Cascading Sarcasm Sheets

in ,

CSSI love the organization of the semantic web. Instead of grouping things as they should look, group items as they make sense semantically then change how they look with cascading style sheets. This works great with paragraphs, ordered and unordered lists of different things, and to a lesser part using divs and/or spans for different sections of data. Still, with all this we haven't come up with a real good way of semantically marking up sarcasm, hyperbole, intended puns, unintended puns and more verbal word play that is best delivered via body language and intonation.

What originally got me thinking all this was sarcasm doesn't do well on the internet but people try to use it all the time. Maybe it's just me, and the people I know, but it is often denoted with sarcasm HTML tags (<sarcasm>yeah, sure!</sarcasm>). I had been thinking about this on my own for some time so I decided to discuss this with my mentor at work. He thought about it for a bit and said to me, "That seems inefficient. You should only markup things that aren't sarcastic. How about a serious tag?(<serious>I'll take 2</serious>)" Being pragmatic I thought, really there are both then everything in between. He agreed.

Next we discussed how we needed to do the levels of sarcasm and seriousness in a span of text. You may want to do something special to css that is really sarcastic or deathly serious. My response was that you could just use class attributes to help you mark up your code. The other option is to wrap a sarcasm tag with an emphasis or strong tags to denote regular, mild and strong cases of each.

<sarcasm>I'm sure you're right</sarcasm>
<em><sarcasm>You sure know what you are talking about</sarcasm></em>
<strong><sarcasm>You are a genius!</sarcasm></strong>

Whether using class attributes or extra tags you can use CSS to change all the various combinations and in between states. It all depends upon which order you place them in your style sheet. Sounds like fun, as long as I don't have a deadline.

Now, I haven't had any time to code up a semantic site rife with sarcasm tags but there might be some out there. If you've got a site or know of one that uses sarcasm tags or anything similar then uses some awesome CSS to showcase it, I'd love to see it and share. Let me know all about it in the comments section, down below.

EMC 2010 Report - Just Another Magic Monday (Day 1)

in ,

Essential Magic Conference LogoThe 15th through the 17th of July held a very special magical event. This event was the Essential Magic Conference. The first ever international online magic conference ( at least that's what I got from the marketing ).  At a price of just 55 euros, it was worth every penny before the end of the first day. One participant even mentioned in chat that it was worth the price after the first session. Speaking of the first day, so far that's all I have gotten through. Sure, I listened and watch parts of the sessions from days 2 and 3 as they were happening live but its taken until now for me to have the time to actually study the first 3 sessions from day 1. As of last Friday, all 9 sessions are available online as video on demand for people who signed up for the conference. So, if you missed this conference in real time you can still get more than your registration fee out of these videos.

As someone who still considers himself a novice magician, I gained loads from the first day( and even the first session) with speeches, performances and presentations form the likes of Lennart Greene, Barry & Stuart, Ponta the smith, Apollo Robbins, Gaetan Bloom, Max Maven and many more.

While I gained a lot from everybody, I gained the most from a magical duo I hadn't heard of before - Barry & Stuart. They had a first day speech entitled, "Everything We've Learned So Far" [Registration Required]. What drew me in the most was an idea that their presentation kept dancing around and they summed up in one of their final bullet points as:

If you want to subvert your art, you need to first learn your craft.

While I have never come across as much of a rebel who would want to subvert much of anything, I do have this constant need to make things my own and I latched on to many of their ideas. Barry and Stuart are 2 young guys who have worked hard and created a niche and name for themselves in magic. And while there are many performances from day 1 I'd like to show my readership ( Ponta the smith's performance in session 1 comes to mind ) - I don't have access and permission to do that. So, I've looked up an entertaining video of Barry and Stuart for my magical and muggle readership alike. Enjoy. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFSkpwLEi-A&w=500&h=405]

[ad#Ellusionist] If you liked this post please follow me on twitter and/or subscribe to my RSS feed. If you only want to see my JAMM posts you can subscribe to the Just Another Magic Monday Feed.

Just Another Magic Monday:Larry Wilmore and The Race Card

in ,

[ad#Ellusionist]I don't watch The Daily Show live. I usually watch it the next day on Hulu. However, last Tuesday they had a bit of magic on the show. I didn't catch it on Hulu, instead I caught it during the 3 minutes it takes to heat up a lean pocket( 2 minutes to cook, 1 minute to cool ). As usual during work meal breaks, I turned on the microwave then turned on the TV to see what's funny on Comedy Central.  I've been working so much with cards lately that when I saw Larry do a thumb fan I was so excited.  In the end I think I let the lean pocket cool for 2 or more minutes. Serious Issue + Humor is good but magic makes it better :)

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Playing the Race Card
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Friday ( French ) Humor - Florence Foresti

in

I remember seeing this video quite a while ago and meant to put it in a Friday Humor post. It's in French but with English subtitles. Given at least one of the jokes in this routine, that fact is funny. However, the punchline to this routine is a beautiful callback to the very beginning of the routine.