June 2010

  • Internet Laws: Poe's Law

    By lisala on 6/24/10 7:23pm
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    Not the law about poetry formulated by American poet Edgar Allan Poe; that law was about the proper length of a poem ("The unit of poetry must be fixed by the reader's capacity of attention, and . . . the limits of a poem must accord with the limits of a single movement of intellectual apprehension and emotional exaltation"), but the law about parody and religion discussion on the Internet. The initial formulation by Nathan Poe took place in a discussion thread on August 11, 2005 at Christian Forums.Com. You'll note that the first version refers only to Creationism, but that the final, and most cited version refers to fundamentalism in the sense of all versions of religious fundamentalism:

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  • Internet Meme: Pancake Bunny

    By lisala on 6/22/10 4:00pm
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    A Japanese photographer named Hironori Akutagawa had a pet rabbit named Oolong. In May of 1999 Akutagawa began to take pictures of Oolong and posted them to his Website. He also trained Oolong to balance a variety of objects on the rabbit's head. The photos really are charming; you can see Oolong playing outside, sleeping, and yes, balancing objects on his head. Oolong had regular excursions outdoors, and even liked to play in the snow.

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  • New York Times Standards Guru Bans the word Tweet

    By lisala on 6/15/10 1:41pm
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    There are times when those who are prescriptive (and pompous) about language end up looking really stupid. Here's a case in point: Phil Corbett, the New York Times Standards Editor, the guy charged with establishing acceptable linguistic and journalist ethics at The Gray Lady, sent out a memo to Times staffers last week in which he rendered the word Tweet, in the context of referring to the 140 character posts sent to the Twitter micro blogging service, as verbotten. The memo was leaked to the blog The Awl, so we have it to parse, in all its glory. In the memo, Corbett instructs:

    Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, "tweet" has not yet achieved the status of standard English. And standard English is what we should use in news articles.

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