Linkages for Tuesday

No, a kid did NOT find an ancient Mayan city by comparing ruin locations to the stars.

Weapons of Math Instruction?

Ursula K. Le Guin writes about her cat.

Huh. Wizards of the Coast has some tournament judges suing them, claiming they were effectively employees and should have been compensated as such.

The Chronicles of Cisco continues for fans of The Flash tv show: Part One (in which Cisco tries to improve the Flash suit and falls asleep), Part Two (in which Cisco tries to find an intruder at 3:45 a.m.), Part Three (in which Cisco makes a mistake), and Part Four (in which we learn... well, watch and see).

Boing Boing has a list of disappearances that still make people scratch their heads. Some fascinating stories there.

More fascinating stories came out of Remote Year, a social experiment that didn't turn out perfect, but certainly makes for good reading.

Here's a brutal Fortean topic: The terror of albinism in parts of Africa. In short, if you are albino, you do not exist and are constantly at risk of death.

This piece from Popehat has to be read to be believed. This guy seriously wanted an amendment declaring only people descended from white Europeans to be allowed to be citizens? Now the guy is a Trump delegate... what a surprise.

Hugo Corner:

• Boing Boing on Chuck Tingle's epic troll of the rabid puppies.
• GRRM on other awards.
• Bujold on her Locus nomination.
• A review of one of the works I don't plan to bother reading, because it's from the rabid puppies' master's publishing house (It sounds about as worthless as I suspected it would, building strawmen based on scant facts). The reviewer then responds to the morons who support the original piece.
• And lastly, a painful piece on the current status of the comic book industry, which also mentions the Hugo mess.

And now, a four-minute video that will make you cry. Maybe.

The Present from Jacob Frey on Vimeo.

Free Speech and Shootings?

The Daily Show had a good piece on not shooting people you disagree with... (trying to embed the video here)

The Daily Show
Daily Show Full Episodes,  More Daily Show Videos,  Comedy Central Full Episodes

While the whole piece is interesting, the bit I want to address is the idiocy of supposedly religious people murdering those who insult their religion. In short, if your religion is threatened by people making fun of it, then either you have no faith or your religion is false. By attempting to silence critics by violence, you are saying, "my religion is so weak and false that I have to defend it by hurting people." People who are secure in their faith can laugh off insults and ignore blasphemy from non-believers. Only those who have no faith use weapons to defend their beliefs. That goes for any religion at all.

So every time I see a report of "Islamic Terrorists" I just think, those guys don't actually have any God except Death. They don't follow the prophet, they follow hate. Same thing with Christians who use violence. We don't hear about it as much, but there's plenty of nutcases out there who want to kill people who aren't Christians or the right kind of Christians. Those people aren't followers of Jesus, they believe in Death. Every time they use violence they undermine the religion they claim to believe in and prove that they, themselves, are weak-willed idiots.

My Personal Response to the Death of a Terrorist

I started with disbelief that the task was finally done, then a small amount of relief.

Next was disgust that it hadn't been accomplished 9 years ago because we didn't have a leader 9 years ago who was willing to put the resources into play, and instead decided that oil profits and money for his buddies in Halliburton were more important than stopping terrorism. This whole thing should have been ended years ago. Instead we had to wait to get a president that isn't into war profiteering, then wait for him to clean up the mess of the war profiteer president before him. Yeah, I'm bitter. How many American lives were lost because Bush couldn't be bothered to actually help the American PEOPLE instead of American Corporations? The only thing better than the death of Bin Laden would be the death of Bin Laden and Bush and Cheney being tried for war crimes, war profiteering, and treason.

So I guess I'm mostly exasperated that this took so long, and that the reason it took so long is still walking around free and wrongly thinking he did a good job as president.

I did manage to get my mood lightened by visiting a few websites and seeing the jokes people made in reaction to the news. The people who want to see the long-form death certificate before believing it were mildly amusing. More so when you consider that President Obama's speech cut into Trump's stupid show. Heh. Another joke I found strangely satisfying was that all the other death reports of Bin Laden were just Harry and the gang taking care of the Horcruxes before they finally got the bad guy himself. Way to mash pop culture with current events.

But mostly, my reaction is just a small amount of relief, a lot of bitterness toward the useless leadership that took us to war in Iraq instead of finishing the job in Afghanistan, and a certainty that this isn't the end of the terrorism story at all.

Sunday Night Links

Happy Birthday Elayne!

The Emerald City Comicon has a new announcement up, including artwork for the con from Tim Sale showing the Hulk and... just go look.

I have always liked Popeye. I loved the cartoon as a little kid. I wonder what that says about me?

Brian Wood has a fascinating blog entry on the inspiration for artists. Very neat stuff there.

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #131. Star Wars, Purple Gloves, and The Legion.

This post applies to me... Blogging on infinite Earths?

Amelia Rules to become a Musical. Cool.

The Webby Awards' 12 Most Influential Online Videos of All Time. I'm surprised at how many of these I have seen, and I'd at least heard of all of them.

2007 LEGO Advent Calendar Day 2: A fire hydrant and supply case for the fireman. The supply case includes a walkie talkie, axe, and fire extinguisher.

Augie on Charity Overload. I agree with him mostly, except for the Girl Scouts (at least they are selling and not begging). And I never have any problem saying "no" to anyone sitting outside a grocery store.

Special Instructions To Players. "In fact, it is so over the top that at first we thought it was some type of a joke. But as we examined the paper, found that this language did exist in the 1890s, considered that general rowdiness and the use of obscene language by players were big issues in baseball in this era, and noted that the accompanying items were all from the same era, we soon realized that that this was not a joke at all."

I've gotten as high as level 46 at FreeRice, but never stay up there for long. I'm usually in the low 40s. Has anyone reached 50?

The Bad Astronomer has news from Texas regarding its doomage.

Oh dear, too funny: Newlywed Terrorists.

Teenage Mutant Turtle, must train to be Ninja.

Linkages

For comic book fans only: the destructive power of Superboy's Punch!

Watch out, that baby might be judging you.

Horn inside pumpkin to scare Trick-or-Treaters. I love it.

The 10 Wackiest Experiments of All Time.

A man in Sweden told the FBI his son-in-law was a terrorist, thinking they would question him and let him go. Which isn't what happened, of course. Um. Oops.

If I could visit England, I'd go see this.

Here's why DRM sucks: MLB rips off fans who bought crippled video by shutting down the authorization system. All the video they bought? Useless.

How to make a speaker from LEGOS, a cup, a magnet, and wire.

The ultimate Domino Cascade? Nah, just a Guinness ad.

If you've ever left film inside a camera when you sold it to the second-hand shop, your leftover pictures might be here.

Augie directs our attention to a mascot posturing after taking down a rowdy fan.

Thursday Thoughts

Still drinking buckets of lemon ginger tea and trying to feel better. My head is stuffed up now, but not too badly. Just enough to keep me from exercising (I tried the exercise bike but nearly fell off because I was out of balance) and from getting enough done.

Bully appears to have had the best National Gorilla Suit Day, even meeting the Doctor and Rose and giant mutant Kitten Kong.

July 21st 2007. If I'm lucky, I'll be at the top of the library list and able to get it right away. The dates are between The Winkie Convention and San Diego Comic-Con, so if I make it to either or both of those I should be ok. Let's hope I get on the library list early enough. I want to read the book before our copy from Canada gets here.

Ok, the whole Boston lite-brite terrorism thing... I'd be more impressed if the things hadn't already been up around town for THREE WEEKS before anyone noticed one, wet pants, and called police. If they had been bombs, the whole town would've been levelled before anyone reacted. Sheesh. And I really don't think the guys who put the artwork up should be punished. The mayor and media who overreacted and caused gridlock and terror should be punished instead.

Meanwhile, in usually overreacting Seattle, the things showed up and provoked little response. Apparently there were even three of them in Bothell, where I live. Makes me wish I'd seen it. Kind of a surprise when Seattle shows more common sense than Boston...

We're a paranoid society, with our so-called leaders screaming about terror so much that a portion of the populace can't see anything unusual without wetting pants and calling police. The truth is you're more likely to die in a car accident caused by some idiot using his cell phone while driving to notify police of a suspicious box than you are to die in a real terrorist attack. In the meantime, this quote from the Associated Press article sums it all up:

"It's almost too easy to be a terrorist these days," said Jennifer Mason, 26. "You stick a box on a corner and you can shut down a city."