I’ve always been acutely interested in the Nobel Prize for Peace since the day I first discovered that it was pretty much an attempt by Alfred Nobel to buy back his reputation. As the inventor of Dynamite and Ballistite, he feared that his legacy would be that of a warmonger and arms profiteer – that his family’s good name would be forever tainted. So, with stunning insight into what we would now call PR, he decided to use his fortune to endow in perpetuity those prizes that now bear his name. Read more…
Apparently, there is a market for short distinctive sounds, less than a second long, which can be used to inform you that some moment of great moment has passed. It must be a market, because my laptop appears to acquire new ones on a regular basis. Maybe it operates a double life as a trader in honk futures.
It constantly emits sound, whether I am sitting in front of it or not. Chimes, chords, marimbas, barks, boings, crickets, quacks, strums, klaxons, pings, whistles, bells – on particularly bad occasions it sounds like a perambulating one-man-band. Honk, clash, honk, clash, paaarp! I’ve considered taking it out busking.
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There are, in essence, three ways you can navigate ‘in-text’ links:
- you can ignore them, in which case, there is no problem;
- you can click them one by one and read (or reject) the opened page before going ‘back’ to the main story, but this makes parsing the original narrative somewhat tricky;
- you can ctrl-click them all into new tabs and read them later, after finishing the piece you are currently reading.
If you’re of even a mildly obsessive compulsive sort, this latter approach is the most logical approach to the media form and you will do it without thinking – I often forget to click without my pinky on ctrl.
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Similar to #2: Tab Breeding, Click Amnesia is the circumstance of finding a browser tab containing a pageful of content you have absolutely no memory of opening.
This can be particularly bad if you are in a shared office environment and the page is of an unsavoury nature – the look of perplexed surprise comes across as a comic over-attempt to hide your browsing delinquencies – a kind of “what the hell? Oh my good, you think I… how dare you!” pantomime.
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Every day, one single thought dominates my mind. I think it all the time, with startling regularity.
No, it’s not a lust for sex. It is not a religious zeal or a patriotic urge. It is not a narcissistic preen or an inconfidant whine.
“What was I just doing?”
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… which set the whole world indifferent.
I’ve been told that I really should start a blog. No, really. I don’t understand, it seems, how dreadfully important it is that I start a blog.
Why would I do such a thing? What do I have to say that could be so fascinating? Who on earth would want to read it? I have been assured that that is not the point. Unfortunately, I have not been told what the point is. So I’m actually no wiser, only slightly less confused.
This, so far, is it. Impressive, huh?
