"Of course it's not big, said Molda to Millda / that's one of the salient features of wrens"

[larryhammer]

As promised, some links from all over:

• Some people have been using fake license plates to give enemies tickets by automatic speeding cameras. (via)
  
  
• GoogleMaps makes mutually assured distruction that much more fun: Ground Zero. (via)
  
  
• Autumn in Japan: photographs.
  
  
• How to cite restroom graffiti, and other things you've always wanted the PMLA to tell you about. (via)
  
  
• These bits of Waveform jewelry are geeky cool. (via)
  
  
• The mechanism of a 7x7x7 Rubic's cube revealed. (via)
  
  
• Don't fall down the blue hole, no matter how beautiful. (via)
  
  
• Gotta say, this is a pretty heart-shaped map of the NYC subway system. (via)
  
  
• More from Michael Lewis on "The End of the Financial World as We Know It," parts one and two. (via)

And in local news, all of LiveJournal's engineers have been laid off, leaving this place on bare life-support. Joy.

ETA: Other reports say, contra this article, that it was "only" 13 instead of 20 who were laid off. ETA2: Officially, less than 20% of the total workforce was laid off.

---L.

Comments

[maryosmanski.livejournal.com]

I/We received our very first traffic ticket via camera a couple of months ago. [Small town denizen that I am, I'd never heard of such a thing prior to this event!] It just happens to have come from someplace in suburban Maryland, but the entire rear half of the vehicle was in the two photos, and it was obviously my car. I'm not sure whether to say "I" or "we," since the car is registered in my name, but my husband was the driver on this occasion.

What annoys me is that this happened while we were lost, driving around on totally unfamiliar roads, trying to locate an address we had been to once before and thought we knew how to find. Preoccupied as we were with trying to figure where we were and how to get back to some setting we recognized, we totally failed to notice we apparently were driving past a public school where the speed limit was 25 mph. One reason we didn't notice the school is that it was close to sunset on a Saturday afternoon.

I wish we'd been stopped by a policeman instead of merely photographed. 1) He could have told us where we were and how to get where we wanted to be, and 2) between our "we're from out of state and we're totally lost," explanation and the fact it was a day when the school was not in session, I do think we might have gotten off with a warning instead of a ticket.

(Can you tell that I am still peeved about this incident?)

[larryhammer]

Traffic cameras are a bit controversial here -- accidents have been markedly down since starting to use them state-wide, but people spend a lot of time complaining about having to obey the law. If more of them, as you point out, that it prevents law enforcement from exercising due judgment, I'd have more sympathy.

And, of course, one reason they're popular among law enforcement agencies is they increase revenue.

---L.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/no_lj_ads/83519.html

This makes it look less grim. I will still be very, very pissed if LJ goes belly up.

[packbat.livejournal.com]

Holy crap, those speeding ticket dudes are only eight miles from where I live!

[larryhammer]

Hee!

---L.