Infojones

Another view of the war

Baghdad Journal contains dispatches and art from artist Steve Mumford and Iraqi artists he met. The period covered is from August 19-October 5, 2004. From a NY Times article.

Playing with numbers or, there's hope

I liked an electoral map a friend emailed me and posted about yesterday as it hit the very disappointed feelings I had after the national election. Then I ran across another map - not the winner-take-all electoral map, but this one (from a Boing Boing post) shaded to match the national vote in each state. This one gives me more hope.

I thought the problem was with my eyes

Now I know why the fonts have gotten so much smaller in the past couple of years.

Want people to read, not scan? Consider small type

The Eyetrack III researchers discovered something important when testing headline and type size on homepages: Smaller type encourages focused viewing behavior (that is, reading the words), while larger type promotes lighter scanning. In general, our testing found that people spent more time focused on small type than large type.
http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm

Being hip or connecting with your users or both, or neither?

So I wasn't sure what the LibrarianInBlack meant when she wrote "So, what's the dilly yo with women bloggers?" Nothing of much use in Google, other than finding the most common usage is "What's the dilly, yo?" The LII found 17 slang dictionaries and the 9th result, Galaxy Dictionaries directory led me to this.

The College Slang Page
We got the 411 on the hip talk in the hallowed halls. Check it out! Way Cool FAQs About College Slang: What is college slang What do we slang Why do students speak slang What's the hardest working word in college slang Wanna know more About the Project The Cal Poly Pomona Dictionaries Savvy Reading on College Slang Surfing for Slang Mini-dictionary from Da Bomb Wanna ...

Most of the words and terms in the dictionary of this project run by a Cal Poly professor were collected by her students from around the country in 1997-98. The top 20 list, tho, is up-to-date through 2003, but just from Cal Poly students. The terms and their use of them is interesting -- reflecting the community at Cal Poly? -- and the animated loading of the page is annoying.

A new way to avoid the draft?

FINLAND DISMISSING 'NET-ADDICTED' CONSCRIPTS
A growing number of conscripts have to be dismissed from Finland's
armed forces every year due to an Internet addiction that makes them
unsuited for service. A Finnish official says: "It's an increasing problem.
More and more young people are always on the Internet day and night. They
get up around noon and have neither friends nor hobbies. When they get into
the army, it's a shock to them." There are no specific figures and the
military has yet to give the condition a proper dismissal code in its health
records. ( The Age, 4 Aug 2004) Rec'd from J Lamp

See Reuters version.

I got this from NewsScan Daily, 6 August 2004. I think I've subscribed to this mailing list more consistently and longer than any other that I read. It's underwritten by RLG and very library-supportive.

Overused phrases

My candidate - "wealth of information" -- in Google [864,000] -- in Yahoo [1,780,000]