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Category Archives: Phlyarology
How to celebrate being 42 every fourth year
A long time after Deep Thought reveals The Answer to Loonquawl and Phouchg, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect try to figure out what The Question might be. Marvin (the Paranoid Android) had told them that The Question was imprinted in … Continue reading
The secret to success
The following statement is NOT TRUE for you or anyone else, but if you wish to succeed you must believe it to be true:
You are in complete control of your destiny, and your success is due solely to your own talent and hard work. Continue reading
Posted in ... wait, what?, balance, Communication, Core thought, Education, perception, Phlyarology, Strategy
Tagged cognition, entitlement, hard work, luck, privilege, success, wealth
38 Comments
I am not pendantry (I am me)
My friend Goldie, in a short conversation recently via the comment thread on a 2017 post of his* asked me whether my moniker should have an initial capital. That simple question got me thinking. A bit of background I adopted … Continue reading
Posted in ... wait, what?, balance, Communication, Just for laughs, perception, Phlyarology
Tagged cognitive dissonance, half-wit, humour, Internet, pendantry, stupid, wit
21 Comments
Confirmation that two-thirds of headline analyzers spout utter nonsense
An examination of three headline analyzer tools (and whether it’s worth using them), together with a Veritasium video on the effectiveness of clickbait (with transcription). Continue reading
Posted in ... wait, what?, balance, Communication, Computers and Internet, Critiques, Phlyarology, Strategy, Tech tips
Tagged clickbait, headline analyzers, Jabberwocky, phlyarology, SEO, transcription, Veritasium
27 Comments
Yes, it IS possible to embed hyperlinks in titles! (but there are caveats)
Ready for a surprise? The title of this post contains two links. The link on the first part of the text is to the post itself; this is quite normal. However, there’s a second link at the end, on the … Continue reading
Posted in ... wait, what?, Communication, Computers and Internet, Education, People, Phlyarology, Tech tips
Tagged HCI, HTML, hyperlinks, Jakob Nielsen, mystery links, title
31 Comments
It’s a mistake to anthropomorphise machines
(AKA ‘Feedback for NatWest: a rant’) I read in a book somewhere, long ago, that ‘computers were going to make our lives easier’. I realize now that the ‘our’ in that promise didn’t include folks like me; it was addressed … Continue reading
Posted in ... wait, what?, Business, Communication, Computers and Internet, Critiques, Phlyarology
Tagged ethics, HCI, loyalty, online banking, rant, software
20 Comments
There is no ‘planet B’ – yet we’re using it already
Happy§ Earth Overshoot Day! Time to celebrate: we’re now using almost three-quarters of ‘planet B’. Shame it doesn’t exist. Back in 2014, I wrote a set of edicts I would apply ‘If I ruled the world‘. One of those (#4) … Continue reading
Experience the numinous total solar eclipse
The Sun is 400 times the size of the Moon. It is also 400 times farther away — so both Sun and Moon appear to be the same size. It hasn’t always been this way; the Moon is moving away … Continue reading
Posted in ... wait, what?, Core thought, Phlyarology, Science
Tagged anthropic principle, anthropism, Baily's Beads, coincidence, eclipse, Great American Eclipse, moon, Rare Earth, sun
13 Comments
‘The climate is always changing’: true, but not helpful
“When we already believe the world to be a certain way, then we interpret new experiences to fit with those beliefs, whether they actually do or not.” Thus spake Veritasium I had another post scheduled for today, but this one … Continue reading
Extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures
It may (or may not) have been Carl Linnaeus who classified our species as ‘homo sapiens sapiens‘ in the late 18th Century. As you probably know, that label derives from Latin: ‘homo’ means ‘man’, while ‘sapiens’ can be translated as … Continue reading
