Earlier this week, an article about writing newspaper headlines to be friendly to search engines floated down my del.icio.us network's feed (that link brought to you via Matt Croydon). It's interesting because it's true, obvious in hindsight and not generally done.

Today, I saw the corollary to that: Don't use ambiguous acronyms in headlines.

I work in the IT industry. Everybody who's ever had to evaluate a solution in IT knows about the acronym NIH — not invented here. Thus, the following headline from the Open Access blog seemed odd:

Universities' obligations under the NIH policy

After a mental double-take, I realised there was another definition of NIH, mostly used in that sliver of land that exists to keep Mexico and Canada apart. The National Institutes of Health. The acronym is never defined (it is in the article linked from that post, but how hard do you want me to work here?), so I choose to prefer my interpretation. It's then a truly noteworthy article:

These are contractual commitments made by the university to [Not Invented Here]. ... universities have to get a process in place quickly for ensuring that the PI's [...] don't take any action that puts the university in a position in which the university cannot comply with this term.

...perhaps they should ask Congress to declare that federally funded research articles get no copyright at all - which is true for articles written by ["Not Invented Here"] employees.

I've worked with people I'd consider Not Invented Here employees. It was really hard to get them to consider anything made by other people. Maybe they were just bitter about not having copyright protection in the US?!

Topics: funny

[#]

How did I not know this? Jasper Fforde, one of my favourite humorous fiction writers — and he of the slightly strange website — offers online, DIY book upgrades for his novels! Valuable typo and fact corrections. Funny, too.

(Via Maureen Johnson, who has written an amusing explanation about upgrading novels from draft to revised status.)

Topics: funny, writing

[#]

A section heading from Wikipedia's style page on weasel words:

Offhanded references to the sky being often-blue will not necessarily demand a citation

Take that nit-pickers!

(Why do I always feel that "weasel words" should be followed by "...and the weasels who use them"? I may have some prejudices here, of course.)

Topics: funny, writing

[#]

"Papa, papa.... why should website content be orderd in a readable way, rather than in the presentation order?"

Websites are designed to be read by other people. Sometimes the content will also be read by machines. If you don't like this, feel free not to publish on the web. If you choose to continue, please follow normal conventions, because Google may not be just reading your header elements looking for a title and you could end up looking like the Pakistan Dawn newspaper:

Not sure what combinations of bad luck conspired to cause this to happen (and it was only at the top of Google's page for a few minutes, it seems), but it's an object lesson in why using tables for markup, poor semantic layout, letting advertisers run riot over your markup, etc, etc, can lead to no end of problems. However, I suspect something went pear-shaped inside Google's AI, too, because what they have pulled out as a title is marked up in "p" elements in the source, from what I can see from a short examination of the site.

(The news item itself is fairly depressing and won't help Indian/Pakistan relations. Let's me be very clear, here: I'm sure. I am in no way poking fun at the content of the article.)

Topics: funny, technology/web

[#]

All the stupid (and let's not mince words here) US legal cases I hear about such as requiring labels explaining that hot coffee may, in fact, be hot would be funny if they weren't true.

Fortunately, at least one such case has been overturned in the state of New Jersey. Turns out, it is not reasonable to be awarded USD 179,001 for falling out of a loft bed just because you were not smart enough to realise it may happen.

Remember, this is the same state that has Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Studies?! Looks like they may need to focus on their secondary school education system a little bit more. The lessons here? Gravity operates in a downwards direction and if you are prone to leaping about suddenly after waking up, do not sleep on what is effectively a ledge without adequate tie-downs.

(Via The Volokh Conspiracy.)

Topics: funny, law/USA

[#]