10 non-work-related items that I found fun or interesting

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Yes, the Chicago Manual of Style trudges through each new edition, workhorse that it is. But even in the new 16th, it remains a poet. Even a dancer...more

Friday Fun: Battleship – General Quarters via the How-To Geek by Asian Angel
Take command of a naval fleet and go into battle with Battleship – General Quarters.
Note: Depending on your office environment you may or may not want to disable the sound for this game. It comes with explosion and alarm sounds.
The instructions on the game are minimal so I suggest reading Asian Angel's run-through first.
Play Battleship – General Quarters

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Fat Kat had a knack for guns, drugs, and gangs; also, it turned out, for being a prison librarian. He helped fellow inmates connect to the world...more

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Boredom is often quite exquisite. To be sure, it can be a sad affair, and it's related to emptiness, but in a perfectly enjoyable way...more

Save a Library, Save Democracy via Big Think by Austin Allen
Earlier this summer I was feeling down in the dumps about libraries. I was spending the month of June in Flushing, Queens, a melting-pot neighbourhood where the local library bustles with patrons of all ages. Unfortunately, like much of the Queens Library system, the Flushing branch had been ... Read More

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Why even bother with Charles Dickens, a vain actor-manager type who used pathetic victims as tear-jerking raw material for his novels? Why, indeed...more

Barbie and Bratz: the feud continues
from WIPO Magazine July 2011
Since 1959, Barbie has been the queen of the fashion-doll market. She even has close to two million friends on Facebook. However, in 2001, Bratz fashion-dolls entered the market, and their funky, trendy attitudes led them to quick success. Within five years Barbie had a formidable competitor in Bratz dolls (“The Girls with a Passion for Fashion!”) which had captured about 40 percent of the market. Barbie manufacturer Mattel responded by suing MGA Entertainment (creator of Bratz), and the two California-based companies have been locked in battle ever since. The reason? An employment agreement that was ambiguous about intellectual property (IP) rights.
Read the rest of the article

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Albert Gonzalez's gift for deception made him one of the most valuable cybercrime informants the U.S. government has ever had...more

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
From Missouri to Florida, more than 70 caves feature mysterious drawings thousands of years old. What do they mean?...more

via Arts and Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate
Henry Fowler did not waffle: there are right ways and wrong ways to use words. A new edition of his classic guide takes us back to the original Fowler's...more
I debated with myself for some time about including this as it is now 18 months since it was published but for those of you interested in the correct use of the English language there was nothing better than the 1965 revision of Fowler's – and now there is!!

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