Philosopher Geek

Every political argument sooner or later ends up with the “just like Hitler” gambit (see Godwin’s Law).  It turns out that Hitler does have things to say about the issues of the day. [… more]

The news that Compact Disc is thirty years old, made me feel old. Actually I (and you) should relax just a bit; the first discs did not hit the stores until late 1982. So it is not as bad as it first seemed.

Whatever about the sound quality, the album art is just not the same reduced to CD size. The impact of something like Dark Side of the Moon is entirely lost when it not on a 12 inch square. There was some excitement in sliding that big disc out of its cover, placing it carefully on the turntable, and gently lowering the needle. There was a certain joy in sitting back the gatefold cover open in your lap, studying the lyrics.

But tell that to young kids today and they won’t believe you.

The server space is paid for, the blogging software is installed, and the layout is adjusted “just so.” Only one thing remains to be done: replace that “Lorem ipsum…” text with something else.

What better way to replace “Lorem ipsum” text than with … Lorem ipsum text.

If you have ever seen mockup for a web page, brochure, or other document, you may have encountered lorem ipsum. It is a section of Latin text that acts as a placeholder for the final copy. It looks better than “place content here,” because it more closely resembles actual text.

Lorem predates the electronic age, having being used in typesetting; some put its earliest use as 1500AD. Although the text is meaningless, it is based on Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum (the original words are scrambled).

You can generate you own lorem text at http://www.lipsum.com/. If you have Microsoft Word 2007, you can generate the text by typing =lorem() followed by Enter.