corilannam | (no subject)

Someone just came into my office to deliver a FedEx and caught me trawling Facebook -- for purely work-related purposes! But there was no conversational opening in which to mention that, so now she probably thinks I'm a total slacker.

Oh well. Guess that means I might as well slack off!

Things I've been meaning to post all week:

* Interesting perspectives on the UK rioting/looting:
-- Penny Red - Panic on the streets of London
-- Eyewitness account of neighborhood looting

Stay safe, UK flist.

* On this side of the pond, the state of society is less flammable, but no less depressing -- How America turned poverty into a crime by Barbara Ehrenreich, an afterward to her book Nickeled and Dimed in its 10th anniversary.

* In the potentially world-changing (in a good way) news department -- New drug could cure nearly any viral infection

* For my greenies, some cool Android apps to help with environmentally safe and non-toxic shopping -- http://www.emagazine.com/magazine/app-happy

I'm not linking to the one about the effects of cell phone radiation. *g*

And back to the shallow waters of fandom--

* I think I am not going to finish my

reel_merlin story by the deadline. This kind of breaks my heart, but there's just still too much to do and I refuse to shortchange this story except by the limitations of my own abilities. I will keep working on it and post when I'm done (assuming that's before the next round!)

* I have submitted my final votes and PTHON IS DONE. I have at least survived with my perfect participation record intact, if not my dignity.

* Update on my computer woes -- My desktop, which had previously succumbed to a really vicious Windows 7 security update, is up and running again, seemingly no worse for the wear! I had to reinstall Windows, but thanks to Dell's DataSafe emergency backup (which I didn't even know I had), I did not lose anything. EVEN MY CHROME TABS WERE SAVED, which of course, is the most important thing because that's where all the stories I haven't read yet live. And there are a lot of them.

Threaded | Flat

I have at least survived with my perfect participation record intact, if not my dignity.

Me too! I feel stupidly proud of it, too. :D

Woah, thanks for the link to Penny Red's blog. I'll be passing it along to friends and family.

Interesting link... I don't agree with a lot of it but it's nice to have a perspective from someone else who's in the middle of it (I spent part of Tuesday night worried someone was going to throw a petrol bomb through my window, I am fed up of being told by people who weren't there that the rioters were doing the right thing.)

< / rant>

Thanks for the anti-viral link though. I'll be digging out that PLoS One paper!

gahhh I am feeling the pressure with reel_merlin /o\ ffuuuuuu

Thank you for the Penny Red link.

Good luck on your reel_merlin! Can't wait to read it whenever it's finished.

Thanks for all the links. Sort of a sad day's reading, but I'm grateful to be directed to the good articles.

How America turned poverty into a crime by Barbara Ehrenreich. This was really depressing. I know the poor are treated horribly in the US, but I'd had no idea it was that bad. I've been reading a lot of really depressing stuff in this vein lately - Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters, for example.

I've just done that update, and did not lose the porn torrent I was downloading! Ah, for the important things!

You deserve a medal for your pornathon record. I bowed out this year, because I found it so stressful last time!

Thanks for the link to the eco apps. I don't have an iPhone, but I can usually find an Android version if I check in their appstore. Merci!

Phoenix, Arizona, has been using zoning laws to stop a local church from serving breakfast to homeless people.
Good grief. This whole article -- and her book -- should be required reading for all Americans. This is appalling and scary as hell.

Edited 2011-08-12 01:28 (UTC)