Happy New Year! Or, as we Merlinians like to say, Happy Birthday Colin Morgan!
Anyhoo, here’s a list of links that caught my eye in the last month or two. I’d meant to post them earlier, but the holidays and family and presents and sickness and Facebook addiction… you know the drill.
1. The Period Is Pissed: Texting Made Our Plainest Punctuation Aggressive – Have you noticed this? I have. It’s amazing what the advent of texting has done to our language, most of which I consider ugly [cn u rd ths nw? & ths 2?]. It’s also amazing how much we/I rely on contextual cues to get tone/intention, many of which are lost when one distills communication down to a few sparse words. I walk around convinced everyone is pissed at me these days – and now, as this article points out, it doesn’t take exclamation points or ALL CAPS to make me feel that way, but rather a simple period.
2. Open Content Program from The Getty – I wholeheartedly approve of the movement to get more and more texts digitized, especially for those of us who would otherwise never get to see such items personally. From the Getty website: “The initial focus of the Open Content Program is to make available all images of public domain artworks in the Getty’s collections. Today we’ve taken a first step toward this goal by making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose.” Woo hoo!
3. Designer of the Bayeaux Tapestry Revealed – O.K., maybe this only resonates with other medievally-minded people, but I think this is pretty cool. In grad school we studied the Bayeaux tapestry and had a beautifully illustrated fold-out copy I loved to study. From the article: “The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, when Duke William of Normandy defeated the English king Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. The tapestry is considered to be a major artistic source for these events, although its origins remain a hotly debated mystery.” Who was the designer? Read the article to find out!
4. Sleep ‘Cleans’ The Brain of Toxins – Have you resolved to get more sleep this year? I almost added that to my list, since I’ve heard so much recently about lack of sleep contributing to weight gain [I must have a SERIOUS case of long-lasting insomnia], but then realized my screen addiction would undoubtedly cause me to break that resolution the very night I set it. Perhaps this article will get me back on track and lead to more shut-eye; we all need healthy sleep, for so many reasons.
5. Four Websites You Should Know About – Perhaps you’ve resolved to keep up more with current events and become a better informed citizen. Well, Organic Lifestyle Magazine has come up with four websites with which they say you should be familiar, “regardless of your political leanings, beliefs, or interests.” Do you agree with their choices?
6. 10 Words to Cut from Your Writing – Eek! I probably use all ten of these. Literally. Dude, I’ve gotta stop writing things like this. Maybe it’d make my writing, like, quite amazing, instead of the very stinky pile of stuff it often ends up being. I’ll think about it. Really.
7. Sound of Music Flash Mob – And just for fun, a little Do-Re-Mi flash to start to your New Year off right!