Wow. Another of my company’s competitors takes a nosedive.
Pisces buddies!!
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Foot-and-mouth
People are getting very paranoid about the spread of the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak. Apparently UK visitors to Portugal now have to dip their shoes in disinfectant. Some woman in New Zealand is facing criminal charges because she neglected to disclose that she’d been to a farm in Scotland in the past 30 days. I’m starting to wonder if we’ll be detained when we get to Australia next week…
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Culture of fear
Max linked to a good article about the current European culture of fear. As an American currently living across the pond, I definitely think that the “irrational fears” are worse over here than at home. Sure, Americans distrust the government, but the British distrust everybody. Back home in Indiana, the only thing I really feared was a car accident (whether from a drunk driver or hitting a deer). Here, though, we fear the trains, we fear the beef, we fear the cell phones. We have the disasters to back it up, too! Personally, my big current one is that “deep vein thrombosis,” seeing as how I’m flying to Sydney in less than two days. My doctor advised that I take half an aspirin and move around a lot, but after reading that article I think I’m going to be jogging laps up and down the aisles. (What about alcohol? Alcohol thins the blood, right? Bring on the cocktails!)
Edited 01/03/2025: Link is unfortunately dead now.
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Harry Potter
HOLY COW! The Harry Potter movie trailer is available online! You’ve gotta see this thing… For now, you can only get it in a streaming version from the official site, but Entertainment-Rewired Magazine is going to have a downloadable version soon here.
Was that not amazing? According to AICN, the score was done by John Williams (of Star Wars fame). I really hope they manage to keep that dark, eerie feel through all of it. It looked more like a Tim Burton movie than a Chris Columbus one! Everything looked amazingly like how I had pictured it from the book. I loved the editing too, jumping from the letter to the train to the Great Hall. I really, really hope that the film lives up the quality of this trailer. *fingers crossed*
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Slashdot links to a very interesting Boston Globe story about researchers who were able to pinpoint the exact time and location that a Vincent Van Gogh painting was done, mainly by using astronomy. Cool. You can see the original painting online here and the ensuing Slashdot comments are here.
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Matthew Perry
“Hi, I’m Chandler. Could I BE anymore on drugs?” An open letter to his fellow cast-members from Matthew Perry. Hilarious.
Edited 01/03/2025: Ouch. In retrospect, that’s in pretty poor taste.
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Advertising to kids
Uh-oh. Snookums already dislikes the Mouse House for what they did to his beloved Winnie-the-Pooh, and this Coke business could very well push him over the edge. He does not take kindly to childhood icons becoming merchandising whores.
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Naming things is hard
I just stumbled across a totally fascinating publication called The Naming Newsletter, which bills itself as “A Quarterly Report On The Strategy & Tactics of Naming.” There are lots of little articles filled with tips and lessons for naming a business or brand. I especially liked “Where Did They Get That Name?” Did you know that “Chef Boyardee” is a phonetic spelling of “Boiardi”, the man who invented the recipes?
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