Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"I believe that if you put Gil [Grissom] and Horatio [Caine] together with superglue, you'd end up with Batman." -- chadu, regarding the television shows CSI and CSI:Miami, 2005-07-21

• Zombies attack American Idol audition, producers ask one of the zombies to audition. The gist:"Muntean organized the zombie horde using the online forum Craigslist. [...] Little did the zombies know that the 'American Idol' organizers had seen the Craigslist ad. 'We've been on 24-hour zombie watch,' said coordinating producer Patrick Lynn. 'We thought it would be fun to have them on the show.'" And a couple of random quotes I thought were cute: one of the zombies said before the attack, "I don't really know what the legal ramifications of a zombie horde are," and late in the article we get the deadpan, "The Austin Police Department says there is no history of zombie-related crime in the city."
  


• "Why Coyote doesn't give commandments", by cadhla: a list of ten commandments the trickster god might give if he were the commandment-giving type. "IV. Adultery Is Actually Pretty Fun. Commit It All You Like. Just Make Sure Everyone Is Cool With It, Or I Will Not Help You Out Once the Hitting Gets Started. --- V. Thou Shalt Not Eat Poisoned Bait. If You Do, Don't Come Whining To Me About It, Because I Am Very Unlikely To Care. Once It Is In Your Mouth, It Is Your Problem, Not Mine. --- [...] VIII. Thou Shalt Not Be A Martyr [...]" Worth a read whatever your religion; wisdom as well as humour.
  


• McSweeney's list of Klingon Fairy Tales -- just a list of titles; amusing, very quick read, more smile than LOL. Starts with "Goldilocks Dies With Honor at the Hands of the Three Bears" and ""Snow White and the Six Dwarves She Killed With Her Bare Hands and the Seventh Dwarf She Let Get Away as a Warning to Others"
  


• "What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?" by Philip E. Agre starts off with the observation (which I've also heard from fidhle), that "most of the people who call themselves 'conservatives' have little notion of what conservatism even is." Historically, "Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy," and thus fundamentally incompatible with democracy. Where it gets interesting is his explanation of how this definition, rather than just being etymological trivia, is actually relevant to current conservativism and why that's bad for most of us. Plenty of bits in here to go "Aha!" at, or to start lively arguments over. "Modern-day liberals often theorize that conservatives use 'social issues' as a way to mask economic objectives, but this is almost backward: the true goal of conservatism is to establish an aristocracy, which is a social and psychological condition of inequality. Economic inequality and regressive taxation, while certainly welcomed by the aristocracy, are best understood as a means to their actual goal, which is simply to be aristocrats." And: "Conservatism in every place and time is founded on deception. The deceptions of conservatism today are especially sophisticated, simply because culture today is sufficiently democratic that the myths of earlier times will no longer suffice." Plenty more such points. Read. Discuss. Just try to keep the discussion below the level of fisticuffs.
  


• And just to make sure there's something here to piss off folks on both sides of the aisle, here's a convenient chart explaining How To Be A Good Democrat / How To Be A Good Republican. Snarkiness and oversimplification abound as each is cast as the other sees them. Some obvious bits, some that folks on one side or the other will actually believe and not recognize as exaggeration, some that may be accurate unless I've got the same intellectual blinders as the rest of my species, and some that are genuinely laughworthy clever. Read it for snark, read it for insight, read it for an excuse to get upset, read it for a giggle ... or don't. I don't think it even really tries to be fair, except at the level of annoying both sides, but it does have its "well if you put that in this context ... heh" moments. Probably funniest to third-party folks and moderates.
  


• Compact and safe hydrogen storage -- a solid which releases hydrogen catalytically when needed and is safe enough to carry in your pocket (as long as you're not carrying the catalyst in the same pocket, I presume). The sidebar of links to related stories looks interesting as well. One quibble: they describe the space savings compared to an equivalent quantity of hydrogen gas at "normal pressure", but who stores a gaseous fuel at normal pressure? I'd be more interested in a comparison to typical tank pressures. (Yeah, I can Google that and do the math; I just think that they're cheating a bit in the article.) Recharge the storage solid by running ammonia into it. (Link thanks to keith_m043.)
  


• Disaster relief timeline ... of a hundred years ago -- see how differently things were handled in 1906, before helicopters and cell phones. More concise rendering.
  


• The $100 Laptop / One Laptop Per Child project at MIT is "a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop -- a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world's children." They want to be able to give children in developing nations computers that can create mesh networks on the fly, be carried between home and school, and use "innovative power" (the example given was wind-up). They want to make a hundred million of them and get them into the hands of governments willing to commit to a computer-per-child policy, and they hope to do this by late 2006 / early 2007. (Link thanks to yesthattom.)
  


• The I Can Eat Glass Project "is based on the idea that people in a foreign country have an irresistable urge to try to say something in the indigenous tongue. In most cases, however, the best a person can do is 'Where is the bathroom?' a phrase that marks them as a tourist. But, if one says 'I can eat glass, it doesn't hurt me,' you will be viewed as an insane native, and treated with dignity and respect." So if you ant to know how to say that in about a hundred languages, now you know where to look it up. Including, of course, Klingon.
  


• And finally, have a giggle at this squirrel altercation. Yes, there is more to it than that, and no, I don't think I can give more of a clue without spoiling it. Just put down your drink and click.
  

More sleep last night than the night before, but interrupted several times -- first by those jerks I still don't understand (who would cruise through a residential neighbouhood with their stereo cranked window-shaking loud in the wee hours?), and then by dreams of the "wake up and go 'huh?'" variety.

Let's see whether more sleep means that I'll continue feeling functional long enough to actually go anywhere today. Here's hoping.

And -- sorry about the format-scrambling typo in the "link sausage" entry I posted earlier. It's fixed now.

When neighbours play their stereo loud enough to be heard more than a block away, and intrusive for half that distance, can I sic ASCAP on them to collect public-performance royalties?

Big fire. About half a block frome here, it looks like. The hose they just hooked up to the hydrant on my corner loops into the alley halfway down the next block. The smoke plume I can see out my back window looks farther away than that. The police helicopter is expending the extra fuel to hover in place (which actually makes a different noise than normal flight). Lots and lots of sirens; equipment still arriving. Only one truck parked on Lombard street so far. Fortunately it doesn't look like my car will be blocked in. (Still planning to head down to Arlington in a little while ...)

In that block I think the inhabited:vacant ratio is higher than where most of the local fires are. I sure hope whatever's burning was vacant anyhow. In any case, it's burning quite thoroughly based on the quantity of smoke it's putting out. No flames visible from my window as of a couple minutes ago.

Ah, there's the scent. I was wondering when I would start to smell it. Smells more of wood and less of other stuff than most house fires around here, but that might be because I'm off to the side of the direction the wind is blowing it so I'm being spared the full effect.

[ETA: The good news: looks like they got it under control pretty quickly and that whopping huge smoke plume is already gone. The bad news: an ambulance just arrived. Hope the need for the ambulance turns out to be minor (not that I'll ever find out -- a fire on this side of town won't make the news unless somebody died, and even then sometimes not). I'm guessing that they'll still be pouring water on it and looking for hot spots for a while, but it looks from here as though it's under control.]