Stuff that sparks ideas or imagination for me.
MARY SUE (n.):
1. A variety of story, first identified in the fan fiction community, but quickly recognized as occurring elsewhere, in which normal story values are grossly subordinated to inadequately transformed personal wish-fulfillment fantasies, often involving heroic or romantic interactions with the cast of characters of some popular entertainment.
2. A distinctive type of character appearing in these stories who represents an idealized version of the author.
3. A cluster of tendencies and characteristics commonly found in Mary Sue-type stories.
4. A body of literary theory, originally generated by the fanfic community, which has since spread to other fields (f.i., professional SF publishing) because it’s so darn useful. The act of committing Mary Sue-ism is sometimes referred to as “self-insertion.”
Sounds dirty.
Making Light’s lengthy article on the concept of “The Mary Sue” is well worth reading.
Godwin’s Law: prov. [Usenet] “As a Usenet argument grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin’s Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. However there is also a widely- recognized codicil that any intentional triggering of Godwin’s Law in order to invoke its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.
Toynbee Tiles are tiles embedded into city streets with a odd messages on them – and they appear on hundreds of streets in dozens of cities, including here in Indianapolis, Indiana. The messages are almost all alike and contain some variation of “Toynbee Idea’s in Kubrick’s 2001 Resurrect Dead on Planet Jupiter.” The tile in Indianapolis, appears on Georgia and Meridian Streets, according to this site.
What does it mean? No one’s certain, but it apparently has something to do with a man name James Morasco who has no voice box, secret short-wave radio broadcasts, and playwright David Mamet.
Other news articles about the tiles:
Lowenbrau, skittles. Try it yourself. Then tell me how it tastes.
Madame Tarra Fortune Teller. Crap; they cost thousands of dollars. Hmmm. Or I could just take a trailer to Vegas and steal one from the Strip. [evil grin].
This just sounds like a lot of fun. As long as I get to be the mustard.
Mr. Wozniak described WozNet as a simple and inexpensive wireless network that uses radio signals and global positioning satellite data to keep track of a cluster of inexpensive tags within a one- or two-mile radius of each base station. WozNet, he said, will include a home-base station that has the ability to track the location of dozens or even hundreds of small wireless devices that can be attached to people, pets or property. The tags � expected to cost less than $25 each to produce � will be able to generate alerts, notifying the owner by phone or e-mail message when a child arrives at school, a dog leaves the yard or a car leaves the parking lot.”
Samuel Pepys was an English gentleman who lived in the mid 1600’s, whose well-known and beloved diary serves as an excellent history of his era. Pepys was a practical man of business but also had a wide-ranging appetite for knowledge. His classical and mathematical education was the basis from which he explored the arts and sciences and he was an accomplished musician. This site presents his diary in weblog form, with annotations and links to reference information that helps bring the gentleman and his age to life.
I think most people I know would get behind this one.