Friday, September 30, 2005
bakku-shan (Japanese) - a girl who appears pretty from behind but not from the front
Kummerspeck (German): grief bacon- it is the word that describes the excess weight gained from emotion-related overeating.
Drachenfutter (German): Literally translated as dragon fodder - are the peace offerings made by guilty husbands to their wives.
Aviador - (Spanish speakers in central [...]
Friday, September 30, 2005
“You live in the big here. Wherever you live, your tiny spot is deeply intertwined within a larger place, imbedded fractal-like into a whole system called a watershed, which is itself integrated with other watersheds into a tightly interdependent biome. At the ultimate level, your home is a cell in an organism called a planet. [...]
Friday, September 30, 2005
The population of Russia is collapsing. Abortions outnumber live births. The population of 143 million could plummet to 77 million by the middle of this century. Their population decalined by 500,000 people last year alone.
It is a “battelfield loss rate” applied to the whole population.
What worse is that despite decalrin this a [...]
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Came across this sample whilst listing to Dave Seaman’s superb “Back to Mine” CD.
"One problem in human existence is the tendency to repeat,
feeling, thinking action- again and again and again
in the same kind of looping cycle.
It is as if one is controlled by a set of loops of tape.
On these tapes are recorded what [...]
Thursday, September 22, 2005
“All army personnel involved in the dramatic blaze suffered only minor injuries” Channel 4 News
“None of the soldiers was seriously injured and all were back on duty yesterday” The Guardian
I was deeply relieved to read that the three soldiers who *looked* like they might have been seriously burned are in fact fine and the MoD [...]
Thursday, September 22, 2005
My friend and collaborator Jason Bates has launched a new weblog that will definitely be worth subscribing to or checking regularly.
http://www.canoworms.info
What is it about?
…exploring the assumptions hidden in the way that people do business in the “corporate world”, and investigating ways in which new assumptions can lead to increased performance. It’s about useful lies, [...]
Monday, September 5, 2005
Interesting list of Customer Service hints, tips and principles via an CS experts weblog: Customer Service Tools.
Monday, September 5, 2005
From The Guardian:
The kindness of strangers
Despite switching disciplines - from maths to law to history then the sciences - Robert Trivers profoundly influenced evolutionary biology with his theory that our sense of justice has Darwinian explanations. But he suffered severe mental breakdowns and his career at Harvard was dogged by controversy. After 15 years [...]
Monday, September 5, 2005
From Fast Company:
Is Your Boss a Psychopath?
Odds are you’ve run across one of these characters in your career. They’re glib, charming, manipulative, deceitful, ruthless — and very, very destructive. And there may be lots of them in America’s corner offices.
Monday, September 5, 2005
Is Jojoba Smurf.
Via Smurf Name Generator