musicplasma tells me that Norah Jones is close to almost all my favorite artists. As with many such "if you like this, try this" tools, it has an inadequate understanding (or perhaps representation) of the many ways two things can be similar (or one thing can be different). The belief that someone who likes Queen will also enjoy Roger Taylor‘s solo work doesn’t take into account the fact that Roger didn’t especially like a lot of the music that Queen put out, especially in the later years. Or even the perfectly reasonable expectation that a solo record would be substantially different from the group’s work (otherwise, why bother?).

Why 47? Just ask the 47 Society.

National Hugging Day is on hump-day this year. I would have had no idea, had I not gotten the Oopsy-Daisy calendar for my office.

I was wandering through Vonda McIntyre’s site the other day, and ran across her list of pitfalls for writers. Then Pat Holt‘s Ten Mistakes Writers Don’t See showed up on Blogdex. Maybe someone’s actually trying to literally tell me something.

I’ve always liked the idea of a hot tub without all the fuss and expense, so had my eye on furo-type heater that can be hooked up to a tank of your choice, such as an affordable stock tank. I don’t know how I feel about the Ikea-like plastic tub-ette, but check out the convection heater! Anybody know how to weld?

Scanner art is cool. And sometimes goofy.

I hadn’t looked at McSweeney’s for a while. Here are some jokes somebody may not have remembered quite right.
For reasons that don’t bear scrutiny, I also found this pretty funny. I found the idea of it even funnier than the execution, though.

The cypherpunks have registered the username/password combination cypherpunks/cypherpunks at a number of places. Feel free to use it and/or register it yourself (the password may be “writecode” if the registration is old enough). If they want an email address, the convention is to use cypherpunks@toad.com.

Spalding Gray has gone missing, under circumstances that don’t foster optimism in me. He has been suicidal recently, and left his home without wallet, baggage, or medication.

All I’m asking for is deli-counter guys with frickin’ lasers on their heads.
Update: for technical specs of the laser (and the disappointing 1mm/sec cutting speed), see the optics.org report.