Back to the drawing board

Several weeks without a blog entry is pretty poor going. My hard drive crashed and the ever imminent dissertation deadline have kept me from Carly's Blog. Now, however, I have a new laptop and I am once again online and clicking away.

The story that I just keep coming back to is ony by Nick Carr in the current issue of The Atlantic. With the brilliant title Is Google Making Us Stupid? it was bound to cause a stir. Responses have come thick and fast and it's been a struggle to keep up with all the conflicting views that have emerged.

My favourite has to be from Scott Karp who is responsible for the great Publishing 2.0 blog.

Also worth checking out is the piece by John Battelle: Google Making Nick Carr Stupid, But it's made this Guy Smarter

Bill Thompson: Changing the Way We Think

And for fairness' sake, Andre Sullivan in The Times: Google is giving Us Pond Skater Minds

There are more, but the WiFi connection on my train is a bit dodgy so I'm not going to list any more now.

As part of my dissertation I've made up a survey about online news and the way that people access it, which anyone reading this should feel free to complete - I'd be grateful for your thoughts.

As I made up the questions quite a while ago and have already received quite a few replies, I can now see that it's far from perfect so apologies if any questions are confusing!

Click Here to take survey

Unicorn sighting

How wonderful is this:

ROME — A deer with a single horn in the center of its head — much like the fabled, mythical unicorn — has been spotted in a nature preserve in Italy, park officials said Wednesday.

"This is fantasy becoming reality," Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Center of Natural Sciences in Prato, told The Associated Press. "The unicorn has always been a mythological animal."

Sadly, it's not a real unicorn but a genetically flawed deer that was born in captivity in the research centre's park.

Speaking to a reporter from USA Today, Tozzi goes on to say that this could explain reports of unicorn sightings in the past. One-horned deer are not unheard of, but the central positioning of the horn is very unusal.

[Source]

[Image courtesy of Yahoo News/AP]

Cracking!

Saw this in the Independent website, had to share it.

Day of joyous procastination

Ok, it's obvious I'm not at work today. I have discovered BookRabbit and developed a new obsession. Check this out:



Oh how I wish I owned books with as many different coloured spines as this person.

BookRabbit lets you sniff around other peoples' reading habits and stacking preferences; you can also buy books that are as cheap if not cheaper than Amazon and shipping is free - result!

For a better explanation of the merits of BookRabbit and other virtual bookshelving sites, read Hermione Buckland-Hoby's blog post on Guardian Books.

Chatty cats

I know, I know, I promised great literary volumes . . . but for now you'll have to content yourselves with the chatty Teletext cats . . . I just love these guys!




I was inspired by the cracking squirrel video posted by the secret squirrel herself here.

Weston spooky mare

This is spooky Birnbeck Pier in Weston super mare.

As you can probably tell it's deserted and seems to be begging to be turned into the setting for a horror film.

My weekend in Weston deserves more time and effort than I can afford at the moment to devote to writing about it. I will endeavor to collect my thoughts and report back later this evening.

Image courtesy of Synwell Liberation Front via Flickr

Leaping Nutter!

I just could not believe this story when I read it in the Mail, but then I saw the pictures!

This man drank 6 cans of beer, took some photographs of the sunset and then leapt across the Grand Canyon - my stomach twists just thinkihng about it.