Monthly Archives: January 2006

Nature of the predictions genre

On The Media– NAMING RIGHT The key variables that differentiated the titles that had been number-one bestsellers from the titles that had failed to be were whether the title was literal or figurative, the word type of the first word, … Continue reading

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News reporting as a cognitive (speech) act

ABC News: Sharon Reportedly Moves One of His Hands The headline is the only thing of interest here. It is an example of several things. On the one hand, it shows how easily a person’s personal tragedy can be abstracted … Continue reading

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Transformation of symbols across cultural borders

NPR : Muslim Migrants, ‘Embracing the Infidel’ Author Behzad Yaghmaian spent two years traveling with Muslim migrants and collected their stories on safe houses, bribes, police custody, and human trafficking. He talks about his book, Embracing the Infidel: Stories of … Continue reading

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Social hypostasis of linguistic items

The GIF Pronunciation Page The GIF graphics file format was invented by CompuServe in 1987. In the years since, a debate has been raging as to the correct way to pronounce “GIF”: like “jif”, or with a hard ‘g’ as … Continue reading

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Urban Legends as examples of folk theories and cognitive models

Urban Legends Reference Pages: College (The Unsolvable Math Problem) This legend combines one of the ultimate academic wish-fulfillment fantasies — a student not only proves himself the smartest one in his class, but also bests his professor and every other … Continue reading

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Discover Music through The Music Genome Project by Pandora

There are two analogies in this post! What great value. Discover Music through The Music Genome Project by Pandora Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds … Continue reading

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City as metaphor for visual aspects online design

A List Apart: Articles: Thinking Outside the Grid Because I’d been thinking about this article for some time, the aerial view of these cities struck me as an apt metaphor for grid design on the web. With today’s technologies and … Continue reading

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Florida high court kills school voucher program

Florida high court kills school voucher program In a ruling expected to reverberate through battles over school choice in many states, the Florida Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a voucher program for students attending failing schools, saying the state … Continue reading

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Are printed books dead? God I hope so!

iRex : The iLiad Digital written content can now be read as easily and conveniently as the printed word on paper. The iRex Technologies E-reader provides true reading comfort, flexibility and versatility. It can be read outdoors, in sunshine or … Continue reading

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Analogies and blends – new category old ideas

I thought, I might add another category for the new year. analogies. This springs from two separate and seemingly conflicting tendencies in my intellectual life. One is to expose potentially harmful and disparate analogies and the other is to create … Continue reading

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