For some reason, this photo-comic in which “Mr. Miyagi” (played by Pat Morita in the Karate Kid movies) gives mad props to Barack Obama amuses me to no end. I decided to enhance it by adding a caption to the bottom":
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What’s on these Presidents’ Minds
Click the photo to see it at full size.
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Help Daniela!
Pictured above are Daniela and her three children: Daniela (age 9), Brandon (age 6) and Evelyn (age 4). Daniela and her family are in a difficult situation, and David Armano (VP Experience Design at Critical Mass, a Chicago-based marketing and design agency) is trying to rally some help for her.
Daniela is a Romanian immigrant who divorced her husband after years of physical abuse. Her youngest daughter Evelyn has Down Syndrome. She makes very little money cleaning houses and lost her house when her mortgage went unpaid.
David and his family have taken Daniela and her family into their home. They’re trying to get her an apartment through a fundraising drive. The goal is to collect at least US$5,000 so that she doesn’t have to worry about rent or a deposit while trying to improve her situation.
Here’s a photo taken inside David’s garage that shows everything that Daniela owns in the world:
David wrote in his blog post about about Daniela that he understand that getting donations in these tough economic times is difficult. In spite of that, he’s asking people to make donate even just a little money to help Daniela out.
I would argue that in times like this, it’s even more important to make an effort to perform acts of kindness. Pulling together and helping each other, especially those of us who are most vulnerable, is how we’ll all ride out the Credit Crunch. As Douglas Rushkoff wrote in his essay Riding Out the Credit Collapse:
The more we are willing to do for each other on our own terms and for compensation that doesn’t necessarily involve the until-recently-almighty dollar, the less vulnerable we are to the movements of markets that, quite frankly, have nothing to do with us.
As of my writing this, David’s campaign has raised over $9,000 for Daniela. Even though he’s raised nearly twice the target amount for Daniela, I would still suggest that you make a donation if you can. $5,000 isn’t going to last very long, and with three kids, Daniela will have expenses other than rent to worry about.
To make a donation to Daniela’s fund, click here to see David Armano’s blog article.
[Thanks to Jay Goldman, whose Twitter message led me to David Armano’s blog.]
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The Missing Months, Restored
A photo posted back in July 2004.
I’ve moved this blog from server to server and blogging platform to blogging platform over the past seven years. In the process of moving its contents about, the archives from May through October 2004 went missing. After looking about my backup files for months, I found and restored them, and you’ll find them in the “Archives” links in the sidebar.
Notable articles from the “Missing Months” include:
- Appearing in Today’s “Globe and Mail” (October 23, 2004): In which my engagement to the Ginger Ninja gets published in Canada’s National Newspaper.
- Non-Academic Lessons I Learned at Crazy Go Nuts University:
- Lesson 1: There are Three Kinds of Men in the World.
- Lesson 2: Ten Incredibly Valuable Things I Learned from my Good Buddy George
- Lesson 3: Chemistry Really Isn’t My Area of Expertise
- The Breakup Style of PowerPoint (July 30, 2004): Edward Tufte wrote about how PowerPoint’s misuse is killing presentations; I write about how it might be changing the way we break up.
- Granddad’s Blog Entry (May 31, 2004): A couple of entries from my grandfather’s diary – a decalogue of his personal principles written in 1935 and a letter to himself he wrote in 1938.
- Almost 30 Years Later and I Still Don’t Belong (May 26, 2004): Some jackass on a right-wing blog says that immigrants have no idea what it means to be a real Canadian; I tell some personal stories that say otherwise.
First, there were the Twitter phishing attacks that looked like direct messages from your friends offering you a chance to win an iPhone. Now some big-shot Twitter accounts appear to have been accessed by pranksters: FOX News’, CNN’s Rick Sanchez’ and Britney Spears’ accounts have all had tweets posted to them by unauthorized parties.
These tweets have since been deleted, but their images have been saved in a number of places, including a Flickr photoset by Mat Honan and on TechCrunch.
Here’s an image of the unauthorized post on Britney’s Twitter account. The pusillanimous bowlderizers over at TechCrunch blurred out the word “vagina” in their screenshot of the posting, but we don’t do that sort of thing here at Global Nerdy:
Click the screenshot to see the full version on its Flickr page.
Michael Arrington, you big girl’s blouse, they use the word “vagina” on prime time TV – for starters, on Family Guy. Also, thanks to Britney’s now legendary bad judgement and celebrity blogs, we’ve all seen said vagina anyway [link not safe for work!].
Here’s the unauthorized post on Rick Sanchez’ Twitter account:
Click the screenshot to see the full version on its Flickr page.
And my favourite, the unauthorized post on FOX News’ Twitter account that tells the shocking truth of about falafel-and-loofah fetishist and screaming head Bill O’Reilly:
Click the screenshot to see the full version on its Flickr page.
Anyhow, you might not be a celebrity, but it still might be a good idea to update your Twitter password if it’s something easily cracked, like a word that can be found in the dictionary.
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Why I Hate Having Multiple Chats
It’s because I always end up typing the wrong message in the wrong chat window. So far, I haven’t done anything as embarrassing as the ChaCha guide below, but I’m not going to tempt fate…
Screen capture courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
Here’s a gem that Torontoist found: an except from a 1974 travelogue featuring Steve Martin called The Funnier Side of Eastern Canada:
Younger readers may not be familiar with this incarnation of Steve Martin, who was then best known as a stand-up comedian specializing in absurdist routines. This is pre-Man with Two Brains, pre-The Jerk, pre-King Tut (“Buried with a donkey! / He’s my favourite honky!”), and even pre-“Crazy Czech brothers” Steve Martin improvising his way across the city – I’d love to see the rest of the film sometime.