporters view the world. I remember sitting in a church service and having something the pastor said spark an article I freelanced to the local paper. I wonder how many different ways there are of viewing the world? [#]
January 19, 2007
■ Doug LeMoine ｻ ENGLISH SENTENCES WITHOUT OVERT GRAMMATICAL SUBJECTS: NSFW, probably … although I’m thinking of using this during the grammar portion of the journalism class I teach …. eh, maybe not. [#]
■ “If predictions by the Oxford Hair Foundation come to pass, the number of natural redheads everywhere will continue to dwindle until there are none left by the year 2100.” [#]
January 17, 2007
■ ” … the bill under debate would outlaw the depiction of violent acts committed against human characters. It would apply to any video title played or distributed on German soil. The legislation effectively would put a ban on most first-person shooter, action and real-time strategy titles.” [#]
January 15, 2007
■ “This establishment, located on the corner of Flushing and Washington Avenues, has been rumored to be a strip club, but we found another review that claims, “the stage is no longer used for entertainment. you will be frisked.” ” [#]
January 13, 2007
■ What I Did Over Christmas Vacation. Sweeeeeet. [#]
January 4, 2007
■ “StrangeUsa.com - Consolidating the vast amount of ‘American Strange Stuff’ out there into 1 easy to use place. Haunted buildings, places, Urban legends, cemetaries, weird places, cool places, ghost towns, and anything else thats worth your time to visit.” The site description really says it all. [#]
■ Writers Dreamtools: Presenting a walk through history by decade. Very cool. [#]
January 2, 2007
■ On This Day Pre-Y2K: “This section of kshay.com offers a real-world glimpse into what people concerned about the Y2K bug were actually saying on the Internet.” Dang, I remember writing these sorts of story. Even then, though, I was pretty much on the skeptical side … [#]
December 30, 2006
■ Escape From It’s A Wonderful Life [#]
December 16, 2006
■ YouTube - The Pogues with Kirsty McColl / Fairytale of New York [#]
■ “I have tried to resolve this issue with customer service reps on the phone, but noone seems to see the difference between “.002 cents” and “.002 dollars”.” [#]
December 12, 2006
■ “For years, New York City has failed to collect on millions of dollars in overdue water bills because its records are so riddled with factual errors and outdated information that pursuing deadbeats and delinquents has become virtually impossible. [#]
December 8, 2006
■ “A nasty dispute last year over the smoking act resulted in the indictment of a Bonanno soldier and an associate on first-degree assault charges for the horrific beating of a Genovese associate who suffered permanent brain damage, Gang Land has learned.” [#]
November 30, 2006
■ “When THE AMERICAN set out to choose the ten best business movies of all time, we looked for three qualities: (1) a great movie, (2) a relatively realistic picture of business, and (3) an attitude not openly hostile to capitalism as we know and love it.” [#]
November 22, 2006
■ “Maurice Graham, who began hitching rides on trains as a teenager and was known as the “King of the Hobos,” has died at the age of 89.” [#]
November 21, 2006
■ Fresh Intelligence : Radar Online [#]
November 20, 2006
■ “To help sort through the adult-beverage glut, we brought in David Pollack (a formidable connoisseur who works at Williamsburg beer den Spuyten Duyvil) to guide an eleven-person panel of untrained but enthusiastic drinking aficionados through a tasting of 21 beers in five categories.” (Note that I disagree with at least several of the panel’s conclusions.) [#]
■ Roast Turkey with Quince Glaze: I make the same thing every year for Thanksgiving (turkey brined with honey, lemon and bay leaves, Mom’s sausage stuffing, etc.) but still like seeing what other recipes are out there. [#]
■ “Depending on who’s showing up at the feast, Thanksgiving can go in many directions. The blend of personalities can range from toxic to sublime. The food can be breathtaking or comic, and the wine, well, the more the merrier, though sometimes the less said about it the better. We on the Dining section’s wine panel experience Thanksgiving no differently, except that we celebrate it a few weeks early in hopes of solving this knotty problem.” [#]
■ “If his experiment with splitting photons actually works, says University of Washington physicist John Cramer, the next step will be to test for quantum “retrocausality.” That’s science talk for saying he hopes to find evidence of a photon going backward in time.” [#]
November 16, 2006
■ “I asked several bloggers about their most popular, or one of their most popular, blog posts - the kind that made an impact on people, had skyrocketing traffic numbers, or triggered a meme or changes. Here are their answers:” [#]
November 13, 2006
■ “I’m sure you get training in your craft, and I understand it’s difficult, pointless work, but if you can’t skywrite with good kerning WHAT IS THE POINT? If your skywriting is badly kerned, you lose. WE ALL LOSE. Do you understand?” I greatly enjoy knowing websites like this exist. [#]
November 10, 2006
■ “Under the pilot, 10 experienced trademark lawyers with good job-performance ratings will be permitted to move anywhere in the continental United States and work from home.” [#]
■ “Still, $2 bill usage is increasing, with banking and currency experts not certain what is fueling the surge.” This fascinates me, in part, because as a rather geeky youngster, I was enthralled with $2 bills. There was something oddly enjoyable about the double-take cashiers would give me when I tried to pay with them. [#]
November 8, 2006
■ “Locksport International is proud to provide a simple, visual guide to lock picking. It is our hope that beginners will find this useful in learning the basic skills of picking pin tumbler locks.” [#]
■ “Few people know that the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is the ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’ novels. You overspend on one, and, just when you begin to dig yourself out, the next installment comes along. Public libraries began during the Depression as a government measure against this very problem.” [#]
November 1, 2006
■ The Value of a New York Dollar Uhhhh — upshot: The Big Apple is dang expensive. [#]
October 26, 2006
■ Dear Santa, please check out the attached website before heading to my house this year … [#]
■ 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived Barbie, St. Nick, the Marlboro Man … hey, wait, no Optimus Prime? Anyway, you can get the book here. [#]
October 23, 2006
■ I’m cynical enough that I don’t necessarily believe that workplaces like these actually do make workers more productive … but, dang, they have to be a lot of fun to toil away the day in. [#]
October 9, 2006
■ “I will respond to questions and comments as time permits, but if you want to take issue with any position expressed here, you first have to answer this question:What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?” This guy uses that statement on each page of his website; sometimes I think the entire Internet would be a better place if such a statement was on every page. [#]