One more thing I hadn’t thought I needed to be worried about.
(with a tip of the hat to our cousins at Bad Astronomy Blog)
When those images of the big Berlin gathering at which Obama spoke started turning up on the Net, I said to myself, “Hmm, this is going to provoke certain kinds of language here and there…” And when the word “demagoguery” started turning up here and there in conjunction with his name, I thought, “Hmm. It’s only one step to… No, surely no one would try playing that card!”
(heh) Silly me.
McCain Web Ad Is Accused of Linking Obama To The Antichrist
Oh noes!! …But here, this should make us all feel better:
The Rev. Tim LaHaye, co-author of the [Left Behind] series, said in an interview that he recognized allusions to his work in the ad but comparisons between Sen. Obama and the antichrist are incorrect.
“The antichrist isn’t going to be an American, so it can’t possibly be Obama. The Bible makes it clear he will be from an obscure place, like Romania,” the 82-year-old author said.
So we can all relax now. I think. (But the simile is peculiar. Since when is Romania obscure? It’s been important in human history for thousands of years: its language remains one of the most direct descendants of Latin as it was spoken in the Empire. And the country’s just sort of sitting there between Europe and Asia, right out in the open. It’s not like it’s trying to hide under Liechtenstein or something.)
(Sidebar: And to think I was getting bored with the US election campaigns when they started to obsess about tire gauges.)
Anyway, maybe now we can go straight to the Godwin’s Law stage of the campaigns and get that out of the way.* (eyeroll)
*Or maybe this has happened already. Doubtless somebody will let me know.
Specifically, for online pick-your-own-ingredients-and-we’ll-ship-it-to-you muesli.
From this week muesli lovers in the UK will be able to order their very own custom made cereal choosing their ingredients online.
The German firm ‘Well’ launched www.mymuesli.com last year and it has proved successful in its homeland. Customers are able to use the website to dream up their personalised breakfast choosing from 70 organic ingredients.
Now the firm is to launch its enterprise in the UK.
According to the company, the concept is: “Ideal for gourmets, raisin haters, allergics, athletes and die-hard greenies.”
Customers pick and mix their own ingredients from the choice offered on the website. The price of one 575 gramme tube starts at £3.90, although the price can vary hugely depending on the rarity of the ingredients.
(Via Nothing To Do with Arbroath)
Tags: muesli, breakfast, cereal, do-it-yourself, DIY, online, ordering, Germany, UK, shopping, food
As the rest of the books offered for sale a while back get their final fates and destinations worked out, here’s one that is now free again to be sold.  Gone now: thanks to the buyer!
 …I have a spare first edition hardcover copy of Spock’s World. These are hard to find now in decent condition. The book has its dustjacket, but this is a little beat up — top and bottom wear, an incompletely torn-off (price?) sticker: otherwise OK. The book inside I would rate as good / very good quality — tight, clean, page edges clean, no wear. $60.00.
If anyone’s interested in this one, email me and it’s yours. (Signed and personalized, of course.)
For those of you who’re not subscribers: the latest chapter has just gone online for the general readership over at the TBM site. Here’s the URL —
All the chapters presently online are linked to from this page.
We also have new versions of the Mobipocket-format files available. The marvelous Linnette Stoney (who’s been converting the chapters to Palm– and Mobipocket-friendly format for us as they come out) has converted the files to add an image that will display in e-ink readers such as Kindle, Cybook and Sony Reader. You can find a .ZIP file containing chapters 1 through 7, as well as the cover image, here.
Chapter 8 will be posted to the subscribers’ file area on August 20th. If you’re interested in having access to it before the general readership does, you’re most welcome to subscribe!
Friends,
It’s up at last.
There are a lot of places where this notification needs to be posted, and a lot of explanations and profound apologies to be made… but for the moment it just seems best to get the news out.
Chapter Seven is now available online for subscribers: it’s linked to from the normal TBM subscriber gateway page. The same old username and password that worked for previous chapters will get you in. (If you can’t find your login info, email me and I’ll send it out to you pronto.) HTML and PDF versions are there right now — the mobile .prc versions will go up in due course, as soon as we receive the conversions.
If you’re not a subscriber, the chapter will go public on the 28th of the month. Look for the link to its gateway page in the left-hand menu at the project page at http://www.the-big-meow.com. (And for those of you who might feel inclined to subscribe, the subscription button is at the top of the left-hand column, along with info about what you get.)
Once again, I’m deeply sorry for the immense delay. I’m going back on the old one-chapter-per-three-weeks schedule: Chapter Eight will be going up in mid-August. Additionally, the book has become a couple of chapters longer in the course of being restructured — check the project schedule for the anticipated posting dates.
Thanks again, everybody, so very much, for your patience during this past crazed and difficult year. More info shortly.
Best — DD
Check out this website, which specializes in nothing but the low cost airlines:
If it can’t find a carrier for a route you’re interested in, it brings up a whole sheaf of other travel sites for you to search. Some of these I’d never even heard of (which is saying something).
There are also blogs associated with the site (the “wing blog” seems a little outdated, but the “wheel blog” and “bed blog” are more up to date). One interesting link that came up on the bed blog, btw: TabletHotels, “Hotels for Global Nomads”. I always like it when a site offers me hotels I’ve stayed at and loved (it just showed me, in one of the hotel images, the very table I sat at in the dining room when I was last there). Check out this one, for example, attached to a famously cool spa facility I’ve wanted to go to for a long time.
(sigh) No time right now for any kind of travel except the virtual. But it’s fun to be able to look at these things and think about when things get a little quieter, a couple of months down the line…
This has been in the pipeline for a while.YoungWizards.com is now running under the Drupal content-management system, which will make it capable of handling its own blogs, forums, and other goodies. YW.net will follow suit shortly.
Feel free to stop by and kick the tires!
[tags]Young, wizards, Nita and Kit, Diane Duane, wizardry, So You Want to Be a Wizard[/tags]
There are various book memes that seem to have been around forever…and So You Want to Be a Wizard is number 356 on one of them, a meme apparently native to LiveJournal. (Here’s an example, and here, and here, and here…)
I was glancing at the list today, and an idea came up. Eventually it’d be interesting to go down that list and tag it to indicate (a) living authors, and (b) living authors with web presences, and (c) living authors whose web presences include blogs.
Later. In my copious free time. Right now, it’s just fun to be in the meme.
[tags] meme, book[/tags]