{"id":139,"date":"2006-01-05T01:06:43","date_gmt":"2006-01-05T01:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/have_you_hugged\/"},"modified":"2006-01-05T01:06:43","modified_gmt":"2006-01-05T01:06:43","slug":"have_you_hugged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/language\/have_you_hugged\/","title":{"rendered":"Have you hugged a colon today?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/silverjacket.typepad.com\/.shared\/image.html?\/photos\/uncategorized\/healthycolon.gif\" onclick=\"window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=300,height=300,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" border=\"0\" alt=\"Healthycolon\" title=\"Healthycolon\" src=\"https:\/\/silverjacket.typepad.com\/blog\/images\/healthycolon.gif\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; float: left;\" \/><\/a>Natalie Angier had a great <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/01\/03\/science\/03cute.html\" target=\"_blank\">article<\/a> in the Times yesterday about cuteness. But pay close attention to the following sentence. Don&#8217;t worry, the first read-through is just a dry run.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>First, I&#8217;m all, &quot;My detector isn&#8217;t set THAT low.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>And then, I&#8217;m all, &quot;Oh, I get it.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Remember, people, unambiguous punctuation is your friend. (By detailing panda feeding habits later in the article, Angier also comes dangerously close to re\u00ebnacting the &quot;eats, shoots, and leaves&quot; offense that sparked a book of that name.)<\/p>\n<p>But wait, you know what? Colons, the squishy kind, CAN be cute. The <a href=\"http:\/\/deuce.urbanup.com\/264012\" target=\"_blank\">deuce<\/a> says one thing, but the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dooce.com\/archives\/daily\/12_20_2005.html\" target=\"_blank\">Dooce<\/a> says another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Natalie Angier had a great article in the Times yesterday about cuteness. But pay close attention to the following sentence. Don&#8217;t worry, the first read-through is just a dry run. The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}