Delicious LiveJournal Links for 7-24-2008

• Mortgage advisers 'are failing'
  The Consumers' Association researchers posed as customers when visiting 50 banks, independent advisers and estate agents. They found that just four gave advice to an acceptable standard, with 41 failing to provide at least one key piece of information.
  (tags: finance mortgages capitalism regulation)
• Lesbos locals lose lesbian appeal
  "An Athens court ruled there was no justification for their contention that they felt slighted, saying the word did not define the islanders' identity."
  (tags: lesbians greece law)
• iPhone Impressions
  Helped me make up my mind about it. It'd better - but it's not ready for me yet.
  (tags: iphone mobile_phones technology)
• Petition to: not support a state funeral for Baroness Thatcher.
  Sign here.
  (tags: thatcher politics uk)
• Solar power from Saharan sun could provide Europe's electricity
  A tiny rectangle superimposed on the Sahara represents an area slightly smaller than Wales but it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and Middle East deserts to meet all of Europe's energy needs.
  (tags: electricity solarpower)
• McMorning Las Vegas, here's the news
  News shows with product placement. Huzzah for America!
  (tags: advertising tv news usa)

Spinny head of death!

Off work today, having woken up with a headache and a head that wouldn't stop spinning whenever I tried to get vertical. As I wasn't out drinking last night, this seems terribly unfair.

Stuck at home for the day, I have at least been amused by such things as the Wasp Knife:

which is a knife with a gas cannister in the handle. Strick it into a shark (watermelon, hoodie, or any other large animal), press the button, and voila, instant death. Isn't technology great?

Wall-E

In which an lonely, obsessive nerd meets a sleek, driven woman, and charms her through the power of old musicals.

Well, no, not really.

But the best review I've seen so far is the one here.

And yes, I cried at the end.

All Knowledge is somewhere on my friends list

Two questions:
1) Do swans have friends?
Or rather, do birds have friends? I know that some mate for life, so they can clearly tell the difference between each other - but do swans actually have 'buddies' that they will spend more time with, help out, etc? Do birds even _need_ helping out? Or are birds rugged individualists?

2) Plot Recognition
I recently finished "Instructions for Living Someone Else's Life" - which had the plotline "Person goes out drinking in 1988, aged 25, wakes up in 2006, aged 46, married, with a terrible job, etc. He then tries to deal with the fact that life hasn't gone how he thought it would, and deal with this strange world he's woken up in, or find a way back home." Which is kind-of Life On Mars in reverse, but it strikes me as such an obvious plot that someone must have done it before - but I can't think of _where_. Anyone?

Comics roundup

Sacrelicious!



Also - this is not me:

and neither is this:

This, however, very much is: