Released test questions and sample tests for some WASL subjects.

I learned that there is a Humanitarian Device Exemption to FDA regulations, and that sometimes twins’ blood supply can get all mixed up before they are born, but now science may be able to help, thanks to the HDE!

The world is a wide, strange, and wonderful place.

Dagoba recalls chocolate bars containing lead (!!), perhaps indicating production problems in swamp-planet-based factories.

More peripheral brain dump: crocheted hyperbolic models, How to Draw a Radish.

I’m reading Accelerando right now, and our hero keeps much of his memory and less-used brain functions in computer storage rather than in his noggin. I keep it on little scraps of paper, my thumb drive, and my blog. Yet again it is proven that I am not writing for others, but for myself. Even so, I was unable to find that one appliance store web site that I saw that one time, or that place that sold exotic soap…

So here are some things that have been living on a scrap of paper, with (I hope) links and more info to be added later. This set came from a back issue of Fortean Times.

9/11 Commission final report
1967, USS Liberty, off the Egyptian coast
The Air Loom Gang, Mike Jay
Sac Nar Man, coconut-oil tattoo
British Library’s National Sound Archive

A brief article out of Charlotte about a scheduled appearance by W this Thursday got caught in my news watch, though it doesn’t contain the key word. It’s the second bit of evidence I’ve gotten in the last few days that details about his scheduled whereabouts are being treated with great sensitivity, even in the US. No idea if that’s just SOP, or if they’re being extra cagey lately.

Hey, here’s something to do of a weekend: eat at some really nice restaurants!

Two of those “for Dummies” books that, while they sound very similar, may in fact be mutually exclusive:
Dreams for Dummies
Drums for Dummies

(hey! I’m like McSweeney’s but much shorter and less funny!)

The most expensive Google Ads words are veeeerry similar to local ads on TV. I’m sure this means something.

As predicted in this space last August, I saw a magazine stand last time I went to Costco. Not quite as cool as Overheard in New York, but I think it’s a good reason to look around once in a while.
(I’m not all that good at taking my own advice, having recently walked within fifty feet of a very dear friend who was calling my name without noticing)

Just when I was starting to wonder if maybe my iPod’s hard drive is losing its mind, I run across instructions for getting into diagnostics mode.