“As for smoking bans in ‘public places,’ there are three reasons why they’re unjustified. First, pubs and clubs are actually private property. Second, bars don’t have to be smoky any more, with the air-cleaning technology available. But most importantly: no danger from ‘second-hand smoke’ has ever been proven. Unlike most journalists, politicians and, regrettably, doctors, I’ve gone through all of the more than 40 studies. Only a few show any risk, and it’s statistically insignificant. There are higher risks from drinking milk, using mouthwash and keeping pet birds. I swear I’m not making this up! People who use this sort of ‘junk science’ to stigmatise smokers and to nag and bully us out of our pleasures should be bloody well ashamed of themselves.”
— Joe Jackson, in The IndependentNot included: a text editor
From today’s Emacs 24.4 announcement:
Highlights of this release include: - A built-in web browser (M-x eww) - Improved multi-monitor and fullscreen support - "Electric" indentation is enabled by default - Support for saving and restoring the state of frames and windows - Emacs Lisp packages can now be digitally signed - A new "advice" mechanism for Emacs Lisp - File notification support - Pixel-based resizing for frames and windows - Support for menus in text terminals - A new rectangular mark mode (C-x SPC)
Looks like I’ll need to add a few more disabling commands to my .emacs file…
Not your usual title string...
Amusing QA error on a maid-cafe web site; the title and keywords section of the page header are error messages of the form: “Warning: mysql_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /var/www/html/www_maid/S/wp-content/themes/maid2013/functions.php”.
This is the sort of thing that announces to the world, “Hi, we’re clueless PHP users; please try to crack our site”.
Also, I have to say that while I understand what they were trying for with the maidreamin.com domain, my initial parse of the URL was a bit… anal.
Sad attempt at a halloween costume
On sale now at Amazon: The Lame-Ass Samurai.
Badly-held sword and ninja socks not included.
This is far from the most cringeworthy “asian” Halloween costume available…
[Update: Sigh. Genghis Khan Samurai Costume (cosplaying for the other team?); Ninja Warrior Set (extra-shiny, to blind opponents when you fail your Stealth check). ]
Ranking the modern Doctors
- Eccleston
- Tennant
- Hurt
- Smith
- Morrissey
- Capaldi
Dear Amazon,
I can find a very faint trace of relevance in the first recommendation, but not in the second one. Please enlighten me.
(and the reason this image is so large is that I took the screenshot on my Surface Pro 2, which has a high-density 1080p display, and Photoshop refuses to make the fonts readable if I shrink it any further)
Dear Former President Obama,
When Jimmy Carter calls you a sissy, you have failed utterly at foreign policy.
Hawk, by Steven Brust
The new Vlad Taltos novel arrived. Drat that horrible evil Amazon! It’s not bad enough that they work hard to sell me the things I want at prices I like, but they had to go and deliver it a day early. The fiends!
I haven’t even read the blurb on this one yet, since I’ll pretty much buy anything Brust writes, the moment it’s available. He may be an unrepentant communist, but the man can write.
