Having spent the formative years of my life in Buffalo, I’m always looking to find ways to keep my hometown relevant to the big city types who don’t acknowledge anything upstate of Westchester. What better way then to point out it’s grammatical flexibility?
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo,” is a grammatically correct sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs. It has been known to exist since 1972 when the sentence was used by William J. Rapaport, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo.
The sentence is unpunctuated and uses three different readings of the word “buffalo”.
In order of their first use, these are:
The city of Buffalo, New York
The animal “buffalo”
The verb “buffalo,” meaning to bully, confuse, deceive, or intimidate
The phrase can be roughly translated to mean “Bison from upstate New York who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.”
I thought this was pretty awesome despite the relative lack of bison feuding in the region for the past few centuries. Regardless, feel free to casually slip this phrase into conversation and wait for someone to correct your grammar. That should buffalo them.
Any shred of credibility that MTV was clinging to in the entertainment industry was destroyed last night during their annual MTV Movie Awards. Having not tuned in for their broadcast in the past decade I decided to give it a chance this year.
This was my first mistake.
The red carpet show was nothing more then a half hour of shameless promotion for the summer blockbuster flick Transformers, which stars a bunch of no-name actors with absolutely nothing interesting to say. Assuming the endless plugs and repetitive “exclusive clips” would end with the preshow was my second mistake.
The shows only redeeming quality was host Sarah Silverman’s relentless attacks on her fellow celebrities, most notably Paris Hilton. She is such a bitch and I love every minute of it. After the opening monologue had ended, so did anything that resembled entertainment. From that point on the show would be dedicated strictly to self-promotion and more nauseatingly drawn out Transformers promotions.
Now, it’s one thing to dump a monster marketing budget into one event and force feed your stars and trailer on the viewers, but the tactics employed by Transformers and supported by MTV sunk to a new low. Toward the end of the show, a new award was announced: ‘Best Summer Movie You Haven’t Seen’. At first I was interested, thinking this might be an attempt by MTV to pay homage to all of the great films not staring Will Ferrell or Sasha Baron Cohen. This was my third and biggest mistake.
This year’s award for the ‘Best Summer Movie You Haven’t Seen’ goes to, you guessed it— Transformers. God dammit that was the last straw! After the cast was done parading around the stage with a false sense of accomplishment, they returned to present the very next award for ‘Best Movie’ and, once again, remind us of the July 4th release date.
Although the list of unimpressive nominees included perennial MTV heavyweights like Johnny Depp and Will Ferrell, I couldn’t help but think that Transformers would somehow manage to pull this one out too. Fortunately I was once again mistaken as ‘Pirates of the Caribbean 2’ took home the grand prize. Finally, it’s over! But wait…
The show was immediately followed by a Transformers themed skit by MTV.
Then a Chevrolet commercial featuring the cars from Transformers.
I had to change the channel before I threw my remote through the television. The sad part is, I’ll still see the movie (I just won’t pay for it). As for the MTV Movie Awards— I’ll catch you in another decade.
‘Street View’ mode is the latest addition to Google Maps impressively robust list of features. To make Street View possible, the Google team literally drove a van all over Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs, taking 360 degree panoramic pictures all along the way. Since most people commute around NYC either by public transportation or walking, being able to make your commute virtually before you make it physically is an incredibly valuable resource.
While previous versions of Google’s mapping technology gave you directions to your destination along with a bird’s eye view of the area, it was devoid of the real world context that makes finding locations easier. When you get directions to a friend’s house, the address is usually accompanied by a physical description such as “it’s the white house with all the lawn flamingos.” Being able to visualize your destination makes a huge difference, especially considering that finding a building address is increasingly difficult in commercial areas.
Telling someone my office is located at 75 Ninth Avenue allows them to easily find the general area, but finding the specific building is still very difficult (as I found out when I came here for my interview). Wouldn’t it be easier to just look at a picture? Now, when you approach that general area, you have some familiar sights to guide you. We all know people who don’t work well with specific directions. If you tell them to head north 2 blocks and make a right on 24th street, they will inevitably end up lost. But, advising them to make that same turn at the deli with the red awning and including a picture of the corner will increase their probability of finding their destination.
I am obviously very impressed and excited about the possibilities of Street View. How will people use this tool and what cities are next in line to be mapped? Any thoughts?
UPDATE: I’m famous! I was looking around my neighborhood and found myself crossing the street on my way to the subway. I wasn’t positive until I zoomed in and saw my gold striped Pumas. Google, I think you owe me some likeness royalties.
Flash guru Broman and I have once again defied the odds and met our seemingly impossible three week deadline. After countless sleepless nights and with the aid of a bottomless cup of coffee, Panasonic Share the Air 2007 is now live!
“Share the Air” is a viral extension of Panasonic’s Action Sports Tour, which tours five U.S. cities this summer. The website offers extreme sport enthusiasts the chance to submit pictures and videos of their own sessions to be judged by professional skaters and photographers. Winning submissions bank a hefty cash prize and some cool Panasonic gear— so get filming!
As you may (or may not) have noticed, I haven’t had much time for updates lately. For the past two weeks I’ve been working day and night on a viral site for Panasonic that launches Tuesday, taking breaks to watch my beloved Buffalo Sabres eventually get eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs at the hands of the Ottawa Senators.
Needless to say, I’ve had better weeks.
I can’t begin to describe the disappointment and frustration I’m once again feeling as a Buffalo fan. There is too much to say and I have no time to say it (so I’ll let my friends over at Common Sense Dancing say it for me). The reality of having to wait until next year still hasn’t set in. My mind is currently lost in the thousands of lines of arrays, loops and functions I’ve been staring at for 14 hours a day. I have nightmares in which I’m debugging and refactoring the code I spent the day writing— waking up in a cold sweat when I find a bug and effectively depriving myself of the sleep I need to do the same work consciously. For those of you who program software for a living, I’m sure you have similar stories of deadline delirium. For those who don’t, you probably think I’m crazy.
Either way, Tuesday can’t come soon enough. I’ll talk to you then.
Despite Giuliani’s best efforts to clean up the streets of New York City, Times Square is still dangerous. What is this world coming to that children aren’t even safe while Mom is distracted by a break dance circle?
This is the only thing that could make me any less depressed today. Chris Drury really needs to give this speech before the Sabres take the ice for Game 4.
I’ve never been much of a fan of soccer. I’m not sure whether to attribute this fact to its slow (see: painfully boring) pace or that it’s only slightly less popular then Extreme Ironing here in the States. Soccer players do have one redeeming quality, though: their ability to exaggerate seemingly harmless contact. I haven’t seen acting this fine outside of a Rob Schneider flick.
