There were a lot of images on this site that made my take double. Nowhere is as russian as Russia.
By which I of course mean the business. Who's doing what with that shortcode? Especially interesting to me is that the Pope's thought of the day has (at least) two different shortcodes. Makes me wish I had noted what shortcode they used at the ballpark last night for voting on what song they should play later in the game.
"Most people want a world with simple black/white answers but you must realize that there are many shades of gray in between and this is the reality of spider identification."
-- Vetter and Antonelli, "How to Identify (or Misidentify) the Hobo Spider"
My favorite part is the twist at the end!
Isle of the Dead, Zelazny. Yes. I've been afraid lately to re-read some of the favorites of my youth, fearing my increasing crankiness will render them unreadable. Isle of the Dead is one of the most idiosyncratic works Zelazny published, but I don't hate it. It was written in 1969, and it shows its age, but the man was a great writer, and his penchant for writing works such as this one, This Immortal, and He Who Shapes does not obscure his gift. Now I'm wondering why I don't want to put Lord of Light in the same category. Maybe I'll read it again and find out.
"Allusion through similarity of form is, I have discovered, a marvelously rich vein of self-reference, but unfortunately this article is too short to contain a full proof of that discovery."
—Douglas Hofstadter, Metamagical Themas
The Books of Lost Swords, Saberhagen. No. Prompted by recent reading, I re-read all eight of the Lost Swords books. I get the feeling Fred gave up about mid-way through (probably around the Sherlock Holmes hommage), and by the last couple wanted to kill the series so badly that he ignored the previous rules by which the Swords had operated. My disappointment with the tying up of loose ends in this series was similar to my disappointment with Ardneh's Sword, though this one didn't so much end up contradicting existing canon (Sword rules notwithstanding) as leaving me thinking "Really? That's the best you can do with an abiding enigma?" Quite unsatisfying.
Self-Made Man, Vincent. No. This was a book-club obligation, a book I would not likely have read voluntarily (and I ended up reading only one of the sections). Between the author's assumptions, generalizations, and overall unwillingness to maintain a coherent position, the only conclusion I can reach is that people are complicated and don't communicate very well.
Just when I had given up hope (due to misleading news coverage that suggested the round=planet proposal was a fait accompli), the IAU finally made the right choice regarding Pluto. The additional criterion (missing from an earlier version of the BBC report) is that a planet must have "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." I had been hoping for requiring that it possess the majority of the mass in its orbital region, but anything that gets us down to the eight bodies with shared origins and finally excludes the Kuiper Belt is okay with me.
My interpretation is that, faced with solid evidence of the absurd results of crafting an objective standard that allowed Pluto to be commonly referred to as a planet (even the proposal separated the 8 "classical" planets from the "plutons" (bizarrely including Ceres)), only the most sentimental of the scientists could bring themselves to support it.
Another cool thing I find last. But that's ok, cause they have the archives online.
Quote of the day: "Children who are developing on a typical development track actually tell very unfunny jokes, so we have provided that facility for non-speaking children as well." That from Dr Annalu Waller, a researcher on the System to Augment Non-speakers' Dialogue Using Puns (Standup), as reported by the BBC.
I have only browsed as far as the soups, but the recipes in the 1902 cookbook With a Saucepan Over the Sea sound really good. Now I'm hungry!
This has been passed around at work, but I'm a little leery of cooking methods that might leach complex molecules into my food. I wondered if oven bags might be more appropriate to the job, but Alcoa has anticipated me, and gives a firm no.
And while doing this research, I ran across tasty Cajun side dishes in boil in bag format.
UPDATE! Seal-a-Meal bags! Really!
Afrigadget, is a site with neat technology appropriate to Africa.
Street Use, a blog on how people really use things, or squodge them together with other things to make them better.
Seems a little meta, but you can rent a place that someone else is renting. OK, it's just short-term sublet type deal, of neat vacationy places.
Spamusement is comics inspired by actual spam subject lines. It is, as advertised, actually amusing!
I Am the Messenger, Zusak. Yes. I have a couple issues with the book. First, it assumes (or perhaps implies) a characteristic of human nature that I am firmly convinced does not exist; second, the writer does a thing that I ordinarily disapprove of. He executes it competently, but it is not necessary to the story and I believe it does a disservice to the characters. Your assignment: compare and contrast IAtM and Zero Effect.
Walking in Circles before Lying Down, Markoe. Yes. I laughed more reading this book than I have laughed at a book in a long, long time. Ms Markoe is a gifted humorist.
Visionary in Residence, Sterling. No. This was quite a struggle for me to finish. I usually enjoy Sterling's work, and I did enjoy the final two stories in this collection, but the rest, by and large, made me think that he was taking the title of the collection (which is also, I believe, his job title where he's a visiting professor of design or some such) far too seriously. I really don't care how smart you are, or how smart you think I am, just use the right words in the right order. Almost no one is good enough to show off and get it right.
So your pesky co-workers won't let you listen to your police scanner at a reasonable volume, check out today's 911 dispatches in Seattle.
In the deceptively boring titled press release ("State revokes, suspends licenses, certifications, registrations of health care providers") from the Washington Department of Health, some people lose their medical licenses for some terribly exciting reasons.
Japanese convenience store food!
While mainly aimed at medical and pharmacy pros, you too can join the Public Health Reserve Corps! I'm glad the health department is thinking ahead.
So many of the Flickr images tagged with forced perspective are so very unconvincing that it makes me want to make better images. Most common problem: insufficient depth of field, leaving things in unmatched focus. Another dead giveaway: uneven lighting.
I suspect the only cameras I have available have inadequate control over aperture to create convincing illusions.
The Anticraft has many wiccan and gothic crafts, with a nice sense of humor. The Lughnasadh '06 issue theme is Danger! and includes a knitted bomb cosy.
Hey, it's Lammas, so celebrate the harvest of grain and bake some bread. Mmmm. Bread.