Links

Life is good.

Rob’s writing another story.

My name (Michael David Hanscom) in Babylonian cuneiform:

In the same MetaFilater post I got the cuneiform from, there were a few other language-related links, including one to the English Grammar FAQ — which actually provides for some fairly interesting reading (at least if you’re at all concerned about using the English language correctly, something that my parents did their best to instill in me).

Additionally, a couple weeks ago (I meant to post about it then, just spaced it until today) andersje remarked on a couple newspaper stories where people had either lost their jobs or were being threatened with the loss of their job because they used the word ‘niggardly’.

nig – gard – ly adj.

1. Grudging and petty in giving or spending.
2. Meanly small; scanty or meager: left the waiter a niggardly tip.

— Dictionary.com

At first I couldn’t believe what I was reading — bascially, these people were being penalized for being able to use the English language correctly. But when I started talking about it at work, none of the three people I mentioned this to had ever heard the word ‘niggardly’ before, and they all made the immediate assumption that it was related to the derrogatory slang ‘nigger’. It really caught me off guard — admittedly, it’s not a word I’ve used often (if at all), but I did know it, and didn’t really realize that it was so rarely used as to be nearly unknown.

Pros and cons to having been gifted with an unusually large vocabulary, I suppose. Not that I mind in the least — I just thought all this was pretty fascinating.

And it came to pass that God visited the earth, and He did behold a series of billboard ads attributing to Him utterances of such banality that they would never pass His lips in a billion years. And it came to pass that God in His wrath considered a libel suit, but in the end opted simply to mount a cantankerous, self-contradictory ad campaign of His own…

I never said, “Thou shalt not think.”

I don’t care who started it. Just stop it.

You’d better have stopped fighting by the time I get back, or you’re all grounded.

There is no such thing as killing in my name.

Stop smirking, America. I’m talking to you, too.

(Found via Boing Boing)

There’s an incredible article at the New York Times Magazine giving a great history of the World Trade Center, from its politically-charged beginnings to the architectural choices that both kept the towers standing as long as they did after the impact of the planes and contributed to their eventual collapse. Just be sure to set aside some time — I just spent the past hour reading this.

When the north tower, the first to go up, was finally topped out on Dec. 23, 1970, it was foggy, and no one could see the view. But James Endler, the West Point grad and construction contractor who oversaw the entire job for the Port Authority, made a point of showing up at a celebration for the workers held on one of the skeletal upper floors — the first open-air party ever to take place 1,300 feet above the street. There was a band, soda and sandwiches. But when the band played the Mexican hat dance, the construction workers started stomping in unison, and Endler — standing next to Jack Kyle, the Port Authority’s chief engineer — began to feel odd vibrations in the structure. The floor did not seem steady. After all the wind-tunnel tests, the computer calculations, the structural innovations, had something been missed? Had the thousands upon thousands of steel parts been fitted together incorrectly?

”Jack, how do we stop that vibration?” Endler asked.

Kyle turned to him, expressionless. ”Don’t play that song anymore,” he advised.

(via MeFi)

I just found this image (along with a ton of other [often barcode-based] very cool desktop images) at some site that I can’t read because it’s all in Cryllic (oh, well, would’ja look at that — there’s an English version too…who’da thunk?) — but it’s very cool stuff.

If I was a better artist, I’d want to do similar tricks with the ISSN barcode for this weblog (which I don’t have posted anywhere at the moment, thanks to the verschluggin crash that I’m working on recovering from). Maybe I’ll go ahead and give it a shot eventually…who knows?

(via MeFi via andersja).

So it seems there’s a Harry Potter toy that’s becoming fairly popular with girls — the Nimbus 2000 vibrating broomstick.

The reviews make this even funnier…

When my 12 year old daughter asked for this for her birthday, I kind of wondered if she was too old for it, but she seems to LOVE it. Her friends love it too! They play for hours in her bedroom with this great toy. They really seem to like the special effects it offers (the sound effects and vibrating). My oldest daughter (17) really likes it too! I reccomend this for all children.

Heck, while we’re at it, why not just give them a Hello Kitty Vibrator, too? At least that’s a bit more honest about its intentions!

(via So Very Posh)

So how’s this for a joyride?

As the city bus drove down the street, two men in the back got into a fight. Concerned for the safety of himself and his other passengers, the driver pulled over to the side of the road and had everyone — including the two men in the altercation — evacuate the bus. Everyone did, save one person, who proceeded to take the bus on a six-minute long joyride through Seattle, reaching speeds estimated at close to 80 miles per hour, destroying eight cars and hospitalizing six people, before eventually plowing through a lamppost and several trees and stopping only when it slammed into a retaining wall.

Yikes.

It’s still unclear just what prompted this little rampage, though apparently his hearing is set for today. Crazy, crazy stuff.

This is one of the posts I lost in the crash — but I remembered that I’d had it up, and went looking for the original links.

MetaFilter had a link up to a story about a man who refused to stop having sex with a woman in a public pool until she reached orgasm.

This led to an entertaining little discussion, starting with beth‘s assertion that “…just for the record not every woman in the world wants an orgasm every time“. Things bounced merrily along for a while, until Miguel Cardoso posted the following entertaining and fascinating rundown of Porgugese sexual customs.

(Liberal use of ‘the F word’ follows, though [IMHO] not in an offensive manner.)

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