World in a minute
When I was a kid in the Midwest, the local news would run a segment they called "World in a Minute," where five stories boiled down to 12 seconds each explained everything you needed to know about current events. You know, so you could get to the important things in the program: the weather and high school sports. (Seriously, high school sports took up three times the amount of any national sport coverage, since the local interpretation of national sports was... the Cubs. Maybe the Bears.)
Anyway, here's the world in a couple hundred words, I guess.
Online stuff
There's a quiz, courtesy of Mr. Piggs and Michael. What's your D&D alignment? I turned out to be True Neutral, which surprised me a little. I was thinking Chaotic Good for some reason. I guess I want my enemies to suffer too much.
Delicious Library
There are rumors of an impending point release Real Soon Now, but I've not seen it yet. I'm hoping it speeds the program up a little--our computer isn't exactly jam-packed with RAM and so every once in a while I have to sit and watch it spool tons of crap to disk. Also, there are two HTML exporters, Delicious Exporter and DeliciWeb. They both suck rocks. The former made a Web site that would take up... 42 MB of space. The latter never actually worked for me, crashing after taking about ten minutes to analyze my library (I assume that's what the thrashing of the hard drive and the progress bar were for). Avoid them and wait for internal exports. Ideally an RSS feed.
Politics
Everything Digby writes about today is worth reading. The Rude Pundit is also worth your time. However, don't combine that with this Ornicus piece, or you'll be reminded of the quote that the American facism will call itself anti-fascism. At least Tucker Carlson is sorta kinda going to stop hurting America now. Well, he's still got his show on PBS, who remind you that they do not need your money now that they are part of the Lying Conservative Media.
Other things to watch for include the GOP trying to destroy Social Security (because it shows how much they lie--it's a big government program that works and helps people, therefore it must be stopped), the Gonzalez hearings, etc. What, you don't want an attorney general who inspires Get Your War On?
Personal
Moved very much by Bob Harris' writing about Australia and the tsunami victims. I'm thinking I may need to donate more, particularly now that I've found another matching source. (Mrs. GFR's workplace will match donations, it turns out. Hooray for the private sector.) Back to work now, and I am just running ragged. My own projects are burying me, so this extra stuff that other folks want to throw at me is gonna have to wait on a back burner for a while. Rumors are flying around. Mostly I'd like to eat lunch at a normal time tomorrow--waited until 2 today and that is Not Getting It Done, as Busta says.
Reading a lot of Essential Marvel Team-Up in the evenings. This one panel of Spider-Man waterskiing while being towed by Sub-Mariner? PRICELESS. Totally makes up for the lame story about Spider-Man and the Werewolf, which looked briefly like it was going to contain Daredevil but did not. Probably for the best, though, since Daredevil has a pretty lame gallery of rogues. The Owl? STILT-MAN?!?!
