ION, I am home sick with a cold. It's been years since I had a cold, and many more years since I called in sick with one, but I think I alarmed my boss yesterday with all my hacking and coughing, and he wasn't really expecting me to come to work today.

I'd go out and get pancakes, but I'm coughing so much I'm not sure going out to a public restaurant is a good idea....

Creepy Talking Robotic Mouth

Video of a robotic voice simulator created by engineers at Kagawa University in Japan.

It creates vocalizations not via a speaker, but by reshaping a flexible mouth and lips. Freaky.

More Dragnet Haikus

“Some came to America because of a word, like my father. A word that woke him up in the middle of the night … an American word, a fat word, a word that could only be spoken with decadent pride. And that word was brunch,” Mandvi said, describing his father as a man in love with the very fabric of American culture.

So Asif's father is a Hobbit then, I guess.

Very apropos given:

We hates your PowerPoint presentation, precious, we hates it!!

We likeses our interns fresh! And wriggggling!

msbelle, can you reorient your desk to swap which side of it you're on? It won't stop people rounding your desk on the corner, but at least you'll be facing them. Having my back to traffic would have me gibbering in about ten minutes, white knuckling it every second of that time.

BevDog - no can do. These are 4 connected cubes and we have no say in how they are placed.

Well, poop. I sympathize. No seriously, I just shuddered thinking about it.

I'm a turtle kind of person anyway. Our office moved from cramped little quarters where my desk was anchored by two walls and a support column to a wide open empty lobby where my desk was marooned in a sea of carpet. Felt like a bug on a plate, seal on an ice floe. In two days I was barricaded behind a desk return on one side, a four-foot bookcase and a two-drawer filing cabinet and visitor's chair on the other. My fortress. I couldn't hide, but invaders had to come across furniture to get me, and I faced the door.

I was laughed at by friends who lunched, usually last to arrive and refused to sit in the last chair left--back to the door or the open room. Mocked, until I pointed out that none of them had chosen to sit there, either.

I would seriously be working from the other side of the desk. It's probably a good thing I'm no longer compelled to be in an office environment.

New speed cameras trap motorists from space

A new type of speed cameras which can use satellites to measure average speed over long distances are being tested in Britain.

The cameras, which combine number plate reading technology with a global positioning satellite receiver, are similar to those used in roadworks.

The AA said it believed the new system could cover a network of streets as opposed to a straight line, and was “probably geared up to zones in residential areas.”

...

Details of the trials are contained in a House of Commons report. The company said in its evidence that the cameras enabled "number plate capture in all weather conditions, 24 hours a day". It also referred to the system's "low cost" and ease of installation.

Stephanie, it's usually very state to state dependant, the laws in that sort of case. Some allow it, some don't, some make it very easy, some don't.

I'm not surprised by that. I guess I asked about GC's case in particular because I thought I remembered her saying that DW would have to adopt Shane in order to be his legal parent.

I have a case right now with a US citizen non-biological mother whose name in on her children's birth certificates, but because her kids weren't born in the US, she's having trouble getting them here. I was hoping to find some sort of resource that would educate me on the varying state requirements to be legally recognized as a parent, even if you are the non-bio parent.

yep. This is all wide open space, low-wall cubes in clusters, no side walls to partition the cubes off from walkways. And the offices are like fishbowls too, all glass fronts, even glass panels on part of the wall between offices. I want to put up a screen around me.