Today I read this headline and was confused. Here’s the history, I think:
My head hurts
I’m happy to report that Eliot Gelwan, one of my favorite bloggers, is blogging again after an unexplained hiatus that started last fall.
From NPR news:
A fence-building company in Southern California agrees to pay nearly $5 million in fines for hiring illegal immigrants. Two executives from the company may also serve jail time. The Golden State Fence Company’s work includes some of the border fence between San Diego and Mexico.
From an IM conversation with a friend whose son is about 3 years old now:
Friend: My plan is to get him playing Dungeons and Dragons when he turns 10. That way we can guarantee that we won’t have any girl problems until after he’s 18.
Me: That plan worked out for you, didn’t it?
Slate writer Jack Shafer notes that “As recently as 1980, the New York Times reserved an honored—if small—place in its pages for “bus plunge” news. Whenever buses nose-dived down mountainsides…the news wires moved accounts of the deadly tragedies, and the Times would reliably edit them down to one paragraph and publish.” In more recent times, however, the Times has been virtually free of bus plunge news.
The reason: the move from manual to digital typesettings. In the manual days, such short news items were used to fill in remaining space in columns. Nowadays, that’s not necessary. Most interesting is that many such items were written in such a way that they could be shortened even further due to space needs:
This Times plunge story, for example, filled the loose space at the end of a news column on July 21, 1964:
Bus Plunge Kills 8
LAS PALMAS, Canary Islands, July 20 (UPI)—Eight persons perished today when a small bus plunged over a 300-foot cliff into the sea near the town of Mogan. One man jumped from the vehicle before it reached the edge and was saved. All the victims were Spaniards.As typeset, this article takes up 10 lines. I assume that the copy editor who cut this piece from the AP wire included the sentences about the jumper and the victims’ nationality to maximize the makeup editors’ options. By physically snipping one sentence, the makeup editors could reduce it to a nine-line story on the fly. By snipping two, they could cork an even smaller layout hole with a six-line story.
On a related note, I can’t get the Bobs’ song Bus Plunge out of my head now.
(via Rafe Colburn)
UPDATE: This made it onto MeFi after I blogged about it. Mildly interesting thread.
This is my first Youtube post, but it’s well worth it:
A great comment on MeFi:
I love MILF’s for their tragically unavailable, deer in the headlights “What’d I do?” selves, which is suddenly-gorgeous-and-completely-spontaneous in a way that makes the angle boned, air-brushed cover girls shot from low angles seem like pitifully dry and frail waifs. Show me a girl who can sling a 40 lb two year old, a big ass purse, and a diaper bag on one arm, and reach for groceries with the other, and I’ll show you a girl who will know what the hell to do with a baby sitter, a warm bath, a bottle of wine, some good takeout and 4 hours in a quiet room of a respectable hotel.
She’ll know, but 99.995% of the time, God love her, she won’t go, and on her typically wistful common sense lies the hope of civilization. But the hope that springs eternal in every man’s heart, that feeds love and lust and occasional wonder, is ministered to by the other .005%, who make grocery store day dreams on short odds a worthwhile endeavor.
I’ve long been convinced that developers who name subdivisions and shopping centers simply select ‘one from column A’ and ‘one from column B’ from lists of generic names. Well, I’m not the only one who thinks that. This blogger actually made such a chart for Denver.
This blogger also notes that the less desirable the subdivision, the grander the name. I’ve noticed these same trends in our own neighborhood. We live in the original development using the name ‘Blackhawk’: the Fairways of Blackhawk. Our neighborhood does indeed have a golf course in the middle of it, which was originally its big selling point, so the name is pretty descriptive.
But then several other Blackhawk neighborhoods popped up nearby, and the names begin to get more generic: The Meadows of Blackhawk, The Park at Blackhawk and Lakeside at Blackhawk. The lake that’s in Lakeside is a small pond. Go figure.
The most recent addition has the cheapest homes and is furthest off the beaten track. Therefore, it has the grandest name: The Estates at Blackhawk.
At least the word ‘Blackhawk’ is somewhat appropriate to the area: high plains with lots of redtail hawks and owls. What gets me are the totally inappropriate names, namely any subdivision or shopping center in Central Texas containing the word ‘Brook’ or ‘Meadow’. We have creeks and fields, no brooks and meadows.
Over on ask.metafilter, someone posted this question:
What’s the appeal of Steve Wozniak?
He’s everywhere these days and many nerds love him. To me, he seems like manboy who has managed to ride his Segway Polo-playing well beyond his 15 minutes of fame. He preoccupies himself with toys, is an awkward conversationalist (see here) and generally resembles a larger, mouth-breathing version of The 40 Year Old Virgin.
Seriously… what’s the deal?
The question got lots of interesting commetns, but even more awesome is the fact that Steve himself commented.
