A report came out recently claiming that cellphones have been conclusively proven to be the cause of Colony Collapse Disorder (the mass failure of beehives that's a serious threat to agriculture around the world). I've seen so many "OMG mobile phones give you cancer" scare stories that turned out to be based on a hopelessly flawed study and/or ( Read more... )

When I was about 14, I started getting into "alternative" music, but within a couple of years I hated the label and started avoiding its use. The trigger was a conversation with a friend of my dad's, who shared my obsessive love of music but whose taste was dramatically different (barbershop and 1950s film soundtracks, I think). He was interested ( Read more... )

I had a dismaying conversation the other day. It wasn't quite the most annoying case of someone I don't really know showing off their awfulness I've ever experienced-that was 8 years ago and I hope it remains a lifetime nadir-but it reminded me of that one.
( ... )

There's a lot I want to say about the election results, but I don't know if I'll have time before it's all old news. So just a couple of quick points:

The goodIt should be obvious by now that I wanted Obama to win, and I'm pleased not only that he did but also that it was a decisive enough victory to be called early, with no court battles or ( Read more... )

If this isn't a blatantly partisan attempt to disenfranchise just the people most likely to be angry with the incumbent party, I don't know what is.

Wasn't it quite a long time ago that this country extended voting rights from landowners to all citizens?

I still don't have home internet service. I am spitting mad about this. The short version of why is that Speakeasy screwed up our order bigtime. If you're very bored, you can read the long version below:

( how Speakeasy just lost a customer )

how can I set Firefox's spellchecker locale so it stops bitching at me about spelling "colour" correctly?

Though the really bad parts are over, I'm getting seriously frustrated with how long it's taking my nose to fully recover from what I thought would be minor surgery with a 1-2 week recuperation period. I still need to rinse it out with salt water twice a day in order to be able to breathe through it; it still bleeds far too readily; it still hurts ( Read more... )

I was hoping to fly to Cleveland tomorrow and stay till Sunday, to get to a friends' wedding. This morning, freaked out by yesterday's little incident, I decided to cancel my visit. I'm deeply saddened by this. Not only do I miss out on the honour of sharing Tom's and Liz's wedding with them, I also miss out on all the fun that weddings ( Read more... )

After 90 minutes of transatlantic phone call in which I spoke to 4 different people, I still can't send bloody text messages. Do any of you have phone service with which you are happy, both in the US and roaming internationally?