Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

In the false but pervasive spirit of holiday affirmative action, I bring you:

• Singing Hanukah candles (click on each candle)
• Singing reindeer (click on each reindeer)
• And a Kwanza chant (light the candles in the right order)

But we all know that this is actually the Christmas season, no matter how many minor holidays we try to include from religions that really would rather not be a party to the national shopping spree. You can keep your Season’s Greetings and Happy Holidays. If you don’t want to specify the holiday, then how about saying something meaningful like Peace on Earth? Nobody objects to that one.

Fines are the price of parking in Boston, and now you can pay your fines with toys. Thanks to Seema for the link.

Browser of the Day: forget Firefox - Camino is up to 0.8.2.

InterfaceLIFT has nifty Mac icons plus instructions on changing your system icons manually for those of us too cheap to spring for CandyBar.

Geek link of the day: free programming books (via Weblog Tools Collection)

I firmly believe that the best things in life are sugar, salt, and fat. Sugar is the gas that makes your body run, salt is an essential mineral without which you’d keel over, and fat…well, fat just tastes good. Salt gets a bad rap, though. We wince in horror when Emeril tosses a handful of it into his latest recipe, we scold people who eat it straight from the shaker (take my word for it on this one), and we feel potato chip guilt—because we know the lowly potato chip is nothing more than a vehicle for the administration of the forbidden mineral.

But I’ll never turn down a potato chip again, because salt is actually completely harmless for the majority of munchers. Earlier this year, JunkScience reported on the Federal government’s ongoing and groundless
Salt Assault. I just spotted the news in their 2004 Junk Science Awards, where the salt assault placed at #9. Here’s the blurb, in their own words:

In early 2004, a panel of the National Academy of Science‚Äôs Institute of Medicine urged that the recommended daily allowance of sodium be drastically reduced by almost 40% and that the average American‚Äôs actual sodium consumption be slashed by more than 60% — even though 10 major studies conducted since 1995 have all concluded that lower sodium diets don‚Äôt produce health benefits and may pose risks for some. Why the extreme recommendation? Political correctness run amok. Read more…

I think I’ll break out the chips to celebrate.

[Update: I posted a longer version of this entry at GNXP, with a bonus link to Emeril’s malassadas recipe.]

But not my geeking. ZDNet UK has an article up about the inner workings of Google. Thanks to Weblog Tools Collection for the link.

• In the LiveJournal: five fanfic recs.
• Via Todd Dominey: Firefox in the news and the monacca bag
• Via Adam Kalsey: the Grapple - not a Frankenfood after all, just a marinated Fuji apple
• Via mezzoblue: stock xchng, a free photo site

Alert system of the day: The Onion’s Iraqi Terror Alert System

From SpaceWeather.com: early Tuesday morning the Moon will eclipse Jupiter. The occultation will be visible from the eastern two-thirds of North America.

Kate Mulgrew’s one-woman show “Tea at Five” will be playing at the Shubert Theatre from Tuesday through December 19th. Tickets range from expensive to twice as expensive.

I ought to have more time to blog post-nano, but somehow it all still disappears. Here’s a funny joke, though: Diary of a Madman’s Goon from rec.humor.funny.

It’s strange to wake up without 2,000 words hanging over my head. I didn’t write a thing today, but maybe tomorrow I’ll start in on the short story that I’ve wanted to write for a few weeks now.

I don’t hate the characters as much as I thought I would after spending four weeks with them. On the other hand, I think I’d have trouble writing fluff after 50,000 words of Serious Plot. I could write something short, gen, and episode-like, like “Revisions.” I enjoyed the Twilight Zone plot of that episode.