Everybody‘s favorite dictionary site has an amazing mailing list that is totally worth your 30 seconds every morning. In my quest to speak better English I have found Dictionary.com‘s Word of the Day to be very informative.

I read them every day Argus-eyed, and so should you, it’s quite a bacchanalia and your brain will grow corpulent.

Google offered a temporary service this week where for $3 they would research and answer a question for you. My co-worker Nick, being an early adopter and devout disciple of Google, was keen to try it out (it was he who first discovered that Google is indeed god).

Armed with a fine question and a credit card we humbly asked of Google, “What is the story of Tom Joad from Bruce Springsteen’s song The Ghost of Tom Joad?”

A few days later, Google replies:

Bruce Springsteen’s song “The Ghost of Tom Joad” is based on John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath.

Tom is the main character in the book, which details the journey of migrant laborers from Okalahoma to California and all the troubles they endured.
For a summary of the book, visit:

http://cerebia.tripod.com…
http://www.awerty.com…
http://www.ac.wwu.edu…

Lyrics to “The Ghost of Tom Joad”:
http://www.english.upenn.edu…

and include this humourous disclaimer:

Please Note: The foregoing information is derived from the Google search engine or other public reference sources and is provided to assist in your searching. It has not been verified, however, and we do not represent that it is accurate, correct, complete, reliable, or otherwise valid. In other words, the information is provided “AS IS”, with no warranties whatsoever. Google expressly disclaims all express, implied, and statutory
warranties, to the fullest extent permitted by law. And under no circumstances shall Google be liable due to your use or misuse of the information provided herein.

We are impressed and incedentally recommend you listen to The Ghost of Tom Joad (either Bruce Springsteen’s original or Rage Against the Machine’s very original cover).

Sloan’s new album, Pretty Together will be released on October 9th. In the meantime enjoy the first single, If It Feels Good Do It (RealAudio).

From the URL of the new single (http://vikrecordings.com/sloan/) it looks as if Sloan is on a new record label.

Rough Riders and Other Canadian Icons on Forget. Because y’all need some education.

You should also be reading Alejandro Bustos’ war on drugs series and Kent Bruyneel’s Half-Arrow Straight.

New content at Fireland too.

A fine young man handed this link off to me. I’m glad to see that other people agree that Subway’s new way of cutting subs sucks.

Put your name on the line for something that matters.

A fine redesign has gone down at Peter Rukavina’s Reinvented.net.

The site is always a good read, but chilli-in-a-bread-bowl lovers will be particularly pleased with the recent rash of fine Tim Horton’s coverage.

Google is a fantastic system. Its principles are elegant in their simplicity and the technology actually works (few companies can claim both of these attributes simultaneously).

A co-worker of mine has a theory that Google is the new god. He points out that while god tends to be vague and require patience of his followers, Google gives straight answers. Google is truly without gender, unlike god, who claims to be, but is clearly a man. In a loose humanist manner, Google, as the window to the collective knowledge of humanity (if you could bestow such a title on the web), is a reflection of god in ourselves.

Up to this point in history, god has had a monopoly on judgment. Now, though, instead of thinking twice about your questionable actions in light of potential eternal damnation, you must think twice about committing your words to the permanent Google record. Google records all. Google remembers all (even after it’s gone from the original site).

For example, if I make a comment on this site about my workplace and a client searches for information on my company, they will likely find my comments. Everywhere I post a comment on the web and use my real name (which I most often do) I leave a mark that can easily be found by a future employer.

Google is god and big brother and I love it.

Is Topher Grace the new Michael J. Fox?

• Kellogg’s Vector cereal lists vitamin B12 prominently on the back of the box implying (indirectly) that it is a source of B12. A closer look reveals that the cereal itself contains no B12, but if you have it with milk, your milk will have B12 in it.
• When you log into Hotmail the first page you see is a page full of other Microsoft services with a small link to your Inbox. The Inbox should be the first page.
• Car salesmen. I know this is a tired cliché, but the jackass at the local Mazda dealership was so bad my sister almost bought a car she knew wasn’t as good just to avoid giving him the business.
• Another tired cliché: sensational journalism. In the last week I have seen two CNN on-air personalities desperately trying to extract exaggeration from a medical specialist and computer specialist on the West Nile Virus and the Code Red virus, respectively.
• Matt in Montreal to see Radiohead.

Thank you for humouring me.