The Null Device

2000/11/9

A piece of online fiction from a gentler age: The Horror of Spam. (thanks, goliard)

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The convergence of content and advertising: AltaVista are now selling search placement as advertising; porn merchants Private Media Group have signed a deal which will direct sex-related searches to their sites, in return for AltaVista getting a cut of subscriptions.

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Is the New Puritan literary movement the literary equivalent of DOGMA 95, or just a publicity stunt?

According to the manifesto's 10 rules, New Puritans "shun poetry," "avoid all devices of voice," including "rhetoric" and "authorial asides," "eschew flashbacks, dual temporal narratives and foreshadowing," and "avoid any elaborate punctuation" (?!) and "all improbable or unknowable speculation about the past or the future." ... All New Puritan works are set in the present day because they're "fragments of our time," and they feature only "real" products, places and objects -- nothing made up.
They're just in it for a lark. Blincoe and Thorne themselves describe the manifesto as "partly playful." Most of the contributors didn't even actually sign the thing, and have no intention of abiding by its rules after the party's over.

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Today's philosophical conundrum: Why does a mirror reverse left and right but not up and down?

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A fascinating article on Spanglish, the hybrid of Spanish and English that evolved in the United States, looking at its histories and comparing it to other languages. (via Arts & Letters)

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Um, it looks as if the US election is still hanging in the balance, with Florida being recounted. So there's still a chance that the lesser evil could get in.

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Scare meme of the day: Can kissing cause cancer?

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