Yes, chicks dig guys who read. Or so Penguin would have you believe. The quiz is v. funny.
Futuristic cars, yeah!
I briefly fancied that the Asperger's tilt test might be related to nose-avoidance tilting, but no: it turns out babies who are likely to develop Asperger's (or possibly other autism-spectrum disorders) tend to keep their heads upright when their bodies are tilted (I imagined that this was a back-and-forth (or maybe I mean side-to-side...) tilting, but the article doesn't actually specify—maybe it doesn't matter which axis the tilt is around). I rather would have expected a desire to keep the input system stabilized would be a good thing, but maybe it's better to be able to adjust to different input orientations and understand that even though it's been translated in some way, it's still the same input.
Microsoft has just launched a competitor to Google News: I haven't tried out Newsbot yet, but I'm hopeful it will allow the same access to WaPo and NYT articles as Google news, so I can search for that stuff without contaminating my Gmail cookie.
I thought I had mentioned this before, but check out Seattle Fabrics, purveyors of various heavy-duty fabrics and accessories.
A BoingBoing reader was (perhaps inadvertantly) directed to this part of a Florida TV station's website while looking for Jesus (or at least the Jesus of Tru Value). I can't figure out how one would normally get to this slideshow cavalcade of Florida misery/human interest, since every time I go up a level in the file system, it looks distincly both broken supposed to be password protected. This search is not helped by the standard TV website clutter and bright screaming headlines.
Prize to you if you can find where to get this horrorshow every day.
In a lovely exhibition of Ukiyo-e prints is a hint on the technique of flying:
"The subject of the print is Kume the Immortal, a renowned recluse who mastered the power to travel through the air at will. The sight of a young woman baring her legs while washing clothes caused Kume to lose his concentration and fall from the sky."
also
"In a deified form, [Kitano's] spirit is said to have flown to China to learn Zen, paying for his lessons with a sprig of flowering plum."
I'm suddenly less enthusiastic about the new Dr Who, after reading in this piece that Mr Eccleston wants to 'concentrate more on the part's "melancholy side."' Ugh. I'm prepared, and happy, to believe that the Doctor has an inner emotional life, but I don't think it will enhance my enjoyment to see evidence of it. Rather the way I prefer the calm Wash of "Serenity" to the panicky Wash of "The Message." They're both shit-hot pilots, but calm Wash does what he needs to do without a lot of fuss.
I would so like to believe that this story of Nigerian credulity is due to a scammer-scam, but the evidence just isn't there.
Point #1: you must must must read Alice, I Think and Miss Smithers by Susan Juby. They are milk-thru-nose funny. They are two of the three teen books I read for my work this year that I would recommend with great enthusiasm to non-teens as well. (The third is The Canning Season.)
Point #2: Alice, the protagoniste in the aforementioned two books, is an awful lot like me at her age. Though my mom (who also liked the books) is charitable enough to say that she didn't think so.
Point #3: Juby has an anecdote from her own life on her web site that makes me think that she and I might not be too terribly dissimilar, too.
A loyal reader, late of Iceland, recommended the book Making the Best of Basics: Family Preparedness Handbook. One of the tips the book contains is to keep grains by for sprouting for when "live foods" are at a premium in your circumstances. In the significantly older book (from 1866), The Market Assistant, comes the much more tasty-sounding tip: growing mustard greens! From page 338:
"Mustard. The leaves of the young, white, broad-leaved kind is best for a mixed salad, or to boil with meat as greens. It may be had at any time in a few days, bu being sown in a box and kept in a warm place."
For those of you wishing you still had secret clearance, Defensetech, the blog of defense news.
I am apparently equally (un)knowledgable about Republican and Democratic minutiae. I don't know what the resolution of their scale is, but they show me squarely in the middle of their spectrum. They give the answers and scoring, but I didn't have the requisite ambition to find out how my several guesses affected the results.
Maybe there's more to the story — revenge, perhaps? — or maybe Rumanian urologists don't get enough training in leaving the frank alone while messing with the beans.
Union songs, from historical to new, from rousing to stupid!
note: One of the songs listed in the first source seems to have been rather unevenly copied. A more believable rendition is here. One might have to take this first archive with a grain of union salt.
I find it hard to take seriously any claims that we have a legitimate need to keep secret the names of everybody rounded up in the post-11 September foolishness when federal sources are falling all over themselves to reveal what seem to me to be very pertinent details about an ongoing "very sensitive" investigation.
The lovely and talented Ursula points me at Scam o Rama, where you can get the scoop on scammers and (counter-)scamming.
So there are databases of unclaimed property in every state, and that property is everything from insurance payouts to bank accounts and more. I used to think that I could be a valiant info-warrior and find money for people, but mostly people (perhaps with good reason) think you are trying to scam them. Perhaps I will post information on how to find this money along with the names of the people, in case they google themselves.
The Greyhound bus service is eliminating a bunch of stops from its routes. For people without the option to drive, this bites. As more of the population ages past the point where driving is a good idea, I hope we'll remember why public (rather than privatized, who can trim unprofitable services) transportation is worth the cost-balancing it does between the high and low volume stops.
Unfortunately, we probably wouldn't be able to tour it, but the Adult Swim Factory sounds like a cool place. I guess I'll have to settle for watching its product, when I remember.
It's a shame the reviewer is uninformed about things, though: since when does any network (much less Fox) have "24 hours of airtime to fill"? And, of course, he misspells Warner Bros., but so do a lot of folks. And how does this get by fact-checking: "Other networks, noticing the success of Adult Swim, have attempted to usurp its popularity by launching mature-themed programs of their own. Comedy Central jumped into the fray with 2003's Kid Notorious..." Has he not heard of South Park?
It's apparently possible to scam 419 scammers, including getting them to do silly things, and even send money(!).
But if I did need a new TV, I might shop around for one of these. I stumbled across these here, home of many interesting furnishing ideas.
The League of Women Voters is at it again: another handy tool for Washington voters.
What could be better than a Monty Python musical? A Python musical starring Tim Curry, David Hyde Pierce, and Hank Azaria!
NYT reports "a precipitous downward trend in book consumption by Americans and a particular decline in the reading of fiction, poetry and drama," citing a study finding that "fewer than half of Americans over 18 now read novels, short stories, plays or poetry."
What the hell is wrong with reading non-fiction, short essays and instructional materials? My own feeling about most "literary" novels, short stories and especially modern poetry are probably in line with those of most USAnians, that they're written so that a certain small portion of the country can feel superior about themselves for consuming it. Like Public Radio (except This American Life and Le Show). I prefer more actual entertainment for my entertainment.
The only citation I can find with a brief look is on the BBC's Magazine, and it's the quote of the day, so get it while it's hot:
"I hope you feel satisfied by that."Maybe I'm only imagining a certain tone of resentment there.
–The Queen to Earl Spencer after paying tribute to Diana
I got bored before finishing the article, but there could be some interesting findings in research showing that fooling your body by feeding it sweet things with no calories might make you prone to over-eat. Regardless, the most stunning breakthrough is pretty early in the piece: "Based on the research, Davidson and Swithers suggest paying more attention to calories consumed and engaging in regular exercise to battle the bulge."
What? Exercise and monitor caloric intake? Such radicals.
I started browsing through the selection of Indian-made scooters from Bajaj, but now I'm entranced by their selection of three-wheelers! And according to my state's regulations, they're all motorcycles.
The very fascinating Frankfurt kitchen was an outgrowth of "Taylorism," those kitchen efficiency studies.
If we keep tracking T9 stories, will we become some sort of T9 web destination? Despite the links to humorous goofs, I've actually quite enjoyed the ease of T9 use, considering I'm typing with my thumbs.
Arg, it looks like I may be forced by exclusive licensing agreements to go to Sheets, Shats & Shit.
Not that I will miss the original Daleks, but my reading of this story leads me to believe Russell Davies and crew were going to do something cool with them. Too bad. I mean, if anything could do with an update, it would be menacing cyborgs that can't go down stairs.
One of the regulars came up to the desk just now, wearing his usual camouflage jacket, baseball cap, and dark glasses, sporting his shaggy goatee. And by regular, I don't mean that he just comes in regularly. I mean he comes in so often and for such stretches of time that one wonders how he supports himself. He said "I just got off the Internet with my girlfriend." He shows me a picture she sent with an email: thin, young, blonde. My first thought is "I wonder if she knows what he looks like?" My second thought is "That's not her real picture." The second picture confirms it- very much cut-and-paste. Also? She's currently in Nigeria, and she'll visit if he just sends $200...
Regular readers will recall my surprise at the Scalia/Thomas split on COPA. Apparently they don't disagree as infrequently as I had supposed, and this analysis makes an argument that it's due to genuine differences in judicial philosophy and reasoning. And since the philosophy attributed to Thomas requires an absence of critical thinking, I find the argument persuasive.
Well, not really, but it's a snappy headline. Actually, a Slate columnist says why he switched to Firefox. I'm using Firefox right now, and I like it a lot. If I could get it to auto-complete in the URL bar, I'd like it even more.