China's virtual vigilantes: Civic action or cyber mobs?
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the November 28, 2008 edition

Beijing - Some call it a weapon in the hands of a righteous army, forged so that wrongdoers might be smitten. Others say it simply allows a mob of vigilantes to publicly vilify and humiliate anyone they choose to pick on through grotesque invasions of privacy.
Either way, the peculiarly Chinese Internet phenomenon known as the "human flesh search engine," a citizen-driven, blog-based hunt for alleged undesirables, claimed a fresh victim this month when a mid-ranking government official lost his job.
Accused of accosting a young girl, Lin Jiaxiang found his name, address, phone number, and workplace pl

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/11/27/mumbai.twitter/index.html

(CNN) -- It was the day social media appeared to come of age and signaled itself as a news-gathering force to be reckoned with.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/11/24/internet.suicide/index.html

Megan Meier, 13, hanged

TOKYO, Japan (AP) -- A 43-year-old Japanese woman whose sudden divorce in a virtual game world made her so angry that she killed her online husband's digital persona has been arrested on suspicion of hacking, police said Thursday.

有不少好玩的点子:

http://valuesatplay.org/

摘自:

http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resources/resources/exp_lang/visual_intro.html

Visual Language

Students should explore various forms of verbal and visual communication and analyse the interaction between words and images, thinking critically about the meanings and effects produced.

English in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 39

In the past, education concentrated on reading and writing: until quite recently, even book illustrations were often seen only as embellishments or helpful accompaniments. In English in the New Zealand Curriculum, the study of visual language is included as an integral part of the study of the English language.

摘自: http://english.unitecnology.ac.nz/resources/resources/exp_lang/putting_words.html

Rhythm

Thee rhythm can be heard when we count aloud:
     five / ten / fifteen / twenty.

The stressed syllables are lengthened in five and ten, and shortened in fifteen and twenty, so that the words with two syllables are about the same length as those with only one.

The rhythm of English speech is produced through the combination of the stressed and unstressed syllables. This is like a beat and is especially easy to distinguish in rap.

Nursery rhymes sound especially rhythmical.
This

Forwarded from http://thiscruellestmonth.blogspot.com/2007/07/alphaville.html

The best scene from Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville: Une etrange aventure de Lemmy Caution (1965).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHikpdf8ktM

Your voice, your eyes, your hands, your lips... Our silences, our words... Light that goes, light that returns. A single smile between us. In quest of knowledge, I watched night create day while we seemed unchanged. O beloved all, beloved of one alone, your mouth silently promised to be happy. Away, away says hate; Closer, closer says love. A caress leads us from our infancy. Increasingly I see the human form as a lovers' dialogue. The heart has but one m

前段时间，翻出公司做的几个网站案例，给一个在芬兰做网站的朋友看了看。那人一看就说：呵呵，很中国的网站，首页上那么多字。我只好说：是哦，不过设计得迎合客户需要，客户要那个样子，我们也没有办法。

由此思考网站首页设计的问题。

国内的首页设计似乎一直有个套路，这个套路从何而来？ 我认为sina,163,sohu这些门户网站的设计套路一直在影响其他小型垂直性的网站。而这些门户网站的设计套路似乎是来源于报纸杂志这些平面媒体的设计，也许是因为中国的网页设计师大多从平面设计转行而来。

现有门户网站的套路设计，其特色就是在首页堆砌庞杂的内容，似乎要以此彰显网站内容的丰富。这种设计对门户网站是利是弊，不是我在这里要探讨的，我所要说的是，门户网站的这种设计套路对企业、学校等小单位的网站或者某个行业的垂直性网站是不合适的。

就网站首页的功能来说，我认为有两大功能，一是导航功能，二是橱窗功能。而能够凸显这两大功能的设计，才是好设计。

所谓导航功能，就是网站所有的次级栏目能通过首页链接得到，换言之，浏览者能在首页上获知这个网站的所有栏目设置，并且能够由此到达所有栏目。（这一点，第5版的5D网站的版头做得非常棒。）

导航有多重要？一个很好的例子就是那个很简单但是很成功的hao123。网络经济时代，很多人靠投机取巧而成功。关键是怎么取巧。hao123的巧思在于，它本身相当于一个网站首页，而那些跟它毫无关系的网站被它当作了次级页面。对于浏览者来说，一个导航功能出色的首页是访问次级页面的必经之地。因此hao123这个仅有导航功能的网站可以赢得巨大的访问量。而这个“首页”访问量根本是建立于“次级页面”的存在，几乎是不劳而获得来。当然，hao123对“次级页面”链

Sylvia Plath's The Applicant referred to a pop song in 1959 by Cliff Richard.  In the 7th stanza, the lines "A living doll, everywhere you look. /It can sew, it can cook, /It can talk, talk, talk." expressed Sylvia's anger at the oppressed femal role in the society.  I guess to most people, that pop song was cheerful, delightful...whatever... just a normal thing like that.  However, to the sensitive feminist Sylvia, it probably sounded harsh.

Here is MV link of the song  Living Doll on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09swfUIk5pw

Lyric:

Got myself a cr

出处: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/lit_term.html

Aesthetic distance: degree of emotional involvement in a work of art. The most obvious example of aesthetic distance (also referred to simply as distance) occurs with paintings. Some paintings require us to stand back to see the design of the whole painting; standing close, we see the technique of the painting, say the brush strokes, but not the whole. Other paintings require us to stand close to see the whole; their design and any figures become less clear as we move back from the painting.
        Similarly, fiction, drama, and poetry involve the reader emotionally to different degrees. Emotional distance, or t