Commonplace Book

links for 2009-11-20

Palin snubs local media on tour

Uh huh.

(tags: politics media)
Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

"Our very way of life is under siege," said Mortensen, whose understanding of the Constitution derives not from a close reading of the document but from talk-show pundits, books by television personalities, and the limitless expanse of his own colorful imagination.

(tags: funny satire humor religion politics)

links for 2009-11-19

Window Watchers in a City of Strangers - NYTimes.com

(tags: urban citylife)

links for 2009-11-18

International Klein Blue - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The hex triplet for International Klein Blue - useful.

(tags: klein colors colour paintings design fun)

links for 2009-11-17

Free Knitting Pattern: Log Cabin Afghan Square

(tags: knitting pattern logcabin)
Knit Flix « hAMImono

Movies with people knitting in them.

(tags: movies knitting lists funny)
Chicken Viking Hat by Sarah @ Aloha Misc. Media House

(tags: knitting patterns)
Fingerstaches are pretty cool.

Yes, they are.

(tags: knitting patterns)

links for 2009-11-14

Meet The Predators «

Really astounding evidence identifying who the average rapist is and how they go about committing their crimes. These are new stats that the main stream media really should be shouting from the rooftops, because they would give police and communities new ways to prevent rape and crime directed at women.

(tags: feminism women crime violence statistics rape)
2000s (decade) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And wikipedia's take on the decade's retrospective.

(tags: bestof2000s bestof2009)
YouTube - The Decade in 7 Minutes

Newsweek puts together the decade in video.

(tags: video bestof2000s bestof2009)
Redesigning the Worst NFL Helmet Graphics | Yes to Less | Fast Company

These are pretty good.

(tags: design football logos helmets)
Largehearted Boy: Best of the Decade (2000-2009) Online Music Lists

(tags: bestof2000s bestof2009 music)
The 100 Best Films of the Decade

From the Times Online. I suspect the "Best Of" lists are going to be crazy this year. I'll do my best to keep up.

(tags: bestof2009 bestof2000s movies)

links for 2009-11-12

Tom Richmond iPhone App rejected » The Daily Cartoonist

MAD Magazine artist Tom Richmond has been working on an iPhone app with movie director/entrepreneur Ray Griggs that allows users to search a database for contact information of every congressman. Tom did 540 caricatures – one for every representative in union and territories – for the app. Unfortunately, they have learned that Apple has rejected the app based due to “content that ridicules public figures.”

(tags: apple iphone apps cartoons congress censorship)

links for 2009-11-11

Junk Food Turns Rats Into Addicts / Science News

These reward pathway deficits persisted for weeks after the rats stopped eating the junk food, the researchers found. “It’s almost as if you break these things, it’s very, very hard to go back to the way things were before,” Kenny says. When the junk food was taken away and the rats had access only to nutritious chow (what Kenny calls the “salad option”), the obese rats refused to eat.

(tags: health diet research nutrition addiction)
What Friends Do: helping friends when it's needed the most

A social network for organizing to help friends when they're got a life changing event.

(tags: socialnetworking crisis friends social)

links for 2009-11-09

On North Concord, it's desolation row | The Indianapolis Star

Shocked that Mayor Ballard's plan to deal with vacant housing hasn't worked. Gee Mayor, what could be the problem?

(tags: indianapolis economy housing politics)

links for 2009-11-08

Custom Postcards: Create and Send Them Worldwide with HazelMail!

More postcard mailers from your own postcards

(tags: photos postcards lifehacks)
Postful: The Web's Printer

Another place that lest you send postcards of your own pictures.

(tags: lifehacks snailmail postal postcards)
AmazingMail - Product Selection

lets you send your own pictures as postcards.

(tags: photos postcards)

links for 2009-11-07

Knitting Pattern Central - Free Toy Knitting Pattern Link Directory

Ideas for the giant stash of yarn Stephanie picked up for a song.

(tags: patterns knitting toys)

links for 2009-11-06

MYTH BUSTED: Internet Use Doesn’t Lead to Isolation

cool.

(tags: research media internet socialnetworking)
Website Maintenance Tips for Front-End Developers - Smashing Magazine

(tags: webdev webdesign resources)

links for 2009-11-05

DavidMixner.com - Enough, No More, Enough

"Call this campaign against us what it is - Gay Apartheid. Refuse to allow any of our fellow Americans, President Obama or our allies to view this as a political issue who time hasn't quite come. America is in the process of creating a system of Gay Apartheid. We will not quietly sit and accept it. All over the place, this nation is creating one set of laws for LGBT Americans and another set for all other Americans. That is the classic definition of Apartheid. Either our political allies are for Gay Apartheid or against it. If they are against it, they must fight with us and no longer duck like President Obama did in Maine and Washington. There is no half way in fighting Apartheid."

(tags: marriage lgbt equality rights Obama maine)
Tommy's Pack Fillers

WW1 Reproductions, Great War Period Reenactors Equipment, WW1 Reenactments

(tags: images props theatre)
Books, Books Everywhere

Suppose you read four books a week every week for 70 years. Allowing for a day here and there where you’re unable to read, we can call that 200 books a year, and 14,000 books over the whole three score years and ten. It’s a lot of books. But relative to all the books there are, it’s a tiny, tiny fraction. According to the guy who manages the Google Books metadata team, at the latest count the books in the world now total 168,178,719. Your 14,000 books are just 0.008324477724 per cent of that.

(tags: books reading literature)
Maine Gay Marriage Law Repealed - ABC News

The idea that equality is only okay when a majority agrees on it is counter to every civil rights battle ever fought. This is the tyranny of the majority over the individual, and it's counter to everything America stands for.

(tags: maine homophobia equality marriage rights lgbt)

links for 2009-11-04

The App Garden on Flickr

(tags: api flickr photography webdesign applications development)
flogr - Project Hosting on Google Code

(tags: flickr gallery software)

Things I've Learned on the Internet

The long and involved commented I posted on this Cute Overload post, just because it's one of those things I've finally figured out after being on the internet for over 20 years.

When I'm walking down the hall and I accidentally step on someone's toes, I apologize for it and take a moment to make sure that I haven't seriously hurt the person whom I stepped on.

I don't get up in arms and protest that I didn't intend to step on their toes and that there was nothing malicious about it -- of course that's true, but it doesn't change the fact that I caused an injury, however slight.

I also don't blame the person for feeling pain when I stepped on them. It's not their fault they were there; they have just as much right to be there as I, and just because I didn't happen to see things from their point of view when I was walking doesn't mean that their point of view is invalid or shouldn't be considered, just that I wasn't aware of it until they yelped.

And sometimes their yelps of pain, being surprised ones, take a tone of accusation at first. I don't take offense to that; it's easy when one is surprised and hurt to suspect that malice is intended, even when it's not. Usually after some apologies and expression of concern, the person I stepped on understand that what happened was an accident on my part and that I am genuinely concerned about their well-being. We exchange mutual pleasantries and move on.

That's probably what should have happened here, but it appears that it didn't. For that reason, I probably won't be back to visit Cute Overload -- I really don't want to interact with people who say things like "walk somewhere else, you're not welcome here" when they've trod on someone accidentally. The first trodding on may have been accidentally, but this post is quite clearly stomping on someone's toes on purpose. It seems to me to be juvenile and rude and unnecessary. Just because you aren't face to face with the person whose toes you injured doesn't mean you have license to go on without apologizing, or to claim that their toes weren't actually trod upon at all, and it was all in their head.

links for 2009-11-03

Prairie Lights Bookstore

Iowa City's premiere independent bookseller in Iowa City. I'm bookmarking with the intent of visiting when we're in Iowa for family thanksgiving.

(tags: bookstore iowa reading books shopping)
Eugene & Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award

Who will be the next Kurt Vonnegut or James Whitcomb Riley? The Eugene & Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award is looking for the next generation of great Indiana authors.

(tags: Indiana writers local writing authors)
One Hundred Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do (Part 1) - You’re the Boss Blog - NYTimes.com

(tags: etiquette restaurants guidelines reference)