Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Bodo Moeller wrote in RISKS Digest (31 March):

"The interesting aspect about spilling chicken software is that it helps you make sure you keep only those errors that actually distort the meaning."

• Uruk-Hai Unhappy with Portrayal in Films
• It's quite interesting to note how the brain attempts to interpret this image. (Thanks to broken_gizmo. Discuss the image here.)
• TV Stars Who Insist On Singing
• Somebody tried to sneak across the Mexico/US border disguised as a car seat
• Top seven "Stella Awards" lawsuits for 2002. (It's probably worth pointing out the caveat elsewhere on that site: "We know quite well that not all of the cases we present will turn out to be frivolous abuse of the American Justice System. Many of these cases indeed involve real issues, real injuries, and deserve real compensation. And some don't. That's why we stress that you should read the cases before you judge."
• plantgirl discovers that those "Shark Tank" stories aren't made up. (Pretty trivial goof compared to a lot of what goes on, but still...)
• Jan Wassenaar in Holland put up a web site all about two-dimensional curves. It's sort of like a couple of chapters from the middle of a math textbook without the surrounding context ... except that being hyperlinked makes it more interesting to browse, and advanced and esoteric curves are right there with the conic sections from eighth grade. The math teacher part of me was interested in the concise descriptions, the math geek in me was entertained by the curves I didn't already know. I figure this isn't a site that'll fascinate everyone, but after poking at it a little while, I decided it was worth pointing out. (I often lose track of where I got these links from, but I remember I got this from silmaril.)
• Sixth-grader arrested for stomping in a puddle. "[...] the boy was cuffed, put in a patrol car and taken to jail." (Got the link from broken_gizmo)
• Womdigious selenite crystals (Discovery Channel, February 2001): the largest natural crystals on Earth -- twenty feet long-- in a cave inside a mine in Mexico ... "'Walking into either of these caves is like stepping into a gigantic geode,' said Richard D. Fisher, an American consultant with the mining company to develop the discoveries as tourist attractions."
• DP Man is a filk of Billy Joel's "Piano Man". (Thanks, xpioti. BTW, ForTran is best known for its use in science stuff -- dealing with text strings is not its strong suit.)
• A nightclub bouncer in New York was stabbed to death as he tried to enforce the city's new ban on smoking in bars. This story has generated a lot of traffic on one mailing list I read. One person commented, "Didn't we learn a single thing from 'air rage'? Take cigarettes away from smokers, turn them into nicotine-fitting lunatics." Perhaps my own ideas about smoking are naive. I never made the connection between 'air rage' and the ban on smoking on domestic flights.
• Remember the article about voting machines by Thom Hartmann that I linked to in my previous 'link sausage' entry? Well here's another, by Dan Keating in The Washington Post: New Voting Systems Assailed; Computer Experts Cite Fraud Potential. "David Dill, the Stanford University professor of computer science who launched the petition drive, said, 'What people have learned repeatedly, the hard way, is that the prudent practice -- if you want to escape with your data intact -- is what other people would perceive as paranoia.'" I'm speaking as a programmer/analyst when I say that this is risky stuff, not as a technophobe or a Luddite. This article points to examples of voting machine failures. It's not all a bunch of hypotheticals. Another significant quote: "'We're not paranoid,' said Mercuri. 'They're avoiding computational realities. That's the computer science part of it. We can't avoid it any more than physical scientists can avoid gravity.'"
• Dissatisfied with the image quality of your digital camera when you want to make large prints? Here's a 340 Megapixel digital camera called "MegaPrime". A catch? Of course there's a catch... ( but if I tell you the really cool thing about the camera, I'll give away the catch )
• It's a little freaky to see this reported as it happened on a message board, but it probably won't be the last time now that Internet usage has become so much a normal part of life in our culture: the story of a scammer getting found out ... the first two pages are chatter about suspicions, the police get involved on the third page, and at the bottom of the fourth page is the unfortunate climax. I found the whole thing a bit disconcerting, and I wasn't even a participant in the thread.

For folks who want to know when I update posts they might have already read, I've just done the following:

Edited the entry about working on my car to add a link to the saxophone story I alluded to in the subject. Cross-linked the entry in my journal about burning my hand and the entry I posted in too_much_info about it. Made small edits and tweaks (fixed typos, added a credit) to my most recent "link sausage" entry.