Excerpt
Wired 13.11: The Mystery of the Green Menace
It’s been celebrated as a muse and banned as a poison. Now an obsessed microbiologist has cracked the code for absinthe – and distilled his own.
Archives for October 2005
Say hi to the new theme
As a tip o’ the hat to good ol’ Marketing 101 — that is, if it ain’t sellin’ change the labelin’ — and rather than create any decent/clever/relevant content, other than links, for the blog, I took some time to install/configure/customize a new theme for the site. Nifty, ain’t it? :) Check out the archives link (top of the page) — it’s all generated on-the-fly. Also, supposedly, (registered) users can create (or maybe it’s just add) ‘tags’ to posts, although I have yet to explore this feature to see if/how it works. If anyone wants a tag created, and can’t do so yourself, I’ll more than likely be happy do so. (And, of course, if you can create tags, I’ll happily delete any with offensive names.)
Feel free to leave comments on this post with your opinion(s) of the new look. Comments on new posts are open for seven days.
Speaking of comments, I upgraded SpamKarma (the plugin for helping cut down on/eliminate comment spam) so if you have any trouble posting comments please let me know (jbala at jimbala dot net).
100 Most Often Mispronounced Words
I tend to be pretty picky about this sort of thing. This example is news to me, though. Check out the list for some others that might surprise you.
Excerpt:
100 Most Often Mispronounced Words
often: We have mastered the spelling of this word so well, its spelling influences the pronunciation: DON’T pronounce the [t]! This is an exception to the rule that spelling helps pronunciation.
Bugged games from World of Warcraft makers Blizzard?
Excerpt:
Boing Boing: Bugged games from World of Warcraft makers Blizzard?
Breaking the rules isn’t nice, but this is a game, people — a game! It’s not a matter of national security; nobody is going to get killed except the stupid video game avatars. Do you realize the government would have to have a warrant to get the kind of information Blizzard claims it has the right to suck out of your computer to stop cheaters? Doesn’t that seem a wee bit wrong?
The blogger who loathed me
Excerpt:
Salon.com… Books | The blogger who loathed me
To be clear: Some bloggers, such as Wendy McClure, also happen to be terrific writers. They use their blogs to undertake the honest labor of self-reflection. The improvisational form activates their love of the language. More power to them.
But there are also bloggers who […] are simply too lazy and insecure to risk making art, to release their deepest emotions onto a blank page with no promise of recognition. So they launch a blog instead.
I can understand the temptation. It’s one I feel every day. […] horrifies me precisely because he represents certain desires that live inside of me: the desire to avoid the solitude and humiliation of sustained creative work, to choose grievance over mercy, to find a shortcut to fame.