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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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

IKR? It's like, yeah, baby, I got my 7 coupons, read 'em and weep! Er, but first could you tell me what they're good for?

*Sudden thought* Did we get a coupon last time?

No, but it's coming with the challenge 7 results (I already asked. *shifty*)

Also - congrats to everyone with 100% participation. :)

Hee! Excellent, and thanks for asking. Whatever they're good for, it's nice to have the whole set. :D

It's that completist attitude isn't it? :) I was going to get all 7 COME HELL OR HIGHWATER.

Me too! Which is why my paperlegends and reel-merlin fics are now a weeeeeee bit behind. *sheepish*

You're telling me! I run the damn challenge, I cannot be late. *types furiously*

LOL! Okay, now I don't feel so bad!

Yeah, pthon definitely messed with my summer writing schedule. But I sure have a lot of porn to show for it. *g*

Hehe, RL gets the better of us all! But I like to be particularly strict with myself because it's unfair to have one rule for the mod and one rule for everyone else. No-one's ever called me a hypocrite. *g*

There was a fuckload of porn. And I mean that both literally and figuratively!

At least you don't have to worry about the scary mod hounding you. *G*

She is super mean, I've heard rumours that she eats babies! ;p

Hehe, butting my nose in to agree with

scribblemoose and

colacube: YAY PERFECT PARTICIPATION! \o/

WOOOOOOOO! \o/

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

You're welcome! I thought it was very interesting reading.

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!

Yikes, that's so terrifying. :-( I'm glad you're okay!

I certainly don't think there was anything right about what the rioters were doing, but I do think it's important to think about why so many people would suddenly start destroying their own communities. Trying to ban them from twitter doesn't seem like it's really going to stop this from happening again. Though I guess with the overall way the world is going, who knows what would?

Though if we can cure colds and the flu, things will have to look up, right? *g*

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

Gaaaaahhhh, me tooooooo. It keeps changing on me while I run after it trying to club it into submission like a whackamole.

But pressure is good! Gogogogo, you can get it done!

Thank you for the Penny Red link.

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

Glad you liked the link! And thanks, I definitely need all the luck I can get on this one.

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!

It was a pretty depressing day of reading, and I found the Ehrenreich piece was the most depressing of the bunch. That one hit me hard with enormous societal shame. I haven't read Stuart: A Life Backwards, but I will go look it up now.

Hee! Yay for saving the porn! All my torrents came back, too, though I proceeded to immediately delete them all by accident myself. None of them were porn, though, so it's okay. *g*

Speaking of porn, the 'thon is definitely very stressful! I don't blame you at all for skipping it this year. It's fun, but I will definitely have to consider it very carefully before I sign up again. It's a major trial for my time management skills.

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!

Are all the links to iPhone versions? Sorry, I didn't notice that! I just automatically look stuff up in the Android market for my phone -- and I know I found at least a couple of these, so hopefully you'll find the ones you're looking for, too.

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)

You are not kidding. The book was scary as hell when she wrote it ten years ago, and it's just gotten exponentially worse.

The part you quoted was the point where I just broke down and cried. All those places that are doing their best to make it illegal to give food to the neediest among us -- who the hell does that? I mean, okay, so obviously the most fortunate people in this country aren't really into giving up any of their excess money to help the least fortunate, but to punish and restrict the people who do choose to help is so disgusting.