Just as I am about to do now!
Slashdot stories
Sony Patents Matrix-Like Game Technology
Daylight Savings Change Proposed
Home Theatre PC Guide
Google Delivering Factual Answers
EFF Guide To Blogging Anonymously
I was thinking that this would have been useful this past week.
Detecting Speech Without Microphones
As a person with a degree in linguistics (I hesitate to ever call myself a "linguist", firstly because I'm not actually working in the field, and secondly because the working world seems to think "linguist" means "translator"), I find the idea of capturing the shapes of the mouth and throat in order to determine the intended speech at once fascinating and logical.
Hole Drilled to Bottom of Earth's Crust
Revenge of the Sith Officially Rated PG-13
You're sending us mixed signals here, George.
Actually, I can see what he was trying to do. He was trying to establish Anakin's innocence and appeal with the first movie, which its overly simplistic rendition of events that were actually so subtle and complex that it was a struggle at the time to understand why they were relevant. (Now, of course, that's obvious too: Palpatine had to come from somewhere.) The second movie, which I have at times claimed is better than Jedi, was the transition between this cartoony (actually, I hate that adjective, but you know what I mean) nothing of a film and the bleakness to follow. So, by contrast, Revenge has to be extraordinarily evil.
Maybe the series will hold up in a marathon viewing.
Router Built for Gamers
Okay, this is bad news for me. I mean, the description text says "Ping times suck? Too much lag? If your loved ones are hogging all your bandwidth with P2P and torrents, you'll want to checkout the D-Link DGL-4300 Wireless 108G Gaming Router." Yes, if Sean sees this, I'm a goner...
...which of course makes linking to it on my website pretty stupid, eh?
BoingBoing stories
Plane Crazy: Musical about golden age aviation and the Pill
I would actually like to see this.
High-rise structures for ashes of Hong Kong's dead
I wonder if something similar is in Japan's future. Right now there isn't much land in Japan that isn't in use for something, and their graveyards are pretty tightly packed. I have some pictures of a graveyard in Kyoto that is so vast and dense that it is like a sea of thin gravestones. Maybe I'll get those pictures uploaded someday. In the meantime, here's a really interesting description of Japanese funeral traditions.
(There's a lot of other information on that page; click here for the index. Of interest right now is hanami, the viewing of cherry blossoms. A highlight from that article: "The restroom facilities at Japanese parks were never designed to handle the huge numbers of people that descend upon them for cherry blossom viewing. Due to this, it is inadvisable to go traipsing through any low shrubbery or foliage borders that may be lining the area." :D)
Yahoo! News: Oddly Enough stories
Confused Cops Swarm Woman After Birth (AP)
This woman is awesome. Just read the story.
Jailed 'Killer' Freed After Wife Turns Up Alive (Reuters)
Oops.
Physicists Write Microscopic Paragraph (AP)
Woman Photographs Swan, Finds Hand Stuck in Ice (Reuters)
It's so difficult sometimes to get the meat of the story into a tiny little headline...
Wash. Lawyer Suspended for Sex With Client (AP)
I just like the first paragraph:
The state Supreme Court on Thursday announced a two-year suspension for a lawyer caught having jailhouse sex with a triple-murder defendant she was representing.So I guess you don't have to be particularly smart to be a lawyer...
Man Drives Into DMV's Wall, Renews License (AP)
Students Use 125 Steps to Change Batteries (AP)
Two words: Rube Goldberg. :D
Local news: Louisville, KY
Official: 'Mistakes were made' in felon's escape
The incompetence here is pretty impressive.
Local news: Aiken, SC
Schiavo decision worries supporter
This perspective on the Schiavo case by a woman who was held at a Yugoslavian starvation camp is worth going back on my word that I'd "washed my hands" of it. But this will likely be the sole exception.
Japan news
Guidelines planned for correct use of honorific Japanese
I really wonder if television isn't at least partly to blame for the widespread "misuse". I've noticed all kinds of sarcastic uses of honorific Japanese in anime.
The article itself states:
The subcommittee will check on the use of honorifics and polite phrases deemed to deviate from perceived standard usage, including phrases commonly used by sales clerks.What, no more irasshaimase? :(
The secondary story in that article, that the joyo kanji will be reevaluated, is good news. I'm not sure that the language will have changed drastically in 24 years, but there are surely new prominent words that need to be considered.
747,000 households refuse to pay NHK subscription fees
Gov't keeps tight grip on textbook descriptions of Iraq war
Gov't OKs nationalist text; sex slavery glossed over
'Comfort women' not suitable for junior high textbooks: Shimomura
Japan seeks dialogue with S Korea over textbook issue
China says textbook issue not Japan's internal affair
Massive anti-Japan protests spread to Guangzhou, Shenzhen
Lots of furor over those textbooks.
Koizumi speaks out against Expo bento ban
Koizumi wins Expo bento battle
Go Koizumi! (And boo to Mainichi for its horrible archiving system...where the hell's the permalink? I'm afraid these links will turn sour as soon as another article with the word "bento" in it is published...)
Okay, whew, I have now emptied out my saved Bloglines stories, except of course for the 100+ Language Log entries I have yet to read. I feel (mostly) better now. And hey, that apparently only took an hour!
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