A Sniffly, Sketchy Sawbuck's Worth

The equine sawbuck's from Cowboy Heaven with details on how to outfit for a backcountry packtrip.
Seeing the paper kind, I'm still startled by the new orange.


It's happened again. I've collected so much dross that I have no recourse but a good ole fashioned link dump. Imagining myself reading the blue like a speeding auctioneer, here we go:

1) Via April, exercise your artsiness with Sketch Swap. There's a little pencil you drag around to draw, and after submitting your masterwork, you get one back atcha. The lizard I saw was way cooler than the test mess I submitted.

2) All things sniffly, via Willam Saletan's always-interesting Human Nature column in Slate. Page down through his link-rich environment to find news about cancer-sniffing dogs (perform great), bomb-sniffing pooches (decently), and bomb-sniffing wasps (read it yourself, lazybones).

3) George Washington, Martin Luther King, Pope John Paul II, and Jerry Lewis? Proving why people ought to mock Congress' priorities.

4) Just when we've begun healing over Pluto's lost planetary status, 300 astronomers rip off the scab. These petition signatories disagree vigorously, and hope to bring the subject back up for the IAU's next general meeting in three years. How will closure ever be possible while the parasite of hope yet lives?

5) A scientist provides his explanation for the evolutionary development of superstition, using a murderer's cardigan.

6) I forgot to follow-up here before, but Mayor Daley of Chicago isssued his first veto in seventeen years against the embarrasingly ridiculous big-box minimum wage/benefit ordinance voted by aldermen. There wasn't enough subsequent support to overturn the veto, some aldermen having had second thoughts due to, I assume, the earfulls from their constituencies as well as shellackings by economists and the national media.

7) Another friend forwarded me of an e-mail purporting to be a victim of sharia law enforcement, an 8 year-old having his arm run over by a truck for stealing bread. The pictures were shocking, but didn't look quite right to me, the kid's age seemed off for one thing, and I've become dubious of so much. Anyway, turns out it's a circulating fraud from pictures of a mid-eastern magic act, which was one of my guesses.

9) Still, there are plenty of authentic tragedies at the hands of the anti-modern, anti-civil extremists, such as the sad killing of an Afghan woman who was an outspoken advocate and organizer of women's education and enterprise programs. She was not given bodyguards or physical protection, though she requested them against the many violent threats she received, but she persisted in her work and the Taliban now take proud credit for assassinating Safia Amajan. If societies truly want to see greater opportunity and human rights advancements, they (we) have to take care of the bravest people doing the advancing.

10) I avoid all these meme tag things that propogate like chicken pox in a playground. I won't forward chain e-mails either, no matter how sincere. My view is that some of my best well-wishing for those I know is manifested in my respect for their time and for their own predilections about what to do with it. Still, when Tim Worstall got tagged, I'll admit to being convinced why everything I'll ever want to know can be gleaned from The DaVinci Code.

And this isn't even the whole landfill's worth. I've got at least another latrinefull for tomorrow.