2009/07/12

In performances by comedians in the USA it is not uncommon for a member of the audience to interrupt the performance by shouting a comment. The comedian must respond to this or lose face. This article discusses some of the responses that are currently in use,, and defines the main categories of insult that are used....

2009/02/26

“When an English speaker doesn’t understand a word of what someone says, he or she states that it’s ‘Greek to me’. When a Hebrew speaker encounters this difficulty, it ’sounds like Chinese’. I’ve been told the Korean equivalent is ’sounds like Hebrew’,” says Yuval Pinter (here on the excellent Languagelog). Which begs the question: “Has there been a study of this phrase phenomenon, relating different languages on some kind of Directed Graph?” Well apparently there has, even if only perfunctorily, and the result is this cartogram....

2010/09/04

The reality is that management by targets was always going to run into trouble. Wherever there are targets, there are a series of unintended consequences, many of which hit our headlines on a daily basis. From a systems thinking perspective, targets are actually tools and have long been in the frame for damaging improvement, preventing learning and sowing disorder. Here’s why....

2010/09/04

KeyWack is a game for people with babies and small children who like to sit at their parent’s computer and bang the keyboard. KeyWack prevents babies from accidentally opening most programs or documents, and makes banging even more fun by drawing shapes and playing random sounds as the keys are whacked. You can also click with the mouse to place a shape at a particular location....

2010/09/04

(Supposedly) an article from the 50's that describes how a good housewife should behave