Category: words mean things (Page 215 of 223)

The flap over the Palm Beach butterfly ballot just reinforces my long-held belief that not enough thought is put into design at any level. When’s the last time you stepped into a hotel bathroom shower and knew instantly how to 1) turn on the water, 2) make it hotter or colder, and 3) turn on the shower? I thought so.

One of my favorite books, The Design of Everyday Things, is fascinating reading about doors, phones, shower assemblies, alarm clocks and other stuff that should be easy to use and understand but isn’t. No doubt the new edition will include ballots.

While I was an e-mail administrator at my previous job, urban legend e-mails sprouted like kudzu and were just as difficult to stamp out. One of my favorites was the one about KFC raising headless, legless chicken blobs in giant Matrix-like factories. Well, apparently they found the head.

Hammacher Schlemmer has brought to market what surely is one of the signs of the consumerist apocalypse: for $20, they will sell you a plastic tong-like contraption whose sole purpose is to form perfect snowballs. Read that last sentence again. Think I’m joking? Follow the link and the ugly truth will be revealed to your horrified eyes.

How the Grinch Stole Election Day: an amazingly funny and literate parody featuring everyone’s favorite green grump.

“The wonder of this race is not that it boiled down to several hundred votes in the state of Florida. It’s that it was a horse race to begin with. You have unparalleled prosperity, peace and a candidate who’s much more experienced running his fourth national campaign. And he blew it, in my judgment. It’s pretty deeply ingrained in Democrats that he blew this thing to an empty suit, an intellectually lazy frat rat who just happens to be the governor of Texas.”
-Garry South, strategist for California Gov. Gray Davis

Can you say statewide hand recount? I thought you could.

I just added a link to my photo page in the left navigation bar. Take a look and let me know what you think. I’m just getting into both digital and film photography, and I love it. I’m also going to highlight photo sites on the web I like.

Word of the day (or the year): chad

And I thought getting that new digital camera was being extravagant.

Newest scary made-up world on the web: “merchantainment,” coined by Ralph Lauren’s son David at this year’s Comdex about their new site, Polo.com.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.