(no subject)

In response to a comment about meeting me for the first time, BrandNewGun said

I thought you might be scary, and you're not at all.

Now, I understand that I have somewht scary hair and I can be a tad argumentative online, but I've discovered that this is a frequent event in my life - people expect me to be scary if they've seen me at a distance/read my journal before meeting me.

Can someone please explain why?

Morning!

I just slept for 7 hours and 45 minutes. I didn't wake up for an hour and fail to get back to sleep. I didn't wake up with my teeth in agony. I'm yawning like hell, but I actually feel _awake_ and more importantly _alive_ for the first time in about three weeks.

I actually felt like writing an LJ entry, which I haven't actually felt inclined to do in at least a week.

Hopefully work will go better too - I could do with the enthusiasm.

Meaning

Overe here Green_Amber talks about life and it's lack of meaning and puts things into words at least as well as I could. So I joined in.

Scary

A brief analysis of misperception by news network here.

In a series of polls from May through September, the researchers discovered that large minorities of Americans entertained some highly fanciful beliefs about the facts of the Iraqi war. Fully 48 percent of Americans believed that the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Another 22 percent thought that we had found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And 25 percent said that most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. Sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of these bits of dubious knowledge; 8 percent believed all three.

The researchers then asked where the respondents most commonly went to get their news. The fair and balanced folks at Fox, the survey concludes, were "the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions." Eighty percent of Fox viewers believed at least one of these un-facts; 45 percent believed all three. Over at CBS, 71 percent of viewers fell for one of these mistakes, but just 15 percent bought into the full trifecta. And in the daintier precincts of PBS viewers and NPR listeners, just 23 percent adhered to one of these misperceptions, while a scant 4 percent entertained all three.

Polling

Some of you UK people may have noticed that YouGov is being quoted by more and more newspaper articles as a source of statistics. What you may not realise is that it's online.

If you'd like to be a pollster for them, go here and make sure you're heard...

Review

William Gibson's Cyberspace series

Quite proud of this one.

Fabulous Physics

Some amazing animations. Particularly the water ones and the collapsing buddhas. Here. Oh and you'll need broadband.

Ce Soir

Ed phoned at 6pm to ask me if I wanted to see Finding Nemo at 6:20. I made it to the cinema by 6:25, but failed to get hold of Erin (who was in M&S) so me and Ed went for dinner. Erin arrived halfway through, so we finished up and made it to the 7:30 performance.

It rocked. I'd been expecting it to be 'ok' after all the reviews, but instead it kicked major ass.

If I didn't have 17 other films I wanted to see, I'd go see it again.

And now to bed,

Video Night - alas

Ed's been volunteering at a volunteer cafe called The Forest, helping with renovation of their new place. They open tomorrow and having a party.

As Guy, Erin and Ed aren't going to be there, I'm calling off video night for this week and going along myself. Sorry for the late notice.

And Khi, yes, you're still welcome to crash. Just let me know when you're arriving.