Wikipedia has a wonderful explaination of the history and usage of puns. Walter Redfern (in Puns, Blackwell, London, 1984) succinctly said: “To pun is to treat homonyms as synonyms“. They explain the different varieties of puns. (Homographic , Heteronymic, Homophonic and Double-sound. “The pun is mightier than the sword.” – James Joyce “The eleventh pun…
Howard Stern is leaving free radio and moving his show to Sirius satellite radio. I used to listen to the show alot from 1990-1995. After meeting Katie, I started listening more and more to NPR. NPR is very rewarding and fills my head will knowledge that I cherish, but NPR does not make me laugh.…
Look at this article about Iran’s President. He basically says, “Who cares about WWII? Israel is our land and you took it. Move Israel to Alaska and we will stop being angry at the West. And these are the guys who are building nuclear weapons. One question, Wouldn’t it have been smarter for Bush to…
Originally in this article, a guy was outraged that a Wikipedia entry had his biography linking him to the Kennedy Assassination. Then later, in this article, this guy admits he did it as a joke. He said he didn’t know Wikipedia was used as a serious reference tool. This is hilarious to me. I have…
Konfabulator has been relaunched as Yahoo Widgets. Very interesting technology. Easy to create, small and useful. I wonder if Yahoo can make it catch on. I wouldn’t be surprised if Google comes out with something similar. And Microsoft is already experimenting with “Gadgets”, but who knows what will catch on. I suggest to Adobe/Macromedia to…
Both Katie and I are not jazzed up for the holidays this year. There are many factors as to why, but none seem to make perfect sense. New House, new neighborhood. Renting, not owning. New School for Ethan, no school yet for Jared or Matt. House is smaller than previous homes. General family life is…
Quick article from Psychology Today. June, 2003. This is exactly what I was discussing with Katie. Our brains react more strongly to negative stimulus. Having a positive attitude is harder than having a negative one. This is the exact opposite of “It takes more muscles to frown than to smile.” Fascinating.
Grouper 2.0 beta was just released. I actually interviewed there over a year ago. They seem to be developing well. The newest version emphasizes personal video sharing. Video is an interesting area in that despite being pretty cool, it hasn’t caught on the way I thought it would. Just look at video telephony. Despite the…
I installed Microsoft Streets and Strips 2006. Every complaint I had about 2005 has been fixed. They introduced voice directions, keyboard shortcuts, dynamic zooming, aliased lines, and much more. Bravo Microsoft. Good software. Someone asked me why I blog. He thought it showed some level of egotism. Although I certainly have a strong ego, I…
Donald Norman wrote a few lines in his book, Emotional Design, about Instant Messenger. He proposed that the main function of IM is to provide emotional connection between people and not to communicate specific information. Most of the IM traffic around the world can be summed up with the following exchange: Person A: Hey. Person…
Police were called to a daycare where a three-year-old was resisting a rest. Sorry, no time for more.
Once again, I find myself in Las Vegas waiting to board a flight to Dallas. Being away from the family stinks. Jared’s tummy still hurts. I miss them already and the week has barely begun. I am on hold on my cell phone, trying to type with one hand. I do not want to be…
Jared has been sick for the last 40 hours or so. He says his tummy hurts. He kept repeating it, “My tummy hurts, my tummy hurts!?” I told him, “I know sweetie.” He replied, “Listen to my WORDS! MY TUMMY HURTS!” I felt so bad for him. In Talbots Toy and Cyclery, he threw up…
Ethan’s bike was stolen from his school the other day. Katie and I have decided to wait until Solstice to replace it. So I said to Ethan, “Mommy and Daddy spoke to Santa…”. Ethan interrupted with a long discussion about whether or not Santa is real. I told him that Santa is a concept like…