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If you’re thinking of setting up an amazing man cave or showing off a ginormous baby bump next year, think again.
A northern Michigan school on Friday released its 37th annual list of words and phrases that it believes should be “banished” from the English language, and it suggests that some classic — and perhaps hackneyed — should get the ax.
Lake Superior State University once again solicited people online to nominate terms they consider tired, overused or simply annoying. Based on those submissions, the arbiters at the school decided to put the following on this year’s chopping block: “amazing,” “baby bump,” “shared sacrifice,” “occupy,” “blowback,” “man cave,” “ginormous” and “the new normal.”
“Pet parent,” “win the future,” “trickeration” and “thank you in advance” also have been unofficially sentenced to linguistic exile for the crimes of excessive and inappropriate usage, according to the university in Sault Sainte Marie on the Canadian border.
“Worn-out words and phrases are the new normal this year, but with some shared sacrifice, we can clean up the language and win the future,” a school representative said in a written statement. “With the addition of this year’s nominations, the list of words and phrases banished over the years has become ginormous.”
“Amazing” — arguably one of the most overused adjectives in the English language — topped this year’s list of submissions, according to the university.
“Banish it for blatant overuse and incorrect use … to stop my head from exploding,” begged Paul Crutchfield from Great Britain, according to the press release.
“Anderson Cooper used it three times recently in the opening 45 seconds of his program,” said Sarah Howley, a resident of Kalamazoo, Michigan, referring to the CNN anchor. “My teeth grate, my hackles rise, and even my dog is getting annoyed at this senseless overuse.
READ MORE HERE
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/30/us/banished-words/
Billy Corgan is working on opening a cool little tea house in suburban Highland Park. The Smashing Pumpkins founder and frontman lives in the tony North Shore burgh and frankly is tired of not having cool cultural things to do.
“We want to open it because there’s nothing really to do up here,” Corgan said, adding that it’s a beautiful place to live. “But [there's a] lack of culture for someone in their 30s or 40s. I think for such a nice place you need places to go and meet people and exchange ideas. That’s the idea fot the tea house … a place to gather.”
The unnamed tea shop will take over the former U.S. Post Office in the Ravinia neighborhood on Roger Williams Avenue. They recently signed the lease and have been working with Highland Park’s mayor, who Corgan said has been incredibly supportive. The shop, which he’s aiming to open in March or April, will seat about 30 people and have a 1930s Chinese-style tea house vibe. “It’s a little bit of a salon vibe, not modern at all. Very old school,” he said. “What we’re going for is that Chinese-French style.”
Corgan, a self-proclaimed tea guy, said he wants this to be a gathering place with rotating exhibits and speakers. He wants people of mixed ages to come enjoy either a simple cup of tea or become engaged in a lecture on archeology, view local or nationally touring art or listen to live music, but think more Fred Astaire than Radiohead as Corgan likes things with a more vintage feeling. “It has a whimsical feel to it … it’ll feel like you’re stepping back in time in terms of space, but what we put into the space will change,” he said. “My dream number is changing it 15 to 20 times a month where you’re inviting people to talk about film or have an open mic night.”
Source: http://chicago.eater.com/archives/2011/12/29/billy-corgan-opening-chinoise-vibed-tea-house.php
Courtesy of our friends at the Montreal Gazette (Q101 is #1 in Montreal!):
With that dire Mayan doomsday prophecy hanging over the next year, we needed to stare extra-deep into our crystal ball to make predictions on 2012′s world of entertainment.
Knowing Armageddon may be in the cards, many important questions arise, such as: How can the world end before Christopher Nolan completes his Batman trilogy? And how can the world not end when Charlie Sheen premieres his new TV series?
Without further ado, and while the world is still spinning, we offer some pop-culture trends and events to look forward to in 2012.
Who killed Rosie Larsen? Who killed Ned Stark? We’ll finally learn the answer to the former when AMC’s The Killing returns for Season 2 in April. The answer to the second question is author George R.R. Martin, who wrote the series, A Song of Ice and Fire, that gave birth to HBO’s celebrated Game of Thrones. The more important question: Who will Martin kill next (read the books for spoilers) when Game of Thrones returns for Season 2 in March?
New Year’s TV babies: Alcatraz (Jan. 26); The Firm (Jan. 8); The Finder (Jan. 12); Luck (Jan. 29). Winter is the new fall, with a slew of hot shows. These four have the best chances of success. Alcatraz reunites Lost’s J.J. Abrams and Jorge Garcia, who played Hurley on Lost. (I’m quietly hoping the premiere is an alternative, more satisfying version of the Lost finale.) The Firm takes John Grisham’s character Mitch McDeere into the future. Originally played by Tom Cruise in the 1993 film, Josh Lucas’s fine acting chops will offer a less artificial, more nuanced, more credible version of the lawyer. The Finder offers a spinoff of Bones. Meanwhile, Luck tries its luck at doing for horse racing what Boardwalk Empire did for bootlegging. My prediction: Luck star Dustin Hoffman will contend with Steve Buscemi and Jon Hamm for the 2012 best-actor Emmy.
Bad boys: Daniel Craig’s Bond is finally back in Skyfall (Nov. 9), in which 007′s loyalty to M (Judi Dench) is tested. Bond’s even bigger test, and one of our anticipated joys of the film? Javier Bardem as the villain. Meanwhile, Canadian bad boy Kiefer Sutherland – Jack Bauer himself – returns to the small screen in Touch. A preview will air Jan. 25 following American Idol, with the premiere pegged for March 19. Created by Tim Kring (Heroes), the show finds Sutherland playing the father of a mute son with special powers of prediction. (I predict a hit in 2012 – and a few more entertaining “Kiefer walks into a bar …” tabloid stories.)
Mad Men and the Man: With stalled contract negotiations and endless delays, it’s easy to forget that when we last saw Mad Men, it was finishing its best season yet. When the AMC show finally returns with new episodes in March, it will be the pop-cultural TV event of the year. Forget the ad agency – what will come of Don’s hasty marriage to his young secretary (Montreal’s lovely Jessica Paré)? Meanwhile, the Man, Canadian legend Leonard Cohen, releases a new album, Old Ideas, on Jan. 31. At 77, Cohen could still outcharm and out-seduce Don Draper any day of the week.
Caped crusaders: Spider-Man reborn; the Dark Knight hangs up his cape; the Avengers assemble. The Avengers (May 4) will test whether putting an orgy of heroes onscreen at the same time will in any way deter Robert Downey Jr. from stealing scenes. The Amazing Spider-Man (July 3) dumps Tobey Maguire for Andrew Garfield (The Social Network), and Kirsten Dunst for the ever-delightful and intelligent Emma Stone. Last, but not least, Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy ends with The Dark Knight Rises (July 20). As for the next Batman? I hear Tobey Maguire is looking for work.
Two reasons Doomsday may not come soon enough: Paul McCartney’s Valentine’s Day album, and Charlie Sheen’s Anger Management. Sir Paul, who recently remarried, will release an album of love songs on Feb. 7, just in time to make a little mood music for Cupid’s big day. Most of the songs will be romantic standards from the likes of Cole Porter, but the album’s two new songs have cheese ball written all over them: Valentine and Only Our Hearts. And that brings us to Anger Management, Charlie Sheen’s pending comeback slated for a yet-to-beannounced 2012 premiere on the FX network. (CTV bought Canadian distribution rights.) The show will offer a televised take on the mediocre 2003 film starring Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson. That said, I wouldn’t bet against a man fuelled by tiger blood; Charlie could very well be winning again very soon.
READ MORE PREDICTIONS HERE
Source: http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/movie-guide/Ideas+trends/5931597/story.html
The Internet’s most popular destinations, including eBay, Google, Facebook, and Twitter seem to view Hollywood-backed copyright legislation as an existential threat.
It was Google co-founder Sergey Brin who warned that the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act “would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.” Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Twitter co-founders Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone, and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman argue that the bills give the Feds unacceptable “power to censor the Web.”
But these companies have yet to roll out the heavy artillery.
When the home pages of Google.com, Amazon.com, Facebook.com, and their Internet allies simultaneously turn black with anti-censorship warnings that ask users to contact politicians about a vote in the U.S. Congress the next day on SOPA, you’ll know they’re finally serious.
True, it would be the political equivalent of a nuclear option–possibly drawing retributions from the the influential politicos backing SOPA and Protect IP–but one that could nevertheless be launched in 2012.
“There have been some serious discussions about that,” says Markham Erickson, who heads the NetCoalition trade association that counts Google, Amazon.com, eBay, and Yahoo as members. “It has never happened before.” (See CNET’s SOPA FAQ.)
Web firms may be outspent tenfold on lobbyists, but they enjoy one tremendous advantage over the SOPA-backing Hollywood studios and record labels: direct relationships with users.
How many Americans feel a personal connection with an amalgamation named Viacom — compared with voters who have found places to live on Craigslist and jobs (or spouses) on Facebook and Twitter? How would, say, Sony Music Entertainment, one of the Recording Industry Association of America’s board members, cheaply and easily reach out to hundreds of millions of people?
Protect IP and SOPA, of course, represent the latest effort from the Motion Picture Association of America, the RIAA, and their allies to counter what they view as rampant piracy on the Internet, especially offshore sites such as ThePirateBay.org. It would allow the Justice Department to obtain an order to be served on search engines, Internet providers, and other companies forcing them to make a suspected piratical Web site effectively vanish, a kind of Internet death penalty.
There are early signs that the nuclear option is being contemplated. Wikimedia (as in Wikipedia) called SOPA an “Internet Blacklist Bill.” Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has proposed an article page blackout as a way to put “maximum pressure on the U.S. government” in response to SOPA.
The Tumblr microblogging site generated 87,834 calls to Congress over SOPA. Over at GoDaddyBoycott.org, a move-your-domain-name protest is scheduled to begin today over the registrar’s previous–and still not repudiated–enthusiasm for SOPA. Popular image hosting site Imgur said yesterday it would join the exodus too.
Technically speaking, it wouldn’t be difficult to pull off. Web companies already target advertisements based on city or ZIP code.
GET INVOLVED HERE (at your own risk…we don’t own nor have anything to do with this website…so be careful!)
Source: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57349540-281/sopa-opponents-may-go-nuclear-and-other-2012-predictions/
As the gravity of what just happened sank in, Ultimate Fighting Championship President Dana White’s sickness became severe.
“I’m really not feeling good, let someone else talk,” White announced to reporters late Friday night following the first-round technical knockout loss and subsequent retirement by heavyweight Brock Lesnar, the organization’s most popular fighter.
Indeed, White has some thinking to do.
PHOTOS: UFC 141
Even though he fought only seven times in the UFC Lesnar was a pay-per-view audience magnet because of his compelling past as a “champion” in the scripted action of World Wrestling Entertainment.
He reigned as heavyweight champion, headlined UFC 100, continued to generate the most Internet traffic of any mixed martial arts fighter and actually has fights left on his contract.
His departure is sobering, perhaps sickening.
Looking around, the UFC’s next most popular champion, Georges St-Pierre, is recovering from a knee injury and likely out of action for nine months. Middleweight champion Anderson Silva has cleaned out his division. And Lesnar’s conqueror, Alistair Overeem, is a lesser-known veteran of other circuits who made his UFC debut Friday.
Overeem’s next fight ikely will be in the summer against UFC heavyweight champion Junior Dos Santos, who will be making his first title defense.
White and UFC Chairman Lorenzo Fertitta took the high road with Lesnar Saturday even after the fighter blew off the post-fight news conference of his final fight.
White said, “When a guy decides he wants to retire, you let him do it. This is not, ‘Go hit a ball with a stick for the next two or three years on your way out.’ This is the real deal, guys. We’ll figure it out.”
Fertitta maintained he’d have to “look up” how many UFC fights Lesnar had on his UFC contract, adding, “Doesn’t matter. If he’s done, he’s done.”
What complicates this situation is the depth of the behind-the-scenes plotting about Lesnar’s post-UFC career.
He told the MGM Grand Garden Arena crowd that he was poised to retire if he lost Friday after battling for two years the effects of the intestinal disease diverticulitis. Lesnar said if he won in Las Vegas, he would pursue a chance to recapture the belt he took from Randy Couture in 2008 and lost three title defenses later to Cain Velasquez in October 2010.
“Tonight is the last time you’ll see me in the octagon,” Lesnar said.
Said White: “I had no idea he was going to do that. There were no signs.”
Some wonder if Lesnar, 34, would have bolted from the UFC if he could have beaten Overeem and Dos Santos, exiting with belt in hand.
There have been rumors dating to last year that Lesnar was exploring a return to WWE. He told The Times recently he wouldn’t shy from doing business with Vince McMahon.
The WWE will start a new television network April 1 when it stages its annual Wrestlemania event in Miami, and it is feasible he could be added with a UFC blessing to appear at the event alongside Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, John Cena and special guest Shaquille O’Neal.
Source: http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-spw-brock-lesner-ufc-114-20111231,0,2143070.story
The Facebook Timeline feature is rolling out across the world, but not everybody is happy about it.
Finnish newspaper YLE Uutiset reports that Facebook appears to be publishing users private messages. Users can see private messages posted to users on their public profile and displayed on their timeline.
Facebook said the report is erroneous. A Facebook spokesperson said:
A small number of users raised concerns after what they believed to be private messages appeared on their Timeline. Our engineers investigated these reports and found that the messages were older wall posts that had always been visible on the users’ profile pages. Facebook is satisfied that there has been no breach of user privacy.
Users commented on social media channels on Sunday evening that not only public messages are visible, but also apparently private messages are on display on users’ timelines.
(Source: Facebook)
It is difficult to pinpoint exactly which messages are affected by the new level of privacy — or lack of it.
Facebook added conversations using chat instant messages to inbox messages in November 2010. Facebook called this the ’social inbox’ to allow messages to be delivered to any device. Wall comments appear in your inbox and on your timeline. Wall comments from friends now appear on your timeline as public posts.
For some users, messages are on display from when the users joined Facebook; while on other timelines show photos and wall posts. Facebook have changed their privacy settings several times over the last few years.
If you don’t regularly visit your privacy settings, you could be sharing more than you thought you were.
The timeline is being rolled out now and should be available to all Facebook users next week. Earlier this year, concerns were raised over the ability to ’stalk’ Facebook users by viewing their activity on their timeline. Facebook also announced that status messages photos would be made public by default to users with profile and status updates set to ‘Everyone’.
Conversations between two people are shown as discussions. However, people who are not engaged in the discussion can still see the conversation. It is unclear which messages are displayed on the public timeline, which is available to anyone and which messages are visible only to friends.
I looked at a couple of timelines, one from an existing connection in Facebook and one from someone I am not connected to. I added my ZDNet colleague Zack Whittaker as a friend on Facebook in 2010. When I look at his profile, I can see the status updates that he posted to Facebook before we became connected on Facebook.
When I ‘unfriended’ Zack I could see nothing on his timeline. Zack has been hiding updates from his timeline since he became aware of the privacy issue. However, another contact who is not my friend on Facebook has a completely different timeline view. I can see photos and links, comments and status updates.
READ MORE INCLUDING HOW TO ADJUST YOUR SETTINGS
Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/feeds/facebook-timeline-privacy-concerns-deepen-as-rollout-begins/4424
There’s quite a debacle going on in the wireless world right now, or as the Brits like to call it, a “row”. A company that was once thought as the primary go-to in the mobile world for diagnostic software that is on millions of handsets throughout the country, Carrier IQ is being looked at with a microscope by the government, the tech industry, consumers, and the people that wear foil on their heads, living “off the grid”, with 19th century plumbing.
Who’s Carrier IQ? What are they doing to cause so many to be upset? Take a journey with me..
Founded in 2005, and privately owned, Carrier IQ is a company that provides software for diagnostics of “smart phones” made by various manufacturers, and by numerous service providers. A statement once made by Carrier IQ said that they “Are unique because we are the only company embedding diagnostic software in millions of phones”. A revolutionary idea, this is what sometimes takes place when you’re on the phone with customer service, or tech support for your provider, and they are discussing the current state of your phone with you. How do they know? Carrier IQ’s software. Everything was going fine, until the beginning of November this year.
Enter Orwell
It began with a video posted by an industry researcher named Trevor Eckhart. The posted video, is Eckhart showing the viewer that Carrier IQ’s software was logging location information, and keystrokes, and was not asking permission if the user, which is a violation of Federal Communication laws. Carrier IQ sent a cease and desist letter to Eckhart on November 16th, informing him that the information he showed, and posted in his video was proprietary, and that he was committing copyright infringement, and making “false allegations” against the software company. The Electronic Frontier Foundation was contacted by Eckhart for help in the matter, and the EFF backed him, and his findings.
Upon news of the combined front of Eckhart and the EFF, Carrier IQ settled down a bit, a put out a public apology letter to Trevor Eckhart, denying any wrong doing on their part, in regards to logging and tracking, and made an offer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation to work together in the matter. But this outing of potential fraudulent practice was far from over.
Eckhart bounced right back into the matter, with another video he posted on November 28th. This time, it had Carrier IQ’s software caught in the act with detail. His 2nd video showed what he said is Carrier IQ’s software, showed clearly on the phone’s display, processing texts, mobile web browser information, and keystrokes. The company fired off another response, in a matter of a few days: “The metrics and tools we derive are not designed to deliver such info nor do we have any intention of developing such tools”. Looking at Carrier IQ’s site reveals a statement that mobile providers “Capture an array of experience data including screen transitions, button presses, service interactions, and anomalies”. That’s understood, Carrier IQ, but that has nothing to do with what it appears that your software is doing.
The Comedian That Became A Politician
United States Senator Al Franken, of Minnesota got wind of this ordeal, and as the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and Law, was disturbed to say the least of the videos, and what Carrier IQ’s software may be doing. A letter was sent to Carrier IQ’s C.E.O., Larry Lenhart, asking questions to find out what was going on, and if the software company was violating Federal law. The laws that Carrier IQ could be violating is a long list:
-The Electronic Communications Privacy Act
-The Pen Register Statute
-The Stored Communications Act
-The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act
Senator Franken also sent letters to T-Mobile, and Motorola to find out about the installation, and implementation of Carrier IQ’s diagnostic software that the 2 companies used for case by case troubleshooting and marketing. Motorola came back with the following list of their phones that use the software, called IQ Agent:
-Motorola Admiral
-Motorola Titanium
-Motorola Bravo
-Motorola Atrix 2
T-Mobile had a similar reply, but a much longer list, with the mobile provider using IQ Agent since last August, with 450,000 various devices using the software, that are:
-HTC Amaze 4G
-Samsung Galaxy S II
-Samsung Exhibit II 4G
-LG Doubleplay
-LG MyTouch/MyTouchQ
- Blackberry models 9810, 9360, and 9900
Sprint is already disabling the software on their phones. Something more about this, is the rampant speculation that spawned from a response from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in regards to Carrier IQ, which was that the FBI cannot comment, or release information about current investigation proceedings. Is the FBI the Carrier IQ data? A very unexpected response, to a very strange situation. If you have any of the phones listed above and are concerned about any possible personal privacy issues, contact your mobile provider about the situation. This is definitely something to keep an eye on.
More than 1,500 Chicago cab drivers have signed a petition calling for the first fare hikes since 2005, in addition to proposing new fees for passengers who pay with credit cards, travel in large groups or vomit in the car during a late-night ride.
Drivers are calling for fares to be raised by 22 percent, and for a host of additional charges, including $1 each for additional passengers, $1.50 for credit card transactions to absorb some processing costs and a $50 penalty for fraudulent payments, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. They are also requesting a $75 “cleanup fee” for in-car messes, especially vomit from inebriated passengers.
The petition was submitted to the city clerk a week after Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced a planned overhaul of dilapidated and fuel-inefficient vehicles being used as taxi cabs, and proposed limitations on the amount of hours drivers can spend on the road.
In his book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely notes that from about 1978 to 1993, the average pay for a public company CEO climbed from 36 times the average worker’s pay to 131 times. In order to “shame” companies into holding back on lavish pay for CEOs, the Securities and Exchange Commission began requiring publicly held firms to disclose the pay of their top five executives in their financial reports. The result? Since that rule was implemented, CEO pay has skyrocketed upward, to 369 times the average worker’s pay, nearly three times as high a ratio as before! And this is a real economic issue. One academic study, in fact, estimates that by 2003 the combined pay of the top five executives at public companies had climbed to more than 10% of the company’s net income, compared to less than 5% prior to 1998.
Lots of reasons can be posited for this yawning pay gap. Globalization, for instance, may be holding down the average worker’s compensation, while also bidding up the demand for capable top executives. But I think Ariely’s hypothesis is more plausible: By making a senior executive’s pay directly comparable with other senior executives at other public companies, the SEC unintentionally generated a feeding frenzy of comparison shopping by executives. You can’t blame a CEO for competing with other CEOs to have the best package, and this became a lot easier once the SEC made the information freely available.
Is it possible something similar is now happening to the rest of us, as a result of the e-social revolution and the dramatic increase in transparency that it is generating? While it’s human nature to be social and want to help others, we also have a natural tendency to be competitive, envious, and jealous of others. It is our nature to evaluate our own lives in relative terms. I’m happier when things improve for me relative to how they used to be, but I’m also happier when things seem better for me than for my neighbor. And social media platforms now allow me to make much more direct comparisons.
Think about it: We compete to have the most Twitter followers, the most LinkedIn connections, the coolest status updates, the most interesting Facebook friends, the cutest pictures, or the funniest videos. We compete to display our own knowledge and insight, because–at some level–we want to display better knowledge and insight than others.
Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1803069/social-medias-envy-effect
In Gary Shteyngart’s 2010 novel Super Sad True Love Story, ordinary Americans are glued to superpowered iPhone-like devices while authority figures monitor their every move. Two newly released research papers on the Internet’s future, it seems, prove the author did a good job of predicting things. One Pew study has found that text messaging is growing more quickly than anyone has imagined, while a new Brookings paper is predicting cheap and total monitoring of all electronic communications by authoritarian governments in the next few years.
First, the dystopian future. John Villasenor of UCLA conducted research for the Brookings Institution that paints a depressing picture of where Internet monitoring is headed. In the paper, Recording Everything: Digital Storage As An Enabler Of Authoritarian Governments, Villasenor has uncovered convincing evidence that repressive regimes worldwide will soon be able to cheaply monitor all voice and data communications in their country. According to Villasenor, “For the first time ever, it will become technologically and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders–every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner.”
The same technological advances that enable amazing consumer gadgets like iPhones also help fuel ominous government surveillance projects. Villasenor’s research indicates that storage to record all phone calls made in Syria for a year currently costs $2.5 million–but, if current pricing trends continue, this will fall in 2016 to only $250,000. Rapidly falling storage costs also mean that Orwellesque video surveillance schemes will soon became extremely affordable. A pilot project by the Chinese municipality of Chongqing to blanket the city of 12 million with 500,000 video cameras (running, incidentally, on Cisco and HP software) currently costs $300 million in annual storage–but this price will drop to a much more practical $3 million by 2020.
According to the Brookings paper, rapidly falling data storage costs are being combined with massive innovations by repressive regimes in Internet monitoring and censorship–that are often aided and abetted by American firms. Along with Cisco and HP’s involvement in Chinese citizen monitoring projects, marquee firms ranging from McAfee to Boeing have sold Internet monitoring software to Iran, Myanmar, and others. Villasenor expects a “coming era of ubiquitous surveillance in authoritarian countries” that will have big implications for U.S. foreign policy.
Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1802688/pew-rising-cell-phone-worldwide-brookings-villasenor-surveillance
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