Even better than just making maps available, Google made them easy to mix with other information, and lots of folks are doing just that.

Perhaps more mysterious than huge glyphs marking the underground repository of nuclear-war-proof rantings of a third rate science fiction writer is that anyone thought that whining to the television station would stop the story. Also, why the effort to keep giant space-visible markings a secret?
Update: more glyph stuff is available here.

Oh, sure, their human rights record is dismal, but it’s not till he finds out they’re mean to puppies and kitties that McCartney boycotts China.

You can still visit tourist attractions in glorious 3-D, without the inconvenience of travel.

If you haven’t read The Young Visiters, please do so. The movie that was made of it isn’t bad, either.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops publishes movie reviews, rating films on this scale:

• A-I — general patronage;
• A-II — adults and adolescents;
• A-III — adults;
• L — limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L replaces the previous classification, A-IV.
• A-IV — adults, with reservations (an A-IV classification designates problematic films that, while not morally offensive in themselves, require caution and some analysis and explanation as a safeguard against wrong interpretations and false conclusions);
• O — morally offensive.

I am interested by the notion of films requiring analysis and explanation as a safeguard against wrong interpretations and false conclusions.
They gave Serenity an A-III.

So we’re watching The Daily Show, and the guest is This American Life regular John Hodgeman, plugging his book, The Areas of My Expertise. I said “I really want to read that book.” My darling says, “Of course you do, he’s on This American Life. You like books by anyone on This American Life.” I sputtered and protested, but he’s right. So if Marti Noxon writes a book, I’ll read that, too. She’s the first story on the Getting and Spending episode of This American Life.

And from this anecdote, you can guess what sort of things I like.

Upon being asked “why are Mexican wrestlers masked?” I was thrilled to find a quite detailed entry in Wikipedia (yay Wikipedia) on lucha libre.

If my lips can’t feel nothin’
Please know I still love you.
If my lips can’t feel nothin’
Please know I still love you.
I just met The Man
at Dixie’s BBQ.

There are a whole lot of tower cranes near my workplace lately, including one that had a climbing frame. I never got to see the climbing frame in operation, so I had to poke around on the web and at my local library to get an explanation. One of the first hits I got was a story of a horrible crane accident involving a malfunctioning climbing frame operated by an unqualified crew. I’m glad nothing similar happened to the 500-foot crane I used to walk past twice a week.