LinkedIn: TED (The Surprising Science of Happiness)

For various reasons I have been studying cognitive literary theory over the last few months. And although I find it fascinating, I'm not going to bore you with it. However, it did remind me to get you Fredians acquainted with one of my favourite websites: www.ted.com.

TED, which stands for Technology Entertainment Design and which uses the subtitle Ideas Worth Spreading, is a nonprofit devoted to just that: its website is full of passionate talks by the world's most inspired thinkers. And although the three domains seems somewhat limited, there's really no end to the variety of subjects and speakers. From performance artists over business men to mathematics professors.

But I'm dragging on and I wanted (have to!) keep it short today. So here's the reason I was reminded of cognitive literary theory. One of the talks featured is called The Surprising Science of Happiness and is delivered by cognitive researcher Nancy Etcoff.

It's fascinating stuff. Not only does it show how profound the impact of cognitive research is, but also (and much more importantly) it is the most intelligent thing I've ever heard anyone say about the most difficult topic out there: happiness.

So if you can spare 14 minutes and 22 seconds, you won't regret it...

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/nancy_etcoff_on_happiness_and_why_we_want_it.html 

LinkedIn: Zap a Day (or a Year)

A while ago I was surfing Humo’s site, when I came across an amusing link to http://www.zapaday.com. Now Zap a Day is a website that offers you tomorrow’s news. Literally. So if you’d click the link right now on Thursday 12 January 2012 you’d get the news for Friday 13 January 2012. Now how’s that possible?, you might ask. Well, it’s actually not that difficult. Most stories are about something that was planned, like elections, referenda, awards and stuff like that. If they’ve been planned for weeks, it’s not too hard to predict that tomorrow the end results of the Egyptian election will be made public. And because we know most partial results already, the general outcome isn’t too hard to predict.

Now when I told my friend E. about this over lunch today, she immediately asked a very good question. What’s the idea behind a site like Zap a Day? Obviously, it’s always going to be half-parody, but is it all comedy or is there a deeper message? So we started thinking. Perhaps Zap a Day shows us how little ‘new’ our ‘news’ actually is? Indeed, when you think about it, much of the news is actually quite predictable and logical. If you know there’s going to be a certain issue on the parliamentary agenda, it’s quite easy to predict what party x or politician y is going to say about it, how the votes will be cast, or what certain journalists will write about it in the newspaper. In this way, it seems neither the news nor the news coverage is very new anymore.

When I rode the train home from work, the subject kept going through my head, and I was suddenly reminded of an idea I’ve often toyed with before. As a regular reader of newspapers on the one hand and news sites and blogs on the other hand, I’ve noticed that newspapers are really in no position anymore to compete with online journalism. Indeed, in our modern world in general, and in the news business in particular, nothing is as important as speed. In the past announcers used to stand on corners every morning, shouting: ‘Yesterday’s plain crash. Read all about it in today’s paper!’. But of course, nowadays that’s ridiculous. Most events can be read about minutes after they’ve happened, and through Twitter - which is rapidly becoming the leading journalistic media channel - even as they’re happening. It seems inevitable, therefore, that the printed newspaper is going to go the way of the dodo.

I must say that I don’t particularly like the idea of that - there’s something quite heavenly about the weekend’s paper with a cup of coffee on a lazy Sunday morning - but still it seems inescapable. Or is it? Personally I do believe that newspapers will continue to exist for quite some time, but obviously they’re going to have to change. Already they’ve shifted from focussing on news coverage per se, to opinion pieces, magazine-esk spreads about tourism or food, and essays on culture. But is there something more we can do?

Well, this is where my little idea comes in. Somewhat similarly to Zap a Day, I’ve often wondered about the notion of a newspaper that doesn’t cover today’s news, but that of one year ago. Zap a Year, if you will. Indeed, to me the printed page is predominantly a space to study (my friend E. attended me to that too!), so it would be the ideal environment not for trying to compete with Twitter or news sites, but for the deeper analysis of significant events in the past. In this way, we could create a crossing between a newspaper and a history book. That’s it: The History Paper.

For instance, one year ago, on Wednesday 12 January 2011, a big story in the news was a wake organised for the victims of the most recent US school shooting, in Arizona. Even President Obama and his wife Michele were present. In the articles about the topic, commentators raised the issue of gun possession in the US and its citizens’ trigger-happy mentality. However, due to the Japanese tsunami and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima that soon followed, this topic of the Arizona school shooting was completely drowned (pardon the pun) in other, more pressing news. But today I would like to know - one year after - what really happened in the end. How many people did end up losing their lives? Because we often only hear about those dying on the day itself, not about those in hospital fighting for their lives in the days, weeks, months after. Have new measures been taken in the US schools to prevent something like that happening? Has it happened again since the incident in Arizona? Etcetera.

There were many things in the news on 12-01-11 that I’d like to know the outcome of today. Like the charges brought against Julian Assange of Wikileaks. Does anyone remember what ultimately happened to that guy? Or the death of Johan Vande Lannotte’s mother, precisely when he had to lead the intense debates about the formation of our government. Discussed on a full two-page spread on 12-01-11, but completely forgotten by 12-01-12.

Unless by Vande Lannotte himself, of course. And by his family, who probably miss their grandmother. And by her husband, who was left to go on by himself. Or had he already passed too? I don’t know.

Let’s tell these stories. In a well-researched, nuanced paper that occasionally will rub off ink on your hands. Wouldn’t that be nice?

LinkedIn: Shit That Siri Says

There's nothing technology can't do anymore, my grandma would say. Actually, she'd use some juicy West Flemish turn of phrase, but that would be the gist of it.

I was reminded of this when recently I heard about Siri on the new iPhone. Siri is an intelligent software assistant which functions as a personal assistant. Apple describes it as follows:

Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Say something like “Tell my wife I’m running late.” “Remind me to call the vet.” “Any good burger joints around here?” Siri does what you say, finds the information you need, then answers you. It’s like you’re having a conversation with your iPhone.

Sounds like science-fiction, doesn't it? But it really seems to work. (If you want to see how, you can find a little movie clip here.)

However, as with all artificial intelligence and voice recognition programs, there are always situations that cannot be anticipated and which will result in the program going nuts. I remember that Lernout&Hauspie's dictation software was fine as long as you stuck to words a toddler would know, but once you started dictating things like antidisestablishmentarianism you'd end up with rather strange stuff on the screen.

And so it's no different with Siri. It's fine when you ask it to find you the nearest bakery, remind you to go pick up your dry cleaning next week, but when you ask some more hardhitting questions, you can get some strange answers. Especially since the developers have given Siri what they call a 'sassy personality'.

Now some guys have dedicated a whole site to strange responses Siri gives (and I guess to asking strange questions too!) and they called it Shit That Siri Says. Here are some of the best for you to enjoy:


Funny, innit? You'll find many more on http://shitthatsirisays.tumblr.com/!

LinkedIn: Dearblank...

Dear website,

unlike those pieces of glass on the bicycle lane, the blaring alarm clock interrupting my sex dream this morning, the promising box of cookies in the kitchen cupboard which turned out to be empty, the rejected paper I wrote last month, the discovery of a black mushy thing in my backpack which used to be a banana and the bad hair days slowly becoming weeks, you really made me smile today. Thanks.

Sincerely, Fred

LinkedIn: Share a secret

A few days ago I had something I wanted to say. Badly. Fortunately for me, I have a forum to do so, which is, of course, the little corner of the Internet you are currently looking at. So as usual I started typing away during my commute and before long I had finished the piece. I devised a title for it (it was to be called All the world’s a stage), it tied in with previous subjects (for instance, the idea of hyperreality) and it was about something most people could relate to. So from an objective point of view there was nothing wrong with the blog entry. Still, for some reason it felt wrong to post it. And after long deliberation I decided to do something I had never done before: I decided to self-censor and not publish the piece. At the time I didn’t quite know why, but today I suddenly figured it out.

It came to me when I was thinking about the very first sentence of this piece (yes, please have a second look at it). While typing it, I hesitated for a moment between the verbs say or tell. Which made me realise that I should not have written 'I had something I wanted to say', but 'There was something I wanted to tell someone'. Indeed, there’s a big difference.

The problem was that I didn’t have the nerve to tell the person in question. I still don’t. So I was faced with an impasse: I couldn’t say it on our blog and I couldn’t tell it in person. Which basically comes down to having a secret. Usually people define a secret as something you shouldn’t tell anyone. But think about it, isn’t the worst secret the kind you can’t tell anyone?

Luckily there is a solution. During one of my nocturnal wanderings along virtual shores, I came across this site: http://coloresque.net/secrets/. It’s actually a virtual art project called Share a secret, which consists of a very simple premise. The site offers you a text box, through which you can share whatever secret you like. You won’t get a response and it’s completely anonymous. The only condition, the site states, is that you tell something that’s true.

Try it. (And be truthful.) I did it, and there’s something quite remarkable about it.

What, you may ask? I won’t tell you. As I learned from this experience, some things are best left, indeed, a secret.

LinkedIn: the Uncyclopedia

One of the most useful websites out there - and I often wonder exactly where that is - must be Wikipedia. It's actually so useful that I am using it at this very moment to look up a bunch of information about Wikipedia itself. That's what they call a strange loop by the way, self-reference for the win! But despite the obvious advantages of having access to this free, web-based encyclopedia, there are obviously also a few disadvantages.

Being a teacher at university for example, I am too often confronted with students quoting Wikipedia as the only source they consulted, confusing what they've read on the web with sound arguments or scientific facts. I'm not saying I blame them for that, growing up in an age in which the word 'library' is associated to a folder on your laptop rather than a place where they hide all the books (the latter is not my joke by the way, big up yourself if you know who said this) must have its consequences, but I wish people would at least realize that Wikipedia does not necessarily tell you the truth...

So, just in case you're one of my (future) students reading this: you will be deducted points if you quote Wikipedia in either a paper or an exam answer. On the other hand, there are points to be gained by quoting passages from the Uncyclopedia. For those of you who have never heard of this website, I give you the Wikipedia entry on the Uncyclopedia. Or what is the other way round?

Wikipedia ("the 'free' encyclopedia") is a website that parodies Uncyclopedia. It was founded in 2001, when it began its noble goal of spreading the world's misinformation in the most inconspicuous way possible. For this reason, academic experts strongly urge students not to cite Wikipedia. Originally written exclusively in Klingon, the project currently spans all the known languages of history. The English version has over twelve million pages, most of them capitalization redirects.

Only one vehicle for article humor is employed at Wikipedia: actual information. However, much of the behind-the-scenes aspects of Uncyclopedia are also parodied, from the abundance of maintenance templates to the system for rating articles. Like Uncyclopedia, Wikipedia has guidelines regarding what is and is not acceptable content, and these guidelines have become exceedingly long and complex as a parody of Uncyclopedia's comparatively simple rules. The site has gained media attention due to its articles on places, people, and painfully obscure pop culture.

Have fun.

LinkedIn: Someecards

Today I have the pleasure of announcing the youngest brainchild of Fred and Fred’s making: LinkedIn. From now on, LinkedIn will figure as a semi-regular category of blogs in which we want to present some of our favourite Internet links. Some will be funny (or what your regular Fred considers funny), some will be serious - all in good Freddian tradition…

The first feature of LinkedIn is the truly side-splitting Someecards.com. I don’t know why but in the early days of the Internet (I’m talking late 1990s when most people got hooked up) sending e-cards used to be much more popular that nowadays. Nerry a birthday would go by without you receiving a link in your e-mail referring to some shitty bmp-picture with a corny message. Because most of the sites that provided such cards were pretty bad (some even offered teeth-grinding gifs of singing Santas or babbling bears), I eventually started browsing the web to see if there really wasn’t anything genuinely funny to be found.

And sure enough, I hit Someecards.com. The site is basically a big collection of funny cards, grouped into categories of anniversary, birthday, get well, thinking of you, and so forth. However, the cards themselves are anything but traditional. You could say their humour is like the Little Britain of e-cards, drawn in a style that will remind a Belgian audience of Humo-cartoonist Jeroom. In fact, many of these cards aren’t particularly suitable to be actually sent, although some can provide excellent material to surprise your friends or relatives. You’ll see.

As a matter of fact, I’ll show you. Since reviews of sites are pointless without having a look at the real deal, I’ve chosen twenty of my personal favourites (in no particular order) for you to check out. Enjoy!





















Someecards.com has been around for quite a while now and it’s a pity that no one seems to know them. So here’s your chance! You can follow them on Facebook and Twitter, and the site even allows you to upload your own e-card by typing a text on loads of empty pictures in their typical style. So fly, fly, my pretties, and spread your wings of comedy!