Showing posts with label linky roundup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label linky roundup. Show all posts

November 21, 2008

Today's Youth Have Too Much Self-Esteem? Other Links of Interest

Study: Today's youth think quite highly of themselves. "Many people who grew up in the '50s say, 'Nothing I did was ever good enough for my parents.' Now we're seeing the pendulum swing, and you hear from coaches and teachers who have been at it a while that kids have become more fragile. They don't take criticism well. Thinking you're God's gift to the world is nice for you. It's a little harder for everyone else."

Racial humor may never be the same -- we hope. "We're entering an era in which racial comedy will have to deal with creative thought rather than relying on the casual repeated use of the F word, the N word and the rest of the slackers' alphabet. In this changing frontier, how will we construct the new bases for racial humor?"

Al-Qaeda calls President-elect Obama a "house negro." Is it smart to insult the man who decides which caves to bomb? No.

The Economist has a hilarious article about George W. Bush's most defining physical feature - his nostrils. "More often, nothing exceptional was on the way to being said. But the nostrils ran ahead, twitching like a bull in a rodeo or a frisking wild horse, hinting at danger to come...Being bigger and better than most people’s, the presidential nostrils were also more acute. They could sniff out WMD in Iraq as snappily as hot dogs at a football game, though it took the UN many years to come up with nothing."

November 18, 2008

Fun With Random Links

Ah, the Dream Captcha. The perfect melding of nerdy internet references and cheap, exploitative trinkets. Also, because it's always fun, let's recite the phrase that CAPTCHA stands for: "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart."

7 out of 10 men say they please their female partner every time. However, 7 out of 10 women confessed to faking it, and 25% pretend frequently.

"How to write a pitch," from Complications Ensue: The Crafty TV and Screenwriting Blog. "do not tell me visual details. Do not tell me any details that aren't story elements. Don't tell me what the extras are doing. Just tell me the story...Simplify, simplify, simplify, and never be boring."

The kittycat dream house! I'm pretty sure I will live there by the time I'm 50. With little rafters for cats to walk on, and secret passageways and...okay, the litterbox in the human bathroom is a little weird.


November 13, 2008

Science Roundup: Saturn's Heat Rash, Muskrat Poop, Whale Snot, Etc.

Saturn’s heat rash - The Cassini probe has been snapping pictures of a weird aurora hovering around Saturn's north pole. From Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy blog on Discover Magazine's site: "In general, aurorae change shape as the magnetic field of a planet fluctuates and interacts with the Sun’s solar wind. But this one doesn’t really do that. It also has been seen to fill the entire polar region of Saturn’s equivalent of the Arctic...So what’s causing this weirdness? We don’t know." Awesome!

Muskrat poop makes a good antibiotic.

Fear of Climate Change Has Maldives Seeking Backup Homeland - the entire country might be under water in a few years, so they're looking for a place to relocate. The entire country.

Whale snot is a useful diagnostic tool for vets looking to assess the health of our blowhole-spouting friends. And I love this part - sometimes they gather the whale snot by flying little remote-controlled helicopters through whale blows. "The whales definitely notice the helicopter," said a researcher,
"they turn on their sides to look at it. But they don't seem bothered."

The L.A. County Sheriff's office is admitting that DNA for almost 6000 rape cases remains untested. So much for the CSI Effect. "The bad news is we have 5,635 kits in a warehouse," said a supervisor."The good news is we now know what has to be done."

Wanna serve in Obama's cabinet? In the digital age, there's a lot of potentially embarrassing information about everyone floating around, and they'd like you to provide lots of deets about your online life. "please list...each book, article, column or publication (including but not limited to any posts or comments on blogs or other websites..." Every comment or post I've ever made? That would take forever! Guess I'll have to give up my dream of being Secretary of Transportation.

November 12, 2008

Entertaining Links, Reflections on Spam Culture, and Yes, Obama

If you haven't checked out passiveaggressivenotes.com, you should. It's hilarious. Passive aggressive notes from roommates, ex-roommates, co-workers, cranky grandmas, and even God! I had no idea that office kitchens and fridges were such hot spots for interpersonal conflict!

From techradar.com: Spam gets 1 response per 12,500,000 emails. Out of 350 million spam emails, 28 result in sales. "Yet even with this apparently abysmal response rate of less than 0.00001 per cent, the researchers still estimate that the controllers of a network the size of Storm are still bringing in about $7,000 (£4,430) a day or $3.5m (£2.21m) over a year."

Live puppy cam is the most popular livestreaming webcam ever! Puppies for everyone!

My friend Daisy Mertzel, who is a producer and videographer, made a video of her excursion to Grant Park last week on Election Day. Daisy, who my parents would probably like to adopt into our family, is amazing with man on the street stuff. She didn't just take videos and pictures, she interviewed people, asking them what "hope" means to them, and why they think Obama's election is a turning point in American history: