Make your own cut-out snowflakes! Fold the paper into sections, snip-snip-snip, unfold, and, voila, your own snowflakes, just like you made in elementary school. Except with a lot cleaner cuts,…
Make your own cut-out snowflakes! Fold the paper into sections, snip-snip-snip, unfold, and, voila, your own snowflakes, just like you made in elementary school.
Except with a lot cleaner cuts, a lot straighter lines, no fold lines, and no mess on the floor when you’re done, of course. Oh, and you can e-mail them to friends, too.
(via Les)
Note to self: When setting an alarm on your computer titled “Amazon order,” for pity’s sake include some detail. Which order? Why? Where? Check status? Order something? Expect something? What?…
Note to self: When setting an alarm on your computer titled “Amazon order,” for pity’s sake include some detail.
Which order? Why? Where? Check status? Order something? Expect something? What? What the hell are you reminding yourself of?
When did you write it? Why? Is it critical, or just something to consider?
We want information, dagnabbit!
And drink some coffee, for gosh sakes!
Sign the First: Our neighborhood has finally been wired for cable broadband. This is surely a taunt from the Irony Gods that civilization is going to collapse, at a minimum….
Sign the First: Our neighborhood has finally been wired for cable broadband. This is surely a taunt from the Irony Gods that civilization is going to collapse, at a minimum. Probably in sixteen days.
Sign the Second: My parents are talking about installing DSL. The thought of my parents having a persistent broadband connection is surely a sign that the Natural Order has been overturned.
Sign the Third: Well, if you hear rumors that my in-laws are considering broadband, too — dig out those Y2K supplies, find a fall-out shelter, and start reading your Bible, because the End Times will surely then be upon us.
It would certainly be disheartening to think that one’s suicide wouldn’t be discovered for over a year. It would be even more disheartening to think that, once it was discovered,…
It would certainly be disheartening to think that one’s suicide wouldn’t be discovered for over a year.
It would be even more disheartening to think that, once it was discovered, it would be mistaken for modern art.
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Police on Friday removed the corpse of a man believed to have hanged himself at least a year ago after builders and students at Budapest’s University of Arts had initially mistaken it for a modern sculpture.
The body hung for a whole day in a garden building that had been re-opened for repairs before onlookers realized what it was and called the police, local media said.
The building, in campus grounds crowded with different types of sculpture, had been closed five years ago pending reconstruction work.
Of course, I guess that says something about modern art, too.
(via Cronaca)
No, really. I am aware that I am a finicky eater. Not as much as some, but certainly down at the 25th percentile or below. I don’t like a number…
No, really.
I am aware that I am a finicky eater. Not as much as some, but certainly down at the 25th percentile or below. I don’t like a number of things that others like, I don’t like flavor tones (sweet stuff for entrees, for example) that others fine intriguing. Okay, I accept all that, and all kudos to Margie for putting up with it.
But there are things that I just plain old know are wrong. And Turkey and Gravy Flavor Soda is certainly among that number.
(via Doyce)
A 3D rendering of the London Underground, showing how the various Tube routes intertwine. Interesting. (via BoingBoing)…
A 3D rendering of the London Underground, showing how the various Tube routes intertwine. Interesting.
(via BoingBoing)
So I decided this week to try switching from coffee back to tea. If nothing else, I thought, foregoing the mound of sugar and glugs of half-n-half that I festoon…
So I decided this week to try switching from coffee back to tea. If nothing else, I thought, foregoing the mound of sugar and glugs of half-n-half that I festoon each of my several cups a day with should help the old waistline, right?
Maybe I should have just had someone strap big sandbags to my arms, legs, and eyelids, because, yeesh, I would have worked off as many calories and felt about as dragged down as I do right now, but would have at least been alert enough to enjoy it.
After the Merriam-Websters McJobs flurry (not to be confused with a McFlurry) of a week ago seems to be dying down, I got a trackback from the Swedish site that…
After the Merriam-Websters McJobs flurry (not to be confused with a McFlurry) of a week ago seems to be dying down, I got a trackback from the Swedish site that broke the news, Blind Höna.
Alas, neither I nor Babelfish speak Swedish, so I’m not sure what it’s saying, except to note the various people who linked back to him. There is, though, a link to an interesting article at the Register on the matter, where M-W notes it’s just a coincidence that the reference to “McJob” in the sampler of new words disappeared just about the time McDonald’s pitched a fit about it.
One side light was McDonald’s complaining that it was actually a trademarked term, related to its McJOBS program.
A spokesman told AP that McJOBS™ is a registered trade mark. Indeed it is, and one with an interesting history. McDonald’s first registered the term on May 16 1984, as a name and image for “training handicapped persons as restaurant employees”. But the trademarked lapsed in February 1992, and was declared ‘Dead’ by the United States Patent Office. Following the publication of Douglas Coupland’s smash Generation X in paperback edition in October 1992 (the book first appeared in 1991), which popularized the term, McDonald’s restored the trademark.
“If there’s a trademarks issue it’s with the plural, not McJob,” [M-W rep] Bicknell told us.
And a check back at the earlier BH site presents this further comment from M-W:
As for the missing ‘McJob’ on the New Words Sampler, we felt as though there was enough misinformation and incomplete information circulating that it would be best to let the full entry and not the shorter excerpt speak for itself. We also found prior to the ‘McJob’ incident that many people were confusing the content of the ‘New Word Sampler’ with the full content of the Eleventh Edition of the Collegiate Dictionary. Accordingly, it is currently under revision; a new version will be restored soon online. “McJob” remains in all the manifestations of the Eleventh (CD-ROM, print, and online).
And that’s the rest of the McStory.
Either Blogrolling.com is having serious technical difficulties, or it’s been hacked. Either would explain not being able to get to its homepage, and, instead, getting endless entries for “Laura’s Blog”…
Either Blogrolling.com is having serious technical difficulties, or it’s been hacked. Either would explain not being able to get to its homepage, and, instead, getting endless entries for “Laura’s Blog” in the blogroll. Not surprisingly, Laura’s Blog is slow to respond …
Busy week up ahead for me. Lots of projects kicking off or supposed to here at the office. At home, I have something on the calendar Tuesday thru Saturday nights….
Busy week up ahead for me. Lots of projects kicking off or supposed to here at the office. At home, I have something on the calendar Tuesday thru Saturday nights. Not necessarily bad somethings or bothersome somethings or God-get-me-out-of-this somethings. In fact, some of them look to be quite promising somethings indeed.
Still, they’re disruptions to the Normal Way of Things. Which is rarely enjoyable in aggregate, regardless of the enjoyability of particular bits.
1. You accidentally enter your PIN on the microwave. 2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years. 3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach…
1. You accidentally enter your PIN on the microwave.
2. You haven’t played solitaire with real cards in years.
3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of three.
3.5. You don’t have a list of phone numbers, because they’re all stored on your cell phone.
4. You e-mail your friend who works at the desk next to you.
4.5. You forward an e-mail to your wife via your wireless laptop, who is sitting next to you working at her wireless laptop.
5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends is that they do not have e-mail addresses.
6. When you go home after a long day at work you still answer the phone in a business manner.
6.5. You work at home, and answer your home phone in a business manner between 8 and 5.
7. When you make phone calls from home, you accidentally dial “9” to get an outside line.
8. You’ve sat at the same desk for four years and worked for three different companies.
10. You learn you’ve been laid off on the 11 o’clock news.
11. Your boss doesn’t have the ability to do your job.
12. Contractors outnumber permanent staff at your office and are more likely to get long-service awards.
I have eclectic readers. Of the four people, plus myself, who took the Interesting Dinner Guest Challenge, I got 56 different names. Only five names were on more than one…
I have eclectic readers. Of the four people, plus myself, who took the Interesting Dinner Guest Challenge, I got 56 different names. Only five names were on more than one list, and only one name was on three of the lists.
So I’d still like to get some more responses before I run the results.
If you haven’t e-mailed me an answer to the Interesting Dinner Guest Challenge, go to the original post, and send me some answers today. Your dinner companion may depend on it!
Though the day started off with Kitten getting up too early, and with a phone call that my Spycraft game on Sunday had to be postponed because of Justin’s football…
Though the day started off with Kitten getting up too early, and with a phone call that my Spycraft game on Sunday had to be postponed because of Justin’s football season-ender dinner thang (Go, Moose!), there were plenty of little successes in it. Two in particular:
1. I think this is the quickest I have returned the garage into two-car-edness after a visit from Jim and Ginger. The remains of the project have sat there for multiple months at a time (usually, but not always, because there’s more project for me to do).
What made this time faster than previous was that (a) I didn’t want my new car sitting out on the driveway, and (b) Margie seriously didn’t want to be getting in and out of the van on the driveway.
2. When hit up by Katherine for a story for our trip to Home Depot, I hit upon the perfect story: “The Story of Shishiko, the Little Cat Girl, and How She Met Prince Menho.” This is the “origin tale” of my Oriental Adventures character, and it was just perfect, as was the sequel, “The Story of Shishiko and the Mean Guard.” I’m actually thinking of writing them up as real bed-time books for her, maybe even with illustrations.
Hey, didn’t Tolkien get started that way?
Wesley Clark, who’s repeated lambasted the Bush Administration for stifling discouraging dissent — and who, in fact has said: Democracy demands discussion, disagreement, and dissent. There is nothing more American…
Wesley Clark, who’s repeated lambasted the Bush Administration for stifling discouraging dissent — and who, in fact has said:
Democracy demands discussion, disagreement, and dissent. There is nothing more American — nothing more patriotic — than speaking out in defense of freedom, questioning authority, and holding your leaders accountable.
— sides with the Bushies (with whom I also disagree on this point) on stifling at least one form of dissent and protest — burning the US flag. He’s voiced his support for a constitutional amendment to outlaw desecration of the flag.
Matt Bennett, Clark’s communications director, said Clark saw flag-burning as a “very, very, very particularized form of dissent that he simply can’t abide. I guess he is carving out a little bit, but not very much. For the most part he is a very strong proponent of civil liberties.”
Yeah, it’s those “little bits” and “most part” loopholes that usually come back to bite dissenters in the butt.
Studies of brain chemistry are beginning to point up differences between run-of-the-mill grunts and folks who are successful commandos. But now blood tests of these elite warriors, compared to regular…
Studies of brain chemistry are beginning to point up differences between run-of-the-mill grunts and folks who are successful commandos.
But now blood tests of these elite warriors, compared to regular infantrymen, shows that it’s all in the blood. More specifically, the elite warriors have highly elevated levels the hormone neuropeptide-Y (or NPY). Not much is known about NPY, although it appears to be a natural relaxant. Produced in the brain and intestine, NPY is also involved with appetite control, heart function and the quality of ones sleep. If you are one of those people who just naturally have a lot of NPY, you tend to be cool under pressure and very capable of handling stress.
We all know people like this. But if you want to be a successful commando, you really need NPY. This is because even commandos generate large quantities of the stress hormone cortisol when under pressure. Without NPY to handle the cortisol, you will be just as stressed out and exhausted as a normal person. It’s not normal to have a lot of NPY.
But a commando is more than some buff, aggressive guy with a lot of NPY. While there appears to be a lot of blood and brain chemistry issues going on here, there are also the more traditional items like motivation and physical fitness. But these have always been easier to measure. In the future, it looks like more blood tests will also be part of the selection process.
But beyond that, NPY compounds, as anti-stress pills, may supplement or supplant some of the amphetamines htat have been used for soldiers for some time on the battlefield. Interesting.
(via Cronaca)
Granted, with great sadness (and disgust), that there remains sickening bigotry and race prejudice here in the US (a recent example, via Scott, can be found here). But, granting that,…
Granted, with great sadness (and disgust), that there remains sickening bigotry and race prejudice here in the US (a recent example, via Scott, can be found here). But, granting that, fabricating racist incidents to make a point (or worse) only lends comfort to the enemy, as it both reduces the moral high ground of those who fight racism, and it discredits-by-association authentic incidents.
Indeed, one wonders whether falsely reporting such incidents — especially targeting a neighbor as the probable suspect — is not just as pernicious, and deserving of as dire consequences.
What was on the cover of Time when you were born? I got Admiral Harry Felt, commander of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC). Woo-hoo! Actually, like all of these, “when I…
What was on the cover of Time when you were born? I got Admiral Harry Felt, commander of the Pacific Fleet (CINCPAC). Woo-hoo!
Actually, like all of these, “when I was born” isn’t all that interesting or nostalgic an answer (I wasn’t interested in geopolitics or the military for a number of years afterwards). When I graduated from college, perhaps … or when I got married. Those would be more nostalgic/romantic …
… or maybe not.
(via Stan)
Yet another color scheme utility for designing web pages and the like. This one has some very good combos, though, as well as a lot of predefined combos/themes and the…
Yet another color scheme utility for designing web pages and the like.
This one has some very good combos, though, as well as a lot of predefined combos/themes and the ability to save new themes you develop. Sweet. This one goes in the tool box.
(via ScriptyGoddess)
I seem to have missed it when it happened yesterday, but it appears that this was the (it hardly seems possible) 5,000th post here at ***Dave Does the Blog. Holy…
I seem to have missed it when it happened yesterday, but it appears that this was the (it hardly seems possible) 5,000th post here at ***Dave Does the Blog.
Holy moley.
Not much more I can add to that statement.
I’m sure that the bags of caramel-coated puffed corn that someone left in the break room are, as promised on the label, crunchy and “100% Delicious.” I cannot, though, quite…
I’m sure that the bags of caramel-coated puffed corn that someone left in the break room are, as promised on the label, crunchy and “100% Delicious.”
I cannot, though, quite bring myself to eat empty-calory snack treats called (ahem) “Waddle.”