The New Yorker has a piece on elevators, perhaps the world's most commonly used and most commonly taken-for-granted mode of transportation. It also recounted the story of a man who was stuck in an elevator for 41 hours after coming back from a smoke break (of which there's a disturbing time-lapse security video). The aftermath of the ordeal ended up costing him his job, his apartment, his money, and all contact with his friends. Remember, kids, smoking will ruin your life.
My favorite passage of the essay was the following, on elevator etiquette:
Passengers seem to know instinctively how to arrange themselves in an elevator. Two strangers will gravitate to the back corners, a third will stand by the door, at an isosceles remove, until a fourth comes in, at which point passengers three and four will spread toward the front corners, making room, in the center, for a fifth, and so on, like the dots on a die. With each additional passenger, the bodies shift, slotting into the open spaces. The goal, of course, is to maintain (but not too conspicuously) maximum distance and to counteract unwanted intimacies—a code familiar (to half the population) from the urinal bank and (to them and all the rest) from the subway. One should face front. Look up, down, or, if you must, straight ahead. Mirrors compound the unease. Generally, no one should speak a word to anyone else in an elevator. Most people make allowances for the continuation of generic small talk already under way, or, in residential buildings, for neighborly amenities. The orthodox enforcers of silence—the elevator Quakers—must suffer the moderates or the serial abusers, as they cram in exchanges about the night, the game, the weekend, or the meal.
Technorati Tags: elevators, The New Yorker, essay, smoke break
I'm jumping on this meme after seeing it on TUAW blogger (and fellow Philly blogger) Scott McNulty's personal blog. According to Amazon.com, my first order was on Feb 28, 2001. I ordered Slaughterhouse 5 by Vonnegut and A Farewell to Arms and The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. This was in 10th grade.
I also remember ordering an Intro to Linux book sometime prior to 2001 (in 99 or 00), but that was using a different email address, so it doesn't show up. I remember they sent me an Intro to UNIX book which I had to send back.
What was your first Amazon.com order?
Technorati Tags: Amazon.com, bubble, books, Web 1.0, meme
People are still making games for mid-90s console failures the 3DO and Jaguar. That's not the interesting part. The interesting part is a comment on that post that offers a quote from the 3DO's Wikipedia page:
The success and quality of subsequent next generation systems which began coming onto the market in the mid-90's, the limited library of titles, the lack of third-party support, and a refusal to reduce pricing till almost the end of the products life were among the many issues that led to the platform's demise. For a significant period of the products life cycle, 3DO's official stance on pricing was that the 3DO was not a video game console, it was a high-end audio-visual system and was priced accordingly, so no price adjustment was needed (emphasis mine).
Sound familiar?
Technorati Tags: Panasonic, 3DO, console, video games, PS3, Sony, Playstation 3
Marc Dominus over at The Universe of Discourse has done some research into the history of the equal sign. Part of the reason a pair of parallel lines was chosen was "because no 2 things can be more equal." The entry also mentions the origin of a two other diacritical marks, ˜ (tilde) and ¨ (umlaut), which evolved from the letters "n" and "e", respectively. Very fascinating stuff.
I only stumbled across this entry a few minutes ago, but the rest of his blog looks equally interesting as well.
Technorati Tags: math, equals, letters, history, etymology, characters, Universe of Discourse
