The Phantom City

You are the fox.

Saint Exupery’s ‘The Little Prince’ Quiz.
brought to you by Quizilla

Link courtesy of hipteacher

While I’ve often thought of becoming a dictator, I had no idea my blog could lead me to such power.

Seriously, this is a bizarre article. The author goes from Paris Hilton’s cameraphone to Saparmurat Niyazov, “President for Life” of Turkmenistan, in the space of seven paragraphs. It’s as if someone tried to edit a rambling thesis down to one page.

Link courtesy of Techdirt, which needs to brush up on its dictators, but otherwise makes a good point.

Apparently even the eels are freakishly dangerous Down Under.

Link courtesy of Boing Boing

Recommended:

• Superman’s Fortress of Solitude by Rick Stoeckel
• Reading-Too-Much-Into-Things Comprehension by Geoff Haggerty
• A Letter Between Siblings Who Lived in the House Described in “Our House” by Madness by John Moe
• Highlights of the 2004-2005 NHL Season by Christopher Monks
• Extreme Ways to Break Your Arm by Rick Stoeckel

Written by Jim Emerson on Roger Ebert’s website (?), these rules for predicting Oscar winners do ring true.

Link courtesy of Metafilter

Why do I suspect Dino Rossi wouldn’t have had a problem with felons voting in the Washington governor’s race if he had won that last recount? Apparently he does now, though.

Here’s a previous entry on this subject.

Well, I’ve upgraded without breaking too much.

As you can tell from the categories list, there are some differences in the way Strayhorn presents things that I’ve had to adjust in my CSS, and some differences I couldn’t fix. I’ll need to look at the subcategories issue a bit further. However, there wasn’t much damage done, and I’ve been thinking about a redesign for a little while anyway, so this might give me the excuse.

Anyway, I’m definitely recommending WordPress 1.5. It has a lot of new functionality that you used to have to either program in yourself or find a plugin to get. (Incidentally, the upgrade only broke one plugin, and that was a fairly new one released for the first time just before 1.5. I’ll have to see if I can fix it up.)

Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a very rich man, talks about taking advantage of the broadcast flag in a way its proponents probably don’t like to think about.

BTW, that is a blog he’s writing.

You know, according to this test, my brain rates at 100% female. (”I feel pretty, oh so pretty…”)

Kind of weird, since my scores on each individual part always fall closer to the male range and never go above the average for female. I don’t think I would have been surprised by a somewhat “female” score, but I think the 100% score may be an error. Maybe I should have taken it in Internet Explorer.

Warning, if you take the test yourself, it takes a while.

Link courtesy of Too many topics, too little time.

Wow, folks are actually talking about one of my favorite books! Of course, the reasons I found it fascinating are the same reasons people cite for its lack of appeal.

I actually like the Biblical structure and voice. It makes it seem more like a dry, fragmented history of ancient, half-legendary events, rather than a story.

However, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings isn’t for everyone, and The Silmarillion is much, much less so. What we’re looking at is essentially Tolkien’s background notes for an entire world in which he was going to set his main stories. That probably puts it one step above the entertainment level of getting a script from a movie you like.

So, I wouldn’t recommend the book to anyone who hadn’t read or didn’t really like LOTR, and even then I wouldn’t expect them to like it. On the other hand, I still get geeked by knowing that Sauron wasn’t the first evil in the world, or even close to the most impressive.

(It seems to me that The Silmarillion performs the particular function, however, of making Middle Earth seem more real. Not because of the background materials, but because the myths and stories follow the familiar pattern of “Everything was bigger, grander, and more dangerous back then” that seems to be a human storytelling trait.)