The Missing Links is just what it sounds like – a collection of links to interesting things I found on the interwebs this week. I hope you enjoy them. This is the ninth in a never-ending series.
Winner! Dan Savage, who is awesome. There’s no two ways around it. We got some serious Savage love going on this week at …And Read All Over. If you don’t already do it, check out his weekly article here. Also, Savage and his husband, Terry Miller, were interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air this week. Check it. Finally, Savage and Miller are the founders of the It Gets Better Project. If you don’t know, now you know. Dan Savage = Hero.
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A Close Second: From PCWorld comes 10 ways Linux is making life better. Windows 7 is great and all, but I’m really ready to ditch it. Now if I could just convince my wife that we need another computer…
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Best in Show: Yo, Philly Phans! We get a bad rap, but that’s ok. We know you’re all just trying to hide the times you acted like asses. Besides, at least we enough cajones to boo the likes of Sarah Palin and Snookie. Do something.
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And this week’s Crazypants Award goes to… Michelle Bachmann. I know that’s sort of a cop out, so here’s Helen Staudinger, a 92-year-old woman who shot her neighbor when he refused to kiss her. Mug shot below.
Random Links
For New Yorkers and map nuts, this is pretty cool. It’s an interactive map that let’s you compare New York 1811 to New York 2011. Neato.
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I’ve never heard of this guy Charlie Booker, but I’m going to have to check him out. Seems like the British equivalent of a Daily Show, no? I’ll let you know if I find more awesome videos from him.
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The Office Space Bliss desktop background by Burt Gummer. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.
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Introducing… the Fixers’ Collective, a Brooklyn-based organization that fixes things just for the joy of it.
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In the not too distant future, some democracies will be without religion – because that’s what the cool kids want. Maybe. Who cares? I would read this short article just for a gander at Jackie’s comment. I love crazy interwebs people. Props to K-Dogg for the Vonnegut reference.
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Finally, after years of wrangling, Florida lawmakers are ready to make it illegal to rape goats. Finally.
Links on Language:
Babel’s Dawn has an interesting post that interprets John Shea’s new paper, Homo sapiens Is as Homo sapiens Was, in terms of what it means for the origins of language.
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Google’s Book Settlement has been rejected. I can sympathize with both sides of the case here, but I really hope they figure out a way to solve this issue. E-books are the future. But didn’t we already know that?
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Anybody play Call of Duty? Apparently in all their “research,” they forgot to study whether or not the street signs in Pakistan are in Arabic (they’re not). Gamers jumped all over this pretty quickly. Here’s Kumail Nanjiani, who is from Karachi, talking about the whole mess.
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OMG in the OED.
