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.
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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.”
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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.

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I read this article on the Pantone site.
fun and useful color tidbits

• When calibrating a monitor, make sure that the monitor has been on for at least 30 minutes before making any adjustments, as this allows the CRT tube to warm up and the colors to settle.

• Improve the luster of your metallics: remember to specify liquid ink when working with metallic colors to achieve optimal results. New liquid inks containing intermediate-sized pigment particles provide higher levels of brilliance than conventional paste inks, which generally contain smaller particles.

• Some pigments are more lightfast than others. This is extremely important when choosing colors for printed material destined for exposure to sunlight, such as outdoor signage and window displays. Seek guidance from your commercial printer or PANTONE Licensed Printing Ink Manufacturer to mitigate concerns.

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I read this article on the Pantone site.
Which I guess basically sucks for, just me…(and maybe Dad…seeing how the rest of y’all have blue eyes)

OUCH!

If you have dark brown eyes, the news is bad. You are more apt to experience pain resulting from dental cavity preparation than a blue-eyed person. In a study conducted by Dr. Phillip R N. Sutton at the University of Melbourne Dental School in Australia, it was shown that the subjects with the least reaction to pain had blue, green, or hazel eyes.

Pain intensified slightly in light and medium brown eyes, with a marked reaction by those subjects with dark brown eyes.

Seeing (or not seeing) colors

Protans are commonly called “red-defective.” they confuse certain reds, grays and bluish-greens and have a reduced sensitivity in the red end of the visible spectrum. Deutans are commonly called “green-defective;” they confuse certain greens, grays and purplish reds.

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