Cheap Therapy

Whether your Valentines’ Day is going well or poorly or not at all, Postsecret makes ‘realistic’ Valentine’s Day reading.

In case you’re not already on the way to work, remember the turnstiles at the train stations are being closed as of today, so you’ll need to have a SmartRider (or presumably a ticket) to get onto (or off?) the platform.

The trekjews web site is your source for Jewish themes in Star Trek. Read about who the Ferengi were based on and the Jewish origin of the Vulcan salute. I mean they were both desert dwelling people, right?

is 18 baby pandas! Even if they are being paraded for a Chinese PR event.

I had the overbearing feeling of uselessness on Saturday, the usual “What am I doing? Where am I going? What is my purpose in life?”. By the end of the weekend I still didn’t feel particularly productive, despite having produced

• mini-bruschetta like things
• farinata (for which I dispatched 8 gilgies from this mortal plane)
• anchovy and fennel grissini
• popcorn
• homemade pizzas

which, although transitory in nature were creative acts nonetheless, and did help fill the hole in my stomach if nothing else.

I figure that a few of you out there might be interested in Unshelved, a comic about librarians. Or in this case, librarians and computers.

So it seems that the US is kicking up a stink about the Chinese using an anti-satellite missile to blow up their own satellite. Whilst somewhat irresponsible to put more shrapnel into orbit, it should be remembered that the US tested its anti-satellite missiles back in the 1960s (and actually shot one down in 1983), and is planning its own dominance of space. The US’s National Space Policy states (as of October 2006):

‘Consistent with this policy, the United States will preserve its rights, capabilities and freedom of action in space … and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.’”

Interestingly enough, whilst Googling stuff for this post I discovered this piece “Too high the moon” by Science Fiction writer Norman Spinrad about Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven (both also Science Fiction authors), and their influence on Reagan era space policy that gave us Star Wars. (The missile defence shield concept is still being used to annoy the Russians, this time by deploying systems to guard against missiles from Iran).

Of course orbiting space junk may be all that’s left of us after we’re all boiled together in our own global warming pot.

The UK Green Party claim that Windows Vista is going to cause massive hardware upgrades that will cause environmental degradation.

Channel 7 are screening Starved on Monday nights at 11:30ish, a sharp, dark little comedy about a group of people united by their eating disorders and their support group. Including the cop with bulimia who threatens to arrest the fast-food courier unless he hands over his load of food (and later throws it up), and the lawyer with a fetish for english accents who has to put Ajax on food he puts in the bin to prevent himself fishing it out and eating it.

Twisted, but worth a look.

An amusing comic from JoyOfTech for all the wii fans out there.