Simon

"The term cargo cult science was first used by the physicist Richard Feynman during his commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, United States, in 1974, to negatively characterize research in the soft sciences (psychology and psychiatry in particular) - arguing that they have the semblance of being scientific, but are missing "a kind of scientific integrity". - Simon

His entertaining commencement speech: http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMAN... - Simon

"Hyperforeignism: is a special type of hypercorrection resulting from an unsuccessful attempt to apply the rules of a foreign language to a loan word. The "Queen of the hyperforeignisms" is the word lingerie. Speakers of American English pronounce this /lɑːnʒərˈreɪ/, excessively depressing the first vowel of the French [lɛ̃ʒəʁi] to sound more like a "typical" French nasal vowel, and rhyming the final syllable with English ray." - Simon

"...entered into an Administrative Settlement Agreement and Audit Policy Determination in which we agreed to pay a civil administrative penalty in the sum of $275,000..." - Simon

English Smarties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... M&Ms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Simon

North American Smarties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - no name

"Investigators looking into the crash of Spanair Flight 5022 at Madrid International Airport on August 20, 2008, killing 154, found that the airline’s central computer system used to monitor technical problems in its fleet was infected with malware" - Simon

So far no one is claiming malware caused the problem, just that it was there. But getting software right is hard enough without making it robust to the sort of environment malware might create. - Seth

Yeah, their headline is rather misleading. It'll be interesting to see how much of a role (if any) it played in the accident. - Simon

CA 94104 - $629m total - $1,681,925 per person - Simon

"Gomes, who lives in Palo Alto, hasn't completely embraced the California outdoor lifestyle of running and rock climbing. "I don't like sweating," he said - Simon

That was in the left front wheel. There was also a dent in the rear wheel as well. It seems to tally with other people's experiences at that place: http://www.yelp.com/biz_pho... - Simon

I noticed it a few hours afterward. Judging from several reviews it seems they are not receptive to customers who even see the damage happen directly in front of them, so I think it would be hard to convince them that they were indeed responsible. (http://www.judysbook.com/members..., http://maps.google.com/maps..., http://www.yelp.com/biz...) - Simon

"English and French speakers wanted the initials of both their respective language's terms to be used internationally: "CUT" for "coordinated universal time" and "TUC" for "temps universel coordonné". This resulted in the final compromise of "UTC"" - Simon

I can just imagine the English and French speakers arguing about using CTU, TCU, UCT and UTC as the "compromise". - Simon

"A long-running dispute between radio broadcasters and the recording industry over music royalties has taken an unexpected turn with a proposed settlement that threatens to drag the mobile phone industry into the ring. The compromise under discussion by radio broadcasters, recording labels and recording artists could include a federal mandate that all new cell phones come with a built-in FM radio chip. While a deal is far from final, the prospect that the government could dictate a key design decision for such a ubiquitous consumer device has alarmed manufacturers and wireless providers." http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_1581... - Simon

"Jens Best wants to personally take snapshots of all those (German) buildings which people asked Google Street View to remove. He then wants to add those photos to Picasa, including GPS coordinates, and in turn re-connect them with Google Maps." - Simon

"The France.fr site allows hypertext links (including deep links) directing to its pages. Nevertheless, the France.fr site must be explicitly mentioned in the title of the link." (via JeromeF) - Simon

dude, they are serious.. - Ozgur Demir

Friendfeed.com allows direct links to its pages, however "Paul is awesome" must be explicitly mentioned in the title of the link. - Paul Buchheit

france.fr also requires "all gypsies out of the country", somewhere in title... - Emil Kirichev

This always bothered me when I first came to the US... - Simon

"The class of 2014 has “never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.” They don’t own watches and instead use their cellphones to tell the time." - Simon

Not sure if I really believe that teenagers wouldn't understand that gesture. But perhaps I'm just an old fuddy-duddy... - Simon

[Circa 1994?] "Official policy statement issued by Oracle Corporation. Oracle Corporation opposes the patentability of software. The Company believes that existing copyright law and available trade secret protections, as opposed to patent law, are better suited to protecting computer software developments." - Simon

"In Switzerland speeding fines are worked out using a formula based on the income of the motorists and the severity of the speed. According to prosecutors he is now facing the highest possible penalty of £650,000 ($1,010,000). He escaped being zapped by numerous radars en-route simply because he was going too fast and they were incapable of clocking speeds beyond 200kph (125mph). It was a new generation of radar machines that finally caught him travelling at close to 300kph (186mph)." - Simon

"Their pages are peppered with “Okkkkayyyyy” and” HAHAHAHA. “ and “OMG!!!!!” You can find polite little girls cursing like sailors on Facebook. Everything is louder, more ardent, capitalized. This is a way of dramatizing or raising the stakes on even the most inane or banal exchange: You don’t just look cute. You look soooooooooooooo cute!!!!!!!" - Simon

"You have to hand it to Google. Going from "Don't Be Evil" to "Greedier than BP" overnight is a pretty impressive trick." - Simon

"Samoset was the first Native American to make contact with the Pilgrims. "[Samoset] saluted us in English, and bade us welcome" " - Simon

" "Welcome! Welcome, Englishmen!" The Pilgrims were startled when the Indian named Samoset introduced himself to the Pilgrims in English. "He asked for some beer."" http://www.notablebiographies.com/supp... - Simon

http://www.google.com/search... vs http://www.google.com/search... - Simon

"Julie Murphy, a 7-year-old Oregonian, set up a lemonade stand on July 29 at an art fair in northeast Portland. County health inspectors shut her down." - Simon

Wasn't there a Simpsons episode that also had this happen? - Simon

"Offering a cash prize to encourage innovation is all the rage. Sometimes it works rather well." - Simon

"Many behaviors with no obvious cultural component were supposed to be [universal]. Take the optical illusion in which a line segment, A, has an--outward--pointing arrow on each end, and an identical segment, B, has an inward--pointing arrow on each. To most American undergrads, B looks longer by some 20 percent. This has been cast as a general property of human vision. But to the San of the Kalahari, African hunter-gatherers, the lines look (correctly) the same length. The illusion arises when kids grow up in an environment filled with right angles. It is not “human,” but specific to WEIRD cultures." - Simon

The great thing about undergrads is that they're an inexhaustable resource. - Gabe

""The fact that Britain's best ally feels the need to protect itself from the English libel courts demonstrates the need for reform." [...] Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Congressman who drafted the bill, said it was vital that Americans' "rights are never undermined by foreign judgments." The bill had such widespread support from Democrats and Republicans that it was passed on a voice vote in Congress."" - Simon

"In a letter sent to Wikipedia's San Francisco office, the FBI said that "unauthorised reproduction of the FBI Seal was prohibited by US law [...] Whoever possesses any insignia shall be fined or imprisoned or both," the FBI wrote. [Wikipedia's] Mr Godwin claimed that the FBI letter sent to Wikipedia omitted key words, which changed the interpretation of the law. "The seal is in no way evidence of any 'intent to deceive', nor is it an 'assertion of authority', recognisable or otherwise," he wrote. - Simon

Interesting to see the BBC reproducing the logo in the article... CNN's article appears to have avoided doing so. - Simon

"Back in the mid-to-late 1990s, the most powerful person in search was arguably Yahoo’s Srinija Srinivasan. If Yahoo’s was the “gateway” to the web, Srinivasan was the chief gatekeeper." - Simon