Here's one for hubby-Eric. Spammers have started to include prose in their e-mail messages to avoid having their notes trashed by smart filters. Blogger and journalist Clive Thompson found an excerpt from Chapter 20 of The Master Key by Wizard of Oz author L Frank Baum in a message that had as its subject line "the big unit" (no prizes for guessing what the rest of it was hawking). Lovely. via Boing Boing
If you can get to the NYTimes website, read Paul Krugman's opinion piece about voting machines called "Hack the Vote". Yes, I wonder why this isn't front page news, too.
Eh, Blogshares is gone. I guess I'll have to take down the link to it eventually.
Oh way cool! Roman dice on auction at Christie's. Via Pete Welsch
Neat story of a student film based on WWII lore. via Daily Snopes
Mr. Picassohead. via Volokh
The Brownsville Herald (Texas) has a wonderful report on the difficulties of trying to see public information under the Freedom of Information act. Via Amy Langfield and Jeff Jarvis
Happy birthday, Elayne! She's also posted her con report of the Mid-Ohio con. Kevin also has a couple of con reports.
*ThumpThumpThump* Again, the sound of me pounding my head against the wall. Franklin Harris responds to discussion about his article on trades versus single comic books. The only reason I responded to that article at all was because Dirk Deppey mischaracterized it as a "detailed and convincing argument", which it wasn't. It was a couple of points that were pure opinion. I don't entirely disagree with Franklin, just as I don't believe that single comic books are the be-all and end-all of comic book formats. But I don't get this silly demonizing of the format going on.
Legomancer sums up the current arguments on comics in the blogosphere. I would add: "If you don't agree with the current trend of thinking that the Manga format is the best thing since sliced bread, then you should be misquoted and misunderstood by all the folks on the bandwagon." Manga isn't a trend, but this ridiculous praise of Manga as the sole future of comics is a trend. And it's getting really annoying. Yeah, we get it. Manga = good, everything else = bad. Move on to another topic, already.
Dirk Deppey thinks I'll be offended by a link he has. On the contrary, I thought it was pretty funny. A little crude, but amusing nonetheless. Why does everyone assume that I take Aquaman so seriously that I'm not amused by jokes? I'm offended by the same old boring jokes, but I'm only offended because they aren't creative. Saying "Aquaman is lame" isn't funny, original, or creative. Drawing Aquaman in a fishbowl being fed fish food is. Why can't people get the distinction? (and no, it's not just you, Dirk, I get a lot of "oh you wouldn't like this" from people who are making perfectly funny Aquaman jokes)
Last thought for the day: If anything happens to Eric at work today due to my loud mouth speech last night, I'll add an update to the note below (as well as call every reporter I can reach). Otherwise, I'm just too sick today to deal with anything more.
