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.”