I never knew

First Jason came out with these thoughts on the need to remember that standards compliance and semantical usefulness are not one and the same. Then both Dave and Doug shimed in with their own opinion concerning the original post.

Doug in particular makes the interesting point that yes they are different but by learning standards if you’re paying attention you will end up generating better semantic content by default, I tend to agree but I also think the difference has to be kept in mind when explaining the two to various people, always better to have everything in order when trying to convert/convince someone just so you dont bundle too many things together and “get caught cheating”.

One more thing, I think this is a good example of blogs being used as discussions. Jason posted at 11h42 on the east coast and by 11h42 on the west coast (3 hours) two thoughtful replies were already online and starting a good conversation from a good post.

Stunning pictures of a 737 that flew into a hailstorm. Quite a beating but no one was hurt. Imagine the pilots with those things bouncing off the windshields, tough job sometimes.

A very good interview with Douglas Coupland, one of my favorite authors.

Douglas Coupland is good at labels. He is an accomplished lifestyle taxonomist, an acute observer of social trends. His books and conversation glisten with consumer brands and pop-cultural name-checks. In the disaffected suburbs of Couplandland, such shared references are the glue that holds the post-political, post-religious, post-post (he was an early evangelist for email) world together. But he is not good at being labelled.

In recent years I’ve been reading a lot of novels set in contemporary settings, there are a few must reads in there, he’s one of them, along with Chuck Palahniuk.

If you ever wished you could study at MIT you now have access to something along those lines but from home. Wired reports on this online program from the renowned institution that lets you read up or even follow some courses online. No accreditation whatsoever but the article lists various ways people around the world are putting this to good use.

This morning I watched a physics lecture which was fun (yes I did say fun) but most of the other areas I looked at, such as architecture or anthropology were much more basic in what they offer. It’s still only a pilot project though, more content upcoming.

In the last couple of hours I’ve seen three tv ads I find odd, pretty close to bad actually.

First, Drano which for years has sold liquid drain clod remover advertises their new gel clod remover by makind fun of liquid products! Isnt this like McDonalds making fun of Quarter Pounders to sell Big































































































































Macs??

Second, Vanilla Pepsi making fun of Vanilla Coke for not being peppy and original enough (The not-so vanilla vanilla)… when they are the ones coming out with a copy of a Coke product, what? Two years after?

Third, Duracell’s ad uses Lord of The Rings, The Two Towers. Can you think of a movie that says battery even less? “When going through the caves of Mordor I always make sure my staff has a fresh set of Duracells”. I know they like to be linked to popular movies but come on.

Nothing witty to say about those ads, they just suck.