Wired has an interesting article on how spam affects the blind.

Blind Get Earful of Spam Daily

It’s annoying to read spam. It’s even worse to hear it. Blind users rely on text-to-speech programs to hear what’s on their screens, and they face an aural assault daily. [Wired News]

It seems that octopuses have have a prefered limb (tentacle?):

Octopuses have a preferred arm

Most octopuses have a favourite arm, zoologists have discovered. This is the first time they have been found to show any bias when choosing which of their eight limbs is right for the job.

The creatures use their trusty first-choice appendage when exploring a new nook or cranny, says Ruth Byrne of the University of Vienna in Austria. She presented the discovery on Sunday at the annual meeting of the Animal Behavior Society in Oaxaca, Mexico. [Nature.com] [via David Harris’ Science & Literature]

How exactly does one say which arm it is? Something like 3rd limb clockwised?

Since I’ve been spending a lot of my time down in CT these days I’ve been watching the news here a lot more. The big story for a while has been the investigation of Gov. John Rowland. Lately it has seemed like there’s been almost a little bit more every day about his dealings.

HARTFORD, Connecticut (AP) — Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland will announce his resignation Monday night, amid a federal corruption investigation and a growing move to impeach him, an administration source told The Associated Press.

The governor was planning to announce his resignation on a live television address to the state at 6 p.m., the source said Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Rowland’s resignation would elevate Lt. Gov. M. Jodi Rell to governor.

Rowland, 47, a Republican easily re-elected to a third term in 2002, admitted late last year that he lied about accepting gifts and favors from friends, state contractors and state employees. [CNN.com]

Happy Father’s Day to all you dads out there. Today mom and I made breakfast for my dad. I made hollandaise sauce for the first time, it wasn’t too hard (I used Alton’s recipe since I’d just seen him make it on his show recently).

The wonderful folks at TRSI just delivered my copy of the LE of ROD TV. The case for the series is like an actual book with plastic ‘pages’ for the DVDs. It’s definitely the coolest of the DVD cases I have. I took a picture with my crappy little phone cam since I can’t seem to find my digital camera at the moment. Click on the image to the left for a bigger picture.

For the strange but cool department:

Flash: 99 Rooms
99 Rooms. Enter at your own risk. (I haven't wandered too deeply, yet.) It's easy to waste time here!
[#!/usr/bin/girl]

It’s not a game. But it is interactive. This is one of those things that I think flash is really cool for. This reminds me of some of the early stuff I remember people doing with Quicktime ages ago.

Via Ellen:

I’m an irredeemably eejitous, liberal, tight as fuck, pathetically simple-minded, dribbling child!
See how compatible you are with me!
[Brought to you by Rum and Monkey]

This subject in my spam folder had me scratching my head some today:

menstruate Any software – very low prices rumpus

There’s a class on anime at the University of Texas. Sounds pretty cool. I’ve actually read Dr. Napier’s book Anime: From Akira to Princess Mononoke a few years ago and thought it was interesting. Why couldn’t they have classes like that where I went to school (oh wait. I did take that class called “Sex and Death”, nevermind).

It strikes me that something is seriously wrong with a vibrating rubber ducky.

While languishing in the bath, there are a number of different items that’ll make your stay infinitely more pleasurable than a touch of Radox and a few bath salts. There’s the loofah for one, and a more pleasurable back scratching device hasn’t been invented. There’s also the rubber duck, essential for any aquatic recreation, although seldom seen at the municipal swimming baths for obvious reasons. The duck is an icon of water-based serenity. A beacon in the fog of a steaming hot tub. A little yellow rubber thing that floats in your bath.

Or at least it was until the arrival of I Rub My Duckie, the rubber duck with a secret weapon beneath the hood. Dubbed a personal massager, the Prozac-faced yellow peril houses a powerful motor that provides the user with an unlimited (well, two AA batteries kind of unlimited) source of soothing, vibrating enjoyment. [firebox.com]