I understand the point of a street sign is to convey a point in the fewest words possible, but have you ever wondered why there is no punctuation on signs? Wouldn’t a bright red sign with STOP! have more meaning than just STOP or would the over abundance of !s just make us numb to exclamations?
I leave you with the sign below. It is a prime candidate for punctuation. Is it suggesting that “slow” children are at the playground and I should beware of the little beggars? (Slow Children. Playground.) Since it’s a yellow sign are these children a hazard? (Slow Children! Playground.) Probably. Is it possibly confused or playing a word association game? (Slow? Children? Playground?) (To which I reply: Turtle, Loud, Jungle Gym) Or is it something deeper. (Go) Slow. (Be kind to) Children. (Play at the) Playground.
This picture (click on it to view a larger version) was taken at a Cracker Barrel restaurant back in December when I first got my Sony camera phone. The thing to notice is over my right shoulder (my wife took the picture). Apparently, Swiss Milk Maid is still a profession in Gaston County. Also, there is something oddly balloon like and unnatural happening that makes it a train wreck..
Anybody who knows me well knows that I am a huge fan of the Muppets. That said I believe the gambler puppet in this version of Kenny Rogers “The Gambler”, has to be the ugliest old man puppet ever. Notice three things in the video and see if you agree: 1) The cancerous lump behind the gambler (Yes, I know it is the puppeteer) 2) His extremely matted hair 3) He is sitting beside Mark Twain – OMG. (Not really relevant to the state of ugly, but it is interesting none the less.)
I was thumbing through the RSS feed for my local newspaper this morning and came across an article talking about the emergence of gangs in the area. At the bottom of this article were 5 signs that your child might be a gang member. My first thought was of how vague these signs were and that my 5 year old qualifies for 3 of them. (It ain’t easy being an imp.)
So I was playing with the idea of how I could possibly get some usable material out of those 5 items when I noticed Google had already done it for me. Apparently, the 6th indication that your child is in a gang, is if they have been shopping at Best-Price.com.
A crime is being perpetrated in the world of technology. For too long, red and green dots have been forced to deal with a societal prejudice; a prejudice that has forced them to live separately. Each forced to live lives of identifying off and on. Yes, I am talking about that great dotist stigma of status representation.
But a revolution is building. Little pixilated points of light are finding their voice and with your help color will no longer be the great separator. Imagine, if you will, a world that allows the green dot to identify that you are offline or that a subsystem has stopped. And why can’t a red dot tell us who we can chat with. Crazy you say? But what is the point in oppressing these pixels in a world of accompanying status messages? You can’t let this continue just because some of us are too lazy to read!
The Campaign for Dot Equality is challenging you to stop the bias now with one simple change. If you use GTalk or some other IM program that will let you set a custom status text, use it. Set you dot to “offline” and tell the world you are online with words. By participating in this campaign you will not only be making a difference in the life of a dot but you will learn to see the world differently. Go ahead and make that change. You’ll be glad you did.
