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Так вот ты какой, двадцать первый век. С айтюнсом в уличных терминалах рядом с терафлёй и лотереями.
Все записи с тегом «удивительные факты»
→ DISNEY TO ACQUIRE LUCASFILM LTD. | The Walt Disney Company
Тектонический сдвиг: Дисней покупает Лукасфильм. И собирается выпустить седьмой эпизод Звёздных Войн через три года. Как пишет Энди Байо: “includes ILM, Skywalker Sound, and LucasArts; Leia is now a Disney princess”.
Lucasfilm to join company’s global portfolio of world class brands including Disney, ESPN, Pixar, Marvel and ABC. STAR WARS: EPISODE 7 feature film targeted for release in 2015.
Medium is the Massage
Сегодня я узнал, что книга Маклюэна “Medium is the massage” действительно называется именно так. Все годы, прошедшие с момента моего знакомства с Маклюэном, я провёл в уверенности, что англоязычные источники, которые ссылаются на книгу, указывая Massage вместо Message — бессовестно ошибаются и вообще задумали оскорбить моего внутреннего граммар-наци или просто издеваются над нами, простыми существами с синдромом навязчивых состояний (проще говоря, OCD-фриками).
Так нет же! На самом деле всё было иначе!
The title is a play on McLuhan’s oft-quoted saying “The medium is the message”. The book was initiated by Quentin Fiore. McLuhan adopted the term “massage” to denote the effect each medium has on the human sensorium, taking inventory of the “effects” of numerous media in terms of how they “massage” the sensorium.
According to McLuhan biographer W. Terrence Gordon, “by the time it appeared in 1967, McLuhan no doubt recognized that his original saying had become a cliché and welcomed the opportunity to throw it back on the compost heap of language to recycle and revitalize it. But the new title is more than McLuhan indulging his insatiable taste for puns, more than a clever fusion of self-mockery and self-rescue — the subtitle is ‘An Inventory of Effects,’ underscoring the lesson compressed into the original saying.” (Gordon, p. 175.)
However, the FAQ section on the website maintained by McLuhan’s estate says that this interpretation is incomplete and makes its own leap of logic as to why McLuhan left it as is:
“Why is the title of the book The Medium is the Massage and not The Medium is the Message? Actually, the title was a mistake. When the book came back from the typesetter’s, it had on the cover 'Massage’ as it still does. The title was supposed to have read The Medium is the Message but the typesetter had made an error. When McLuhan saw the typo he exclaimed, 'Leave it alone! It’s great, and right on target!’ Now there are possible four readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: Message and Mess Age, Massage and Mass Age.”
С одной стороны, чудесная история о свободе формы.
С другой, OCD-фрики стенают в ужасе, потому что все варианты правильные. А в мире определённости так ведь не бывает, слишком обширное пространство возможностей получается, нам в нём тяжело. Сквозняки, за всем не уследишь.
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Steve (or someone close to him) spotted a loophole in the California vehicle laws. Anyone with a brand new car had a maximum of six months to affix the issued number plate to the vehicle.
So Jobs made an arrangement with the leasing company; he would always change cars during the sixth month of the lease, exchanging one silver Mercedes SL55 AMG for another identical one. At no time would he ever be in a car as old as six months; and thus there was no legal requirement to have the number plates fitted.
One might also assume that the leasing company was happy — they had an endless supply of luxury cars to on-sell with the previous driver being none-other that Steve Jobs. That would be a win-win-win situation for Steve, the leasing company and for the subsequent buyer.
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On April 20th 2010, CCP added another notch in their belt when the Icelandic government awarded them the 2010 “President of Iceland’s Export Award”. The award usually goes to the company that generates the greatest revenue through export, with consideration given to how well the company are appealing to new markets.
Past recipients of the award have included airlines, pharmaceutical suppliers, fisheries and even independent artists. As almost all of CCP’s income comes from overseas, they have remained almost entirely isolated from the Icelandic financial crisis.
Пост 1300805224
В продолжение предыдущего поста с цитатой про однополый секс: парни из OKCupid добивают диаграммой, иллюстрирующей грамотность граждан и гражданок обычной и альтернативной ориентаций, чтобы на деле узнать — насколько коррелируют гомосексуальность и знание каких-то элементарных вещей.
Выборка в шесть сотен тысяч человек показала шокирующий результат. Гомосексуальность не при чём, а вот между полами разница в два раза. Десять процентов девочек не в курсе пропорций Земли и Солнца. Пять процентов мужчин. Или, как сказал Кристиан Руддер в посте на OKCupid:
Come on, people. #facepalm.
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It turns out that a tiny fraction of gays have
single-handedlytwo-handedly created the public image of gay sexual recklessness—in fact we found that just 2% of gay people have had 23% of the total reported gay sex, which is pretty crazy.Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex « OkTrends
→ Why Does Spicy Food Taste Hot?
It turns out that capsaicin – the active ingredient in spicy food – binds to a special class of vanilloid receptor inside our mouth called VR1 receptors. After capsaicin binds to these receptors, the sensory neuron is depolarized, and it sends along a signal indicating the presence of spicy stimuli. But here’s the strange part: VR1 receptors weren’t designed to detect capsaicin. They bind spicy food by accident.
The real purpose of VR1 receptors is thermoreception, or the detection of heat. This means that they are supposed to prevent us from consuming food that will burn our sensitive flesh. (That’s why our VR1 receptors are clustered in our tongue, mouth and skin.) As a result, when the receptors are activated by capsaicin, the sensation we experience is indelibly linked to the perception of temperature, to the feeling of eating something near the boiling point of water.
But that pain is just an illusory side-effect of our confused neural receptors. There is nothing “hot” about spicy food. The larger point, of course, is that vast swaths of the reality we take for granted are mere accidents of anatomy.
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Олден Уитмен
Какое место вы отводите себе среди писателей (ныне здравствующих) и писателей недавнего прошлого?Владимир Набоков
Я часто думаю, что должен существовать специальный типографский знак, обозначающий улыбку, — нечто вроде выгнутой линии, лежащей навзничь скобки, именно этот значок я поставил бы вместо ответа на ваш вопрос.В.Набоков. Интервью в апреле 1969 года (перевод А. Г. Николаевской). Опубликовано в сборнике Nabokov V. Strong Opinions. ¶