posted by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
eftychia at 07:46pm on 2003-09-15
eftychia at 07:46pm on 2003-09-15- Diabetic sues employer for not letting her eat at her desk (Oregonlive.com) "When her blood sugar became low, Fraser said she asked whether she could eat some food stored in her desk, but her supervisor refused. She eventually passed out in the lobby of the bank, Fraser said. Her husband took her home. Later, Fraser said she complained to her supervisor's boss. In March 1999, she was fired." The big issue so far seems to be whether diabetes is covered under the ADA.
- A large, untethered, walking robot: Lucky, an animatronic dinosaur at Disneyland. With videos. "What is most impressive about Lucky is the degree of articulation in the head and neck, and the wide range of facial features. It's easy to believe that he is real as he 'talks' with Chandler, or whimpers when his balloon floats away, or smiles and winks at a shy child. Lucky's motions are incredibly smooth -- he doesn't appear robotic in his steps, or the way his head moves around to take in the scenery."
- 1000 Blank White Cards sounds like an interesting way to kill time with friends. "1000 Blank White Cards is a card game, the purpose of which is to create the cards you're playing with." New cards get created by the players during game play. The object is to be silly and entertaining; the web page, in response to a question about winning, declares that "The whole thing is pretty arbitrary and random; in fact, it's almost impossible to win intentionally." I don't spend much time at the gaming table at parties, but I may have to try this one sometime.
- I haven't had time to really explore this, but it looks potentially useful to some folks: The Folk Music Directory at utyx.com is an index of folk music related web sites.
- A scientific examination of the five second rule. "[...] the 5-second rule dates back to the time of Genghis Khan, who first determined how long it was safe for food to remain on a floor when dropped there. Khan had slightly lower standards, however; he specified 12 hours, more or less." Among other things, they found that more bacteria are transferred to food from smooth floor tiles than from rough ones.
- Homeland Security targets crossdressers (Other Magazine). "[...] most of all, it seems slightly ludicrous: obviously, whoever thought crossdressing would 'discourage scrutiny' hasn't talked to too many trannies." The short Other page includes a link to the official press release mentioning this. (It's in the last paragraph.) In related news that most of you have probably already heard (but I'll link it here just in case), there's this story (Washington Post via Yahoo) about the plan to rate each airline passenger's threat level. "'This system is going to be replete with errors,' said Barry Steinhardt, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's technology and liberty program. 'You could be falsely arrested. You could be delayed. You could lose your ability to travel.'"
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Employers are finally learning that B players hold the cards.
(Thanks to
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
moominmuppet, whose journal the link
points to.) "There are many types of B players, but most are
loyal (to a point), don't live and die for the next promotion
(but want challenging work), don't need coddling (but can die of
neglect), are honest (if not diplomatic) and are not as driven by
power, status and money as are A players, who live for little else.
Indeed, A players admit to being maddened by the B players' seeming
indifference to what matters to those at the top." - Doune Castle, Monty Python Tourist Attraction -- And it turns out the manager of the 14th century castle where much of Monty Python and the Holy Grail was filmed, isn't averse to playing along: "He provides visitors with coconuts so they can wander around the grounds making the 'clop-clop' sounds made by the horseless King Arthur and his sidekick, Patsy." The article goes on to talk about the serious history of the castle as well.
- Whoops: "Tommy Chong who played one half of the dope- smoking duo in the Cheech and Chong movies, was sentenced to nine months in federal prison and fined $20,000 Thursday for selling bongs and other drug paraphernalia over the Internet."
- And finally, another cute kitty picture (sorry, still not a photo of Perrine -- I haven't had any spare cash to get more film developed yet. Soon, I hope.)
Once again, due to being distracted for a while, most of these have been sitting in open browswer windows on one machine or another long enough for a) me to forget where I found most of them, and b) different operating systems to complain to me about running out of memory. So I guess it's time to bundle a bunch up and reclaim the RAM... Some are from Usenet, some from email, some from other folks' journals, and some I tripped over while looking for something else, as usual.
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1000 blank white cards sounds like free-form Flux.