Funny Side (Hopefully) Up

A few weeks ago, my classmates began to use hashtags on WhatsApp. They served no purpose, because WhatsApp has no support for hashtags as of now, but they made me wonder about the origin of the hashtag. Why did it suddenly strike us that we should use a pound sign on social media? When did it originate? Why is there a hashtag symbol on our telephone dial pads? In my never-ending quest for knowledge (wink wink), I began to Google the hashtag and its origins. Surprisingly enough, the pound only took off in a big way in 1960 or so. Bell Labs and AT&T began to put it on their new touch-tone dialing systems to be used in those annoying automated telephone response things that all those customer helplines have (if I wanted a recorded voice repeating a sentence over and over, I'd have used Siri, not called customer service!). Back then, the pound symbol wasn't nearly as well known as it is today. All of a sudden, everyone who wanted the above annoying voice in their ear had to k...

A couple of days ago, I forced myself to read animal farm (a decision I deeply regret, I must say). Now, I don't mean to offend anyone - I'm certain there are those of you out there who think that George Orwell is the best thing since sliced bread - but I, personally, didn't think it was all that great. First of all - and this is the one thing I hated the most - the book doesn't end well. I mean, quite frankly, I was hoping that it would end with the regime of the pigs being ended. Instead, the book ends with the pigs turning into humans. Now call me choosy if you must, but when I read a book, I like to end it feeling happy. My problem with Animal Farm isn't so much that it ends sadly than that it ends without a sense of completion. At the end of nearly every book I've read, I've felt that, if nothing else, I've actually finished a book. With Animal Farm, that never happened. I felt like there was a large blank space at the end of the book that no one ...