I think I’ve found my favourite eCard website/service: someecards
This one in particular made me laugh, and also reminded me of the comedy blog of yore, Stuff White People Like.
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Let’s Do the Whitest Thing Imaginable
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Purging Book Clutter
Last week I moved house. During the move I took stock of my belongings in my ongoing battle with clutter and discovered that more than half of my boxes contained books… and that’s after I gave a box or two of books to a good home a month before!
The emotional attachement that is made with a good book is strong, and it is this that is causing me to hoard them. Advice for clearing literary clutter, an Ask MetaFilter thread, may be the starting point of a new purge.
De-cluttering involves recognizing that regret is part of life, and being OK with that. Yes, I’ve given away books that I now often wish I still owned. But I’ve also screwed up relationships, made iffy career choices, etc. — you suck it up and move on. If you try to cling to every single thing (material, spiritual, or emotional) that you might need one day in the totally hypothetical future, you’re going to end up bogged down in a lot of stuff.
via 43 Folders
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Logo Design and Examples
I really appreciate good design, and this list of 50+ Kick Ass Logos for Inspiration truly are inspiring.
According to David Airey, there are four critical elements to great logo design, and these match all of them.
- It must be describable
- It must be memorable
- It must be effective without colour
- It must be scalable i.e. effective when just an inch in size
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Male and Female Privilege
Following on from yesterday’s post on white privilege, here are two further lists on male and female privilege:
- I will never be expected to change my name upon marriage or questioned if I don’t change my name.
- If I have children but do not provide primary care for them, my masculinity will not be called into question.
- If I have children with a wife or girlfriend, and it turns out that one of us needs to make career sacrifices to raise the kids, chances are we’ll both assume the career sacrificed should be hers.
- My role in my child’s life is generally seen as more important than the child’s father’s role.
- Most people in society probably will not see my overall worthiness as a person being exclusively tied to how high up in the hierarchy I rise.
- I am given much greater latitude to form close, intimate friendships than a man is.
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Legal Cases That Changed Britain
The Times has now concluded its series on The (Legal) Cases That Changed Britain: 1785 – 2006.
DPP v Ray
July 27, 1973This case settled an important principle of law applicable to people caught legging it out of restaurants without paying. It has been applied countless times since. After eating a meal in the Wing Wah restaurant in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, Roger Ray, a university student, and his three companions decided not to pay. About 10 minutes later, after waiting for the waiter to leave the dining room, they made off. Ray was convicted under the Theft Act (now covered by the Fraud Act 2006) and the conviction was upheld by the House of Lords. The law lords ruled that Ray had impliedly stated in ordering the meal that he intended to pay, and that by remaining in his seat after deciding not to pay had ostensibly continued that earlier implied statement, thereby deceiving the waiter.
Part one: 1785-1869 | Part two: 1870-1916 | Part three: 1917-1954 | Part Four: 1955-1971 | Part five: 1972-2006
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White Privilege
White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, is an article by Peggy McIntosh on the invisible privileges of being white.
I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group.
- I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
- I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
- I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
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Media Ownership and Mergers
Neatorama on media ownership – The Big Six of US media (via Link Banana).
Last year I linked to a similar chart, from 1991, showing the media ownership of The Big Ten multinational conglomerates.
Mother Jones has an appealing visual representation of 25 years of media mergers and how the biggest media conglomerates in the US came to be.
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Top 50 Productivity Blogs
The Top 50 Productivity Blogs is one of those lists that I love to hate. It’s so useful and contains a wealth of extraordinary resources, but at the same time will temporarily ruin my productivity as I scour through the archives of the mentioned blogs looking for said resources.
- Getting Things Done (e.g. Zen Habits)
- Life Hacks (e.g. Stepcase Lifehack)
- Personal Productivity (e.g. 43 Folders)
- Lifestyle Design (e.g. Tim Ferriss)
- Getting Organized (e.g. Unclutterer)
- Productivity at Work (e.g. The Chief Happiness Officer)
- Personal Development (e.g. The Positivity Blog)
- Productivity for Entrepreneurs (e.g. Sparkplugging)
- Productivity Through Technology (e.g. Jeet Blog)
- Niche Productivity Blogs (e.g. Academic Productivity)
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Common Errors in English
Mixed-up, mangled expressions; foreign-language faux pas; confused and confusing terms; commonly mispronounced words – they’re all explained in Common Errors in English by Paul Brians.
The concept of language errors is a fuzzy one. I’ll leave to linguists the technical definitions. Here we’re concerned only with deviations from the standard use of English as judged by sophisticated users such as professional writers, editors, teachers, and literate executives and personnel officers. The aim of this site is to help you avoid low grades, lost employment opportunities, lost business, and titters of amusement at the way you write or speak.
It’s available on Amazon, but when it’s available free online and is updated regularly, why buy? The supplementary pages are also worth a look (non-errors, more errors, and commonly misspelled words).
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The Disadvantages of an Elite Education
William Deresiewicz on the foibles of the Ivy League elite:
Our best universities have forgotten that the reason they exist is to make minds, not careers.
[…]
With respect to class, these schools are largely—indeed increasingly—homogeneous. Visit any elite campus in our great nation and you can thrill to the heartwarming spectacle of the children of white businesspeople and professionals studying and playing alongside the children of black, Asian, and Latino businesspeople and professionals.