Worldle West Wing wonder

Wordle is lots of fun!  Because I’m probably the only one who would ever be interested in word art created from my essays, here’s one I made with the script of the West Wing episode ‘Two Cathedrals‘ (click to embiggen).

Eating on the Hill

Senate Votes to Privatize its Failing Restaurants.  Apparently the Senate Restaurants have only turned a profit in seven of of their 44 years in business.  “In the past 10 years, only 20 new items have been added to the Senate menus.”  They only just got sushi!

I swear, the Longworth Cafeteria was one of the highlights of my time working on Capitol Hill (on the House side) earlier in the year.  The choices!  The International Food counter!  The cheap cheap prices!  And all the containers were biodegradable.  I got a packed lunch once on the Senate side, at a briefing, and it was terrible.  A packed lunch at a briefing on the House side was something to celebrate – a huge roll, little container of pasta salad (with fetta and pesto!), cookie (the oatmeal and raisin ones were incredible), an apple, packet of chips… so good.

Cassandra action figure

So disturbing, in so many ways.

Cake and the Internet

A True Story: Walmart Cake.  The cake is, of course, hilarious.  Funnier, however, are the comments on the post, which prove once and for all that people on the Internet are stupid.

Abandoned embassies

Once Grand, Now Bedraggled.  Story on countries who have abandoned their embassies in Washington D.C., for a variety of bizarre reasons.  One building used to be the embassy for Yugoslavia; when the country was dissolved in 1991 it was supposed to be turned over to Bosnia.  But the deeds were never transferred, and now no-one can find the key.

‘Controlled’ explosion

Unexploded WWII bomb is detonated. Workers clearing land for the 2012 London Olympics found a 1000 kilogram WWII bomb – it took days to make the site safe, a job that was made particularly difficult when the thing started ticking. To make things worse, it was next to a gasworks. The team of experts from the Royal Engineers were eventually able to ’safely’ detonate the thing, although this doesn’t look like a particularly controlled or safe explosion to me…

They know where I live!

I understand how and why it’s done, but I still find it disturbing when ads for Australian companies (this Qantas ad is promoting flights from Sydney to China) show up on non-Australian websites.

Physically assaulted by the Internet

Hackers Assault Epilepsy Patients via Computer.  Under ‘dickheads’ in the dictionary, you’ll find this lot:

Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users.

Traumatic workplace experiences

Fox News worker sues over bedbugs.  Apparently getting bitten three times over a 6 month period by bedbugs is enough to cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  I am intrigued by her lawyer, Alan Schnurman (“the Larry King of Law“), “who said he has brought numerous bedbug cases.”

Questions raised: (1) Is bedbug infestation a major problem in American workplaces?, and (2) do people really sue over this crap?

Why the Internet is not a waste of time

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus.  Incredible article by Clay Shirky about how the Western world is only just starting to emerge from its television-induced stupor.  The Internet is an invitation to participate, to create, to get involved.  Television invites you to do nothing but consume.  Which one do you think is a better use of our time?

Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn’t posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it’s not, and that’s the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

I also loved this story sorry for the long quote, but it’s worth it):

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she’s going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn’t what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, “What you doing?” And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, “Looking for the mouse.”

Here’s something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here’s something four-year-olds know: Media that’s targeted at you but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won’t have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan’s Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

I wish I’d read this article last week, before my anthropology of media class looked at the Internet.  There were only a couple of us in the room who regularly used the Internet for, well, anything, and I found it incredibly difficult to explain the value of online interaction and community.  Now, the next time I hear someone criticise ‘nerds’ and their silly games, I’ll just point them in the direction of this article.