Links o’ Interest

Amazing hand shadow work.

Smart lawyers get scammed. Smart people are just as gullible as everyone else.

Children building their dying teacher’s coffin.

Some clever origami art.

No, no, your other right hand!

A fantastic collection of quotes, mostly anti-establishment. It took me thirty minutes to read, but well worth it.

Dean Kamen is just amazing. Here he is talking about his new artifical arm he helped design.

That’s How They Get You

Consider the below picture. At first look, the actual cupcake looks a lot like the ones shown on the box. But it isn’t.

Cupcakes

It’s subtle, but look at the curvature of the top of the cupcake. The real one is basically flat, the ones on the box picture are pleasingly rounded. They have such a nice hump because they have such a generous portion of filling that it’s practically bursting with shiny caloric pleasure. The real cupcake, being flat, cannot hold quite as much filling. The amount of filling contained in the actual cupcake is enough to please a midget grasshopper, but nothing bigger. We don’t buy these anymore.

TiVo

Simply the best thing ever. I could write a whole ‘nuther post about that. A good friend did a whole Toastmasters speech about how amazing it was, and I am in complete agreement. Anyhow, I just splurged on the TiVo® Series3â„¢ HD DVR, their top of the line product.

And after 15 minutes of setup, the first ever image on my HD TiVo? David Spade. In Rules of Engagment.

Yuuuccchhh!

Thoughts During the First Quarter of the First Patriots Game of the Year

  • Our offensive line is amazing.
  • I can’t believe they let us have Randy Moss.
  • I’m looking forward to the rest of this year.
  • I sure hope we don’t choke the rest of the game and make this post look ridiculous.

Update:
Ridiculous is the opposite of how I look. Lawsy, we’re good. What an offensive line. Brady was barely touched the whole game. Even Rechee Caldwell could have picked up a couple TDs when Brady has that much time to throw.

Go Pats!

Gonzales is Gone

There’s a wide river of pundits who like to bleat about bipartisanship, as if the Democrats are being rude by defying the president every now and often. But one of the most shocking things about this administration is the extent that they corrupted non-partisan institutions and made them partisan. They have continuously put politics over policy at FEMA, CDC, NIH, NASA, EOC, and just about any other government organization you can think of. They have consistenly concluded that such concepts as the right to free speech, the right to organize, the right to a fair trail and due process of law, and other core concepts of our country are disposable privileges, to be thrown out whenever inconvenient, on their own authority.

To whatever degree Gonzales’s departure changes this, hooray. Many roads on many scandals lead through the Justice Department, one can only hope that this change will blow a cleansing wind through it.

Update: I thought this was a good take.

Running on Empty

I got nothing to talk about. Links of Interest coming tomorrow.

Comments: I’ve been having a lot of trouble with spam. Besides the hundreds of spam comments that are automatically filtered, there’s a dozen a day I need to manually filter. I’ve been trying different filters and different settings to combat it. Apparently, I turned comments off entirely and didn’t realize it. Hopefully everything should be OK now, but if not, just email me directly.

Oh heck, here’s one link to keep you happy. A fun webcomic for the graphic fans.

Who Likes These?

Is it too much to ask to just have paper towels? In the last few years, I’ve seen more crazy gizmos to dispense drying materials than I thought possible. Here’s the latest atrocity I have to deal with:
Towel

It’s motion sensitive see. So you have to wave your hand a couple times until it sees you, and spits out a carefully measured piece of paper. Carefully measured to not be enough, so you have to repeat.

Then there’s the kind that you have to grip with both hands on each side, but not too hard and pull but not too hard and not too soft. Or the kind you push a lever to get the carefully measured not enough towel. Or the one with the navigation wheel of death control on the side in case the main control isn’t working, which as of this writing, it never has.

The odd thing is that I don’t anyone who likes these. Everyone would rather just have some paper towels. And yet these pop up all over the place. So who makes the decision? What person sits back and thinks, “I hate these. My friends hate these. My coworkers hate these. You know what, I’m going for it. Let’s put them in!”

Who likes these?