Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Today's News

A couple of interesting bits from today's Gazette:

First, I know what I'm doing on Thursday night. First, I'm a guy. Second, I was in the Strategic Air Command, back when we pulled alert, sitting at the end of a runway, in a bunker, baby-sitting an aircraft for seven days at a time--I've seen a "hydraulic training film" or two. This will be worth listening too. The questions from a crowd of college students and others in this town, even more so.

“THE GREAT PORN DEBATE”: With Ron Jeremy and Craig Gross, 7 p.m., Colorado College, Shove Memorial Chapel, 1010 N. Nevada Ave., free; 389-6606 or 389-6607.

The second article I'll tag as an incidence of mild convergence. Following my post titled "Hang in there," on Monday, Phil posted a comment regarding a similar experience with emoticons. Turns out that, according to today's news, this is the 25th anniversary of the birth of the smiley face and every permutation of emotive punctuation that has followed since.
Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message.

Somehow, knowing that I share a birthday with the ur emoticon explains a whole lot.