Here is a video showing how a construction worker was rescued from a burning building. He seems to have shown considerable presence of mind, buying time by jumping from one ledge to another as the fire came closer. The whole thing has a voiceover, perhaps from the person doing the recording. She actually said at one point, “OMG!”. Do people actually use such initialisms in conversation?
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In a comment on my post about voiceover artists, reader Anthony Burber referred me to an interesting article by a middle-school teacher Jessica Lahey who was concerned about the number of girls in her class who had an ‘upspeak’ in their voices or, even worse, adopted childish voices.
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As the days go by without any news of what happened to Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, theories about what may happened have grown increasingly wilder, with even suggestions of aliens and supernatural agents thrown into the mix. (See here for more wild theories.)
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The US government announced yesterday that it is transitioning to relinquish direct control over the administration of the internet by ending its contract with ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) which is the organization that exerts stewardship over the internet by establishing protocols, assigning domain names, and bringing some order behind the scenes to the seemingly anarchic nature of the internet. The move by the US government has been welcomed by ICANN.
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In a effort to reduce pollution, the city of Paris has made its public transportation free for three days so that hopefully fewer people will drive their cars. Other French cities are doing the same in order to combat pollution levels that are approaching that of Beijing. France is undergoing a heat wave that is exacerbating the situation.
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The video below shows a man on a car-jacking spree, taking three cars in succession and driving the wrong way on an interstate before finally being caught. Practically the whole thing was captured by cameras from helicopters. It is incredible that no one seemed to have been seriously hurt. For more details you can read here.
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Some time ago, I discussed the question of how dominant cats were compared to dogs and the consensus seemed to be that it depended on the cat and the dog. But now I read of a case where a 22 lb Himalayan cat in Oregon is so dominant that not only is the family dog intimidated but so is the entire family. They had to lock themselves and their dog in a room and call 911 to recue them from the cat.
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With help from readers, I managed to solve the problem of spam flooding my mailbox that started happening at the same time I switched to the Mavericks operating system on my Mac.
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After procrastinating for some time, I downloaded the new Mavericks (aka, v. 10.9) of the Mac operating system. In general, the transition seems to have been smooth but there has been an odd quirk with respect to mail in that I am now being flooded with porn spam.
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I am not an early adopter of new technology. I tend to wait until I am sure that I really need or want it and often the new technology, like the mountain with Mohammed, comes to me without my seeking it, by becoming the default.
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