Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

The New York Times has an interesting article on Williams Syndrome, which concludes by contrasting sociability without intelligence to intelligence without sociability.

Here’s a timely lolcat from MacroCats.

UniversalHub has a photo of the line for iPhones at the Apple Store in the Cambridgeside Galleria.

Hashiwokakero, or Bridges, is a sudoku-like logic puzzle in which you have to connect all the islands with the number of bridges specified on each island. They have to go in straight horizontal or vertical lines, and you get a maximum of two bridges between any two islands. The solution must also be connected; that is, there has to be a path over the bridges from any island to any other island. For a sample solution, see the FAQ.

You create a bridge by clicking on one island and dragging to another, and a second bridge the same way. If you try to do a third bridge, you go back to zero bridges. You don’t actually have to drag all the way to the second island, just a little ways in one of the four possible directions. Click the Ready button to check your progress.

Now you’re addicted, too!

See the Big Dig in amazing Technicolor, thanks to Universal Hub.

By a series of unlikely links I came across Tofu, a nifty Mac application for reading text horizontally in columns. For some reason I’m not seeing the associated View in Columns service, but I’m not a big user of Services anyway.

Now if only it handled PDFs…

[Update]: I updated to Tofu 2.0 alpha, which does handle simple PDFs, and also noticed this in the Help:

The “View In Columns” service is only available if Tofu is in your Applications folder and you have logged out and back in since installing it. Also, not all applications support Services.

I was looking for new GeekPress fodder for Seema, and I found this quiz:

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

I spotted Stigma, a first novel by Philip Hawley, Jr., on the new book shelves at the library. Although I prefer science fiction, sometimes I can’t resist a medical thriller with a nice, juicy disease. The disease in question was a mysterious autoimmune-style reaction to (the reader must suspect) that new vaccine approach every other character in the novel is working on.

The medical side of the plot took some interesting twists and turns, but it was overshadowed by the more physical exploits of the ex-Navy SEAL emergency-room physician, his ex-girlfriend, and his mysterious nemesis. This was frustrating for me because when I read a medical thriller, I want the heros wearing biohazard gear and the extras bleeding out of their eyes. I’m not so interested in the hand-to-hand combat in South American jungles and the specially-modified Glocks.

Definitely at the point where the hero stops the imminent threat of worldwide contagion, he should be using his new vaccine rather than a block of C4. But if you like the heavy-handed ex-SEAL approach to epidemiology, then Stigma is for you.

Thanks to Amit Patel for posting the eLisp to give tabbar for emacs a prettier, more tab-like appearance, plus screenshots.

See my Tabbar post for how to set up Tabbar itself.

There are four more new drabbles on the Stargate page, mostly under Season Six. I’m not actually churning them out this fast; I just found three old S6 drabbles that I’d never posted.

Thanks to Jade for the beta!