I increased [my boss’s] sugar intake by one spoon at a time and generally left a couple of days in between changes. I kept going until I was bored. I guess part of me wanted her to notice, but she never did. Not even the amount of sugar we were getting through. Anyway, I eventually got her up to 23 spoons of sugar in a cup of tea — yeah, 23! She never said a word and always finished the cup.
Reminds me of some of the stuff that Jim does to Dwight on The Office. At my first job out of college, some coworkers of mine and I found a Mac OS extension that decreased the size of the screen by a pixel or two each time the computer booted. I don’t think we ever installed it on anyone’s computer; just imagining the reaction was good enough.
Even though it’s a history of the telegraph, this book is always relevant. The rise of the 1830s communication device continues to be a fantastic metaphor for each new Internet technology that comes along, from e-mail to IM to Facebook to Twitter.
This is a documentary about vogueing, and the extremely refined and detailed aesthetic sensibilities it reflects, shot in New York City around Chelsea, the Meatpacking District, and Harlem in the mid- to late-80s. The city has changed in dramatic ways since then, to say the least. The characters of the film are complete outsiders with, at the same time, a deep understanding of the world they are outside of.
The photographer insists that the effect was not created by the camera and was visible to the naked eye. The early consensus in the forums is that the photo was taken through a double-paned window.
Not sure what the proper response to this news is.
Twentieth Century Fox is resuscitating its “Alien” franchise. The studio has hired Jon Spaihts to write a prequel that has Ridley Scott attached to return as director. Spaihts got the job after pitching the studio and Scott Free, which will produce the film.
The film is set up to be a prequel to the groundbreaking 1979 film that Scott directed. It will precede that film, in which the crew of a commercial towing ship returning to Earth is awakened and sent to respond to a distress signal from a nearby planetoid. The crew discovers too late that the signal generated by an empty ship was meant to warn them.
Yes!? No!? What? Uh-uh. Zzzz. Great! Not again. That’s it man, game over man, game over!
The 140-character limit of Twitter posts was guided by the 160-character limit established by the developers of SMS. However, there is nothing new about new technology imposing restrictions on articulation. During the late 19th-century telegraphy boom, some carriers charged extra for words longer than 15 characters and for messages longer than 10 words. Thus, the cheapest telegram was often limited to 150 characters.
Schott also shares about 100 words from The Anglo-American Telegraphic Code, a code book that reduced long phrases into single words in order to cut down on telegraphic transmission costs. The full book is available for reading on Google and it includes over 27,000 code words on 460 pages!
1. The Night of the Hunter, Laughton 2. Apocalypse Now, Coppola 3. Sunrise, Murnau 4. Black Narcissus, Powell & Pressburger 5. L’avventura, Antonioni 6. The Searchers, Ford 7. The Magnificent Ambersons, Welles 8. The Seventh Seal , Bergman 9. L’atalante, Vigo 10. Rio Bravo, Hawks
Lots of notable titles missing…and only a couple post-1980s films make the list.
Although it may sound ridiculous to say “Don’t take it personally” when your husband tells you he no longer loves you, sometimes that’s exactly what you have to do.
The indicator I prefer is the Hot Waitress Index: The hotter the waitresses, the weaker the economy. In flush times, there is a robust market for hotness. Selling everything from condos to premium vodka is enhanced by proximity to pretty young people (of both sexes) who get paid for providing this service. That leaves more-punishing work, like waiting tables, to those with less striking genetic gifts. But not anymore.
The same article also mentions the Overeducated Cabbie Index, the Squeegee Man Apparition Index, and the Speed at Which Contractors Return Calls Index.
“It’s a prolonged purchase,” said Marshal Cohen, senior analyst with the consumer research firm NPD Group. “It’s like trying to drive your car an extra 10,000 miles.”
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