Eyewitnesses, VR plus, duang, Nietzsche Ipsum, Johns

1. The future of eyewitness testimony, which is often garbage.

“[I]n fact, it’s ‘the number one cause of wrongful convictions,’ says Daniel Medwed. Medwed is a law professor at Northeastern and a member of the new Standing Committee on Eyewitness Identification, which was recently convened by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. The committee is charged with devising police and court procedures that take into account the central lesson of research on eyewitness testimony: ‘Our memories of what we see aren’t static. They’re elastic and malleable and change over time,’ Medwed says.”

2. Some of the most interesting VR projects use the headset as just one piece of a larger sensory experience.

“OccultUs is an innovative installation. Users find themselves at the core of a hybrid space, where images and sound, though originating in heterogeneous realities, coincide. Stuck between two worlds, their perception is challenged.
The OccultUs experience requests users’ participation in a double way: as the leading actor of the piece, but also as an integral part of it by becoming the object of other spectators’ attention.”

3. “Duang!” is the onomatopoeitic sound of being on the receiving end of all the Internet’s attention for a brief moment.

“The launch of a new word in China is threatening to break the internet, with the character being shared millions of times despite no-one knowing what it means. The character, known as “duang”, has appeared more than 8m times on China’s leading social media site Weibo since it emerged a week ago, generating hundreds of thousands of online conversations.”

4. Lorem ipsum, but with Nietzsche’s writings.

“Play zarathustra god passion will ubermensch passion burying eternal-return. Spirit self evil sexuality suicide enlightenment joy evil self love reason. Philosophy hatred spirit aversion christianity hatred gains virtues madness free burying. Hope depths eternal-return noble salvation ultimate moral deceptions. Oneself overcome evil ocean of philosophy. Prejudice law decieve endless victorious salvation society marvelous contradict right justice ultimate oneself. Good joy abstract snare right spirit oneself christian ultimate truth. Ascetic contradict victorious chaos society derive faithful.”

5. This is a remarkable headline: Fewer women run big companies than men named John.

“Among chief executives of S.&P. 1500 firms, for each woman, there are four men named John, Robert, William or James. We’re calling this ratio the Glass Ceiling Index, and an index value above one means that Jims, Bobs, Jacks and Bills — combined — outnumber the total number of women.”

Today’s 1957 American English Usage Tip:

direful is a NEEDLESS VARIANT for dire in sense, & in formation is based on a false analogy (dreadful).

The Credits

1. bostonglobe.com 2. vimeo.com / @caradefabio 3. telegraph.co.uk 4. nietzsche-ipsum.com / @phonetrips 4. gapersblock.com / @ourmaninchicago 5. nytimes.com