it was a big deal when Twitter doubled the number of available characters from 140 to 280, met with relief by most and disdain by the few wordsmiths who’d trained themselves to say as much as possible in as few as possible words. But 280 characters isn’t exactly an empty diary. It isn’t the classic 250 words per 8.5x11 inch paper. It isn’t anything, really. It is insufficient when you have something real to say. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, one of the most compelling, succin

Few areas of communication are as least studied yet so universally critiqued as greeting cards. A handful of scientific research has been done over the years on why people send cards, what it means, who sends them and what THAT means, and whether this is somehow highbrow low cultural expression or low highbrow cultural expression. I’ll point to a few of these studies. The great ones, no doubt, are safely locked away in the bowels of Hallmark and other giants like Papyrus but