A magician shows dogs a treat that he has in his hands and then makes it ‘disappear’. The reaction of the dogs is amusing but I hope they gave the dogs the treats after the camera stopped rolling. I don’t like to tease dogs. They are so trusting.
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Like many older people, I tend to find some new ways of speaking grating. I still wince at the increasingly common use of the response “I am doing good” when someone is asked how they are. The same with “I could care less”. And the word ‘nucular’ drives me up the wall. I am not enough of a rude pedant to actually correct people when they speak like that, taking such liberties only with my own children when they pick up these ways of speaking from their friends.
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Cadillac came out with a commercial for its new electric car that struck some as being crass in its braggadocio and praise of consumption and excess. It was ripe for parody and one might have expected some comedy website or show to do one. I did not expect a rival car company to do it. See for yourself.
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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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