It took me forever to parse this Reuters headline: “Gay equals fourth-fastest 100 after near miss.”
Is it about equal rights for gay people? Are there a hundred of them that are really fast? Did some historian just figure out that gay people with equal rights just hit the hundred-member milestone and that this is some kind of speed record? Were they really close, nearly lost it, but then made it?
Oh. Wait. The article is about the Olympics:
World champion Tyson Gay equaled the fourth fastest 100 meters of all time when he clocked an American record 9.77 seconds in the quarter-finals at the U.S. Olympic trials on Saturday.
Whoops. Does anybody else have this kind of problem figuring out what headlines mean sometimes?
June 29th, 2008 by jon
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Likewise, as the character Dierdra Vaal, one of the deans of Eve University, an in-game corporation dedicated to training new pilots (as players are known), Valentijn Geirnaert, a 23-year-old student in The Hague, has often been in conflict with Goonswarm members like Bane Glorious, the almost erudite Goonswarm member played by Alex Kravitz, a 22-year-old technician for a pharmacy company near Minneapolis.
I was super freaked out to see an Eve character portrait on the front page of the NYTimes website. Even better, Eve Uni gets named dropped. It’s a pretty decent article all around.
June 28th, 2008 by drew
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This is a great photo, and an example of how well thought out Obama’s staging is. The colors just pop - they made that sign to work with her suit and his tie and it works great. It’s little things like this that always made his campaign stand out while hers just looked amateurish.
June 27th, 2008 by drew
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This seems like the Wrong Way To Do This. Prizes do encourage research, but wouldn’t it be better to pour this money into the NSF to encourage a much broader research program? No company or lab can really get work done all based on the hope that they’re going to get there first.
The obvious exception is the DARPA Grand Challenge. I don’t know why schools work on that. I guess they get lots of corporate sponsorship money? But how do they fund their grad students that work on it?
June 24th, 2008 by drew
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Heh. This is pretty great. After all the Hot Coffee kerfluffle, it turns out NO ONE CARES, but the plaintiff’s attorneys are still claiming insane fees - more than the settlement itself.
June 24th, 2008 by drew
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For some reason I landed on the GOP’s website today, and I was surprised by a number of things.
- The GOP seems to have adopted Obama’s use of Gotham as their primary font. Its use in the donate button is particularly egregious - not only do they use the same face, it’s colored very similarly, down to the glass-style two tone shading that is so in vogue these days. (See also this great clip from the Helvetica movie about Gotham’s inspirations. I suspect we will think of Gotham as Obama’s font for quite a while to come.)
- They’ve taken Obama’s main design element, the cycling stories on the main page. While this isn’t rocket science, Obama’s page is one of the very few places I’ve seen it done quite like this. The GOP’s designers don’t even try to make it look different by moving the story list - it’s pretty much just a direct copy.
- Jon pointed out that their copywriters are idiots, too. Check out the inappropriate possessive on the top story. Oops.
- They’ve also jacked his “glowing states” motif in their bizarre campaign to remind people how long it’s been since Obama has visited Iraq. It seems ill-advised to try to bash someone on something that he’s quickly pointed out he’s looking forward to doing.
- Obama’s face appears on the front page of the GOP.com site at least three times. John McCain? Zero. So much for positive campaigning, huh?
June 22nd, 2008 by drew
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Oh boy. A $500 Ethernet cable. The best part?
Denon’s 1.5 meter (59 in.) ultra premium Denon Link cable was designed for the audio enthusiast. Made from high purity copper wire and high performance connection parts, the AK-DL1 will bring out all the nuances in digital audio reproduction from any of our Denon DVD players with the Denon Link feature. Attention to detail when building this cable was used by empoying [sic] high quality insulation, tin-bearing alloy shielding and woven jacketing to reduce vibration and to add durability. Additionally, signal directional markings are provided for optimum signal transfer. Rounded plug levers help prevent breakage.
(Emphasis added).
IT’S DIGITAL. THE WHOLE POINT IS THAT IT CUTS OUT NOISE INTRODUCED INTO THE CHANNEL. Also, it’s a $500 Ethernet cable. I’m also amused by the claim about reducing vibration, which has absolutely nothing to do with electrical conduction at this scale. Furthermore, I’m not aware of many living rooms suffering from serious vibration problems. Perhaps our apartment is just dull. Also, I’m pretty sure the claim about “signal directional markings” is some combination of fiction and abject insanity.
To be fair, Denon isn’t really alone in this market. I’ve previously run into a long list of products designed to prey on the “audiophile” market. Debunking bogus claims from “audiophile” product manufacturers also seems to be a thing people do.
I’m not sure what it is about the audiophile market, but it seems to have attracted snake oil salesmen like no other demographic I’m aware of. Are there other analogues out there?
Thanks to Zach for the link.
June 14th, 2008 by jon
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Note: Please do not join this group if you are not “Hillary Clinton Supporters in Recovery”. This group is for those of us who wants some peace and quiet to ourselves, to discuss and share our current emotions, and to be with people who share similar views and thoughts as us.
Do not join this group to insult our members or to pester us to vote for your candidate. Our vote is our own to decide. No one can tell us how to decide. If any presidential candidate wants our vote then he needs to earn them, just like Hillary has earned our votes.
Failure to respect this group and its wish will result in a permanent ban from the group and a report to the Facebook administrators!
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“Hillary Clinton Supporters in Recovery” Facebook group description
Drama bait!
Come on, everybody. Let’s all get familiar with (a) the basics of the Internet and (b) playground politics. I’m all about not being a jerk, but this seems to me to be a giant “kick me” sign.
June 8th, 2008 by jon
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