Xander ,'Get It Done'
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.
I would love to be a Successful Writer and stand up at TED and do a charming talk on Something Important and be the Invited Speaker at someone charity luncheon. That is totally Plan A.
Plan B is being a respected assistant at a world renowned aerospace lab with a couple of books and a few decent essays under her belt while living in a glamorous city in a decent apartment with enough cash on hand to order tasty takeout a couple nights a week.
Plan B is pretty good.
admiring Allyson from afar.
Pft. You da rock star.
Julia Sweeney tells a very funny story about the day her daughter wanted to learn about how frogs had babies: [link]
That's a riot.
She told that hilarious tale when I saw the Julia and Jill (Sobule) show at Yoshi's a few years ago. Had us rolling in the aisles.
Speaking of TED, my organization sponsored a TEDx event (an event affiliated with TED, but done locally) yesterday evening. We had speakers on using cell phones to enable distance diagnosis of things like oral cancer, developing prostheses for amputees, the problems with donating medical equipment to developing countries, and so on. And there was a great Senegal-NC combo band playing before and after the speech parts. Loads of fun. I volunteered to usher, which is probably as close to being a TED talk participant as I'll ever get.
meara, I'd forgotten all about that book. Until now.
And the dolphins - there was a Carl Hiaasen book where, at the end, a bad guy is assaulted by a dolphin and, I believe, drowns in the process.
Aw -- Pink had a daughter, named her Willow. [link]
I didn't know she was pregnant!
MI6 hackers replace al Qaeda bomb recipes with pirated cake recipes
Hackers working for UK intelligence agency MI6 modified an online al Qaeda magazine and replaced the bomb recipes therein with cake recipes. They called it "Operation Cupcake."
"When followers tried to download the 67-page colour magazine, instead of instructions about how to "Make a bomb in the Kitchen of your Mom" by "The AQ Chef" they were greeted with garbled computer code.
The code, which had been inserted into the original magazine by the British intelligence hackers, was actually a web page of recipes for "The Best Cupcakes in America" published by the Ellen DeGeneres chat show.
Written by Dulcy Israel and produced by Main Street Cupcakes in Hudson, Ohio, it said "the little cupcake is big again" adding: "Self-contained and satisfying, it summons memories of childhood even as it's updated for today's sweet-toothed hipsters."