Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Here's some good advice and you'll want to buy our product to implement it
About ten years ago, Bill Phillips wrote a book called The Sports Supplement Review. A buddy of mine had it and we were both interested in the advice and the breakdown of the different supplements. The book had good advice and did a service in describing the good, the bad, and the ugly, as it put it, of supplements. There was, however, a pretty sophisticated sales pitch for all of the products of the company that Bill ran, EAS, however. You read it and you got the distinct impression that sure, you could be healthy and sound without getting EAS stuff, but gee, it'd really be better if you did, after all their stuff was probably the best deal around.
This model appears to have completely taken over the health industry. Witness: Treadmills are great, p.s. every example of a good treadmill is this one company's, what a shocker!. The more things change.
This model appears to have completely taken over the health industry. Witness: Treadmills are great, p.s. every example of a good treadmill is this one company's, what a shocker!. The more things change.
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
New Tech means the end of language barriers?
I'm not sure what I think of this article in Discovery promising the end of language barriers through technology advances. Of course, as someone who has invested a considerable amount of time into learning another language and teaching my own to others, I'm both threatened by this development and welcome it. On the other hand, I'm skeptical that any technology will enable one to speak another language with anything more than phrase book flatness and lack of nuance. On the other other hand, I have little doubt that for many, many people this will be an improvement. There's another consideration as well: the big three languages of the world are and will be for at least fifty years Chinese, English, and Spanish. English is the language of the elites, Chinese and Spanish the most spoken languages in the world. Knowing these three languages makes cute devices unnecessary.
Some things can't be done by technology however. In this word processor that Blogger provides, there is an option to "Moderate comments." For a fleeting second I thought that this was a way to somehow figure out if you have been too outrageous in your remarks and kind of blunt their edge--what a technology that would be, and one I dearly need. (Eudora attempts something like this, I believe, or at least warns of intemperate language.)
Some things can't be done by technology however. In this word processor that Blogger provides, there is an option to "Moderate comments." For a fleeting second I thought that this was a way to somehow figure out if you have been too outrageous in your remarks and kind of blunt their edge--what a technology that would be, and one I dearly need. (Eudora attempts something like this, I believe, or at least warns of intemperate language.)
