Coming soon to an Intertube near you:
Neil Patrick Harris! Nathan Fillion! Felicia Day! and, of course, Joss Whedon!
First episode goes live (and free!) on July 15th; second and third are each two days later, and the whole thing goes away (ok, behind a “give us money!” link) at midnight on July 20th.
you’ve all heard of lolcats by now, right? Well here are new, never before captured photos of lolgrues in teh wild…
(well, I laughed… :-)
Episode One of Shadow Unit is up. In case you were actually thinking of getting work done today…
I found wright house, a site that has a long list of so-called Steven Wright jokes. The difference? They’ve annotated the list; they mark jokes as authentic, or else name the comedian who actually said them.
“what’s another word for synonym”?
A completely over-the-top review of a Bic pen:
Amazon.co.uk: M. Williams “Matt Wil…‘s review of Bic Crystal ballpoint pen, medium point, b…
Some of the comments on this review are equally hilarious:
I often use pencils to write notes on paper, but have been thinking about changing to a pen. Is this pen a good starting point for a novice?
and so on…
What does 120 calories look like?
(hat tip: Jeremy Zawodny)
The no-corn-syrup diet | overstated
I love the venn diagram! (hat tip: Jeremy Zawodny)
I’m not sure if this is irony or hypocrisy. The Carpenter’s Union is outsourcing its picket lines to random people off the street, paying them $1 above minimum wage ($8/hr) to protest … low wages.
Megan McArdle: Harry Potter: the economics
The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?
An interesting touch on the subject. It seems true that in the Potterverse, magic is free, something that never works very well for story telling. C.S. Friedman just published Feast of Souls, the first book in a trilogy based on the opposite extreme; the source (and cost) of magic is life force. in The Magic Goes Away, Larry Niven deals with magic as a finite resource, to interesting effect. There are lots of other examples in SF&F literature.
So why don’t we care about this inconsistency in Rowling’s work?
From Bruce Schneier’s security weblog:
Here’s a clip from an Australian TV programme called “The Chaser”. A Trojan Horse (full of appropriately attired soldiers) finds its way past security everywhere except the Turkish consulate.
At least they remember their history.
This sounds familiar:
Not worth blogging individually, here is a bunch of links that I wanted to share:
Friday, 20 July 2007, Globa and Mail lead article on page two, all about the rubber duckies arriving in England. This is getting global and more fun. May be on the Globe website, but I cannot find it. Helge
Comment by Helge Koch — 7/20/2007 @ 6:18 pm
I found this article in the Daily Mail, as well as numerous others…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=464768&in_page_id=1770
Star Trek meets Steampunk.
http://slumbering.lungfish.com/?p=417
If I knew more about 19th century Science Fiction I could use this as a campaign seed… :-)
Toronto is a happenin’ place! A list of SF&F stories set in Toronto:
Someday I’ll have to go through the list and figure out which ones I’ve read.
I liked the thematic lists at the end of the page:
Vampires: Nancy Baker, “Cold Sleep,” “Exodus 22:18,” The Night Inside and Blood and Chrysanthemums; Stephanie Bedwell-Grime, The Bleeding Sun; Robert Boyczuk, “Doing Time”; E.L. Chen, “Fin-de-siècle”; all of Tanya Huff’s Blood novels plus seven related stories; Karl Schroeder, “Dawn.”
Werewolves: Kelley Armstrong, Bitten and Broken; Don Bassingthwaite, Breathe Deeply, Pomegranates Full and Fine, and As One Dead; Sara Joan Berniker, “My Mother in the Market”; Tanya Huff, Blood Trail.
Zombies: Kelley Armstrong, Broken; Tony Burgess, Pontypool Changes Everything.
I’m apparently totally out of the loop these days.
Bill Amend announced that he was pulling back, moving Foxtrot to Sunday Colour only as of December 31, 2006, and I only just noticed this week!
This guy has an unusual and amazing job: inspecting operating power lines. The video is cool enough to share:
(via Ned Batchelder)
First tropical storm of the year: Andrea on May 09, 2007. And so begins another year of watching hurricanes…
(with my luck the remnants of a hurricane will blow through Atlantic Canada when we’re supposed to be on the ferry between NS and NF…)
AlterNet: Rights and Liberties: Culture of Fear: Poetry Professor Becomes Terror Suspect
Because of my recycling, the bomb squad came, then the state police. Because of my recycling, buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, the campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not even that. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us “safe.”
Bruce Schneier has been collecting a bunch of these stories lately. His point is less about civil liberties, though. If police and emergency services are kept this busy chasing false alarms, it’s that much easier for the real criminals to slip past unnoticed…
I’ve linked to some of his recent entries:
Now all of the women I know can pee standing up like a man …
What will they think of next?
(In all seriousness, I can see a use for this; many public washrooms are truly disgusting places that I wouldn’t want to park my buttocks in…)
Why the treasure ships from the Americas were allowed to skip Customs: no one inspects the Spanish acquisition!
(Shamelessly stolen from olletho)
Because nowadays, dissing Rowlings works in public is much like going to Rome and picking on the pope?
Comment by Nita — 7/25/2007 @ 2:51 pm
I think it goes something like this:
1. Magicians can conjure up anything, so why would any of them be poor?
2. Hey, if they can do that, why would any muggles be poor either? Or have diseases?
3. Hm… Why are so many people in the real world poor/hungry/sick, when we could clothe/house/feed/cure them if we wanted to?
4. This train of thought is making me uncomfortable, so I’m going to stop worrying about it and get back to the story.
Comment by Greg Wilson — 7/25/2007 @ 4:14 pm