From Cardhouse:

Infectious Neckties, Scarves, Boxers: These unique neckties and scarves are made from the finest 100% silk, and are designed to complement every wardrobe from laboratory to boardroom. The patterns represent many of the most serious and misunderstood diseases troubling society today.

Again from the BBC: Pioneer 10 is still making discoveries after 27 years in space. Good for it!

From the BBC:

Cheese roll goes down well

I wasn’t sure if this was going to be a story about the Baby Jessica of cheese or a statement about the benefits of washing down that quesadilla with a healthy serving of milk. Turns out it’s about neither. Beware! As the caption helpfully points out, “Rolling cheeses have injured people.”

Phlegm is a graphics program that uses a microphone to control brush characteristics.

The user makes natural spitting sounds, and the resulting brush shape approximates what you’d expect to see on the screen if you really were spraying saliva onto the monitor.

Another great series from Lil’ Fishstick:

The oranges are just there for appetite appeal.

Here’s the best unofficial site for the Lord of the Rings movies. Ringbearer.org – One Site to Rule Them All…

From a SCA mailing list I’m on, in turn from a Lord of the Rings movie site, here is a list of cast members for the upcoming LOTR movie trilogy:

Aragorn:-Stuart Townsend
Arwen:-Liv Tyler
Beregond:-Nick Nolte*
Boromir:-Sean Bean
Bilbo:-Sir Ian Holm
Eowyn:-Mira Sorvino*
Frodo:-Elijah Wood
Galadriel:-Uma Thurman
Gandalf:-Sir Ian McKellen
Gimli:-John Rhys-Davies
Gollum:-CG (Peter Woodthorpe)*
Faramir:-Ethan Hawke
Legolas:-Orlando Bloom
Merry:-Dominic Monaghan
Pippin:-Billy Boyd
Sam:-Sean Astin
Saruman:-Christopher Lee
Ted Sandyman:-Brian Sergent
Wormtongue:-Jeffrey Combs*

• These cast and crew members have not yet been confirmed.

I had a 17 hour workday yesterday, all without net access. Oh, the horror! Ten hours were spent driving through dark foggy rain, so that almost made up the excitement I missed on the net.

While I was away, I received notice that Marion Zimmer Bradley passed away over the weekend, after suffering a heart attack last week. Besides being a prolific author of Fantasy fiction, she was also a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, of which I am a member. The very name of the Society has been attributed to her.

Ugh. I came down with a nasty cold over the weekend.

I was able to watch the new Yogi Bear cartoons on Friday, and I thought it ws a hoot. As I mentioned below, they were done by Spumco (headed by John Kricfalusi), the same folks that created Ren and Stimpy. I was very glad to see that John hasn’t lost his edge, and sorry to see he’s not interested in doing any more. To see what really gets John K. going, visit Spumco’s website for his web cartoons. Of special interest is the work he’s done for Bjork, my favorite Icelandic pixie.

Cardhouse passed along this article regarding Oakland, CA’s property forfeiture laws. It looks like the state of California is on the verge of putting common sense back into the laws, making a conviction necessary for property seizure. Jerry Brown, someone I had always respected, is very angry because Oakland laws states that only a suspicion of guilt is necessary. In Oakland, an officer can say “I thought I saw you buy drugs from your car” and the city gets your car. No trial needed! You can either buy your car back, go through a long appeals process (the city’s never lost an appeal), or give up. According to the article, a city attorney is proud of the statistic that shows “60 percent of the people arrested are from out of town.” People from out of town are much less able to fight back, making them a better target for the city. I make a decent wage, but if this were to happen to me, I don’t have the means to fight back. Why is Jerry Brown and Oakland so against the notion that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty?

Well, that’s all of my rant. Thanks for listening. Now mail Jerry Brown and tell him what you think.