Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Daily Links 2-25-14

In today's post: the Christian leader in the digital age, smartphones are making us tired and unproductive, food brands named after real people, and more.

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The Christian Leader in the Digital Age:


The Digital Age is upon us. In the span of less than three decades, we have redefined the way humans communicate, entertain, inform, research, create, and connect – and what we know now is only a hint of what is to come. But the greatest concern of the church is not a technological imperative, but a Gospel imperative.
The digital world did not exist a generation ago, and now it is a fundamental fact of life. The world spawned by the personal computer, the Internet, social media, and the smart phone now constitutes the greatest arena of public discussion and debate the world has ever known.
Leaders who talk about the real world as opposed to the digital world are making a mistake, a category error. While we are right to prioritize real face-to-face conversations and to find comfort and grounding in stable authorities like the printed book, the digital world is itself a real world, just real in a different way. 
Real communication is happening in the digital world, on the Web, and on the smart phone in your pocket. Real information is being shared and globally disseminated, faster than ever before. Real conversations are taking place, through voice, words and images, connecting people and conversations all over the world. 
If the leader is not leading in the digital world, his leadership is, by definition, limited to those who also ignore or neglect that world, and that population is shrinking every minute. The clock is ticking.
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21 English words we need to get rid of. It's surprising to me how many of these words are commonly used.

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For all their advantages, smartphones don't seem to be making us more productive. Quite the opposite:

For a productive day at work tomorrow, give the smartphone a rest tonight. 
Reading and sending work email on a smartphone late into the evening doesn’t just make it harder to get a decent night’s sleep. New research findings show it also exhausts workers by morning and leaves them disengaged by the next afternoon. 
That means the way most knowledge workers do their jobs—monitoring their iPhones for notes from the boss long after the office day is done and responding to colleagues at all hours—ultimately makes them less effective, posit researchers from University of Florida, Michigan State University and University of Washington.

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A handy infographic on why readers prefer print books to e-books.


via EBookFriendly.

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Real or Fake: The Names Behind 12 Famous Food Brands. I was pleasantly surprised at how many of these were real.

Monday, December 09, 2013

Daily Links 12-9-13

In today's link roundup: World War II in color, gift ideas for Star Trek fans, a Nutella bar opens in Chicago, and more.

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Check out these stunning World War II era photographs. The wonders of Kodachrome.


Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds

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The perfect gift for a Star Trek fan:


Hat tip: Boing Boing

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Understanding the meanings of common British slang phrases. This could come in handy in case I ever make it back across the pond.

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This exists. A Nutella bar at Eataly Chicago.

Photo by Marc Much - Eater Chicago
I have to see that the one thing I miss about living in Chicago is the food. There were always an abundance of great places to eat. Can anyone say road trip?

Hat tip: Neatorama

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Inspired by the soon to be published book Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience (which is an outgrowth of the website of the same name) Flavorwire compiles their list of 12 collections of letters that are worth reading. I love reading letters from writers as it gives an insight into their thoughts. (Hat tip: Book Riot)

Wednesday, October 02, 2013

Daily Links 10-2-13

A little photographic history, words that don't exist in English (but should), John Coltrane, and more in today's link roundup.

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Why didn't people smile in 19th century photographs? The answer is somewhat surprising. (Hat tip: Neatorama)

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25 words that don't exist in English (but probably should) (hat tip: Eliana Johnson)

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A baseball fan's bucket list (and a mighty fine one at that).

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John Coltrane's handwritten outline for A Love Supreme. Check out the entire story here.

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Are you studying or reading? Unfortunately I can relate to this post. (Hat tip: Blogging Theologically)

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Disney quote of the day:


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A profile of the real-life Indiana Jones. Yes, there is someone who really resembles the movie character.

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Wally Pipp is best known as the guy benched in favor of Lou Gehrig. But do you know the rest of the Pipp story? 

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Just how close did we come to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis? If it weren't for one Soviet submariner disobeying orders we would have gone to war.