Rowan Tree and Red Thread

While I deplore the waste of fossil fuels inherent in car ownership and caused by speeding I have to respect this woman.

I wonder if she's got a lady's driver's insurance rebate? And how long she'll hold on to it if she drives like that?

[from Boing Boing.]

From pyat by way of doc_mystery

1. Total number of books I own: Who knows? It's over a thousand, but I can't be sure of the exact figure. There are a few hundred books at my mother's house that belong to me but I haven't managed to move out.

2. Last book I bought: An Amazon order, so there's several books: Sethra Lavode by Steven Brust, Storm Front by Jim Butcher, The Owl Service by Alan Garner, Time-gifts (Writings from an Unbound Europe) by Zoran Zivkovic and Kinds of Minds: The Origins Of Consciousness by Daniel Dennett.

3. Last book I read: Storm Front by Jim Butcher. The first of several books by Butcher about Harry Dresden, a John Constantine-like figure with Chandler private eye stylings, who works as a wizard in the peculiar occult world in Chicago. Pretty good, and interesting enough to make me look for other books in the series.

4. Five books that I have read a lot or mean a lot to me, for whatever reason:

• Douglas Hoftsader's Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, for a delightful romp through more topics than I can remember and provoking many odd thoughts.


• Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, for being the book it is.


• Lois McMaster Bujold's Komarr, for introducing me to Bujold's work, Miles Vorkosigan and a beautiful mix of space opera and romance.


• Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained, for clarifying a lot of questions about cognition and consciousness, and providing me with endless snippets to bother Sam with while we read in bed.


• and whatever it is I'm enthused about at the moment, varying day by day.

5: Five suckers/friends who can answer these questions for themselves, if they like:

You know the drill. Sort it out amongst yourselves.

Walking back from the doctor's today I stopped for a moment and enjoyed the sky. It was blue like childhood summers, with no clouds that I could see. High up, two birds flew circles around each other and left me dizzy. Hello sky!

The BBC have a test to see how good you are at spotting fake smiles.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/surveys/smiles/index.shtml

There's a short video clip for each question so it will take a while if you're on dial up.

I got 15/20 right, so I'm better at it than I thought I was. Unfortunately it doesn't tell me what the average result is so I can't lord it over everyone else.

I am TECSOL A-2. Great.

TECSOL A-2 Solvent, Anhydrous: You are an industrial solvent marketed as TECSOL Special Industrial Solvent by Eastman Chemical Company. You are available as both 95% and anhydrous. You are denatured with methyl alcohol and methyl isobutyl ketone. Find out what kind of industrial solvent you are

You are an quiz-taker Find out what kind of quiz-taker you are

Obviously. I suppose I should take the hint.