Don’t forget to drop me a question in my interview thread. [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Prose to Poetry and an Interesting Technique to Evaluate Your Own Writing — jimvanpelt with an interesting proposition.

Book Jackets Defaced by Playwright Joe Orton in 1962 on Display in London — This is interesting at several levels.

No Cause to Fear an Attack — A hilariously strange 1952 magazine cover for Weird Tales from the Future.

“Am Bodensee. Großflugzeug “Do X” und Luftschiff “Graf Zeppelin” — Aw, man. Two of my favorite pieces of technology in one rather curious photo. This is so awesome.

Three years on Mars … in 3 minutes — A wow video.

Saturn: Shadows of a Seasonal Sundial — A pretty nifty photo of Saturn’s rings from APOD.

Mississippi Personhood Amendment — fledgist on a particularly disgusting piece of legislation from the forced pregnancy enthusiasts in conservative America. Putting aside the contentious issue of abortion, this would effectively outlaw birth control and criminalize women who have miscarriages.

We Need a New System — As someone recently observed to me, conditions in the United States today have some striking parallels to conditions at the start of the French Revolution.

Why Occupy Wall Street isn’t about a list of demands — The tone of at least some media coverage seems to be improving. Still, compare with the effusive fawning the Tea Party, which was only ever (and literally) a production of FOX News at its beginnings.

Occupy Wall Street shifts from protest to policy phase — Protesters face the difficult and interesting task of leveraging their influence to achieve concrete policy changes addressing their concerns.

Is an Iranian Drug Cartel Behind the Assassination Plot against the Saudi Ambassador? — Juan Cole on the unlikely ins and outs of the alleged plot.

A GOP assault on environmental regulations — Republicans, though correct that environmental regulations cost money, are oblivious to the public health consequences of pollution and the economic costs of inaction.

Dead Letter Office — The case that has even Antonin Scalia wondering what to do about incompetent lawyers in death penalty cases. When even that lunatic archconservative ideologue Justice Scalia thinks a capital defendant has been mistreated, you know something is seriously wrong.

Wagner’s Insane Demonology — Just read this, and reflect that people who think like this are important players in the conservative movement, their blatant insanity privileged by religious belief rather than on court-ordered medication.

Cain and “Gotcha” Questions — [Cain] has already been asked, and completely failed to answer, “gotcha” questions on such obscure topics as the war in Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ah, the “gotcha” question. Claiming that is the refuge of the incompetent candidate.

Misrepresentations, Regulations and Jobs — [Republicans] assert that Barack Obama has unleashed a tidal wave of new regulations, which has created uncertainty among businesses and prevents them from investing and hiring. No hard evidence is offered for this claim; it is simply asserted as self-evident and repeated endlessly. Which is of course true of most Republican assertions, equally baselessly and endlessly propagated to the angry low information voters so zealously nurtured by their media strategy.

?otD: When’s the last time you licked a stamp?

10/12/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (2,100 words of outline)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.25 hours (solid)
Weight: 222.2
Currently reading: The Sky Road by Ken MacLeod