Tuesday, June 18, 2013

It's always nice to learn a new word. Today's is skeuomorphism.

Skeuomorphism.

I'll let The Guardian define it for you:
Loosely speaking, skeuomorphism means "making stuff look as if it is made of something else." In this context, it is the logic that dictates that Apple's iBooks app resembles a cheap pine bookshelf, for example, and its Notes app resembles a yellow legal pad with lines and a margin – of the type last seen in about 1978.
Hurry over there  and read the whole entertaining shebang, making sure to enjoy all the snarky references attacking one of America's most sacred cows – the design genius of Apple.

While you're in The Guardian's neighborhood, hustle over to Josh Halliday's article about the notice given to British news media suggesting that they cool it and "limit" publishing news about American surveillance of the telephone and Internet system that could, British spelling and all, "jeopardise national security."

What I found most interesting was the paragraph at the very end of the article. It suggested that while Prince of Darkness Dick Cheney, Queen of Ignorance Michele Bachman and other loudmouthed gas bags may consider Edward Snowden (leaker of the fantastic extent to which our own government spies on all of us)....while Cheney and Bachman may call him a traitor, the Brits aren't exactly buying into that. They stated:

"Although none of these recent articles has contravened any of the guidelines contained within the defence advisory notice system, the intelligence services are concerned that further developments of this same theme may begin to jeopardise both national security and possibly UK personnel."

In other words, no cat got out of the bag that wasn't already out. They're just concerned that if this stuff continues, then – maybe – something might possibly get out.

See what you can find out, just by trying to learn a  new word?


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