Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries ….
- If My Brain Ran Windows, This Would Be How My Task Manager Looks [Image Cache] – Yup, pretty much.
- Put Together a Winter Car Emergency Kit [Winter Upgrades] – Some more very good advice, esp. for those of us who live in inclement climes.
- 7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School – I think the issue here is different types of writing, for different audiences and purposes. An academic paper in an English class perforce requires a different style, voice, feel than a short story, or even a blog entry. That can be a hard lesson to learn.
- More South Carolina GOP sex shenanigans – “Don’t be nervous, don’t be frightened, don’t be scared! / Be prepared!”
- What do you mean, “Where’s the present?”: Cheezburger Network
- The FDIC Would Like You To Know That They’re Not Emailing You [Phishing] – Unless you are really, truly, honestly sure of the source, DON’T CLICK ON AN EMAILED LINK. If you are in any doubt, go to the firm/organization’s home page and try to find what you’re looking for there.
- Copycat Company Sues Original Artist To Void Copyright Claims [Legal Battles] – As a side note, the original decor also more sophisticated than the knock-off. Regardless, an interesting case.
- Book review: Memories of the Future – Just started reading it, and worth doing so for any Star Trek fan, whether of the “Kill Wesley” camp or not (Wheaton has a sardonic appreciation for that movement, based on his review of the early episode writing and his own tyro acting skills).
- Obama pay czar increased salaries for Wall Street – Gosh — I wish I could have a 14% raise this year. Or any raise.
- Curry an answer for curing cancer? – Curry! Yum!
- Adobe pushes Flash and PDF for open government, misses irony – Ars Technica – I can almost see PDF — save that Adobe’s tools have made it such a customized monster with each new version. But Flash? “Here, let us show you the data … but you can’t have a copy of it, search for it, or in any fashion make use of it.” Bleah.
- Lobbyists beware: judge rules metadata is public record – Ars Technica – If nothing else, it will encourage people to properly annotate (or scrub) their metadata. Which is, net, a good thing.
- House, Senate get separate bills to kill net neutrality – Ars Technica – In John McCain and Marsha Blackburn’s topsy-turvy world, preventing carriers from discriminating between different content to be accessed by their customers is a “government takeover of the Internet” that somehow helps content companies “control what consumers see and don’t see.” In other news, War is Peace, and Freedom is Slavery.
- Google and the Deadly Power of Data [Comment] – I can understand the sentiment, but it seems to me to be lamenting buggy whip salesmen and coal wagon manufacturers. The issue is not the destructiveness of Google’s power, but what new business and social opportunities arise from it.
- Swine Flu Is Stressing ERs Everywhere – And We’re Not in Flu Season Yet. – Fortunately, I didn’t need to go to the hospital. But to add to the joy of all of this, seasonal flu vaccines are beginning to run out, due to shift of manufacture of the H1N1 vaccine.
- The Semi-Triumphant Return of Captain Mal – Shiny!
- Marriage Equlity “Will Lead to the Extermination of the Human Race” – Classic binary thinking and projection, i.e., either all marriages have to be different-gender or same-gender, and homosexuals are out to make all marriages same-gender. Which would be kind of a surprise to most gays I’ve talked with. Until someone says otherwise, I find it unlikely that more than 5-10% of marriages would be gay ones, which hardly seems likely to lead to any reduction in the population.
Scalia says he’d likely have dissented in Brown v. Board, would have voted to keep schools desegregated – “[T]his is the logical extension of the Republicans’ arguments against ‘activist judges’ making civil rights decisions in court. We’ve asked repeatedly whether Republicans against ‘activist judges’ also think that historic civil rights decisions affecting African-Americans were decided incorrectly too. We now have our answer. Yes.”– A misquotation. See comments.- Gmail account security tips – Words to live (or save your email) by.
- Far-Right Activist Launches Nancy Pelosi And Harry Reid ‘Burn In Hell!’ Contest – “Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you.” — Matt. 7:1-2
