Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Stuff I find around the web that interests or amuses me.
Another link that deserves more attention than it might get just tossed into the linklog: Dean Emsay’s “Understanding Language” post and the associated discussion thread. As someone who’s long had an (entirely unschooled) interest in language and linguistics, much of what’s in here is absolutely fascinating.
(via Anil)
The actual story itself is mildly amusing, but what really made me laugh was that when I read the summary on Fark — “Mouse causes auto accident by climbing inside the driver’s pants” — I actually read it as “Moose causes auto accident by climbing inside the driver’s pants”.
Big pants. Or tiny moose. Either way, wouldn’t the antlers get rather uncomfortable?
“This One-Eyed Man is King” by Legendary Pink Dots, The from the album From Here You’ll Watch the World Go By (1995, 5:12).
According to the Seattle P-I:
As you’re clearing those wine bottles and beer cans from last night, don’t throw them out with the rest of the trash if you live in Seattle. Starting today, recyclables cannot be placed in garbage containers under a new city ordinance.
Good to know, and I’m all for that. Unfortunately, my apartment building doesn’t offer anything in the way of recycling collection bins — all we have is a big trash dumpster in the parking lot that everything goes into. So what are we supposed to do (barring manually hauling our recycling to a collection center — not only do I have no clue where one might be, that’s a little impractical without transportation other than the bus and my feet).
A little morbid, but it’s just how my mind works at times.
When all’s said and done, is someone going to have to roll back the World Population Counter by however many hundreds of thousands of people died in the tsunamis and their aftereffects?
“Collapsing New People” by Fad Gadget from the album Pop and Wave Vol. 1 (1984, 4:06).
John Scalzi is looking for Christian lawyers who work for the ACLU:
Someone who is very close to me (who will remain nameless for the moment) just presented the opinion to me that, for various reasons, she strongly suspects there are no lawyers who work for the ACLU who are also Christians, since she was also of the opinion that the ACLU isn’t interested in the constitutional rights of Christians…
Naturally, I was appalled at this statement and told her that I would make it my mission to find her an ACLU lawyer who was also a Christian, and that upon finding such a specimen, that I would ask her to consider the possibility that one could be a Christian and a lawyer and consider as one’s mission the constitutional rights of all Americans.
If you are a lawyer who loves Christ and are either on staff or has worked for the ACLU, would you please come forward to say hello?
The ensuing comment thread on his post is getting very interesting, too. Worth checking out (though it keeps getting longer, so give yourself a few minutes).
(via Boing Boing)
“I Believe” by Absolute U.S., The feat. Palmer, Suzanne from the album This is the Sound of Tribal U.K. Vol. 2 (1995, 9:23).
My lord — I hadn’t even heard about the disaster around the Indian Ocean until I started browsing through headlines this morning, and now they’re putting the death toll at somewhere over 33,000 people.
This was going to be a linklog post, but then I decided I wanted to give it a little more visibility.
With all the current blathering about Christmas being “stolen”, I thought today’s Something Positive strip was especially funny.
This is hands-down one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time — eyeglasses without rims, bows, or even a bridge. They’re attached via a bridge piercing.
I’ve never had a desire to get pierced, but if that was a direction I wanted to go in, I’d give this idea some serious thought.
“”Non Nobis, Domine…“” by City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra/Rattle, Simon from the album Henry V (1989, 4:12).
Very cool: an early 1950’s pictoral map of the United States of America, apparently issued by the US Government to introduce our country to the people of Germany, most of whom knew little of us outside of what they’d picked up from GIs in their country during World War II.
Relevant commentary from the MetaFilter thread where I found this:
So the State Dept. handed out these maps to give Germans some idea of what the US looked like? I’m interested in their intentions, and the history behind this map give-away.
well, smackfu suggests that the map is from around 1951. There was only a vague image of the United States in Germany then.
For many Germans Americans were huge, well-fed guys handing out chewing gums to German post-war kids. And some of these guys even were black. (I remember my grandmother telling me how amazed she was when she saw the first black G.I., the first black person she ever saw.) Now imagine what people must have thought of the United States then. Of course they knew about cowboys, the Liberty Statue and so on but that was about it.
I think the map was supposed to give a somewhat more detailed look an the United States, but then again not too sophisticated. The Secretary of State probably imagined that Germans would be overwhelmed otherwise. Maybe they really would have been. I assume that’s why it’s designed like a children’s map.
Then again, in the early fifties Germans started to go on holiday again. So it might be a promotional map for the American tourist industry.
That’s what I can think of.
— heimchen
Check out the full-size (7 Mb) map here.
According to the PI, our new space-age public restrooms are a success:
Seattle’s automated public toilets program is flush with success, averaging more than 600 uses a day in Pioneer Square and near Pike Place Market.
The usage is “about 10 times higher than what is considered normal in Europe,” according to a report given to the City Council’s Utilities and Technology Committee yesterday.
I’ve still not used one of these things — but then, I’m still convinced that they’re eating people.
