what have you done with spock's brain!?

News
For NASA, Misjudgments Led to Latest Shuttle Woes Oh, the incompetence. NASA needs some new, l33t engineers in a bad way. Before anyone else DIES.

Virginia church burned, vandalized following General Synod actions"Anti-gay hatred appears to be the motive in an arson attempt on a UCC church near Staunton, Va...."

Pro-gay marriage amendment focuses on religious freedom This is, doubtless, going to go exactly nowhere in Ohio, but it's a good thought, if many clergy really are concerned that legal same-sex civil marriage would require them to perform marriages of which they do not approve, which, as the article points out, is not the case now... See, Religious Right? Separation of Church and State can be good for you, too! Thanks for the link, griffen

Astronomers detect '10th planet'
SURVEY!! If you could name this planet, what would you call it?


For German geeks
Online Grimms Fairytales This is a rather nice page with some of the better-known tales available in German and English, with illustrations from different editions. At some point I'm going to make icons or something else subversive with them. I think there's amusing photoshop remix potential there-- too bad I suck at photoshop.

German films at Internet Archive You can now download two classic silent German Expressionist films-- "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," which, while the plot is not that fantastic, it looks seriously cool. The surreal, exaggerated sets are really something, and you don't see anything remotely like this these days. "The Golem" is also very cool-looking, though rather strange as compared to the traditional Golem stories. Also, while one of the reviewers claims that it's not anti-Semitic, I think that's open for debate. Possibly he just means it's not bad for the time in which it was made (1920...). As the reviewer does note, the creators of the film didn't really know what they were talking about, and I'd be fascinated to see what the original German intertitles looked like-- I've seen two different translations, and the newer version on the DVD definitely seemed to have fewer dodgy undertones in it, which makes me think the translators decided to sanitize it a bit... In any case, it's an interesting film, albeit not the Golem story I was looking for.

Miscellaneous Amusement
DISAPPEARING CIVIL LIBERTIES MUG Sadly funny.
A pallative for the last one: splodefromcute OD on cute animal pictures.
LJ icon of the day
check out the HAIR HAX0RIZING FORMULA I don't know where Shanmonster got this, but it is funny.
Vorkosigan fans! There's GURPS Vorkosigan!This would be a pretty cool 'verse to play around in.</a> Must get more people who live near me to read these...
dafont.com Excellent free font site. Thanks, greenwitch


And now, I have made a bunch of lj icons. I'm not terribly adept at this, but I enjoy it, and thought I'd share. Want, take, have. Credit if you're so inclined.

Thanks to bonuspoints for Spock's Brain caps and inspiration.






I can't think of the right text for these... can you? (of course, many are funny enough on their own...)








(you know, I did not need my brain to go to that last place. But now it has. *scrubs brain in vain* brain, what is brain? ugh.)



(to the, like, three people who'd get this: Is it readable? Do you like it? The image is off one of the merchandise sites. The problem with books is there's very little visual material to work with, though there're plenty of good quotes. Ideas? I've never been that fond of the cover art, at least not the US versions I have.)