Daily Links 10-23-13

In today's roundup of interesting things from the internet: an abandoned library, strengthening your writing, a how-to of the day, and more.

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Has texting destroyed proper spelling? I hope not.

I never took the home study course, but the texts and tweets and emails I send today are full of plz and thx and u and w and &, and that's true as well for most of the messages I get. I write coupla and wanna and lmk. i'm also -- the horror -- a lower case kind of guy. Many people rail against this as a degradation of language and a vandalizing of culture. I'm not one of them. I think it's efficient, occasionally ingenious, unpretentious and fun.

But I have my limits. Articles, resumes, professional work -- standard English only, please. In domains like that, I'm a hawk on spelling, grammar and punctuation. If you don't know the difference between your and you're, its and it's, affect and effect, I'm rigidly intolerant. I let myself get away with murdering the English language in an email, but for a job applicant I treat it like a capital crime.

The prescriptive case for standard English has always made sense to me. Good grammar, proper punctuation and correct spelling improve communication. Not only do they clarify the sending and receiving of messages, they clarify the thinking that goes into those messages. Plus there's a cultural argument: Language is constitutive of identity, and if the rules of language erode, the identity erodes.

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This is just......sad.(Hat tip: Book Riot)

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Settling the debate on who designed the famous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Well, sort of.

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10 words you should cut from your writing.  This list probably could be longer but it's a good start.


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How-to of the day: a primer on darts. While this is only a guide to playing one particular variation of darts it's still a handy guide.

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Having a messy desk isn't such a bad thing after all. Makes me feel better about the condition of my own desk. (Hat tip: Blogging Theologically)

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The (flawed) logic of the second glance. And it's not just a guy thing.

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The power of the word no:

Learning how to say no is one of the most useful skills you can develop I found, especially when it comes to living a more productive and healthy life.

Saying no to unnecessary commitments can give you the time you need to recover and rejuvenate. Saying no to daily distractions can give you the space you need to focus on what is important to you. And saying no to temptation can help you stay on track and achieve your health goals. In fact not being able to say no, is one of the most biggest downfalls that successful entrepreneurs claim as their own key mistakes.

Daily Links 9-17-13

Work, misspelled cakes, introverts, switching careers, and more in today's link roundup.

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Five encouragements for your work.

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Why do baseball teams bunt so much? And is it effective? (The short answer is no)

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When spelling names on cakes goes horribly wrong. (Hat tip Neatorama)

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"I'm an introvert, and I don't need to come out of my shell." I couldn't agree more. Also, his points on homeschooling are dead on.

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This just goes to show that it's never too late start over in your career: 10 People Who Switched Careers After 50 and Thrived.


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What's the Difference Between Women Preaching and Women Blogging? There is a difference. I think the author is right on the money in her analysis of this issue.

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The real life inspirations behind Disney Princesses.

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Finally, a little Cubs humor:

Daily Links 9-9-13

The challenges of spelling, more benefits of owning a Kindle, and more in today's edition.

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Why is English spelling so messed up? Mental Floss has the answer.

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It was only a matter of time:

that it would let customers who bought certain print books download the electronic versions of those titles for a small fee, or for free. For anyone who buys both kinds of books, myself included, the service, which Amazon calls Kindle MatchBook, raises a simple question: What took so long?

I had wondered when this was going to happen. Just another reason to own a Kindle.

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14 Lessons of the New Workplace Millenials Need to Master. Actually reading over this list just about anyone who works in the business world should apply these lessons.

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This is an amazing story:

Brigitte Höss lives quietly on a leafy side street in Northern Virginia. She is retired now, having worked in a Washington fashion salon for more than 30 years. She recently was diagnosed with cancer and spends much of her days dealing with the medical consequences. Brigitte also has a secret that not even her grandchildren know. Her father was Rudolf Höss, the Kommandant of Auschwitz. It was Rudolf Höss who designed and built Auschwitz from an old army barracks in Poland to a killing machine capable of murdering 2,000 people an hour. By the end of the war, 1.1 million Jews had been killed in the camp, along with 20,000 gypsies and tens of thousands of Polish and Russian political prisoners. As such, Brigitte’s father was one of the biggest mass murderers in history. For nearly 40 years she has kept her past out of public view, unexamined, not even sharing her story with her closest family members.

But here is one of the best parts of this story:

In 1972 they moved to Washington. Brigitte’s husband took a senior job with a transportation company, and they bought a house in Georgetown. It was a chance for Brigitte to start over. Brigitte struggled — she didn’t know how to write a check, spoke little English and was without friends or family. After some searching, she found a part-time job in a fashion boutique. One day a short Jewish lady visited the boutique. She liked Brigitte’s style and asked her to come work in her fashion salon in the District. Soon after she was hired, Brigitte says, she got drunk with her manager and confessed that her father was Rudolf Höss. The manager told the store’s owner. The owner told Brigitte that she could stay, that she had not committed any crime herself. What Brigitte did not know, at least not until later, was that the store owner and her husband were Jewish and had fled Nazi Germany after the Kristallnacht attacks of 1938. Brigitte was thankful for being seen as a person, rather than her father’s daughter. She worked at the store for 35 years, serving prominent Washingtonians, including the wives of senators and congressmen. The store owner returned Brigitte’s loyalty and hard work by keeping her secret. With the exception of one other manager, none of the other staff knew the truth about Brigitte’s family history.

Be sure to read the whole thing.
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Ten things I've Learned on Twitter. Some interesting tips for folks who want to use Twitter more effectively. (hat tip Thom Rainer)
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Why Duck Dynasty Viewers Heed Its Call (hat tip Acculturated). Maybe it has something to do with the fact that the Robertsons are real, down to earth, honest to goodness folks.