« November 2007 | Main | January 2008 »
Found via VSL: Newseum is a great site that lets you quickly browse the front pages of newspapers from across the country (and around the world even).
The Lewiston Tribune (in Lewiston, Idaho) just had a front page that you can see on Newseum with a big photo of a guy hanging holiday decorations outside his store. Right below that photo, the same guy wearing the same clothes is caught on a surveillance camera stealing a wallet. Hilarious:
Good explication via VSL:
In Thailand, ghosts aren’t relegated to ancient burial grounds or campfire stories — they’re a vital part of the culture. And it’s not just folklore: After the tsunami that wrecked much of southern Thailand in 2004, John Burdett wrote a New York Times piece about the Thai people’s concerns not only with rebuilding but with the sudden onslaught of ghosts. With the membrane between the spiritual and the everyday so thin, it’s not surprising that the otherworldly might also slip into Thailand’s television ads — or, as in this spot for Sylvania lightbulbs, come loudly, brashly, and bizarrely tramping in to dominate the screen.The ad features a variety of strange but specific and real (well, they’re real in Thailand) ghosts that disrupt a family’s picnic. It’s half a commercial, half a vivid primer on Thai folk eschatology, and unlike anything you’ll see in a Western ad. But that’s why we have the Internet, right?
I'm not sure why I love this story, or why I imagine I would have liked to meet this old guy. Via PATNEWS:
The 11 December issue of the New York Times, page C12, has an obituary for David Shepard, inventor of one of the first optical character recognizers, and then to make it easier for such recognizers to recognize characters, he invented the Farrington B font for credit card receipts. He was the inventor on many patents, and his company, Intelligent Machines Research Corporation, this in the 1950s. In the 1960s, he helped pioneer telephone voice response systems, where callers could get more information over a telephone with voice requests. In the last few decades, he was active in inventing in the area of high-altitude wind power generation. During World War II, he helped break Japanese codes for the U.S. Army. At 10, he was an orphan, and his guardian was Laurens Hammond, an inventor himself who invented the Hammond organ and a way to synchronize railroads' electric clocks. Mr. Shepard was 84 when he died in San Diego.
Via Warren Ellis, via Rob:
This is fascinating, the cache of a one-post—and since pulled-down—blogspot blog, complete with comments, apparently written by the mom who created the fake profile, in which she tries to explain the full story from her perspective. I agree with this person that it's probably legit. Weird, amazing reading, including the mom's attempts to defend herself in the comments.
From the '70s, that is. Found in a lumber yard in Bow, WA:
I love it when crass, non-customer-facing (and usu. slightly sinister) words accidentally creep up into public view:
E.g., I gave up on discouraging clients from using the word "content" ages ago. You see it everywhere now. You know, content! That stuff consumers love to access! Via media! I know there's nothing *I* like better than to curl up with some good content. Especially licensed content. That's my favorite.
The day after I saw this Target aisle, Penny Arcade ran a nice comic along the same lines....
If'n you're interested, former Seattle Weekly writer Bruce Barcott has a long piece in today's NYT Sunday Magazine on that cat-shooting I blogged the other day.
Recent Comments