glomph

I'm in the final chapter of the next-to-last volume. Some characters from the first two volumes have been reintroduced in the current one, bringing some unexpected plot twists. The closing volume will introduce a surprising number of new characters, even if you don't count health-care professionals.. There will need to be a supplementary volume for notes, appendices, maps, and corrigenda. Lots and lots of corrigenda. I hope the maps section will be much greater then than it would seem now to need to be.

"Tangled Web"? Spiderman has a clone?

I couldn't tell from the article if the worm actually got out into the wild. Even if it had, it doesn't sound like too much of a threat, since it sounds like you have to go through a two-step install and give an administrator's password to get it to work, and then it might infect only Cocoa apps within the same subnet.

Maybe. More likely word about it will spread a lot faster than the virus. And if Apple patches something in a day or two that makes the virus not work, then they'll look like heroes and not idiots. It's a lot easier to deal with one virus than 14,000.

No. Voldemort, or maybe Moriarty.

Of course they're not. Ten or so years ago, for example, there were some WDEF viruses that affected Macs, as well as MS Office macro viruses that were cross-platform. And obviously if you run Windows on an Intel Mac under Bootcamp or any of the virtual environments such as Parallels, it's just as vulnerable as if you ran it on a PC. There still has not been a virus in the wild that would affect OS X, but there will be some day. True, but not as well as a PC can. Mac users need to be careful about sending files to PC users, because they might be infected. That's the main reason to run anti-virus software on a Mac. However, the PC virus won't run on a Mac, and therefore can't spread itself from the Mac. A large number of worms and viruses spread by infecting Windows email hosts and sending themselves to people on the address list. Random addresses on the list are spoofed as the "sender," so if the spoofee is a Mac user, someone might erroneously think they got the virus from a Mac. Most troubling is your wishing viruses and worms on other people of any sort. Well, maybe, but since any script kiddie can make a Windows virus, what bragging rights go with doing that? Wouldn't it be more impressive to write the first virus that will in fact (and not just in theory in the lab) infect Macs running OS X? And now that about 14% of laptops sold in the US are Macs, the argument from obscurity seems outdated, if it ever was valid. Windows used to by default leave practically everything open to malware, all sorts of ports open, and give root level of permissions to .exe files and the like. Vista, for whatever good or bad things one might say about it otherwise, has supposedly tightened up a lot of the security holes.

In England it is celebrated on the fourth Sunday in Lent. Several other countries have adopted the US Second Sunday of May date, which came from a lady's efforts to get the whole country to commemorate the date of the death of her mother.

There's an old saying about the difference between tragedy and comedy. When I slip on a banana peel and fall, that's tragedy. When you slip on a banana peel and fall, that's comedy.

Not to split hairs too finely, but I purposely used the word "innately" to speak of persons' potential without regard to environmental and cultural factors such as malnutrition and the difficulty that cave men had in finding a telephone to use to call for car insurance rate quotations.

It's unlikely that people are innately smarter of dumber than they have been for 10,000 years or more.

Somehow the question caused the word "gestalt" to pop into my head. I'm not completely sure why it did, but if you've ever had the word "gestalt" to pop into your head, you know how painful that can be. The human brain puts things together and tries to make sense out of them. If you look at the landscape while riding in a car and listening to music, it can become like a movie soundtrack, and what you see will begin to fit with the music. Similarly, if you listen to music while watching an unrelated TV show with the sound turned down, especially if there is a lot of movement on the screen (such as a sporting event), the brain will make the two go together, like a ballet even. If you look at life, you'll usually see a pattern, even if your brain has to invent it. If all you see is that we die and are forgotten, well, that's a pattern, too, and quite a strong one. And even if you find no purpose in most individuals' lives beyond that, you might be staring at one tile looking for meaning and missing the picture the tiles form in the mosaic.

I had a late lunch, so I'm just now about to eat supper. I picked up a small container of shrimp salad at the store this afternoon, so that's what I'm having tonight.

If Jimmy Carter could confess to having lust in his heart, I see no reason why you can't.

Hungary has ZERO tolerance for drunk driving. Any blood alcohol level over whatever the residual level that the body produces when you've not been drinking is sufficient for a driver to be arrested.

Tell me about it. People think I'm overweight, when it's just my aspect ratio.

I always found it cool that there were major allusions to Steinbeck, et. al., in Looney Tunes cartoons, in addition to the classical music in some of the soundtracks.

With that list of questions, it is a wonder that there is anyone left to give blood. I was once in Egypt for a few days. I, like most people over 50, take a low dose of aspirin every day. I don't need even to look at any questions relating to sexuality in any form.

Except that the article says that women still buy more underwear for men than men do.

I think the legal principle of proportionality (or whatever it is called) would be the central issue here. Does the punishment fit the crime? That is somewhat harsher penalty than many jurisdictions have for drunk driving, at least for the first few offenses.

I read that the Disney "Fairy Tale Wedding" package is now available to same-sex couples, too, adding a new level of meaning to the name. It includes the more public parts, such as the ride in Cinderella's glass coach through the park. Time for the Baptists to renew their Disney boycott.

Some people say that a fear of heights comes from a desire deep down to jump.

Carrying coals to Newcastle.

Yep.