There's nothing more satisfying than putting another blanket onto a child who is cold.
I can't believe I didn't mention last time the most noteworthy thing that happened on Sunday. We were at the gas station, and I was filling up the car, and this colorfully-dressed gentleman with his dreadlocks mostly stuffed into a stocking cap came up to me holding something and said "Do you want to buy some..." and various interesting possibilities passed quickly through my mind, and then he said "reggae?".
So now I have a copy of "Music Is My Life", the Tenth Anniversary Collection by Ragga Lox. Good solid reggae (not that I'm a reggae expert, but it sounds good to me) in a nicely packaged jewel case with pictures of Ragga Lox himself on the liner and on the CD itself, and M says she thinks the gentleman I bought it from was the artist himself, which is cool. ($10, just like it would have been from iTunes; you can buy it from his website also, but it looks like it'll cost more.)
Buying music from the artist himself at the gas station is better than online, because you get the liner notes and the jewel case, and you get to shake hands with the artist.
On the other hand the selection is quite a bit smaller.
Damion and Lucy have a daughter and are married and everything: details here.
From the latest NTK, the noteworthy Open Rights Group (on what I consider to be mostly the right side of the relevant issues), the odd and also noteworthy hanzo:web (which seems to intend to save forever a copy of any subset of the Web (with tags and metadata) that anyone asks them to).
And also via NTK, What should I read next dot com, through which I discover that Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker both have new (new to me) books out (and, from the Amazon data at least, I'm not particularly interested in buying either one; hm).
Spam subject lines! Here's an interesting set. (Apologies for the awkward formatting here; if anyone knows of a good equivalent to the old "wrap=off" that still validates, let me know; none of the suggestions I found on the web actually worked.)
I can't decide if these are more likely hand-crafted, or generated from some set of templates. I don't see any convincing patterns, yet they're strange and non-idiomatic. Maybe they're handcrafted to elude some particular spam filter that would have caught the idiomatic versions? Very odd.
We'll close with a reader contribution, filed under "Be careful what you wish for":
which clearly requires no further comment.
HTML o' the Day reveals to us the wonderful Egg Song, and reminds us of the Badger Song, which all by itself reminds us of the Llama Song.
(I was once a treehouse, I lived in a cake; but I never saw the way the orange slayed the rake!)
Today it's coooold outside, but I'm inside. Most of the time. And I'm slowly realizing that I'm in the beginning of a looooong vacation. Which is nice.
Over at Ajax Toy (and I'm pleased to note that this here weblog is tonight the second hit on the Google search), readers write (among many other things):
"Today I am the very essence of iscoseles, open at both ends and empty in the middle. That's what the essential nature of iscoseles embodies. I had a vision about it in yoga class today and now I am the dharma of geometry." ... Oh my god, where did he meet these women? Did he bring them over purposely to annoy her because if so, it worked.
The edge was the same as the clean-swept side. From her vantage point there was no depth of field, like you could fall up as easily as sideways. She shouldn't stare at the sun so long or fall in love so easily.
do you cry at night when you've run out of eyeglop and your eyes are so dry from all the times you've poked and prodded their corners all day?
do you giggle at night when you've run out of youghurt and your lips are so hungry from all the times you've licked and pinched their tender surface all day?
Oh, I get it. This is just like metababy! A really, really small metababy. Sort of a micrometababy. Cool.
(That last one ended with what looked like an attempt to link to and/or embed some sort of image, but our extremely paranoid "nothing but text please" filter garbled it all up.)
I must note again how amusing the fixlists on toy universes tend to be:
Sims can now work out if there is a rug in front of the TV.
Cowplants will no longer have their faces squished after eating Nightlife's NPC's.
Sims will no longer get a memory of making out with themselves in the hot tub under certain conditions.
Young Adult Male Sims can no longer get pregnant and give birth by using the Electro Dance Sphere.
Quite a relief, eh?
I suspect it's harder to have bugs in universes with physics that goes down further. I mean, get the decimal point in the wrong place in the speed of light, and you don't get atoms at all, much less cowplants or young adult males.
A reader writes:
I love these videos from David Deutsch mostly because they give such a sense of "life is so simple in academe". [link]
Endearing and educational!
Other readers have more pragmatic concerns:
- 27 for "helen naked pictures"
- 13 for "naked helen pictures"
- 4 for "mia"
- 2 for "naked pictures of helen"
- 1 for "breasts"
- 1 for "nude girl"
- 1 for "software of view web cam without permission"
- 1 for "view web cam without permission"
- 1 for "webcam"
- 1 for "webcam hack"
Is that how it's told now? Is it all so old? Is it made of lemon juice? Doorknob, ankle, cold!
From Metababy of all places again: "Presence in The Flesh: The Body in Medicine" (an interesting review thereof).
So I'm very sleepy, and sort of wondering why the eagles care whether or not I post all these random snippets of things that I happened to see that happen to have URLs. But that's the way the world works.
"You can trust us because you know we don't actually give a shit about you." (Much nicer than it sounds.)
Speaking vaguely of which, "PodZinger Launches Audio Search Service", which is interesting, and which led me to "First Six-Node Quantum Cryptography Network Is Unveiled" (did I know about that?). And perhaps relatedly, Quantum telecloning ("quantum telecloning").
From this here weblog (as, I think, are some of the others tonight), "Proof: Employees don't care about security" (prepare to have some already-low expectations lowered further).
From Steve who used to have a weblog, Frank Lloyd Wright vs. Zombies:
So Doselle and I were standing there in Wright's incredible house, cogitating on defensive issues. Of course, it does make the architecture come alive, worrying about hordes of zombies attacking.
UK holds Microsoft security talks:
UK officials are talking to Microsoft over fears the new version of Windows could make it harder for police to read suspects' computer files.
...
It is partly aimed at preventing people from downloading unlicensed films or media.
(Unpacking that last one a bit: Vista has encryption and DRM and stuff in it, and people are worried that although it will keep people from copying stuff they want to copy, it might also allow them to hide stuff from the government, and that would be bad.)
Gary McKinnon, the U.K. citizen accused of hacking into computer systems run by NASA and the U.S. military, will not be extradited across the Atlantic to face trial unless the U.S. can guarantee he won't be treated as a terrorist.
At a hearing at Bow Street Magistrates' Court on Wednesday, McKinnon's lawyers claimed that he could be detained indefinitely by the U.S. authorities.
Police arrest 55 suspected hackers in Brazilian phishing swoop. (I love that "swoop".)
The Innocent Have Nothing To Hide Dept:
The proliferation of security cameras -- especially if the government requires them in private businesses -- troubles some civil liberties advocates.
...
"The safer we make the city, the better it is for everyone," says Chicago Alderman Ray Suarez, who first proposed mandatory cameras in some businesses. "If you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?"
Yeah, Ray, what could the innocent possibly have to worry about?
And while we're on the subject Bruce Schneier notes an interesting piece: Soft Surveillance: The Growth of Mandatory Volunteerism in Collecting Personal Information -- "Hey Buddy Can You Spare a DNA?".
Various nasty security bugs: these two in various Windowsy things, and just for equal time some in Lotus Notes.
Frog with no feet go deaf.
660 in a furlong
plink plank plunk
wobba wobba wobba
Just the two, thanks.
However many had by Steely Dan! (Reel in those years, indeed.)
Zim zam zom!
Anyway, now I'm even sleepier. (Did I link to the Karaoke pictures from my Sims universe? Now I did.)
So I'm probably going to go off to sleep and all.
But you're welcome to stay as long as you like.
Have some hot chocolate.
