George Foreman knocks out heavyweight champion Joe Frazier and Howard Cosell and Angelo Dundee announce one of the best broadcasts in sports history. Continue reading →

How Twitter & Texting Saved Writing The end of literacy as we know it? Get over yourself. These popular tools force people to write more clearly and concisely. Flickr photo courtesy of the Office of the Maryland Governor The way some people talk about Twitter and texting, you'd think that the tools meant the end of literacy as we know it. For example, Google the phrase "Why I Hate Twitter" and you'll get more than 38,000 hits. Here's a typical complaint: Twitter and texting are killing the English language. English is a beautiful and complex language ... but our quick-hit communication culture is turning the language of Shakespeare (as the French call it) into a bunch of random symbols. I couldn't disagree more. In my ... Continue reading →

What was presented as genuine emotional loss sometimes looked like competitive grieving — sadness mixed with the performance art of social media. Or as Jacob Silverman witheringly sighed on Jewcy.com, “On Twitter, grief is just another meme.” If your Facebook feed was free of Gibb adulation, then it might have been nostalgia-bombed by Donna Summer retrospectives, Adam “MCA” Yauch tributes, Levon Helm memories, Maurice Sendak mash notes, and Chuck Brown YouTube videos, photographs and moldering interviews. Everyone was sad, so sad. Everyone was everyone’s favorite artist.In the boomer icon death flood of recent weeks, certain behaviors have emerged, the new rules for mourning online: Sorrow is poignant. Sorrow is public. Sorrow is pithy. “He finally reached Brooklyn. ­#RIPMCA,” one Twitter user wrote. (Actually, dozens wrote ... Continue reading →

image via Eric Isaac Good news for all you disgruntled ExtraMooga ticket holders who are still not over the fact that you had to punch ppl in the face for a piece of shrimp toast or purchase toilet paper on the black GoogaMooga market: YOU'RE GETTING A FULL REFUND! Event organizers Superfly decided to give all your asses your money back. Here's the scoop from Eater: "We are offering a 100 percent refund to anyone who attended ExtraMooga: the full ticket price, credit card fees—everything...Our intentions were to do something great. We were definitely ambitious. But we also wanted to do something top notch. We did not deliver on the promise we made for the ExtraMooga, and that’s why we’re going to make it right." ... Continue reading →

Want a quick way to ruin your Thursday? Have the number of hours you work and the number of vacation days handy, and then check out the BBC's nifty tool that lets you compare the number of hours you're working compared to other country's averages. Depressingly (for those of us in the United States), the BBC's Wesley Stephenson explains, "Workers in the US are given an average of nine days of paid leave and six paid public holidays," which is nice in theory but no one is really taking those 15 days. According to an ABC report from 2010, only 57 percent of Americans were taking their full vacation time. And in April, USA Today reported that 48 percent of Americans chose not to take ... Continue reading →

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are the equivalent of tabloid darlings in the mortgage industry, according to new polling data. The government-sponsored enterprises "were in the news during the whole home foreclosure crisis. They were the Kim and Khloe Kardashian. They were names that were easy to recognize, there was lots of press about it, and there was enough repetition over time that the names penetrate," Dave Sackett, a partner at Republican polling firm The Tarrance Group, said during a presentation at a housing conference on Tuesday. That helps explain why the vast majority of likely voters said they recognized the names of both mortgage giants, according to a survey The Tarrance Group conducted on behalf of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars earlier ... Continue reading →