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  • Fantagraphics

    Mark over at Boing Boing points to a an Excellent article about Fantagraphics, the folks responsible for republishing the Complete Peanuts Collection (among many many other things).

    Saved by the Beagle

    A year ago, Seattle’s Fantagraphics was on the brink of bankruptcy. Now it’s in the black, thanks to good ol’ Charlie Brown—and a pair of dogged believers who turned a cranky fanzine into the most widely respected comics publisher in America. [Seattle Weekly]

    I picked up the first volume of the collection and it’s great. I plan on picking up a second copy of it to send to my nephew, because every kid needs to experience Charlie Brown. I remember when I’d visit my grandmother as a kid among my dad’s old books were a number of old Peanuts books.

  • A9 Bonus

    I’ve been playing with A9 a little bit lately, it is kind of nifty, but nothing that really made me go WOW. Though, someone did find out something interesting about it.

    Discount at Amazon for using A9.com

    A9 is the new search engine from Amazon and so far it seems good enough to use. It’s supposed to have all kinds of wizbang features, which it seems to. One important thing is that it’s hooked into amazon’s cookie system so it does know who you are and keep track of your searches. (blah blah big brother yadda evil corporate, DOWN liberal DOWN *smack* back in your cage.)

    If you can get over that for 5 minutes and use it, then go to amazon, you’ll notice this little “pi/2 discount” thingie. I clicked on it and, being a good little advertising target monkey, I’ll pass the resulting blurb on…

    since you’ve been using A9.com recently, virtually everything at Amazon.com is automatically an additional π/2% (1.57%) off for you. Collecting this discount is zero effort on your part. It will be applied automatically at checkout (it will happen whether you use the shopping cart or our 1-Click Shopping®). You don’t need to do anything to get this discount except keep using A9.com as your regular search engine.

    So there ya have it. [via The Universal Church of Cosmic Uncertainty]

    I just checked on Amazon and found that I had the same link there now. Pretty keen.

  • Maggots!

    Every time I hear about the use of maggots for healing I think “whoa, cool”, then I think about it a bit more and go “ew icky!” Though, I guess if it works that well I’d cope with it if needed.

    Maggot Band-Aid
    David Pescovitz:
    First used centuries ago to treat battlefield wounds, maggots are proving to be a useful treatment to prevent post-operative infections. Maggot debridement therapy (MDT) calls for maggot dressing to be applied to wounds twice a week for up to 72 hours each time. From the press release about a recent study on MDT in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases:

    “Debridement, or the removal of contaminated tissue to expose healthy tissue, can be done surgically. However, maggots that have been disinfected during the egg stage so that they don’t carry bacteria into the wound have their advantages. The larvae preferentially consume dead tissue (steering clear of live), they excrete an antibacterial agent, and they stimulate wound healing–all factors that could be linked to the lower occurrence of infection in maggot-treated wounds.”

    Link [via Boing Boing Blog]

    Now I just need to find the article I remember reading about the medical uses of slugs.

  • CNN Goof Of The Day

    From the “oops” department:

    cnn divides europe

    switzerland.jpg
    Gert-Jan posted this excellent screencap of CNN reporting on Putin’s visit to Berlin. Too bad they moved Switzerland up and over to the Czech republic’s spot on the map.

    Notice how naming the Netherlands and Belgium was clearly to big a task.

    If CNN can’t even get elementary school facts right, how can you trust anything they say?

    [via Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

  • It’s Informative, But is it Useful?

    From over on engadget:

    Strange Sign
    Apparently the South Korean subway advertising system runs off of a 20GB hard disk. Add your own caption for extra fun! [engadget]

    Feel free to leave your own caption here or there.

  • Geek Misconceptions

    Kasia writes about something that annoyed me a bit. She points to “A Girl’s Guide to Geek Guys” and “The Guy’s Guide to Geek Girls, V2.0” and comments on some of the points they make.

    Let’s clear some things up.

    • The Star Trek thing.

      Star Trek is not a geek thing. Not all geeks like Star Trek, heck, most geeks I know never watch it. Would you people stop equating geeks with Star Trek freaks? Who the hell is Ivanova? The first guy to buy me a Star Trek mousepad as a cute gift would wear it as a collar in about fifteen seconds or less.

    • Branded tshirts.

      So people think geeks wear tshirts with brand names because they’re proudly displaying their loyalty? That’s cute and funny at the same time. T-shirts at conferences are free, t-shirts at conferences come emblazoned with logos and brand-names, ergo, geeks often wear tshirts with brand names because they’re free. Unlike the rest of you gap-labled yuppies, we don’t pay to advertise corporations.

      Unless you count my Free Software Foundation tshirt, I paid for that, but that was really more of a donation than a purchase. Sort of like the emacs manual, yah, i’ll ever read that!

    • Geeks can fix things.

      Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha — that’s all I’m going to say on the issue.

    [kasia in a nutshell]

    In general, I’ve always thought of myself as more on the geek side. But reading through the guide to geek guys it seems I was wrong. I’m barely geeky at all! Even though in humor, I just found that these were just so wrong and cliched that they weren’t even that funny.

  • Partisan Project

    I tend to stay away from discussing politics on this site, but my friend John just IM’d me a link to a pretty nifty site called PartisanProject..

    What We Did. We invited 15 designers and artists to each create one, two-color poster (18.5″x24″) urging a vote against the current administration. The posters were printed, stacked together, folded in half and in half again – like a newspaper. These poster packs are being distributed much like a free newsweekly – dropped in bookstores, coffeehouses, restaurants, grocery stores, libraries, etc. throughout the city of Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas of southwestern Pennsylvania. people can choose a poster (or posters) they like and hang it outside their home or somewhere in their neighborhood. The posters can also be downloaded at this website. We are also wheat-pasting the posters in various locations through the city. And in September, we will host a gallery event where each poster will be displayed en masse along with speakers, voter registration booths and live music. [Partisan Project. INFO]

    Neat idea. Given that I’m not a fan of the current administration, I thought this sounded pretty cool. I also think they’re a bit short-sighted and should also be pushing this for other areas beyond Pittsburgh. And someone needs to tell them that you really shouldn’t have all the text in your site be images. It makes it impossible to quote things easily.

  • Puzzle From Hell

    My parents have a number of puzzles from ELMS Puzzles, Inc. They are a company that makes these beautiful hand made wooden puzzles that are usually quite hard. I took some pictures of the one we’re working on right now. It is one of the more challenging puzzles I’ve ever done because the edges aren’t straight. Also, they seem to like to put some pieces in that have a straight edge on them that go in the middle of the puzzle, helping to confuse you more. Oh yes, and there’s no picture of what the puzzle will look like, so it is kind of cool waiting to see what the whole thing will look like.

    My mom also just mentioned a place called Stave Puzzles, that sounds like another place that does the same kind of thing (with some even crazier looking puzzles).

  • LiveJournal Grammar

    LiveJournal has some pages with advice on writing, including a whole page on the correct use of Homonyms, though I think their examples are actually Homophones. [via Waxy.org Links]

  • Ever Wonder What the Worst Jobs Are?

    My friend Selma pointed me at this article from Popular Science that covers the worst jobs in science.

    The Worst Jobs in Science

    From fart sniffer to postdoc, the most torturous ways to make a living in science.

    October 2003

    Ah, science! Ennobling. Fascinating. Deeply challenging. Also, dangerous, gross and mind-bogglingly boring. We at Popular Science are sometimes brought up short by the realization that there are aspects of science—entire jobs, even—that, when you strip away the imposing titles and advanced degrees, sound at best distasteful and at worst unbearable. Having chosen last month our second annual Brilliant 10 — a group of dynamic researchers making remarkable discoveries—we turned to this pressing question: For the rest out there, just how bad can a science job get?

    The answer: Really, really bad.

    We solicited nominations from more than a thousand working scientists and culled the list for the most noxious. Then we voted. Which is to say, there is absolutely nothing scientific about the ranking of the worst jobs in science that appears on these pages; it is simply the collective opinion of a group of alternately awestruck and disturbed editors who rarely suffer anything worse on the job than keyboard- induced repetitive-motion syndrome. [Popular Science]

    Um. Ew. I don’t think I could ever see some kid saying they’d want to do any of these when they grow up.