It appears, judging by her Web site, that Deborah Gibson is once again embracing her Debbie-ness.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but she looks awfully Deborah-esque here:

Then again, she’s 40 now.

Oh, and the dress is by Alice and Olivia, the shoes by Giuseppe Zanotti, the occasion was a pre-screening reception for 3 Billion and Counting. [Warning: brief embedded audio.]

(Previous Debitude here.)

Despite Mr. Porretto’s suggestion that I have too much time on my hands, I continue to work long hours and strive to get something resembling an adequate quantity of sleep.

Besides, the ultimate goal of the punster is to come up with something as sick and twisted as this:

There was a boy of Italian parentage named Carbaggio, born in Germany. Feeling himself a misfit, with his dark curly hair among all those blond Nordic types, he tries to be even more German than the Germans. In late adolescence he flees to Paris, where he steals one of those brass miniatures of the Eiffel Tower. Arrested by the police, he is given a choice of going to jail or leaving the country. He boards the first outbound ship and arrives in New York. Thinking he would like a career in communications, he goes to the RCA building in Rockefeller Plaza, takes an elevator and walks into the office of General Sarnoff. Sarnoff tells him that the only job available is as a strikebreaker. The boy takes it. When the strike ends, he finds himself on a union blacklist. He goes to work making sonar equipment for a company owned by a man named Harris. After several years, his English has improved to the point where he gets a job as a disk jockey. His show is called Rock Time. He has fulfilled his destiny: he’s a routine Teuton, Eiffel-lootin’, Sarnoff goon from Harris Sonar, Rock Time Carbaggio.

Paul Desmond, who was twenty-nine the day I was born, came up with this classic bit of Parthenonsense shortly thereafter. Until such time as I can top this, I keep on keeping on.

Or, “Sorry, Rosemary, I’ve no time.”

Andrew Ian Dodge lets us know in the title to the 393rd Carnival of the Vanities that autumn has arrived in earnest.

To a number of people I know, including my son and his wife, this fall has meant, means, among other things, writing a check for earnest money as part of the complicated process of buying a house. Had they been in the state of Oregon, so doing would have been governed by Chapter 393 of that state’s laws.

So apparently it’s “tweet,” “twet,” “twutten.”

(Not to be confused with “hic, haec, hoc”: that’s a pronoun, dammit.)

Marko, on the discovery of a possible Class M planet merely twenty or so light-years away:

On the galactic scale, it’s in our cosmic driveway, so to speak. If we already have an Earth-like planet orbiting in the Goldilocks zone of a star so close by, then the statistical chances for our little blue pebble being the only life-supporting planet in the universe are about as great as the statistical chances of Kate Beckinsale coming up our driveway in the next ten minutes, wearing her skin-tight Underworld leather outfit, piloting a Ferrari with the suitcase compartment full of $100 bills, and bearing a note from my wife saying “Have A Fun Vacation, Honey.”

Hmmm…

That’s one scary-looking driveway there.

There are times when I think that anything worth doing is worth doing later. Then again, I hate like hell to have tasks stacking up on my plate, especially if everything has to be Just So. The link between procrastination and perfectionism has often been been explored, though this is the first explanation I’ve seen based on construal level theory:

When you picture getting started straight away the close temporal distance puts you in near mode, where you see all the detailed impediments to doing a perfect job. When you think of doing the task in the future some time, trade-offs and barriers vanish and the glorious final goal becomes more vivid. So it always seems like you will do a great job in the future, whereas right now progress is depressingly slow and complicated. This makes doing it in the future seem all the more of a good option if you are obsessed with perfection.

Unfortunately, I can’t figure out a good way to exploit this phenomenon in my own life. If the target date is T, I can’t persuade myself to focus on, say, T plus 2, when all this, thank God, will be behind me; I tend to think in terms of “How can I do this in half the time with half the sweat?” and spend roughly 50 percent of the allotted time trying to figure out a way to save 50 percent of the allotted time. This works about as well as you think it does.

Medium weirdness here yesterday: as usual, I’d publish a post, and as usual, the WordTwit plugin for WordPress would conjure up a shorter version of the URL and advise the Twitterverse that I had something new to read. Historically, I’ve been getting between 25 and 40 visits from each such post, which helps to maintain the fiction that this place is sort of popular.

Then the fallout began. Someone said that the proffered URL led to the wrong post; someone else got 404ed on a different one. I left word with BraveNewCode, publishers of WordTwit, that something was askew with their new release; within a couple of hours they’d sent me an updated version of the plugin which worked just fine. I sent them back a thumbs-up, and now that new version is available to all WordTwit users. I did notice, however, that now they have the option to tweet a URL that isn’t actually shortened but still works: the original WordPress permalink based on the ID number. I’ve shifted to that option, since it takes up little more room and requires less folderol behind the scenes.

Technical support too often seems to be neither technical nor supportive; I’m always grateful to folks like BraveNewCode who go out of their way to make my life online a little easier.

Francis W. Porretto explains one reason why we resist overhauling the Tax Code:

This is the heart of the problem faced by the advocates of systems such as the Fair Tax. Smith wants to know what his tax burden will be under such a scheme. He knows what his load is today, but any new scheme comes with a degree of uncertainty: How high will the national sales tax be? What would prevent Congress from changing it arbitrarily, as it currently does the income tax? He can’t be sure of those things, or that he’s seeing all the “fine print.” The uncertainties, and his established reliance on the real-property deductions in the income tax law, predispose him away from such a sweeping change … even if, objectively, the new scheme would be to his advantage once it was in place.

Be it noted that I do in fact take advantage of the real-property deductions in the current income-tax law.

And with that in mind, let’s see what my tax burden might be under the FairTax proposal in its most recent form. Existing obligations — the mortgage and its escrow collections, my restructured debt — would not be subject to the tax; this excludes approximately $18,500 a year. Savings and investments would not be taxed; at the current (lowish) level of same, this would knock out another $2000. The so-called “prebate,” which excludes an income base at the poverty level so as to add a hair of progressivity to the system, excludes another $10,830. State and local taxes presumably would also be dropped off, cutting maybe $2500 more.

What’s left, I assume, is taxable once spent, and the tax on what’s left, based on the proposed 23 percent on the gross — 30 percent on the pre-tax figure — runs about $4000. Since my current Federal tax bite is on the far side of $7000 — approaching $9000 without the aforementioned real-property deductions — I calculate that under this particular set of assumptions, I would come out better under the FairTax in its first year; but even if the tax were enacted exactly as described by its proponents, the tax rate and “prebate” would be adjusted each subsequent year, based on the previous year’s revenues, so that advantage might be reduced or even eliminated.

So Smith has a reason to be concerned. He also, however, has an obligation to do the math.

Britain’s grandiosely-named “Equality Act” has scores of provisions, some probably dumber than this:

It creates the controversial legal concept of “third party harassment”, under which workers will be able to sue over jokes and banter they find offensive — even if the comments are aimed at someone else and they weren’t there at the time the comments were made.

They can sue if they feel the comments “violate their dignity” or create an “intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment”.

Home Secretary Theresa May, Her Majesty’s Government’s enforcer, maintains:

“In these challenging economic times it’s more important than ever for employers to make the most of all the talent available. When a company reflects the society it serves, it’s better for the employer, the employees and the customers.”

Have you seen British society lately, Madame Secretary? What in it, exactly, is worth reflecting? Certainly not this effort to blow secondhand smoke up the kingdom’s ass.

This being from the Daily Mail, however, it seemed reasonable to seek out a second source, and the Beeb sums up several of the Act’s provisions, including the one under discussion:

“Can I now be held liable for harassment of an employee by the third party, such as a customer?”

Yes, but only “if you have failed to take reasonably practicable steps to prevent the harassment occurring,” explains [Matthew Tom, employment partner at Candey LLP].

He says that a “three strikes” rule applies, so you can’t be liable unless you know the employee has experienced third party harassment on at least two prior occasions, although not necessarily from the same source.

Jeebus. To insulate our customer-service personnel from the rudeness of customers, we’d have to disconnect the phones entirely, shut down the email server, and conduct everything via legal counsel. Not practical in a retail-services context. Customers, of course, are protected by (1) the fact that we’re supposed to stick to the script and (2) the fact that I don’t take their calls.

Still, the Law of Unintended Consequences suggests that the upshot of all this, rather than the “death of the office joke” as predicted by the Mail, will be the elevation of the thin-skinned to protected-class status. Barack Obama, whose depth is measured in nanometers, would probably like this just fine.

(Via Fark.)

How is it that we have all these apologies floating around and not so much as a hint of actual repentance?

I hate it when a public official is forced to confront a scandal and says something like “I claim full responsibility” or “The buck stops here”. Much as I hate it when a celebrity faux-apologizes, a defendant reads off a lawyer-written bullet-list of regrets, anything that uses the rhetoric of apology to try to cap the well after a crime or misdeed, to “move on”.

“Boy, I’m glad that’s over.” Um, no, actually, it isn’t:

“Claiming full responsibility” should be a lifelong sentence. Not to wear a sackcloth and ashes or a scarlet letter, not to stand abashed before a hostile crowd repeating a memorized confession under the watchful eyes of minders. It should be a sentence to work tirelessly to make it right, and never give up until it is.

The worst thing about a society that has fully monetized liability is not that people lawyer up and withhold apologies until the attorneys have worked out just how much cash the guilty party owes. The worst thing is that we’ve amputated everything else from the idea of responsibility.

As though all aspects of guilt could be washed away by the writing of a sufficiently-large check.

At the link, Professor Burke suggests appropriate forms of penance for certain contemporary miscreants, including, yes, those two jerks who tormented Tyler Clementi.

Remember that business about a picture being worth more or less a thousand words? It would probably take me a thousand words to explain this in full, so I’m pointing you to the appropriate picture.

If “appropriate” is the appropriate word, that is.

(Suggested by Breda.)

Evidently, it’s a platform:

I haven’t quite decided what I think about this item from Prada’s 2011 Spring/Summer collection. From here up, this is a traditional wingtip, with all the traditional detailing in all the traditional places; from there down, it’s, um, less so. And as ShoeBlog says, “If Prada’s shoes don’t jump start the dreary weather, at least the colors will.” Whatever you may think of that orange stripe, it’s certainly not drab.

Maybe. After the jump, what they saw on the runway above those shoes:

Read the rest of this entry »

Kevin Walsh, proprietor of Forgotten NY, occasionally posts classic hits (via YouTube) on Facebook, and the other day he got around to an old favorite from 1963: “I Will Follow Him,” by Little Peggy March.

Still, when I got around to compiling a Valentine’s Day Mix several years ago, I passed Peggy by in favor of the original French-language version by Petula Clark, which you can see here in what appears to be a Scopitone film.

These days, of course, most people probably remember the 1992 adaptation in Sister Act, which was splendid in its own right. But I’m here to tell you, Petula has been singing this song for almost fifty years, and she still sounds pretty darn good:

The Charlie Chaplin reference near the end is to “This Is My Song,” written by Chaplin for his 1967 film A Countess from Hong Kong, starring Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren; it was a smash hit for Petula and presumably was the next song on the program. It sounds something like this.

And besides, Betty was way cute.

We want to assure you, up front, that the person who takes care of this function every week has no plans to resign and run for mayor of Chicago.

Beautiful day out there:  And you’re inside, playing on the computer. What’s wrong with you?

you call that a party:  It’s all fun and games until someone ends up on the computer.

sam walton was a miser:  Which is the best kind of ancestor to have, if you think about it.

the thriving for corruption:  A political history of — well, just about anywhere, really.

what is the back wing of a car called:  SPOILER WARNING: It’s called a spoiler.

persistence is futile voyager:  Harry Kim probably thought so, after repeatedly striking out with Seven of Nine.

montgomery ward enema pages:  ”Hey, Squigster, I think I’ve got the new name for the band!”

testicular cup introduced in 1874:  ”Unless you like this one better.”

why isn’t chalant a word?  Seems like a perfectly cromulent word to me.

house “101 seats” “up for grabs”:  Caution: not everyone’s seat is going to be one you’d want to grab.

Dust ladened filter:  Got one of those in my vacuum cleaner. It sucks. Or, more precisely, it doesn’t suck.

men’s magazine watch air filter:  I wonder if it’s laden with dust.

Boobie-Thon 2010 is under way, and as always — this is the ninth version — it’s a surprisingly simple drive that raises more money than you’d think. (The take for the first eight years ran upwards of $60,000.)

As part of the deal, you get to see some perfectly nice racks and some imperfectly-nice racks, and you get to pass some cash to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. (There is a parallel drive for cleaning up the Gulf Coast; you can donate to either or both.) It’s very easy to be snide about “raising awareness,” but I figure there’s no better way to raise awareness than to show you just what it is you’re trying to help: it’s more than just another pink ribbon, folks.

A number of Actual Reporters read these pages, so I figure they’ll nod and go “Yep” when they see this ad posted by the Illinois Valley News of Cave Junction, Oregon:

How bad do you want to be a reporter? Bad enough to work nights and weekends? The poor glutton for punishment that’s chosen will cover city and county government. Sports and general interest feature stories.

In exchange for your long hours and tireless efforts you will be rewarded with low pay and marginal health insurance. Please send resume, and 3 writing samples to [email address redacted]. This is a full time salaried position located in the beautiful northwest.

I suspect the next thing they’ll say is what I said: “There’s an Illinois Valley in Oregon?” (Answer: Yes.)

This is, says Gawker, The World’s Most Honest Journalism Job Ad.

Mother Gaia, left to her own devices, is a major biatch, and the next time some self-righteous greenozoid tells you that mankind is a blight on the ecosystem, you might want to remind him of this:

Not being eaten by hyenas every time you get a sufficiently slowing case of the sniffles is one of those major motivating forces for having civilizations, which is a point that has usually never been fully appreciated by people writing posts about the dangers of thimerosol in vaccines on an iPad. Not being eaten by hyenas is also a rarely recognized but truly essential ingredient for producing people whose full-time profession is philosopher or pundit.

Of course, if after hearing this, he wants to be eaten by hyenas, there’s no reason on earth why you’d want to stand in his way.

Well, actually, this probably isn’t the street where you live:

On the other hand, if it’s the street where you’d like to live, for a limited time only, here’s your chance.

(Via FAILBlog, tweeted by Nancy Friedman.)

France has banned the niqab veil, effective next year, and this is what’s in store:

Scarves covering the face were banned in schools and hospitals, as well as on public transport. Women, who violate this requirement will be fined €150 and given a course of lectures on the basics of the secular foundations of the French Republic. Men who force women to wear burqa will face up to a year in prison.

In the meantime, there’s this:

Two French female students have made a film of the pair of them strolling through the streets of Paris in a niqab, bare legs and mini-shorts as a critique of France’s recently passed law.

Calling themselves the “Niqabitches,” the veiled ladies can be seen strutting past prime ministerial offices and various government ministries with a black veil leaving only their eyes visible, but with their long legs naked bar black high heels.

Only one of the two is actually Muslim. The reaction from passers-by was predictable:

At one stage in the film, the two women approach the entrance to the ministry of immigration and national identity, only to be told by a policeman to go elsewhere. However, a policewoman also present is delighted by their clothes. “I love your outfit, is it to do with the new law?” she asks. “Yes, we want to de-dramatise the situation,” one girl replies. “It’s brilliant. Can I take a photo?” asks the policewoman, who will soon be required to fine public niqab wearers.

(Via Tom Maguire.)

LeeAnn is probably wondering what she did to deserve to be stuck in a Monty Python sketch.

(Specifically, this one.)

Pay hefty baggage fees when you fly? What for? Stuff everything in your pockets:

Debenhams says that budget travellers are “picking the pockets of airline thanks to a loophole in the baggage rules”.

The shop has seen sales of its big coats and lots of pockets rise by 350% over the summer, and it thinks passengers are doing it to avoid expensive baggage charges.

“Rather than pay expensive charges for stowing cases in the hold of the plane, canny holidaymakers are using their free hand luggage allowance and ‘wearing’ the rest of their baggage.”

Then again, Debenhams is a British store. Will this sort of thing work in the States? Peter says it will:

I flew [Saturday] from Tennessee to Alaska, to visit Miss D. and help with the closing stages of reassembling her aircraft’s wings. Instead of taking my normal cabin carry-on bag, I took a smaller unit, and filled the pockets of a military-surplus winter parka that I brought along.

Of course, once they catch on they’ll charge you for having the temerity to own garments with deep pockets.

KingShamus argues (over at Juliette’s) that Robert Gibbs’ most relevant qualification for head of the Democratic National Committee is that he’s never done anything like that before:

You gotta wonder what Bob Gibbs has done that makes anybody think he’s ready to shake down Democrat-leaning donors for big money donations. I had no idea making unfunny patronizing digs at members of the White House press corps could snag you an executive job at one of the two major US political parties. Unless looking and acting like your least favorite high school algebra teacher is somehow a prerequisite for the job, homeboy really doesn’t have much going for him.

Then again, he’s the New Guy, and Democrats, KS asserts, are obsessed with the New Guy:

There were probably more qualified candidates running for the Democrat Party presidential nomination of 1960. Somehow the Democrats managed to nominate a noob Senator named John Kennedy. Nearly any Democrat could’ve been CEO of America in the 1976 election. Who did the Dems pick? A relative unknown southern dude named Jimmy Carter. Before being the mack daddy of the Oval Office Intern Bang Competition, Bill Clinton was ‘The Man From Hope’, a charismatic Baby Boomer governor who hadn’t made a name for himself outside of the parochial world of Arkansas politics.

This isn’t, of course, the way the GOP does it:

This is all about entitlement, and the “we did our grunt work, we served our time in the field, now reward us” nonsense that keeps getting damaged Republican candidates their party’s nominations, because “it’s his turn” and “his guys” have taken control of the party’s city, county, and state operations center.

On balance, this may be an advantage to the Democrats, on the off-chance that New Kid on the Block actually hangs tough — or at least that he doesn’t have a paper trail. (In the case of the latter, see Obama, Barack H. If you can.)

Robert Stacy McCain has a whole article on What Not To Do if you have a blog, and at least in one area, I meet his standard:

Never assume that whatever it is you’re writing about is so damned important that people have no choice but to read it.

I don’t think this has ever been an issue around these parts.

The Swagger Wagon, it ain’t.

(Via TTAC.)

Dynamo Dave Sherman celebrates ten years of bloggage, almost all of which I have read, even the stuff about me when I wended my way to Great Falls during World Tour ’04.

Geez, that’s a long time.

It’s long been my experience that the supposedly “child-safe” medicine bottle it takes me two or three minutes merely to comprehend, a toddler can crack open in seconds.

Da Techguy points out that this applies to areas other than mere medicines:

When my youngest was about 3 he had an annoying habit of crawling out his bedroom window and onto the roof.

We tried taping the windows, locking the windows etc. Nothing worked. Finally we had a window company come in. They brought in a window and set it up in the Kitchen, and said it was “full of wonderful safety features that children wouldn’t be able to circumvent.”

If you have kids of your own, your immediate thought is probably “Hah!” And, of course, you are correct.

“Always,” says Donna B., “read the Amazon reviews.” If she had, she’d have been spared this experience:

The book I bought — Intervention [by Robin Cook] — garnered 62 (out of 99 total) 1 star reviews. At least one of those reviewers said it got one star because Amazon doesn’t allow zero stars. Several reviewers echoed my thought exactly: The worst book I’ve ever read.

It occurs to me that had every other reviewer given the book five stars, the overall average would be only about two and a half.

Which is the whole point of the NBA preseason: to see who’s going to be in the rotation, and who’s hungry enough to fight for minutes. The score — Thunder 97, Bobcats 93 — is almost irrelevant, unless perhaps you’re Jeff Green, in which case thank you for 25 of those Thunder points, or Serge Ibaka, in which case you got your first-ever NBA start (at center, both Nenad Krstić and Nick Collison being unwell) and a double-double in so doing.

What will matter to Scott Brooks, I suspect, is the fact that Charlotte failed to come up with a field goal in the last half of the fourth quarter, which means that the second (and third) units put up some decent defense. Although I expect what he’ll talk about at practice was how the ‘Cats erased a 12-point OKC lead in the third quarter.

Next outing is Friday against Miami at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, which will be the only Thunder preseason game on television. Imagine that.

Kate Winslet, who turned 35 this week, is the antithesis of the waif. The picture is okay, but the quotation is choice:

Which reminds me of when Kate Moss was pregnant, and Jay Leno snarked: “Of course, now she’s eating for one.”

The blog query of the ages:

[A]re there any rules around how to hyperlink a sentence? For the last 11 years, I have always wondered if I should treat the hyperlink like a parenthesis. What I mean is, do I include the period in the hyperlink or should I place it outside of the hyperlink? I have no clue.

My thinking — my actual implementation is something else entirely — is that if the hyperlink is a complete sentence, or if it completes a sentence, the period goes with it.

Where I run into trouble is the Fark Blurb of the Week. Fark headlines don’t end with periods. After agonizing over this for entirely too long, I decided to end the link where it’s supposed to end, and hang a period off the edge to create the illusion of an Actual Sentence.

A brand-new car loses somewhere around 20 percent of its value the moment it’s driven off the lot with a new title, and unless somewhere down the line it’s deemed “collectible,” the value will continue to dwindle to essentially nothing.

Except this year:

I posted earlier about how Cash-for-Clunkers, by driving up the values of used cars, would hit Rhode Islanders because Rhode Island municipalities tax car ownership based on the Blue Book value at December 31 of the prior year.

We just received our tax bill for this fiscal year, and three of our four cars rose in value for tax purposes, even though the cars are a year older.

Rather a lot, in the case of one of them:

The largest percentage gain was in a 2000 Honda Odyssey with over 200,000 miles on it, which is on death watch. The value rose from $2,800 to $3,849, costing us an extra $44.12.

Geez. I wonder if my car (just as old, but not quite so used) is worth 37 percent more than it was last year. Since I didn’t actually check it last year, though, I can’t really run a comparison. (Still, $5,840 seems a bit high, even allowing for condition, which is, as the record-raters say, mint-minus to VG+.)

Having fulfilled my pledge to the Boobie-Thon, I was definitely in the mood for something like this:

All good conservatives know that unlike GM and Chrysler, Ford declined the government tit. They were also the only one of the Big Three that made significant profit, even though they declined the money Obama was handing out.

Which is not to say they are anti-tit. In fact, Ford Motor Company is very much pro-tit.

Evidence of same.

(Tweeted by Robert Stacy McCain.)

Jenn questions that whole Higher Education Bubble business promoted by the Instant Man and others for the last couple of months:

It’s true that education costs are rising much faster than the rate of inflation, much like housing prices a couple years ago, but from what I have seen the increase in cost is mainly at private schools — both the “elite” Ivy League schools, and at schools like the University of Phoenix.

The Ivy degree, she says, is valuable mostly for access:

With Harvard or Yale on your diploma you are essentially guaranteed access to jobs in the upper levels of government or access to those who take them. That is a valuable commodity and will always be so.

Then again, there are gatekeepers way down here in the Real World too:

The for-profit schools … also provide access, but of a much different sort. They just get you past the idiot HR people, if you are lucky. Their cost is rising because a college degree has become a screening tool for almost every job and there is no access to the state run university systems for most of the people who attend these schools. The managers at these schools have recognized this and are churning out graduates in a very small number of fields very quickly … Unfortunately the market has now been flooded with marginally qualified graduates of courses in Business Administration or Information Services.

And market imbalances tend to be self-correcting in time. Meanwhile, your best buy might well be Obscure State University.

I suspect that if my bank made me jump through these hoops on a regular basis, I’d probably react similarly:

Each month I had to take additional steps to confirm my identity. A process that included:

1. An attempt to log in.
2. A request for a “one-time” security code.
3. Checking my e-mail.
4. Obtaining my code.
5. A second attempt to log in with the security code.
6. Finally, logging in.
7. Changing my password.

At one point, he said something not particularly unprintable, and decided to use that something for his new password. For some mysterious reason, this did not improve the operation of the user interface.

Although I suspect the bank would never have noticed it had he rendered it in 1337-speak: “PhU(|<(|-|4$3666.”

David Fleming, in ESPN The Magazine, on the last thing an athlete ever wants to happen:

The ability to deflect signals from the brain that say, “We’re tired, this is dangerous, we should stop,” is a common trait among elite athletes. In a rather cruel twist of fate, though, that same quality also makes them more susceptible to crapping their pants. Jocks are taught to ignore pain and fight through fatigue, and they often mistake the rectum’s initial accommodation response as a sign of total control over the area.

On the other hand, when you gotta go … well, you know the rest.

(Via TrueHoop.)

I’m assuming it’s windy out: Andrew Ian Dodge is offering a Gale Carnival of the Vanities this week, the 394th in the series.

Then again, who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I. I, however, will toss up something you can see: this vintage (not sure of the year) semi-glam shot of Gale Sondergaard, who was tested for the role of the Wicked Witch of the West in MGM’s The Wizard of Oz, but decided not to take it, reportedly because she feared the makeup it would take to make her hideous on screen might actually make her hideous in real life. Margaret Hamilton wound up with the role of a lifetime, but Sondergaard managed to keep looking like this for a while:

To make this fit both the template and the post conceit, this photo has been resized to a width of 394 pixels. (Click to embiggen, though it’s still none too huge.)

Who knew? The 800-lb gorilla wants to be in charge of the delicate matter of computer health:

Microsoft is calling for infected PCs to be quarantined from the internet, with access denied unless they can produce a ‘health certificate’.

In a position paper published this week, Scott Charney, the company’s corporate vice president for trustworthy computing, argues that the world needs a common health policy that would prevent malware-infected machines from connecting to the internet.

“This approach involves implementing a global collective defense of internet health much like what we see in place today in the world of public health,” he explains.

I dunno. I’m more of a Darwinian in this matter: after your third $175 trip to Best Buy to fumigate your $400 PC because you clicked on some stupid-ass link, or some link sent you by a stupid ass, there’s at least a small chance that you’ll realize that you’re just not suited for this environment, and you can crawl back onto the sofa with the remote control and veg out in peace.

The usual “Buy a Mac” crowd will refrain from chiming in here, because they don’t want you either.

(Via SteveF at Daily Pundit, who observes: “It’s pretty rich for near-monopoly purveyors of crap to blame users for having crap.”)

Yesterday’s photos from Diary of a Nudist [warning page from Google, plus your work filters are gonna choke] followed the theme “What’s on your ‘to-do’ list?” Lots of naked people, of course, but instead of just sitting there soaking up the Vitamin D, they’re engaged in actual work.

Second photo down, a young lady is tossing a bit of rubbish into the bin adjoining the parking area; the vehicle nearest to her is a Matrix. A Hyundai Matrix.

“It didn’t look like a Toyota,” I said to myself, and after a bit of Bingage, I arrived at the heart of the matter: Hyundai’s Matrix is the Euroversion of the Lavita, a mini-MPV that’s not sold over here. Toyota, meanwhile, sells no Matrixes (Matrices?) in Europe.

This is not the first time Hyundai has used a nameplate that you might have seen elsewhere, either; their little i30 wagon, unrelated to anything Infiniti ever sold with an I30 badge, is popular in Europe and Australia, and is establishing a presence in the States as the Elantra Touring.

That said, if you look at that same photo and say “I thought he said there was a car in this picture,” it’s okay with me.