A Better Course

“Literal Translation” « Haikasoru: Space Opera. Dark Fantasy. Hard Science. He notes that while one version is awkward and the other smooth, both are linguistically equidistant from the original Japanese. The awkward version just has an “illusion of literalness” simply because it isn’t as good. (tags: japanese translation murakami jayrubin haikasoru literature )

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Blue Lines Revisited – Influencing The Influencer "It’s pretty much the way street teams operate but they’re aimed at 14 year old boys. The lack of reciprocity here also isn’t a problem if you’re a Social Media Rock Star and all your real life friends are Social Media Rock Stars too because they’ll also be […]

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The School of Life : Joe Moran on Kindness It is certainly true that kindness is rarely invoked in contemporary public rhetoric. The voguish word for our straitened times is not kindness but “fairness”. When everyone must bear their “fair share” of economic pain, kindness is likely to be regarded as a luxury we can […]

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Metrics Fetishism – Chris Hecker's Website The problem with hill-climbing is it can only see local maxima, it doesn't have any visibility into where the global maxima lie in the space. If you blindly hill-climb, you will end up at the top of the nearest hill, terrified to move because all derivatives point down, while […]

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Covering Lolita: An Online Exhibit by Dieter E. Zimmer Some of these are not nice at all. Really interesting to see the still from the Kubrick used in various ways, though. (tags: book design art nabokov lolita )

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Confessions Of A Wall St. Nihilist: Forget About Goldman Sachs, Our Entire Economy Is Built On Fraud – By Mark Ames – The eXiled "Every single player in finance suddenly had to face the fundamental problem—this whole economy is built on fraud and lies and garbage. So when Lehman collapsed, every single player panicked, going, […]

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What It's Really Like To Be A Copy Editor – The Awl when my day-camp counselor asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I did not tell her that I hoped one day to correct who-whom mix-ups or determine whether “faucetry” was a real, dictionary-approved word. I told her I wanted […]

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Build Blog » Couch Cushion Architecture; A Critical Analysis "But further investigation reveals a clear delineation between indoor/outdoor space with a design focus on protection through the use of barrier. Planes are shifted off the orthogonal to accommodate function; as a side effect it relieves inhabitants from a harsh Euclidian geometry" (tags: buildblog design funny […]

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Valve writes the best press release, ever – Thom Dinsdale's posterous "Aperture Science is pleased to inform you that we have partnered with Valve to announce the gala CANCELLATION of the June 14 Portal 2 event at the Regal Theater. The event will be replaced by a surprise." (tags: computergames pressreleases marketing publicrelations pr thomdinsdale […]

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it's designed • Children die from…. posters Clay characters in bright colors are usually associated with childhood and fun. Seeing them in dangerous situations, helpless and hurt, people will realize that child injuries are something that shouldn’t happen. (tags: itsdesigned advertising children )

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