It’s like the opposite of Chicken Soup for the Soul: OSHA’s true stories of teen tragedies.

“We wanted something that was real war – Smurfs losing arms, or a Smurf losing a head –but they said no.”

and more likely to make one respond to a fundraising letter: the University of Idaho president made it abundantly clear that evolution is the way to go.

My page-a-almost-every-day calendar of Chinese progaganda posters is this weekend featuring a poster of a girl washing her hands in front of a poster of a girl washing her hands, in front of a poster of a girl washing her hands…. Oh, the mind does boggle. It’s fairly entertaining how the background of these posters often feature other propaganda posters.

Australia’s Supreme Court, in a shocking show of reason, has ruled that it’s legal to play games you have legally acquired.

"It" being Serenity, of course. It’s very good. I’ll see it again. I am slightly disappointed in two things, one of which I will discuss here: during the Captain’s stirring speech (you know there’s going to be a stirring speech from the Captain, so don’t go whining about spoilers), it’s all back-lit and smoky, positively Spielbergian. All in all, a very creditable first-time directing effort. I found the story worthy of the big screen, and the performances were outstanding. I was pleased to see Joss’s calm Wash ("I am a leaf on the wind; watch how I soar"), rather than Tim’s hyper Wash, though I think the DVD commentaries indicated Alan Tudyk was more comfortable with hyper.
In other notes, Jewel Staite said somewhere (maybe her blog) that she was happy Joss hadn’t made her gain weight for the movie, but, frankly, I think both she and Adam Baldwin were too skinny to be Kaylee and Jayne.

From Hugo’s Spanish Simplified, a text I would estimate was published in the 1910s:
“Teachers and students are hereby warned that any other book purporting to be Hugo’s Spanish System is nothing of the sort, but merely an imitation of the first edition, with just enough alterations to spoil the arrangement, and make the exercises laughable.*

*We may mention a very amusing instance of this. Not to copy our exercises exactly, the plagiarist altered one of our sentences, ‘Is your brother smoking?’ to ‘Is your sister smoking?’ thus avoiding a charge of copying word for word, but making himself ridiculous in the process.”

Needcoffee.com is posting their photos and other memories from Dragon*Con.

Want to know the latest on tropical cyclones? Sure, we all do! Visit the National Hurricane Center / Tropical Prediction Center for all kinds of useful info and graphics (including the lists of names—I hadn’t known there are only six lists).

DirtyLibrarian recommended threadless, and already I’m thinking about getting some new shirts!