The ever-popular 'miscellany'

I stayed home from work tonight because O Joy Unbounded, I woke up vertiginous. It seems to've faded after a nap (after all the dog-wrangling in the disgusting heat here) so no worries, but I was pretty sure it wasn't going to go away in time for me to drive safely/comfortably to work, and being at work wouldn't have mitigated anything either. So here I am with a couple of questions and some interesting links:

• Anybody out there a member of Netflix?
• Anybody out there a fan of The Wild Wild West, with a good memory of the details of the show?
• Anybody out there conversant with the mechanics of semi hitches?

Stuff I picked up by way of lyellian:

Date in jail for drugging beer / Quick-thinking S.F. pair nail man slipping his companion a mickey

...and what's worse is he tried it twice!

'Bitch Ph.D.' reports Frenchdoc's incredible conversation

At least the guy admits some shade of wrongdoing... it's a start.

Randomly acquired:

Study: Disney Films, TV Darken Elderly

By the time children enter elementary school, they already hold a negative view of older adults... Last year, the [Brigham Young U.] team analyzed depictions of older characters in cartoons from public TV and cable networks. They discovered many of the characters were angry, senile, crazy, wrinkled, ugly and/or overweight. "The most negative older characters in the Disney animated films were the villains," said lead author Tom Robinson, an associate professor in BYU's Department of Communications.

[the films and TV shows] ...portrayed older females in a particularly negative light, while older male characters tended to fill authority roles, such as that of clergyman, ruler and mentor.

"Snow White" had the most elderly characters, with an average of 3.8 such characters in subsequent films. Eighty-three percent of Disney's elderly characters were Caucasian, 9 percent Asian, 1 percent African American, 7 percent Native American and Pacific Islander and no older Hispanic characters.

They forgot to point out the incredible depth of sexism on the way to the ageism... with just a soupçon of racism.

Cars Create Wireless Network

The system uses a vehicle's onboard computer, GPS, low-cost sensors, custom software written by the UCLA team, and existing wireless channels.

In recent experiments, the researchers used the standard protocol that allows laptops, for example, to connect wirelessly to the Internet. The typical range is between 330 to 990 feet.

In the near future, vehicles will switch to the Dedicated Short Range Communications standard being developed by the Department of Transportation. This signal, which has a range of up to 3,300 feet, will allow high-speed communications between vehicles or between vehicles and the roadside.

The software written by the UCLA team locates its own car and the cars it wants to talk to, selects the strongest signals, determines if any of the drivers should have priority (emergency workers might, for example), and organizes the various data being exchanged.

This reminds me of a system a friend of SeleneSue's and Jared's was working on several years ago now. As I remember it, It would allow convoyed trucks to link together virtually with a computer-controlled system using a form of radar for distance measurement, so they could travel together as closely as train cars without having to deal with human reaction time.

*spittake*

( Many, many things I found laugh-out-loud funny, especially at 04:45ish. )