Mal: Okay. She won't be winning any beauty contests anytime soon. But she is solid. Ship like this, be with ya 'til the day you die. Zoe: 'Cause it's a deathtrap.

'Out Of Gas'


Natter 39 and Holding  

Off-topic discussion. Wanna talk about corsets, duct tape, or physics? This is the place. Detailed discussion of any current-season TV must be whitefonted.


Kate P. - Oct 10, 2005 5:39:28 am PDT #4854 of 10002
That's the pain / That cuts a straight line down through the heart / We call it love

I know that "Thousands die in Bangladesh flooding" is the old joke

Um, what's the joke?

I wonder if the white thing comes into play too... I don't think the bali coverage was as exhaustive.

I was in Australia for the first Bali bombing (and god, how awful is it that I have to refer to it that way), and I remember the news was mostly all about the Australians who'd been killed or injured--very little on how it had affected the Indonesians.

I actually haven't seen much on the second Bali bombing either, but I've been kind of hermitty and news-avoidant of late.


sarameg - Oct 10, 2005 5:41:17 am PDT #4855 of 10002

My sinuses are protesting the weather changes. Other than a couple of head colds this year, they've been behaving, so I'm extra whiney about it.

Weekends I tend to be pretty news free (only a vague idea of what it happening in the world. As in, still turning) so this morning's paper was one of OMG. Dude. Holycrap.

Nap. Need nap.


Gudanov - Oct 10, 2005 5:43:33 am PDT #4856 of 10002
Coding and Sleeping

Update from home.

Right now he and Emaryn are in her room. He has bullied her into playing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" for him over and over so he can do the hand motions. She said to me, "Mom, he lowered his eyebrows at me and stared at me, so I had to do it." Yep, she's right.

Yeah, Leif is pretty unmoveable once those eyebrows lower.


Consuela - Oct 10, 2005 5:50:38 am PDT #4857 of 10002
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix

I'm sitting at home waiting for the contractors to come and fix my wall. I arranged for them to show at 8, and then they called back and asked if 7:30 would be okay. Now it's 7:50, no contractors.

Hmm. I'm reading the reporting on the earthquake in Pakistan, but I'm not seeing links to donate -- I assume Red Cross is there?


Volans - Oct 10, 2005 5:51:12 am PDT #4858 of 10002
move out and draw fire

Leif and the Eyebrows of Domination +1.

Not really a joke, more a wry commentary that the front page of a newspaper will have "Three Dead in LA Shooting" and the bottom corner of the third page is where "Thousands Die in Bangladesh Flooding" goes.


Trudy Booth - Oct 10, 2005 5:51:56 am PDT #4859 of 10002
Greece's financial crisis threatens to take down all of Western civilization - a civilization they themselves founded. A rather tragic irony - which is something they also invented. - Jon Stewart

I assume Red Cross is there?

Red Crescent probably.


Gudanov - Oct 10, 2005 5:53:29 am PDT #4860 of 10002
Coding and Sleeping

CNN's website has a link to big list of relief agencies (with links).

[link]


tommyrot - Oct 10, 2005 5:58:35 am PDT #4861 of 10002
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

More on the Ig Nobles: [link]

I've heard this one a lot:

The Ig Nobel Prize in medicine went to Gregg Miller, inventor of Neuticles, artificial testicle replacements for neutered dogs and other animals, which come in different sizes and levels of firmness.

In his videotaped acceptance speech, Miller noted the time it took to develop his invention. "It took two years to get the balls rolling," he said.

But I haven't heard the others, including this one:

Another gross-out idea won this year's Ig Nobel Prize in fluid dynamics: Two European researchers calculated the pressure that builds up inside a penguin about to go potty, and reported their findings in a paper entitled "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -- Calculations on Avian Defaecation" (.pdf)

I love the spelling of "defaecation." Does that make me a weirdo?


Kate P. - Oct 10, 2005 6:03:47 am PDT #4862 of 10002
That's the pain / That cuts a straight line down through the heart / We call it love

Not really a joke, more a wry commentary that the front page of a newspaper will have "Three Dead in LA Shooting" and the bottom corner of the third page is where "Thousands Die in Bangladesh Flooding" goes.

Ah, okay. I was missing the context.

It's so horrifying. I'm tempted to go look up numbers from the tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina, and the mudslides, and compare numbers of people who died, because I don't have any sense of where 20,000 falls on the scale of truly major disasters. But it wouldn't tell me anything useful. 20,000 people dead is unimaginably awful, and a comparison to 50,000 or 100,000, or whatever, isn't going to make it any less so.


Theodosia - Oct 10, 2005 6:24:38 am PDT #4863 of 10002
'we all walk this earth feeling we are frauds. The trick is to be grateful and hope the caper doesn't end any time soon"

You also have to calculate how much infrastructure was destroyed in each -- in the case of the tsunami, whole seaside towns were swept away, f'r'instance.

Heather, the one thing I most care about with renaming is that noone else chooses 'Connie' because I'm already too confused as it is.

I have been to yoga, so go team me. Unfortunately, the instructor had us practicing the run up to headstands, and I really don't have the upper arm strength to get very far with those. (Conversely, once you get up into the headstand, it's easy on the arms, since your body weight is balanced through your head and neck. It's the lifting up part that does me in.)