July 03, 2008
Nominative Determinism is Dangerous
It occurred to me after Craig's post about tipping milk that he should be worried about Nominative Determinism, since my name is Sarah TheMostDangerousGame.
In other news, happy birthday, Mom TheMostDangerousGame!
July 01, 2008
Nominative determinism is everywhere
Nominative determinism is a recurring theme on the BBC News Magazine Monitor (which also has a Twitter presence), so I am perhaps primed to see it in this story about the new blocky milk jugs:
“Just tilt it slowly and pour slowly,” Ms. Tilton said…But then, she would, wouldn't she?
June 30, 2008
June 27, 2008
Timely Straight Dope Rerun
Cecil's take on the second amendment largely holds up, even after the recent Supreme Court ruling. I have long been in accord with his last sentence:
[W]e should concede that the Second Amendment means what it seems to mean and that if we want to control guns to the point of prohibition, amending the amendment is the honest thing to do.
June 25, 2008
Paging Doug Coupland
It doesn't have the same tactile pleasure, but it also doesn't have the Legos embedded into your heel in the middle of the night. Infinite bricks! Free digital Lego buildie thing download.
Burma Badness
One learns several things from this article on aid to Burma:
1. There is a charity called Telecoms Sans Frontieres. Neat! A sidebar lists their usual technical kit.
2. Burma continues to behave in a way that reasonable governments don't, especially being afraid of free communication.
June 22, 2008
Crow Lake Review
Crow Lake, Lawson. No. The writing was perfectly adequate, but the structure of Lawson's debut novel killed it for me. More specifically, the relentless, detailed, brutal foreshadowing killed it for me. It reminded me of nothing so much as watching a “non-fiction” tv show: “coming up after the break, you'll meet three new contestants, one of whom wears a leg brace!” Probably because there are characters named Bo and Luke, I gave the foreshadower a Dukes of Hazzard drawl: “Now don't y'all think that there porkypine's goin' t' give our boys some trouble on down the road?” Lawson settled down toward the middle (having foreshadowed everything, she at least had the decency to tell the story), but then the story itself didn't merit the elaborate scaffolding she had put around it. If your point is that people are complicated, I need the trip to be substantially more rewarding. This trip is scenic, but ultimately unsatisfying, and the destination is well-trafficked.
