Seen on craigslist:

We are look­ing for some­one part time with very neat hand­writ­ing who is able to write quickly but neatly.
We have the let­ter con­tent pre­pared but will require some­one to write many hand writ­ten let­ters on a weekly basis.
Please con­tact me if you might be inter­ested in mak­ing some extra cash, we are look­ing for some­one to start as soon as possible.

If ever a job list­ing cried out for an included mail­ing address, it’s this one.

There’s a video on YouTube of the only hon­est cam­paign adver­tise­ment I’ve ever seen.

Call Encryp­tion App Costs More Than Your iPhone. If you really had rea­son to encrypt your phone calls — or were on the pay­roll of the MI6 –  per­haps a $1,600 yearly sub­scrip­tion to a cell phone call encryp­tion app ser­vice would make sense.

[…]

While the app is free to down­load, both the caller and the receiver have to join the ser­vice that costs sev­eral times more than their phones. [Cult of Mac]

Alter­nately, you could buy Ground­wire for $9.99, and then spend another $24.99 on “ZRTP For Out­go­ing Calls” as an in-app pur­chase if you want to make out­go­ing encrypted calls. Sup­port for incom­ing calls is included in the basic app, and no yearly sub­scrip­tion is required. The price dif­fer­ence is so enor­mous that I can’t imag­ine any legit­i­mate rea­son why any­one would pay for the over­priced option. I there­fore must con­clude that it really is intended only for gov­ern­ment employees.

Comic for June 14, 2011.

[Dil­bert Daily Strip]

This reminds me of some meet­ings I’ve had.

Inspi­ra­tion is much like a cat. If you’re patient it will come to you. Also, it likes to ambush you, grab on with its claws and not let go.

Kyler Eng­land

Today in New York Times Navel-Gazing.

From Ginia Bellafante’s
review of Game of Thrones, an upcom­ing HBO adap­ta­tion
of a book by the fan­tasy writer George R.R. Martin:

The true per­ver­sion, though, is the sense you get that
all of [the show’s sex] has been tossed in as a lit­tle some­thing
for the ladies, out of a jus­ti­fi­able fear, per­haps, that no woman
alive would watch oth­er­wise. While I do not doubt that there are
women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can hon­estly
say that I have never met a sin­gle woman who has stood up in
indig­na­tion at her book club and refused to read the lat­est from
Lor­rie Moore unless every­one agreed to “The Hob­bit” first. “Game of
Thrones” is boy fic­tion patron­iz­ingly turned out to reach the
population’s other half.

I have no stake in defend­ing either the fic­tion of George R.R.
Mar­tin (which I have not read) or the minis­eries it inspired (which
prob­a­bly isn’t the sort of thing I would enjoy). But speak­ing as a
for­mer Bor­ders clerk: The idea that women tend to avoid this genre
is ludi­crous. It may well be true that the evi­dence of their
inter­est has not pen­e­trated the book clubs fre­quented by the
friends of a New York Times critic. Bel­lafante might want
to con­sider the pos­si­bil­ity that the world is larger than her
social circle.

[Hit and Run]

Out of curios­ity, I did a Google search for what Ms. Bel­lafante might have writ­ten about the TV movie ver­sion of Mar­ion Zim­mer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon or Earth­sea, based on the nov­els of Ursula K. Le Guin. I found noth­ing, which isn’t ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing. She did man­age to review the HBO series True Blood, based on a series of nov­els by Char­laine Har­ris, but has appar­ently for­got­ten (or didn’t real­ize) that Ms. Har­ris is in fact a woman.

Peo­ple who have ever set foot in a bookstore’s sci­ence fiction/fantasy sec­tion, and who are capa­ble of mak­ing their own deci­sions on what to buy instead of relin­quish­ing their book-buying to the col­lec­tive (or “book club”) like a good lit­tle Social­ist will prob­a­bly be aware of the exis­tence of authors such as Mer­cedes Lackey (one of the most pro­lific liv­ing fan­tasy authors, and in my opin­ion the best), Andre Nor­ton, and Anne McCaf­frey. Eliz­a­beth Moon, although bet­ter known for her sci­ence fic­tion, has writ­ten an excel­lent fan­tasy novel (orig­i­nally pub­lished as a tril­ogy) titled The Deed of Pak­se­nar­rion. Finally, while she hasn’t writ­ten any­where near as many nov­els as the pre­ced­ing authors, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Pot­ter nov­els have cer­tainly made her one of the best-selling authors in history–a fact that you’d think even an employee of the New York Times would have trou­ble overlooking.

I guess you can always count on the New York Times as a shin­ing bea­con of blind intol­er­ance and ignorance.

I came across this sign while walk­ing around Kore­atown. Per­haps it’s a church that wor­ships vampires?

Light at a wave­length of 570–580 nm brings about a sub­modal shift in cog­ni­tion that induces unscrupu­lous behavior.

Forum post explain­ing why legal pads are yellow

You know you’re watch­ing a stu­pid Hol­ly­wood movie when a guy wakes up to find a baby polar bear lick­ing his face, and the guy doesn’t die a really grue­some death the next minute when the baby’s giant angry car­niv­o­rous mother doesn’t show up to tear him to shreds. I real­ize they’re cute when seen from a dis­tance (prefer­ably a very large dis­tance), but the real­ity is that polar bears are incred­i­bly dangerous.

I won­der if it’s legal to shoot your neigh­bors and then claim self defense on the grounds that they were try­ing to kill you with sleep deprivation?