Showing results for Non-Computer - The Old New Thing

Jul 12, 2004
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Welcoming a new era in Swiss army knives

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Victorinox, the company authorized to make so-called Swiss Army merchandise, has run into a bit of a problem: Is there anything else you could possibly think of putting on a pocketknife for an outdoorsman? And even if you did, there's no room for it. The pocketknife has already reached the point where it's too unwieldy to carry around ...

Non-Computer
Jul 8, 2004
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Lighting organic material and sucking it into your lungs

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Last year, The Philip Morris Companies renamed itself to the warm-and-fuzzy sounding Altria Group. Gotta love the colorful abstract logo they've got. (Psst, editors of the Altria home page: It's "Whom We Fund". "Whom" with an "m".) They claim the name comes from the Latin altus ("high") but that doesn't explain where the "r" comes from....

Non-Computer
Jul 5, 2004
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Another chance to see Elvis take on a mummy

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

For those in the Seattle area who missed it last year, The Fremont Outdoor Cinema is screening Bubba Ho-Tep on Friday, July 9th. Go see it. You won't be disappointed. Assuming what you were expecting to see was Elvis fighting a mummy. With the help of JFK. In a wheelchair. If you were expecting something else, then okay maybe you'll be...

Non-Computer
Jul 1, 2004
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What's this fascination with Germanic languages?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Some people wondered about my fascination with Germanic languages and asked why I didn't branch out to other language families. It's basically laziness. I grew up speaking English (and a little of the Holo dialect, most of which has by now vanished from disuse), then studied German in high school and college, and most recently added Swed...

Non-Computer
Jul 1, 2004
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What’s this fascination with Germanic languages?

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Some people wondered about my fascination with Germanic languages and asked why I didn't branch out to other language families. It's basically laziness. I grew up speaking English (and a little of the Holo dialect, most of which has by now vanished from disuse), then studied German in high school and college, and most recently added Swed...

Non-Computer
Jun 30, 2004
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Fees disguised as taxes

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

It has become customary in the telecommunications industry to quote a low price and then add half as much to it in "fees". Regulatory Programs Fee. It sure sounds like a government tax. It isn't. There's been a new round of official-sounding line items on telephone bills, which are really just ways for telephone companies to ra...

Non-Computer
Jun 28, 2004
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Ringside seats at Fruit Fly Fight Club

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The first rule of Fruit Fly Fight Club: Flies can't talk about Fruit Fly Fight Club. Because they can't talk at all. At least not to humans. Researchers at Harvard Medical School took a break from studying lobster fighting and shifted their focus to fruit fly fights, and even mutant fruit fly fights. (Via The Annals of Improbabl...

Non-Computer
Jun 25, 2004
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Hong Kong crocodile caught at last.

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

After over half a year of eluding experts, the Hong Kong crocodile was caught at last. What amused me was that the article said that the creature had eluded an expert crocodile hunter from Australia named... John Lever? (Curiously, in this article, he is given credit for capturing the croc.) Not the self-proclaimed Crocodile Hunte...

Non-Computer
Jun 24, 2004
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At least it's easier than learning Finnish

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Finnish Radio station YLE offers weekly news summaries in classical Latin. Because practically nobody outside Finland would understand the news in Finnish... In my random travels around the Internet, I stumbled across this article on the subject of teaching Finnish to foreigners: Finnish's status as an official EU language has created...

Non-Computer