“Artists Make More Money in File-Sharing Age Than Before It”

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The record labels have been making a big stink for at least a decade about how file-sharing is driving artists to the poorhouse, but I’ve always been skeptical of that. The most popular ones might be suffering — maybe — but the vast majority of artists (I know a few) could only benefit from more exposure. The latest news makes it pretty clear that the only ones really suffering are the labels themselves.

I just can’t feel sorry for an industry that’s well known for screwing the artists as well as the general public. It’s not completely dead yet, but it has been rotting for a long time.

(Via LifeHacker)

University Students

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The students are back in town, very obvious in their official school tee-shirts (and by the fact that the city’s population has jumped by nearly 20% in the last couple weeks — and the traffic has gotten worse all out of proportion to that).

While driving yesterday, I saw four groups of such students, and it occurred to me… a group of lions is a pride, and a group of geese is a gaggle. What should a group of university students be called? After discarding “clump” and “tangle,” I settled on one: they’re now officially called “an annoyance of students.” 🙂

GoddessJ and our friend Interrobang were very amused by this later, and offered their own suggestions: “billfold” and “c-note,” presumably referring to the large amounts of spending money the students in this town always seem to have.

In any case, a good time was had by all. 🙂

“Commonly Misheard Expressions to Avoid (or Fix) in Your Writing”

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This kind of thing is a pet peeve of mine, and of my wife’s. We’re both avid readers, and she’s the daughter of a teacher as well; we know how these phrases are supposed to be spelled, even if we don’t know the background of them (I never knew where “beyond the pale” actually came from until I read the article). When we see them misspelled in someone’s writing, we just have to wince.

(She hangs around FaceBook, so she winces a lot more often than I do, but I get some too… I actually saw someone write, last week, that Apple should “up the aunty” on the minimum memory size of the iPod Touch. And according to Google, he’s not the only one misspelling that phrase. You’d think that Aunty would have something to say about that.)

“Advice for Britons on serving foreign guests”

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Some of these are interesting, others are amusing. Especially since I know several Canadians (and yes, several of them would take offense if you called them American, and almost all of them would quickly correct you), and a couple who’ve spent several years in Japan and have adopted some of the Japanese culture. And my father-in-law is Belgian — I knew about the division between French-speaking and Dutch-speaking Belgians (it’s referred to regularly at the dinner table), but I wasn’t aware of the Belgian connotations of snapping fingers as impolite, I’ll have to be careful about that.

(Via BoingBoing)

“The Science Behind ‘Having a Bad Day’ (and How to Solve It)”

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I don’t have much to add to this, I just thought people might find it useful. In addition to some fun neurobiology information, it offers some concrete steps to use the next time you start thinking that you’re having a “bad day.” (Hint: as I’m sure you suspected, it’s essentially all in your head, and as such it can be dealt with there.)

I also really like the title of the book that it quotes from. 🙂

“Unsuck It Translates Awful Corporate Speak into Plain English”

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I’ve often wondered why some people can’t just use plain English. I understand that there are some specialized terms in every occupation, but making up whole new words when existing words will do? Or using flowery and obfuscating phrases instead of well-known ones that mean the same thing? So far as I can tell, the only reason for those behaviors is to intimidate the listener, or to make the speaker seem smarter. (In either case, here’s a free hint to the practitioner: most people with a little experience can see through it.)

On the other hand, it’s very amusing to see examples of the worst abuses of our language. 🙂