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Caffeine-free Diet Coke is a staple at SCI’s World Headquarters, and while we prefer it in cans, we often consume a two-liter bottle each day. So, we noticed that the shape of the bottle changed this week.1 Notice the retro design with the narrow band a few inches up from the base in the photo to the left.
Our initial reaction is that the change is not for the good.
Clearly, the new design mimics the shape of the classic Coke ponies (7 oz.)… Read the rest
Back on March 29, we wrote At the Right Place, which detailed many of the parking violations we saw at a Lenten Penance service at our Parish, St. Alphonsus, in Wexford, PA. Included in the violations were numerous cars parked in clearly marked fire lanes, three cars surrounding and violating the same fire hydrant–it’s at the end of a narrow grassy island and there was a car on each side–and other cars parked where they shouldn’t have been–in parts of the narrow driveways that are clearly not parking… Read the rest
Technically, and chronologically, the Fourth of July, is already over.
Officially, and bureaucratically, there are still another 23 hours to go before the official holiday ends; so, there is still much to do.
however, as we reflect on our past eighteen-plus hours, it seems that we have had as All-American holiday as anyone could have. We exercised just about all our rights, and responsibly enjoyed the freedoms and liberties that were bestowed upon us (by our blessed good luck to have been born in the U.S.A.).
Admittedly, we didn’t attend… Read the rest
We have a new post over at SperoWebDesign.com about something that we have observed at this site. It’s called Nationwide Market Intelligence, or not. It is mostly about the web; so, SWD seemed to be the best place to post it.
The new post involves our criticism of Nationwide Insurance’s silly and bad “blue phone” television commercials, and how that post, from mid-February, tops (or is near the top and ahead of Nationwide) in the results of searches like, “Nationwide commercial blue phone,” without the quotes.
Read… Read the rest
For Immediate Release: the principals of Spero Consulting seek a partner in the manufacture and distribution of children’s toys. The partner firm must have the capacity to design, produce, and distribute a “girl” doll with: (1) a sophisticated voice recognition module and (2) the ability to reply to specific statements or compliments in a particular, logical manner.
Subject to cost considerations, we propose three versions.
Via voice recognition and the doll’s internal “logic,” the base model must respond in the following ways to different types of statements:
We usually work late into the night, but rarely shovel snow at 3:00 AM.
This morning is an exception.
The snow has been accumulating for the past eleven hours, and we’re not sure of the official measurement–we’d guess at least a foot so far–but when we threw our Basenji bitch into the night, she splayed her legs and her paws didn’t hit the ground. (Don’t worry, other dog lovers, we quickly retrieved her and found our boots and coat and began shoveling. Also, being Western Pennsylvania,… Read the rest
In fact, students of historical linguistics could tell you that many other words are homographs, too, and those students could also explain semantic change, including the pejoration and reclamation of words. (Don’t be a fool, you know where this is heading.)
We doubt that we have much in common with President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, but we do sympathize with him for the grief he is taking for using ‘retarded‘ as a pejorative.
Was it poor judgment? Sure. Should he have known better?… Read the rest
For the past few weeks, it seems that every day we hear at least one news presenter or commentator complain that would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, stopped talking after he was “read his Miranda rights.”
We find that very irritating because as a foreign national and enemy combatant, he has no such rights; so, they could not be “read to him.”
The fact that an FBI agent read or explained the Miranda warning to him does not confer those rights upon him.
The largest error was not or is not… Read the rest
