Archive for December, 2007

Turn Smoggy Sky Blue

Sunday, December 30th, 2007

熟悉北京的朋友一定会对这篇文章深有感触:Beijing’s Olympic Quest: Turn Smoggy Sky Blue
Beijing is like an athlete trying to get into shape by walking on a treadmill yet eating double cheeseburgers at the same time.
很有趣的比喻。
有空可以读一下整个Choking on Growth的系列报道。纽约时报确实强。
Bonus video: Ari Gold featuring Sasha Allen - Where the Music Takes You

Eye chart for the leet speakers

Saturday, December 29th, 2007

看到不少用“Geek专用视力检查表”作标题的文章都指向了我这里。好奇心作祟,点过去瞧瞧是咋回事儿,结果发现一张很有趣的图。

一看图我就知道了,肯定是第一位作者在解释第5行的内容时给了这里的链接。其他转载的各位也就都链过来了。
我发觉这图我全部都能看懂,包括最底下一行小字。我还一向非常不喜欢1337的呢。OMG! WTF?
Bonus video: Jordin Sparks - Tattoo

The Facebook Problem

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

经常使用Facebook的人最近应该会注意到一个“低级错误”:

我的第一反应:肯定不是相关人员不懂基本语法,而是程序设置出了问题。果然,很快看到了Language Log给出的分析:
You can see how it came about: there’s a program that pulls the sex item (called “sex”, and not “gender”, by the way) from the user’s profile and then plugs in she/her/her, he/him/his, or they/them/their according to what it finds there. So if someone with no sex specified checks one or more boxes […]

100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know

Tuesday, December 4th, 2007

偶然间看到100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know,一声叹息。至少有一半的词我完全不认识。
The editors of the American Heritage® dictionaries have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every high school graduate should know.
The following is the entire list of 100 words:
abjure
abrogate
abstemious
acumen
antebellum
auspicious
belie
bellicose
bowdlerize
chicanery
chromosome
churlish
circumlocution
circumnavigate
deciduous
deleterious
diffident
enervate
enfranchise
epiphany
equinox
euro
evanescent
expurgate
facetious
fatuous
feckless
fiduciary
filibuster
gamete
gauche
gerrymander
hegemony
hemoglobin
homogeneous
hubris
hypotenuse
impeach
incognito
incontrovertible
inculcate
infrastructure
interpolate
irony
jejune
kinetic
kowtow
laissez faire
lexicon
loquacious
lugubrious
metamorphosis
mitosis
moiety
nanotechnology
nihilism
nomenclature
nonsectarian
notarize
obsequious
oligarchy
omnipotent
orthography
oxidize
parabola
paradigm
parameter
pecuniary
photosynthesis
plagiarize
plasma
polymer
precipitous
quasar
quotidian
recapitulate
reciprocal
reparation
respiration
sanguine
soliloquy
subjugate
suffragist
supercilious
tautology
taxonomy
tectonic
tempestuous
thermodynamics
totalitarian
unctuous
usurp
vacuous
vehement
vortex
winnow
wrought
xenophobe
yeoman
ziggurat
如果你跟我一样想寻求安慰,看看几则国外网友的留言:
Well, in my second year of college, I haven’t used/heard about 67% of those words.
I think this is […]