President Barack obama and first lady Michelle Obama took part in a painting project at a school in Washington to celebrate the legacy of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday. It was also Michelle Obama’s birthday. (Jan. 17)
Continue reading …As America rails against inflammatory rhetoric in the wake of the Tucson shootings, it’s worth asking: Would Martin Luther King Jr. have been silenced in this political environment? “Even King’s most memorable speech—the ‘I Have a Dream’ address at the March on Washington—was nothing if not a figurative…
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Clicking your way through Ulysses and having a hard time remembering just what it is Bloom ate for breakfast or, indeed, just what he did on the beach? Don’t blame James Joyce, blame your Kindle ! A Princeton study entitled “Fortune favors the bold ( and the Italicized )” (their emphasis) has shown that readers retain information more reliably when they are challenged with so-called “disfluent” fonts (like the top one above). This flies in the face of the belief that easy to read text is easier to remember and should give typographical titans something else to ponder when placing text upon a page character by character. Now, what does this have to do with e-readers? Most are stuck with standard fonts that cannot be changed and fall squarely in the “fluent” category — they’re so easy to read your brain spins down. The solution is, of course, to add more and broader font support to the devices, something we’d love to see regardless of scientific merit. Until that comes to pass try holding your Kindle at odd angles or squinting. Maybe that’ll help. Or, you could just put down the Proust and pick up some Clancy. Princeton study shows that easy fonts make things harder to remember originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 15:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Want to snatch up some Facebook shares? Tough luck, if you’re an American. Goldman Sachs is limiting the private offering of up to $1.5 billion in shares to non-US clients only. In a statement to the Wall Street Journal , Goldman says the “intense media attention” surrounding the deal “might…
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No other company is as dependent on one man as Apple is on Steve Jobs. That’s the perception anyway, so when the Apple CEO announced another medical leave, the murmurs about the fate of the world’s second-most valuable company began immediately. The reality is that there are very capable people running the show, and in the coming year they’re expected to announce a new iPad, a new iPhone and plenty of other ways to redistribute your wealth in their direction.
Continue reading …Monica Crowley Claims There Are Equal Levels of Vile, Vicious and Violent Rhetoric Coming From the Left as the Right
January 17, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media When Monica Crowley puts up the same kind of list with supposed liberal violence or rhetoric that Digby linked in her post here with what we’ve seen from the right since they’ve lost their damned minds after President Obama got elected, then maybe I’ll take her flame-throwing false equivalencies seriously. Crowley decided to play the “all sides are equal” game on PBS’s The McLaughlin Group and did one major job of projection here. CROWLEY: I think it was a good, well modulated speech and I think the tone was perfectly appropriate. And I do think this was a presidential moment for him because, really for the first time in two years, he spoke on behalf of all of the American people, not just on behalf of his party, not just on behalf of the left, but really spoke on behalf of all of us. So I think it was an important moment. I do think he missed two opportunities. The first one is, I think he waited too long to deliver the message. Another memorial service was scheduled for Wednesday, but he could have come out on Sunday or Monday with a message to his own side telling them to cut it out when they were drawing this very sort of malicious and vicious lies that somehow conservative talk or our political climate have caused this particular act of violence which even he admitted later did not. He let his side run wild for days with this malicious lie. The second thing is, I think even though he did give an effective beat down to his own side by saying this does not… there is no direct correlation between this act of violence by a lone psychopath and our political climate. I think he stopped full of a full rebuke of the complete irresponsibility of folks on his own side that still continue to try to link this act or other things with political talk on the conservative side. Eleanor mentioned Roger Ailes at Fox and Sarah Palin’s web site, but I would like to see the left take the lead in moderating their talk, because for every one example you can give from the right, there were plenty of examples on the left of the most vile, vicious and even violent kind of rhetoric coming out of the left.
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I have been consistently blown away by the quality of the submissions for the LifeEdited project. It is now the review period where readers can vote for their favourite project. There is so much to chose from, even dpet’s homage to Daniel Libeskind happening here…. Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …A vial holding the blood of Pope John Paul II will be installed in a Polish church as a relic, the AP reports. The vial will form part of the altar at a Krakow church due to open in May, the month of the late Polish pope’s beatification. The city’s…
Continue reading …Universal Music and Sony releasing singles same day they hit the radio, will anyone buy them?
January 17, 2011 No Comment
The humble single has been given a new shot at life, an extension to the lease on its breathing machine, a little more food in its tube. Universal Music and Sony have begun a new policy called “On Air, On Sale” that makes music singles available the same day they hit the airwaves, in theory stemming the tide of piracy by making music available legally more quickly. Of course, the number of people actually listening to those radio stations is also dwindling, and whether or not people really want to buy singles vs. entire albums these days remains to be seen. But, hey, earlier is usually better than later, right? Universal Music and Sony releasing singles same day they hit the radio, will anyone buy them? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Jan 2011 14:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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