matt.hintsa
Dan Russell, a Google “search anthropologist” who studies how everyday people search for information online, told The Atlantic last week that 90 percent of people don’t know that they can use CTRL or Command+F to find a word in a document or web page.

But this advice thing couldn’t be that hard. After all, Ben Franklin wrote an advice best-seller where he said things like “A cat in gloves catches no mice.” Who’s putting gloves on a cat?

And consider the advice you usually get at graduation. It’s terrible.

First, they say that the world is your oyster. This is true. It is sort of an acquired taste, hard to open with a spoon, and threatening to people with shellfish allergies.

Take the road less traveled.

The road less traveled is probably less traveled for a reason, like, it’s a less efficient road, or maybe it leads through a bad area of town where guys try to open your car windows with hooks.

Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.

Sure, if you want to waste a lot of money on your space program and don’t care about astronaut life.

“Bad Advice” by Alexandra Petri.

Excerpt of a brilliant commencement address delivered to the National Cathedral School’s class of 2011.

Read the whole speech here. [PDF]

Some students, residents worry, will crave a rowdier college experience. Lisa Trader, 36, said she relished that her children, ages 8 and 6, could “just run” freely when they got off the tram. If the neighborhood dynamics changed, she said, perhaps the island’s more idyllic charms would disappear. “I don’t need to go back to college,” she said. “It would be a shame for it to turn into a party island.”

Ms. Torres said Roosevelt Island families need not worry. “This is Cornell,” she said. “One would assume they’ll be working.”

New Cornell Campus May Awaken Roosevelt Island - The New York Times

Obviously Ms. Torres has never been to Slope Day.

My greatest goal is to go to Hong Kong’s airport and London’s airport.
Excerpt of a letter I wrote in sixth grade (October 1999) to my future self. It was an assignment in class and we each were presented with our letters upon graduation from high school.
Everyone. At the zoo. Is fat. And on scooters.
Text message from a Canadian in Texas.
NORAD Tracks Santa, the official name of the exercise, began in 1955 when a Colorado Springs newspaper ad invited kids to talk to Santa on a hotline. The phone number had a typo, and dozens of kids wound up dialing the Continental Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, the predecessor to NORAD.
I was sitting at my desk when I felt a small shake,” said Kelly Cromwell, a money manager at J. Zechner Associates on the 47th floor of the TD Canada Trust Tower in Toronto’s financial hub on Bay Street. “My chair then started to move to the right, and that’s when I got up and ran to the elevator.

NOT THE ELEVATOR, KELLY!

Sounds like she was close to being presented with a Darwin Award.

via.

The vuvuzela, which is made to replicate the call of an elephant, comes across as a drone on television. In real life, though, the noise reaches 144 decibels, equivalent to the sound made by a passenger jet.
I was there with you, at Cornell. I heard the screams. I try to forget it every day, but… it keeps replaying in my head.