Tag: memes

  • WSJ 'Birdfeeders bad' meme deconstructed

    A recent forwarded newspaper article singing the ills of birdfeeders had us going for a while. If we had read more closely or paid more attention to the source (the Wall Street Journal), we may have more easily seen it in the light presented by Laura Erickson’s Wall Street Journal Bird Feeding Article Distorts Truth.…

  • Origin of 'shipper'?

    Reading a Buffy spoiler fan website today, I encountered an unfamiliar term: shipper. I know what slash fiction is (having stumbled on a book about k/s fanfic in the Princeton library a good 20 years ago), and I gather a shipper is someone who either likes to write slash fiction or who at least likes…

  • First Evil gets a blog

    Fans of Buffy will probably get a kick out of The First’s Journal. Apparently the First Evil was broken up enough about (SPOILER) the death of her ur-vampire pet Turok-Han that he/she/it created a memorial page for the creature. “Beloved minion. Devoted pet. He raved and grred. A lot.”

  • Ethics for software developers

    Dave Winer’s First Essay of the Year sums up some of the themes he has refined over the last year, partly in discussion/debate with Larry Lessig. One passage that particularly caught my attention was a brief discussion of the ethical issues involved in software development: I strongly believe there are ethical rules, we just have…

  • Looks like I'm a man

    You’ll hate this test but it gets more accurate with each submission. It was 86% sure I’m a man, close to my own level of certainty. A somewhat girly man perhaps (fairly near the middle on the linear scale — must be that preference for a blue bedroom over white), but a man nonetheless. Hear…

  • Looks like I'm a man

    You’ll hate this test but it gets more accurate with each submission. It was 86% sure I’m a man, close to my own level of certainty. A somewhat girly man perhaps (fairly near the middle on the linear scale — must be that preference for a blue bedroom over white), but a man nonetheless. Hear…