Last week, I was in the middle of writing about the girl who quit her job with dry erase board, when I realized I can't get any pictures to illustrate the post. The only thing that would work would be one of the images from the original hoax, or some derivative of it. But all of them were copyrighted. Read more…

I love books. Not just the words that make some kind of sense we usually call stories, but the books as objects. Pieces of paper glued together and spilled with the ink in the shapes recognized as letters. I love the feel under the fingers, the smell… you know that stuff, it's been written million times so far. 

But that won't stop me from masturbating the subject once more. And I'm gonna do it in the library. Read more…

Yesterday, the web was buzzing about a girl that quit her job by sending email with 33 photos of herself and dry erase board to her entire office. Go see them if you haven't already, then come back so we can talk.

Today, The Chive posted a follow up with more photos, telling that they have discovered the girl's identity, that her name is not Jenny and that the story was a hoax. They've made it all up. 

Question is, does it really matter? Read more…

In the last post we explored why monotheism naturally slips in the fundamentalism and causes so much hatred and trouble in the world. By its foundation in one and only god, it has to be monopolistic. 

But it wouldn't be fair not to mention the good side of monotheism. Or better, to say why the development of monotheistic religions was a great step in the evolution of the human thought. Read more…

Religious fundamentalism came with monotheism. There were no holy wars before it. Sure, ancient times were cruel, wars between nations were raging, but they were motivated and justified by the economy not the ideology. 

Comparing to our era, those times had an enormous religious exchange and tolerance. Different cultures explored the known world and other cultures. E.G. Egyptian pantheon was known to and influenced the Greeks. And its followers were not treated as infidels. Now, what's so different about monotheism? Read more…

Recently, there was a surprising statement in one of NSFW feeds that usually just post photos:

Any picture done in monochrome is automatically art; its practically one of the governing laws of the universe…

Now, this theory is worth exploring. Especially because in this case it taps in one of my favourite questions about relationships of art and pornography. For your office-reading convenience all the examples are just linked to (and you probably don't want to open them in the office). Read more…

The comment on tutorial about making nice and useful links led me to a strange idea about how the links should be (not) done. Nicholas Carr explores the idea of delinkification, i.e. not placing links inside of the text, but putting them on the end of it, like the footnotes in the printed text.

Links are wonderful conveniences, as we all know (from clicking on them compulsively day in and day out). But they're also distractions. Sometimes, they're big distractions – we click on a link, then another, then another, and pretty soon we've forgotten what we'd started out to do or to read.

I beg to disagree. Read more…