Email: Radicals' poisoned roots [CM]

"Radicals" are usually "extremists" in sheep's clothing -- and extremists (in the name of any cause) by definition have lost their perspective.

Email: Netflix Support

Title request: Broken Bridges (2006)

You provide listings for all other movies in current release so people can rate them on premiere, why not this one?

Press: Dating and mating rituals ... decoded - MSN

“Pretty much all courtship postures fall into two categories: Attempts to look big and attempts to look little,” she explains. Traditionally, men generally try to look big, or “loom,” while women try to look small, or “crouch.” The direction someone’s feet are pointing can also convey interest: Smitten women turn pigeon-toed; men pivot outward. “Feet can be a real giveaway,” says Dr. Fisher. “People are quite conscious of their body and hands, but forget to control their feet.”

Email: I Am Curious (Veggie Tales) [MG]

I have a confession to make: This morning I added two Veggie Tales discs to my Netflix queue that [my son] didn't want to see, just because I figured I'd want to see them sometime myself (Jonah plus Lyle the Kindly Viking).

Poetry: The Clause - C.K. Williams

(via The Writer's Almanac)

Poem: 'The Clause' by C.K. Williams from The Singing. (c) Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

This entity I call my mind, this hive of restlessness,
this wedge of want my mind calls self,
this self which doubts so much and which keeps reaching,
keeps referring, keeps aspiring, longing, towards some state
from which ambiguity would be banished, uncertainty expunged; [...]"

Technology: Talking pirate skull

This is what happens when nerds operate independently of reality.

Press: Virtual orchestra strikes a note - BBC

BBC NEWS - Virtual orchestra strikes a note: "The public has been invited to take part in what has been described as the first virtual orchestra.

Plastic cubes, attached to a light and a speaker, have been laid out on a full size orchestra stage outside the Royal Festival Hall on London's South Bank.

Sitting on a cube activates a musical note and as more people sit down, more of the score is revealed."

(This makes me very afraid for the future of the arts -- and (oh, the) humanity!)

Ads: SitePal

A Technorati search displays an ad for SitePal that depicts one of a series of female virtual hosts (head and shoulders, nicely drawn) who speaks, "Please type a message in the text box and let me say it." Part of my creativity involves coming up with questions (or answers) that no one else does; but part of it involves knowing what most people will come up with. So the irony of these well-done ads is that the first thing most men online at night are going to type in to hear from one of these sultry sirens is "Please f--- me now" -- and the next thing she says (remember, this is a business ad not a fantasy plaything) with a wink and a flip is, "I can work for you 24 hours a day with no need for food or sleep!"

Neologisms: titch

Tiniest increment possible (of cream added to coffee, etc.).

(My sister has used this for years but it's not in the M-W so I'll include it here -- with no claim as my own. Sometime I'll attempt a comparison of dimunitive terms such as smidgen, squidgin, tit, tat, tad, titch, and so on. By the way, there's evidence of the British use of titchy.)

Neologisms: squidgin

A tiny or miniscule amount; probably less than a tad and certainly a titch. (Google shows only 50 pre-existing instances of the word.)

Internet: Red Planet myths

Beware of a PowerPoint file that's been floating around for three years (every August, since it lacks a year, and its senders lack a squidgin of the brain that remembers news stories) and contains inaccuracies.

Internet: Miss Farad poem

Miss Farad was pretty and sensual
And charged to a reckless potential;
But a rascal named Ohm
Conducted her home --
Her decline was, alas, exponential.

Internet: Free puppy

(I don't know the source of this puppy but I’d swear that’s Billy Bob Thornton's offspring!)