Welcome to another Link-Friday. It’s been a while and some of my links are a little dated but hopefully they’ll bring you some enlightenment or enjoyment. With that disclaimer in place, here’s this week’s links.
Our first link is bitter-sweet. I am a huge fan of America’s space program. I have been EXTREMELY upset ever since President Obama canceled the human space program when he first entered office. (Granted, he did a little back pedaling and chose to reinstate some of it when the political backlash – Florida’s electoral votes come in pretty handy – seemed to become quite severe.) I won’t lie: I was looking forward to President Bush’s plan to return to the moon. I was way too young to remember the last time we went to the moon and I really was looking forward to us going back while my children were still young enough that it might inspire them and their career path. But, enough nostalgic ramblings… Oh, wait… Everything about this link is a nostalgic rambling. Anyway, Space Shuttle Discovery was turned over to the National Air and Space Museum this week. Here’s a link to the blow-by-blow account of the gutting and destruction of Discovery so that she will never be able to fly ever again. Every time I hear of a beautiful flying machine that is intentionally injured in such a way that it won’t fly again it really hurts my heart – especially when the ship has many years of life left in her.
Our next link is to a Lifehacker article about how to become a more effective complainer. The reason that I chose to highlight this link is that it actually helped me to make a little headway with an ongoing battle I am currently having with my health insurance concerning an operation that my son needs. Though my results were not perfect, maybe it will be able to help you a little.
During my Links-R-Us, Vol. 7 post I included a link about a blogger who was fined $2.5 Million dollars for disparaging an investment firm and its’ lead partner. Since posting the link to the article about this, I have run across the following articles concerning the real reason this blogger was fined so heavily. It wasn’t about being protected by journalism laws. It seems to be about stealing someone’s reputation by registering domain names and accounts in the other persons name and then filling them with bad press in an attempt to market protective services to them… This person even went as far as to try to disparage the three-year-old daughter of the author of the second link. I was sorely mistaken in my defense of this person. (Even as I write this I wonder if I’m not painting a target on my back.) It just goes to show that you can’t always trust a national news source to tell the whole story…
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/04/02/ugly-new-reputation-smearing-tactic-going-after-a-toddlers-internet-footprint/
http://randazza.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/judge-rules-again-that-blogger-crystal-cox-is-not-a-journalist-you-know-why-because-she-isnt-a-journalist/
http://randazza.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/judge-rules-again-that-blogger-crystal-cox-is-not-a-journalist-you-know-why-because-she-isnt-a-journalist/
My next link is to a story about a Rube Goldberg device that takes 300 steps to pop a balloon. Wow! 300 steps! That’s totally amazing. For those who don’t know, a Rube Goldberg device is something that is ridiculously complex to perform an insanely simple task. The devices are named for a cartoonist that drew complex machines that did simple things. Humans, in their attempts to alleviate their boredom thought, “Hey, we could do that for fun…” Thus, Rube Goldberg devices started to become a reality. They’re actually pretty cool to watch when they work. Enjoy.
Our final link today is to a story about a husband and wife taking a gun safety class together. You would think that by the nature of it being a “gun safety” class that there would be a little bit of caution involved. Apparently that type of thinking just doesn’t cut it at this class. While the instructor was out of the room, the husband managed to shoot a bullet clean thru his hand and into his wife’s leg. I have just one question to ask, “What genius sold this bozo a gun?” Some people are just a wee-bit too, shall we say, common-sense challenged to do anything that involves a firearm. Interpret that any way you will, but I’m just saying… I’ve included two links because the MSNBC.com article actually has more information than the article it references.
http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/307869
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/24/11370496-gun-safety-class-backfires-man-shoots-self-and-wife?lite
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/24/11370496-gun-safety-class-backfires-man-shoots-self-and-wife?lite
And that brings us to the end of another Link-Friday. It appears that I was pretty long-winded today and wanted to say thanks for wading your way through this post. With any luck you’ll have an awesome weekend for your efforts. So, in the immortal words of Tigger, “Ta Ta For Now.”
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