A witty post title to keep you warm at night, 11/29/08

Link salad for you, while I consider my post, which I have appear to have forgotten how to write:

• In case you didn't see it, it's true: Cartoon Network has perpetrated the Final Rickroll. I like to think we'll look back on this as the beginning of a new era.


• For those of you with a political bent: the full text of Lawrence Summers' controversial address (the "women are less committed to science" speech) and an article, sadly not containing the full text, of the so-called "Summers memo". I have made my judgments on these issues and on Lawrence Summers, as much as I can for now, and ultimately, Summers' apparent sexism disappoints me, but I am grateful that he is not in a position where he has direct impact on the issues that is bound to render him blind to, and hopeful that it will not impact the considerable knowledge he brings to the board; I thought you might find these helpful. Wikipedia pages omitted because I just can't figure out how biased they are; the tone used could be that of a journalist with integrity or that of a dissembling apologist.


• To cleanse your palate after that, Language Log looks to be gearing up for a rumble. Over what, you ask? Why, over proper usage of the term "pentathlon". These are the sorts of things us nerds will cut you over.


• Britain deploys TV cameras designed to detect crimes before they happen. No, I'm not kidding, and no, I'm not happy. The system sounds ridiculous, and that's exactly my problem with it—what right do they have to pull this kind of maneuver on the populace at large? The quote about where money should be spent sums it up beautifully, but it does not adequately address my reaction to a story from two years ago about London Homicide's list of the 100 British people most likely to commit crimes. This wasn't a hypothetical list, either; this is a list of people that they were going to try to steer into counseling, or even possibly arrest. I have previously considered moving to the U.K., but this, combined with the "crime-detecting" CCTV systems as evidence against reformation in the two years since that article, give me pause. (Bonus silver lining: Enjoy the fact that concerns about excessive surveillance and invasion of privacy are raised in a quote from a man called an information commissioner.)


• And to wrap this one up: Just as we started with the ultimate expression of the Rickroll, we will end with the ultimate comeback to crude pickup lines.

That's all for now; my inability to write my post has now spread and metastasized, and I have found myself unable to operate simple Ctrl + commands. A better post with more original words when I return from sleep tomorrow morning.