Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"Honestly, anyone who knows anything about Londoners culture should have known the operation was doomed to failure, anyway. The whole point of terror bombing is to send a message, and everyone knows you don't strike up conversations with strangers on the Tube. It's just not done." -- autographedcat, 2005-07-08

As usual, I've gone far longer than I meant to between doing 'link sausage' entries; and as usual, I've forgotten where I found many of these. I've got a few links already collected for the next link sausage entry, too ...

1. Altoids "re-use our tins" contest (thanks to aiglet): I almost punted this because the web site puts the descriptive text into images without ALT tags instead of using text to display text, dammit ... but nonetheless some of you may be interested in their "Tin Million Uses" contest seeking "the most innovative and curious re-use of the Altoids tin [...] the more curious the better." Anyone managed to fit a Linux box into an Altoids tin yet?
   


2. Why it's smart to disobey officials in emergencies, from Wired (again thanks to aiglet): "In a connected world, ordinary people often have access to better information than officials do." Regarding 9/11, "According to the engineers, use of elevators in the early phase of the evacuation, along with the decision to not stay put, saved roughly 2,500 lives. This disobedience had nothing to do with panic. The report documents how evacuees stopped to help the injured and assist the mobility-impaired, even to give emotional comfort. Not panic but what disaster experts call reasoned flight ruled the day." And, "This is the real source of homeland security: not authoritarian schemes of surveillance and punishment, but multichannel networks of advice, information, and mutual aid."
   


3. Tinfoil.com, "Dedicated to the preservation of early recorded sounds", by which they mostly mean wax cylinders. They've got excerpts from the world's earliest still-playable sound recording: "Mere months after Edison's invention of the phonograph, inventor Frank Lambert shared Edison's vision of applying the new talking machine toward the development of a talking clock. Realizing that soft tinfoil, which was the recording medium of the day, would not provide a lasting record (wax cylinders were still years away), Lambert (no relation to Thomas Lambert, inventor of the Lambert celluloid cylinder) apparently chose to experiment with a cylinder made of lead. As a result, his early sound recording experiments can still be heard today after more than 120 years."
   


4. The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form is, well, just what it sounds like. For example:

   adverb by Tim Alborn
    
   The adverb's a versatile guy:
   It modifies verbs, low and high,
   And all adjectives too;
   Then it adds to the brew
   Words like also, how, when, where, and why.

   After contributors have been at it a couple more years, maybe I'll switch to using this as my main quick-lookup dictionary instead of the Miriam-Webster site
   


5. final_girl invited people to "write a personal ad for the god you want -- not one under which the world would be better, but THIS world, in which it would be easier to live in if you had this faith", and several people did so.
   


6. While I (and many of my friends) continue to find the spoons metaphor useful for describing what chronic illness is like, as well as using it as a shorthand for describing our current state (some of my healthy friends have started using it in the second way as well), tamnonlinear points out limitations of the spoons metaphor and suggests another: how having to cope with a chronic illness amounts to having a second job. "Illness as a second job makes more sense to me. It's a job that you hate and it doesn't pay you. It takes your free time and requires your concentration, and it is an obligation you can't put off. It takes work. It limits what you can do, how far ahead you can plan activities, how much spare time you can spare. Even when you aren't 'working' at the other job, you need time to do nothing sometimes, just because you haven't been able to do that with your other obligations. You can't always predict how much of your time it will need or take. If the disease or disorder gets serious enough, it becomes the full time job." I still find the spoons metaphor useful and don't plan to give it up, but the second-job analogy rings true as well and presents a little more of the picture of what it's like dealing with this. Some of the comments provide important clarifications and amplifications. (Look for the comments by fjm and hilleviw) I'll try not to play the "my agenda should be your agenda" game (since I blatantly committed that act yesterday), but if [this part of] my agenda already is your agenda, then this is the most important link in this journal entry.
   


7. From "that mailing list" comes this striking set of images showing a transparent monitor effect -- desktops that give the illusion that the icons are hovering in space and you can see right through the monitor to whatever's on the wall behind it. (This would be a bit trickier with a laptop that gets moved around, but wicked cool if you could pull it off.)
   


8. The Phallic Logo Awards provides examples of, and snarky comments on, corporate logos which resemble penes. "The game designers across the nation are playing is; can they design a logo and get it approved without the client realising it's a big spurting penis?" There's even a special "muff diver award" for a logo the judges couldn't resist even though it didn't look phallic. (Thanks to dorable for linking to it.) Theoretically work safe -- the images anyhow, if not the text -- since they're all supposedly-innocent logos of corporations, organizations, and government agencies ... unless your cow-orkers have minds as dirty as yours. ;-)
   


9. An open letter to the Kansas School Board requesting that the author's faith be included in classroom discussions of "Intelligent Design". The author believes that the world was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster: "Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him. It is for this reason that I'm writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I'm sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith." I'm guessing that several ofmy friends will be wooed to this faith upon learning that "it is disrespectful to teach our beliefs without wearing His chosen outfit, which of course is full pirate regalia." [Emphasis added for the sake of Marine Property Redistribution Specialists who may be only skimming this entry.] The scientific evidence that is presented includes a graph demonstrating the correlation of global warming with the decline in the number of active pirates. Two members of the school board have responded so far. (Linked to by a few people ... I think I saw it first in theferrett's journal, but I'm not sure.) T-shirts and coffee mugs available.
   


10. I've never been married, so mine is the perspective of an innocent bystander rather than an expert, but zoethe's Guide to Happy Marriage sounds like it makes an awful lot of sense.