http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1046

Piled Higher & Deeper by Jorge Cham		www.phdcomics.com
title: "Burrosploitation" - originally published 7/23/2008 For the latest news in PHD Comics, CLICK HERE!

http://www.languagehat.com/archives/003192.php

I'm beat from trying to copyedit and spend time with my four-year-old grandson all in the same day, so I'll just toss a couple of links out there to distract you while I catch up on my rest:

A Northwest Pronunciation Guide. I love obscure local pronunciations (see here and here), and this is a treasure trove of them. For some reason the Pacific Northwest has a particular concentration of weird spelling/pronunciation matches like Champoeg sham-POO-ee, Puyallup pyoo-AL-up, and Kalalach CLAY-lock (not to mention geoduck GOO-ey-duck, one of the weirdest in the language). Thanks, mrzarquon!

Hiphop Lx:

Hiphop LX (linguistics) In Hiphop the WORD is the message. Language is a system of sounds and symbols and communication in any language is based on how to use that system. If you know the system, you have power over ideas and imagination. You can build, change, plan, play and destroy. Many words and expressions in hiphop represent regions, neighborhoods and cities. Hiphop Lx is dedicated to representing the words and expressions that represent and serve as a symbol for a region and area. It explores the language system of hiphop and how the word came into being, meanings and the overall development of the word and expression. It challenges everyone to represent their region with true bona fide words and present them to be researched, examined, challenged and celebrated.

http://spray.nettavisen.no/kultur/tegneserie/nemi/nemi_pop.jsp?lastShown=24.07.08

• ithiliana: Calling out Michaela Ecks/Laura Hale/Purplepopple/Partly_Bouncy - The purpose of this post is to call out somebody who actively seeks to harm other fans. She lies. She outs fans by connecting their real life identities with their fannish identities. She is trying to make money from a site which is billed as "history" -
  
  (tags: fandom privacy wiki)


• frankincensy: [in buy_n_large] "WALL-E: A Butch/Femme Love Story" - How do you see the characters, in terms of gender, and what influenced you to see them that way? What do you think of the article? I'm not sure how I'd gender WALL-E and EVE myself, but I see their love as the kind that has nothing to do with gender. -
  
  (tags: gender sexuality characterization)


• svmadelyn: My .02 - - The thing that not many people have really brought up during this "FanHistory outs fans!" mess is that...well, it's pretty obvious that Laura Hale/purplepopple/partly_bouncy is, rather than being in it for the lulz, in it for the pagehits. -
  
  (tags: fandom privacy wiki)


• losyark: DW's Companions, and why they don't matter in the end. - Spoilers for all of all of Doctor Who, and Torchwood and Sarah Jane Adventures, and all of Harry Potter. -
  
  (tags: characterization dr.who hp)


• carlanime: OIC: THIS is why we can't all just get along. - What the wiki's doing right now [...] is an insidious mix of both: it picks up community gossip, but not community standards; asks for input from the fans, but then won't let everyone edit; is one thing when it wants a piece of information kept in (becaus -
  
  (tags: community wiki)


• tiptoe39: Submitted for your consideration. - Evolution of a pairing -
  
  (tags: fandom flow-charts)


• jacquez: "All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." -- Edmund Burke - The skinsacks want to hurt you. And me. And everyone else.[...]Kick them to the door. Hard. Tell people about them. Document what they do. Don't let them participate in your community, your mailing list, your journal. -
  
  (tags: fandom)


• resolute: Dr. Horrible, Sartre, and why I'm not surprised. - Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog exists in the same Whedonesque moral universe as all his other works. It exists in a world where random loss is the rule, not the exception. Where there is no order or justice except what we make for ourselves. -
  
  (tags: jossverse)


• cereta: Something I've been pondering re: community modding - it's rare[...]for someone to be banned from a list/community/archive for actions taken on another list/community/archive. And there's just a general sense of "that is Not Done" about it.//And you know, I'm beginning to think this is a bad thing. -
  
  (tags: etiquette fandom)


• commodorified: Speak of the Devil (Without improving her Google Ranking) - But sometimes you want to discuss something, and you want to link to it, but you don't want to drive up its page ranking, for whatever reason[...]So, if you want to do that, you can do to your links what I just did to those: you use a nofollow tag -
  
  (tags: howto)


• ethrosdemon: Ah, ok. As per metafandom, I'm glad to see that people are pinging - On the one hand, I think that if they are doing what they're doing with the purported goals they have, they should tell us who the HELL they are on lj[...]On the other hand, I respect that my desire is outweighed by another person's autonomy -
  
  (tags: OTW community fanarchive)


• the_willow: My Fandom - My fandom, my fannish space involves critique. It involves opinion, contrary or agreeing. It involves meta and analysis. It involves reviews. it involves constructive thought. It involves deconstructing the source. -
  
  (tags: criticism fandom fanfic)

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/library-classification-as-art/

You know how cats rub their scents on something by stroking their chin and little kitty lips on things? Usually while purring? And it looks like they’re kissing things?

If I were a cat, I’d do that to this amazing senior project:Looking at Libraries: Defining Space Through Content by Valérie Madill, a student at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC.

Madill does for books what Deborah Adler did for prescriptions, incorporating design and clarity into something eye catching, inherently useful (from my nooby perspective anyway) and simply amazing.

According to the description page in the website, library books “are lost within themselves and… the cover design has lost it’s presence.... A library is not a bookstore, [sic] books here are stored and classified, not sold; they are sought and they are found.”

Mixing color with the 21 general subject matter classifications, Madill’s system visually updates existing systems with color and centrally-located information. The spine has the classification data; the back has just about every piece of info on a book you could want, from ISBN to publisher.

Seriously. I’m drooling, and I’m not a librarian. That art right there is hot. Librarians, whaddya think?

Thanks to Rebecca for the link. 

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010443.html

112 is the Europe-wide emergency telephone number, supplanting or supplementing (in the case of the UK, which still uses 999 as well) earlier emergency numbers. It is also the worldwide emergency number from GSM mobile phones, redirecting to the local emergency number depending on location.

(Of course, there may be other problems once you reach the emergency services number, but that is outwith the scope of this discussion.)

Universal public emergency services of are surprisingly recent in the history of urban living. According to Wikipedia, the first organized municipal fire brigade was established in Edinburgh in 1824. Sir Robert Peel is credited with establishing the Metropolitan Police in London in 1829. And although the history of the ambulance is much more gradual, civillian emergency medicine and transport seems to have been an innovation of the 1800's.

Regular readers of this blog are of course aware that Jim Macdonald is an emergency medical technician. I, for one, would like to take this numerically convenient moment to thank him for what he does in that role, both online and in the all too real world. Jim, you rock.

It's also appropriate to remind everyone reading this that the emergency number, and the services it reaches, are there for a reason. Call them at need, and let the vehicles by if someone else has done so.

http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/07/book-pile-contest.php

• Post your photos to Flickr and tag them "LTbookpile" (also tag them "LibraryThing"). If you make a new account it can take a few days for your photos to be publicly accessible, so post a URL to them in the comments here.
• Or, post your photos on WikiThing here.
• Or, if all else fails, just email them to abby@librarything.com and I'll post them for you.

• One grand prize winner will receive a LibraryThing tshirt, a CueCat barcode scanner, and a gift membership.
• One runner up will get a gift membership.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/zephoria/thoughts/~3/343905280/a_penny_for_you.html

My blog is boring these days. Most of my writing energy is being spent on my dissertation. And I promise, none of you want to hear details of how I fine-tune my methodology chapter. I can't even keep you entertained with outrageous tales of sordid trysts because, well, there aren't any. Hell, I barely leave the house. The most exciting moments in my life occur when my cat snarls at the neighbor cat who tries to steal her food. And, well, that minutia is better left for Twitter. I could blog the dreams I've been having that involve Marx and Engels yelling at each other, but those make me look psychotic. So I'd rather not. That pretty much leaves grocery lists, health rants, and detailed discussions of the variability in Los Angeles weather.

Part of the problem is that I've been pretty disengaged with everything but my dissertation. I don't keep up with blogs or gossip and I have been dreadful at making it to events that would normally stimulate me to comment on events out in the world. Most likely, you're more engaged with social media these days than I am. Or you're here accidentally. And really bored. Presumably, if you keep coming back, you're waiting for me to say something interesting. Or maybe you're just sick and twisted.

So how about we make a deal... Why don't you help me find fodder to ramble and I'll try to be provocative in return? (Or at least more entertaining than I am now.)

If you've got something you want me to comment on, leave a comment. Write questions, share links, whatever. I can't promise that I'll get to everything nor can I promise that I'll want to comment on everything, but at least that'll give me a sense of what you might find interesting and it'll give me something other than my dissertation to think about. Being a hermit makes it hard to determine what is interesting. Anyhow, let's just give this a try... Perhaps it'll be an abysmal failure but perhaps it'll be an interesting experiment.

So what's on YOUR mind these days?

http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/it-was-a-fishbowl-and-bbq/

A list in no particular order to illustrate what happens with a bunch of romance fans, bloggers, readers and authors descend upon a Times Square BBQ place with big honking holy shit huge drinks.

1. I arrive late because I went home, took care of the fam, then drove back into Manhattan. This was bad idea jeans, because a few hundred other people had the same idea at the same time and I was taunted by sitting on the helix into the Lincoln Tunnel looking at New York but unable to get there. And, to make matters more embarrassing for me, the restaurant wouldn’t seat the party until we were all there. What the crap?!

Now I’m one embarrassed person. Sorry, y’all.

2. The drinks were huge.

3. No, really. The drinks were huge.

4. DO YOU SEE THE SIZE of the FISHBOWLS they serve the DRINKS in?!

5. See #1 re: driving. Hence I drank barely a quarter of the fishbowl, chugged water (which did NOT come in the fishbowl, damn them) and donated the rest of my margarita to a worthy cause: the inebriation of someone who didn’t have a drink. Yay!

6. I don’t go out much, really, which makes me lame, but I forget how funny it is that a table of 15 people with one major genre in common will always find something to talk about, and will undoubtedly have a kicking time. It’s like a book club on crack. With margaritas.Or beer. In fish bowls.

7. There are funny pictures of me circulating out there. I promise I am about 200% more funny-looking in real life.

8. Ann Aguirre was angelic and very cool, and if you ask her how she met her husband, the story will make you wet yourself with laughter.

9. We talked about any and all of the following: writing, books we’re reading, Magic Hoo-hoos, San Francisco, juicy pink velvet things, Twitter, and dial up modems. Also books. But you guessed that.

10. My camera phone takes grainy ass pictures in low light, but that doesn’t mean I can’t caption them. Enjoy - and thanks to everyone who came for creating a kickass evening.

http://www.fadpov.com/read.php?ID=769

Anyone who's seen Sliding Doors is familiar with the premise. A seemingly insignificant decision, maybe even not a decision at all, but a missed opportunity - something small, something you'd never think of twice - and yet, it's a turning point. A point from which a startlingly different life path branches, and the consequences could be monumental.

So the case is with Donna Noble, who is thrust back in time by a dodgy fortune teller and a "time beetle" (the less said about the big silly plastic bug, the better); to a literal crossroads, where she turns right, instead of left, as she'd originally done. That decision takes her away from her potential temp job at H.C. Clements, away from Lance, away from the Racnoss... and away from the Doctor.

And things only go downhill from there.

It's a fascinating concept, really. We all have probably asked ourselves "What if?"  "What if I'd gone on to get my Master's degree?  "What if I'd asked out my high school crush?" "What if I'd taken that trip?" And it all comes down to "How would my life have been different?" Thing is, sometimes it's the little "What if?"s that could be the most important pivot points of all. But either way, our lifelines, our potential stories, can branch out in myriad and wildly different ways – and in this episode, we get to see what Donna's life was like without the Doctor. In fact, we get to see an entire world – Universe – without the Doctor.

What happens if the Doctor dies?

According to the events of "Turn Left", plenty of bad things. How bad? To quote the Doctor "Think how bad things could possibly be, then add another suitcase of Bad". London devastated, all of southern England irradiated, tens of millions of deaths in the US, refugee camps, concentration camps, and then even the stars themselves start going out...

So yes. Bad. Very bad. And suddenly Donna Noble, who thinks she's no one special at all, becomes the most important woman in all the world.

Also, Rose Tyler is back, and that's made of awesome any way you look at it. Rose spends her time being mysterious and steering Donna away from certain death, while trying to convince her that she's the one who can change the world. And then, ironically, sending Donna to her death (or "death", depending on how you look at it) with a very Doctor-like "I'm sorry". But not before giving her a message for her other self to send to the man himself. Two words. Just two.

BAD WOLF.

And if you think the hairs on my neck didn't stand up and goosebumps pop up all over me when Donna delivered that message, and the Doctor went tearing out into the marketplace, back to the TARDIS, with the words everywhere around him and the music pounding along completely nuts in the background, then you don't know me very well.

That was a damn exciting scene, right there.

A sadder scene? The dying TARDIS. I'll have none of that, thank you very much. Is it sad that I was brought to tears at that bit?

Much like the moment Donna decided to sacrifice herself. Catherine Tate really sold that scene, much like she did every single moment she was on screen this episode. She was phenomenal in this. She carried the episode, and she was phenomenal.

Billie Piper, too, was wonderful. Talk about a triumphant return. She played Rose a little harder, edgier, sadder... but still with a compassionate heart. She also had a great line delivery with "great hair... some really great hair".

David Tennant. What can I say? When is he not brilliant  Though he wasn't in this for long, that scene at the end more than makes up for it. The look on his face, the way it slowly changes as he realizes just who Donna is talking about... it's gorgeous.

I also love Rose telling Donna she was already brilliant, the Doctor simply showed her that truth. And that he does that to everyone he touches. Because: yes. That's one of my very favorite recurring themes of this show.

Well, that and Bad Wolf. Which is where we leave off, with the timeline set right and the Doctor alive and well and those two words emblazoned on every surface, even on the TARDIS herself. Heralding the "end of the Universe", if you ask the Doctor, standing there in a console room bathed in red light and backed by the sound of the Cloister Bell.

But we know better, don't we? It means Rose is coming back and we'll all get a very happy ending. Right?

Right?

Next week. The Earth gets stolen. And: Companionpalooza!    

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=395

Just about 13 years ago, O.J. Simpson defense attorney Johnnie Cochran made news with these words from his closing argument:

Remember these words: "if it doesn't fit, you must acquit". (.wav)

I'm not saying that this useful rhyme was the key to Simpson's acquittal, but it certainly stuck in people's minds. Together with images of O.J. struggling to put the gloves on, the significance of the ill-fitting glove evidence to the outcome of the trial is not a matter of significant debate. It certainly didn't hurt that Cochran is an effective speaker.

Compare this with yesterday's news reports of the opening statements from the trial of Osama bin Laden's driver Salim Hamdan, whose civilian defense attorney Harry Schneider has been quoted as follows:

The evidence is that he worked for wages, he didn't wage attacks on America […] He had a job because he had to earn a living, not because he had a jihad against America.

Get it? "he worked for wages" vs. "he didn't