Wednesday Linkfest

B3n (yes, that is a three), who is another online acquaintance from the Delphi days, is just as much of a language pedant as I am, and shows it while talking about the list of recent additions to the OED. I completely agree that they’re taking the whole ‘descriptive’ thing a bit far…

While it does slightly warm my heart-cockles to know that both skank and tricknology are in the dictionary now, I am greatly revulsed to see the horrible manager jargon also being added. “deconflict“? Really. “derivatization“? Have mercy.

One third of Alabamans, and Senator Erwin, are apparently too stupid to live.

(I am surprised to find relatively few UFO sitings in Alabama….)

I may mentioned in the past that I thoroughly enjoyed John C. Wright’s Golden Age books (The Golden Age, The Phoenix Exultant, and The Golden Transcendance). Based on what I just found out today (This month’s Locus sent me looking) I am going to theorize that there is a 99.95% chance that Wright’s future works will be of little interest to me, a 0.04% chance that this change will have no effect on my reaction to his writing, and a 0.01% chance that he will go down the brilliantly mad PKD road and I will enjoy his stuff even more. (Note: three ghosts < pink laser ).

Speaking of religion, here’s something from one of my favourite religions. [via]

Interested in economics? (I know my wife is interested greatly in this area, and I’ve been an on-again-off again amateur for ages). Well, you could do much worse that to sit down with some of the historic background readings Brad DeLong is proposing for his grad students.

As an aside, you’ve got to love a university professor who could write this:

We are pleased to welcome him into the ranks of the Ancient, Hermetic, and Occult Order of the Shrill–made up of those who have been driven into shrill unholy madness by the mendacity, malevolence, incompetence, and stupidity of George W. Bush and his administration and whose shrill screeds of Bush-hatred echo beneath the dead, uncaring stars–with the rank of Greater Shoggoth.

Ia!! Ia!! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Kevin Hassett R’lyeh wagn’nagl fhtagn! Ia!! Ia!!!

I already know what I think of Bush, but you take a look at the timeline that Jim McDonald has put together over at Making Light, and see what you can conclude about him and his administration from it.

You know, whenever I think about Bush, I find myself wanting a device that could make my wishes a reality. I can’t go into detail on the wishes here, since that might trigger a Homeland Security investigation 🙂 but I can tell you that I have found such a device: The Psychotronic Wishing Machine [via]

I could try to explain this device, and the associated principles of radionics, but for full comedy value, you should read the site yourself. Here’s a taste:

Using The Psychotronic Wishing Machine ™ conscious projection of intent is possible and causal engineering ,the manifestation of ones intent occurs. Because everything that exists in the material universe resonates at a specific frequency it is possible through the use of The Psychotronic Wishing Machine ™ to define and locate a particular required frequency (rate) of the desired effect and utilise it in the radionic procedure. The Psychotronic Wishing Machine ™ can also be autotuned to the frequency (rate) of the specific target ,ie the recipient of the desired energies, and by creating an ethereal structural link in the microcosm of The Psychotronic Wishing Machine ™ we affect the structure of the macrocosmic universe, ie the material world as we know it.

And don’t even get me started on The Psychotronic Love Magnet

Of course, you don’t need The Psychotronic Money Magnet™ Ultra Advanced Version 1.0 if you can just convince the banks to hand you half a million euros in a suitcase under the bathroom stall–or even better convince them to wire over 7 million euros to your international accounts. The writeup on someone who did just this (which I got via Schneier) makes it sound like he’s the most impressive con man in history, but as far as I can tell his ‘leet con artist skill amounted to asking the banks for the money under pretense of being a representative of the government. Of all the twisted, nefarious plots!

I suspect some bank officials are inline for a “stern talking to”.

So they’re making a movie of Paradise Lost. [via]

Any bets as to whether or not Lucifer comes off as sympathetic? Or whether the movie captures Milton’s underlining of the cruelty of the Christian God?

My guess: special effects extravaganza that won’t alienate the Mel Gibson’s Bloody Jesus crowd.

You know what I would love to see a faithful adaptation of? Santayana‘s Lucifer: A Theological Tragedy.

Here’s one of my favourite bits of that, from the speech where Lucifer explains to Hermes why he rebelled when God wouldn’t explain why he was apparently bound by the laws of ‘sluggish nature’:

…Thy small zeal for the truth may be forgiven
If thou confess it now, and I might still
Call thee my master, for thou rulest well
And in thy kingdom I have loved to dwell.
Or else, if truth offend thy pampered will,
And with caressing words and priestly spell
Thou wouldst seduce me, henceforeth I rebel.”

Even better is Zeus’ speech at the end of Act V, Scene I, after Christ has come to blackmail the Olympians, and Zeus is basically dying:

…Fleeting is the breath
That saith: I am eternal! We were born
And we must therefore die. Such is the wage
Of being.

You know what else I would really love to see? Fitzgerald really follow through on going after the “broader conspiracy”. Wouldn’t that be great?

And now for something completely different: a brilliantly satiric review of Alan Moore‘s Watchmen. It’s not Watchmen being satirised, it’s Internet comic commentators.