Found this on CBS website, linked from WIRED blog.

A Nation Of Potty Mouths

A Brief History Of Swear Words In America

July 23, 2006

(CBS) It all started with “Gone with the Wind” and Rhett’s not-so-fond adieu: “Frankly ,my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

His vulgarity was shocking at the time, but damn, that was nothing compared to what passes for entertainment today, where a movie is named “Meet the Fockers” and every Sunday night we invite “Desperate Housewives” into our homes, comments CBS News correspondent Steve Hartman.

Heck, even our born-again president swears, or did at least once that we know of. (Read the article)

Comments(0)

I found this article on Google Groups.
This is a great article because this is exactly the attitude that people give Web Design. They just assume that it can be done. I Love this analogy!

If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one. (Read the article)

Comments(1)

Is the web making us illiterate?
(Hello Cuil, er, Quill, er, Kool)

Posted by Chris Matyszczyk
July 28, 2008 12:50 PM PDT original article

The web is helping our children read more. Or less. Or, well, maybe it depends on what you call reading. Because if it’s got spelling mistakes or words no dictionary has caught up with yet, then it’s not really reading, is it?

The New York Times yesterday hosted a spirited debate on the subject. Parents, dyslexics, professors, even children chipped in with their muscular views.

Subtly showing its hand, the Times made sure the article was a very long one. Because, like many other bastions of journalism and literature, it is a newspaper that chooses to uphold certain standards.
(Read the article)

Comments(0)

Original article by the New York Times:

Literacy Debate: Online, R U Really Reading?

Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
The Simses of Old Greenwich, Conn., gather to read after dinner. Their means of text delivery is divided by generation.

BEREA, Ohio   Books are not Nadia Konyk’s thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows an interest.

Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer here in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.

A slender, chatty blonde who wears black-framed plastic glasses, Nadia checks her e-mail and peruses myyearbook.com, a social networking site, reading messages or posting updates on her mood. She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters. But she spends most of her time on quizilla.com or fanfiction.net, reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies.

Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nadia, who gets A’s and B’s at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Ms. Konyk said, “I’m just pleased that she reads something anymore.”
(Read the article)

Comments(0)

Leave it to me to find random trivia about color…

• Chromadynamics is the study of the physiological effects caused by observing color. Scientists have proven that certain colors effect vision, hearing, respiration and circulation.
• A year-long study at the University of California helped dispel the belief that canines are colorblind. Three greyhounds, Flip, Gypsy and Retina, had no trouble telling red from blue, but could not distinguish yellow, green or orange.
• A test conducted at the American Psychology Association Convention found that the most favored jelly beans are black and red, and the least favored are white. This shows the perception of strength and weakness based on color extends into the area of taste.

(Read the article)

Comments(0)