Look carefully at the picture below.
Four pedestrians are waiting for the red light to change, even though the road they wish to cross has been blocked permanently due to security reasons, and the police are guarding it!
Picture taken near Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on September 26, 2008.
In the few minutes that I watched, lots of Berliners acted likewise!
There is a technique to making your reader follow the words effortlessly.
If they read, they also comment, subscribe or link. After that what you've learnt in SEO school may prove useful.
Getting them to read is the key. And it works like this:
Google would always find you and send a few visitors. But visitors don't automatically become readers. You've to entice them to read. If they read, they feel a little compulsion to act. For instance, some of them might give you a link.
But it's not for us to worry about links and how they convert to PageRank. It's for Google to worry about their technology and to send visitors to pages that people read. We can trust them to keep tweaking their methods and find content that people like to read.
Read Jonathan Morrow for content, and you'd learn something useful. But study his method to entice you to read on, and you've cracked the code!
Try Jon's latest post on Copyblogger. You may want to think how you'd treat this subject before reading the piece.
Your writer's muse is like a puppy. It needs care and discipline and if you treat it well it will be your best friend for many years to come.
read more | digg Jon's story
| Source: ninjapoodles, who relates an interesting story about the picture. She also blogs at Ninja Poodle. |
Does it constitute an explanation that snoring is caused by the vibration of soft tissue at the back of the throat?
That's like saying that the coqui frog produces ear-splitting calls because of the vibrations from a sac near its mouth. Of course, but why?
Click here to learn about frog communication. For a theory about snoring read on.
Such a theory must explain:
It must also explain why evolution hasn't worked to eliminate it when:
Could it be that snoring offers (or once offered) a survival advantage?
Quite likely, when you consider:
But what could be its survival advantage? Perhaps, the fact that snoring loudly can scare away animals that may attack a sleeping family.
Plus, an adult male would be the best choice for tackling an animal that comes snooping:
Oh, btw, animals also snore. It would make sense for them to snore too, isn't it?
With a few pen strokes, Hugh of gapingvoid captures Barcelona's church, Sagrada Família.
Source: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004359.html
The church appears to reach out to heavens in much sadness, if not anger.
The pictures I took of the church (coincidentally at the same time as Hugh was there) don't capture the feeling as accurately as his sketch.
I played with one picture in Photoshop, but the results, even when interesting, weren't art.
Haven't made a new post for a long time because I'd been travelling and was occupied with work.
One interesting place I got to see was Sevilla in Spain.
The city has a river running through it, called Guadalquivir.
Here's a night time picture from one of its bridges (Puente del la Barqueta?) that connects the main city to island Triana.
There's a lot of life in this area, and not just in the evenings.
Painters doing their thing at the foot of the bridge next morning.
Sevilla (some claim the much smaller Triana) is the birthplace of Flamenco music and dance that are such an important part of Spanish culture.
Here's a dancer at one of the shows I got to see.
The landmark that city identifies with most closely is Giralda, the bell tower of the Cathedral of Seville.
It's painted on ceramic plates that tourists to the city are supposed buy.
The cathedral is awesome.
And so is the castle nearby, the Alcázar of Seville.
It is a strange structure, because several castles seem to occupy the same place and are fused into each other, much like objects in a Picasso painting.
The rich stonework on its walls is unbelievable, even as you look at it.
Delhi is beginning to get colder. This morning there was also a light drizzle.
Why does such weather make one happy?
Tens of millions of years ago where human ancestors were born in Africa or Eurasia, the climate may have been just like this.
Since then not only humans but weather too probably drifted away from what was paradise.
However, occasionally, we can still experience it.
Have a great day!
Robert Scoble recorded a Twittergram to announce the birth of his son.
Something about the first cry that just gets your attention. It’s different than any cry that’s come since.
Source: Two days of Milan — his first Twittergram story — BlogTalk Radio « Scobleizer
I know what Robert is saying.
Nearly 15 years ago, when I heard my own son cry for the first time, I was startled. It was a voice that I recognized instantly--and unmistakably. It was my grandmother's!
When he cried again, I tried to hear carefully. The resemblance was much less obvious.
It was gone in a few hours.
Yesterday, Amit Varma blogged about Pratibha Patil's qualifications to be the President of India in a delightful tongue-in-cheek post:
Consider, first, her spirituality. We are a spiritual nation, and Pratibha Tai actually converses with spirits.
Source: Celebrating Pratibha Patil - The India Uncut Blog
His piece opened my eyes to very interesting stories that seem to regularly appear in the media. Take two recent examples:
Would you expect a reputed College of Engineering to adopt technology based solutions to efficiently perform its own functions?
Perhaps not, if you understand what the economics professors taught you.
Since college seats are scarce and the college is not able to charge a market determined price for its limited seats, it must find other means to reduce demand.
You would, therefore, understand how the Delhi College of Engineering solved its admission problem:
And these barriers are for just obtaining the information brochure. Surely the rest of the mechanism is equally carefully designed keeping the end objectives in mind.
Out on a walk in the morning, I saw four or five very excited dogs that had surrounded a man sitting on his haunches.
Getting closer, I realised that this man had brought food for them, which naturally led to all the excitement. There was another dog (let's call him White) some paces away, who was kept pushed back and not allowed to join in the party by those who got there first!
I moved quickly to gain a safe distance. That's when I noticed yet another dog (Black, okay?) some 100 metres further down, also walking determinedly to crash the party.
The dramatis personae had gathered and I began to wonder how the script would unfold. Will the two latecomers be able to take on a numerically stronger, established group?
White seemed to debate the same question as he waited for his natural ally to reach the scene.
They were dealing with dangerous guys, and White knew the odds well. So he quickly went over his notes of Game Theory, that no doubt his professors in the school of hard knocks had drilled in very solidly. And he declared his strategy by energetically challenging the newcomer!
A ferocious, and probably unnecessary contest, seemed all set, when one from the entrenched group broke away and joined White in beating away the intruder.
And then both returned happily to the party. How cool, I thought!
I moved on, contemplating the lessons so brilliantly worked out by John Nash but even more amazed by how nature has given all her creatures the ability to work out answers, without recourse to any theory. Wish I learnt to theorize less and experience more.
A little later I saw the problem developing in to a game theory nightmare. Two more dogs were following the scent of the friendly man that brought food each morning.
Language can both express and conceal. Could it be that sometimes what's not visible in the original expresses itself in translation?
Here is the quaintly worded apprehension of a trash collector in Baghdad. It's cited in today's New York Times headlines email.
"When we are working, we are working nervously. We are carrying our souls in our hands."
SABAH AL-ATIA a trash collector in Baghdad.
The lede itself says:
"In a city where a bomb could be lurking beneath any heap of refuse, trash collectors have one of the deadliest jobs."
Notice the difference between the two?
However, "to carry life on the palm of the hand" is an everyday expression in north Indian languages and could denote much smaller risks, like recklessly riding a bike or crossing a busy road.
The quote (slightly mistranslated?) expresses the risks more evocatively than the probably stronger statement in the lede.
I hope Sabah's own assessment of risk is lower. But I hope his everyday expression doesn't conceal any real risks in his own mind or in the minds of those who could help him.
I wish him all the luck he needs!
Especially, when they are expensive.
You may think up one of these themes as your brand strategy (clever you!):
That's Rolex, Blancpain, Breitling and Raymond Weil respectively, advertising in Time, Asia edition dated September 11, 2006.
Of course, you'd blend these approaches, the devil that you are.
Rolex mix a little no. 4: Anoushka Shankar (contemporary music 700 years in the making). Breitling add 1884 under the logo, Blancpain trace their traditions to 1735 and Raymond Weil feature easy-release case clasps for Charlize Theron, and you.
Surely others sell exceptional watches too. They just didn't advertise in this one copy of Time magazine I picked up for the journey.
Now, some fun for those of you who are truly creative: Can you think of any other approach to selling these kind of watches?
