Whatnot on a Wednesday

So there's some random stuff going on, and I wanted to link to some of it, and ask for comments on the rest of it. I'm afraid to do that considering that I ASKED YOU A QUESTION, INTERNET, AND ONE PERSON RESPONDED. Still, I have faith in you. Don't let me down.

Thing 1: I'm not leading with the question because everyone knows you only remember what you last read. This is a link to a site called QuizLaw which is interesting (if a bit profane) because they do an excellent job of explaining oddball legal speak and legal situations. They also have some pretty interesting news items about what's going on in the judicial system. This post talks about one attorney's theory about how to deal with terrorists under law: treat them like pirates. He draws some parallels between the actions/status of both and raises some interesting ideas. I'll leave it to my law-school buddies (who are LEGION, when I think of it) to comment on that.

Thing 2: Douglas Adams, of Hitchhiker's fame, posts an interesting rant on the state of wallwarts - all those chargers you use every day to power up your cell phone, iPod, camera, Palm Pilot, computer-related paraphenalia, and other electronics. He thinks the industry should standardize all this nonsense, and I totally agree. Every time I pack for a trip I want to hurl them all out the window instead of making room for them. Preach, brother, PREACH.

Thing 3: This is an older article from earlier this month talking about whether sex sells to women. The answer? No.

What do women want? "Presumably women desire to be more like the wholesome beauty models, and in turn, will purchase the products they endorse more readily than they would a product endorsed by a more overtly sexual model," Goodman said.

Personally, I think it's that women think sexiness is only one facet of themselves, so yeah, if I'm looking for lingerie, I might want a sexy ad, but I also live a portion of my life in the PG world and sexiness is not the only facet of myself that I want to portray. I hope more research is done in this area. It's intruguing to me.

Thing 4: This is an even older article from August about how TV is as good or better at telling a story as film and that TV's golden age is occuring now, rather than in previous decades, as many claim. Basically, the author contends that TV allows more of a relationship with the characters and much more complicated plot simply because you have much more time than you get in a film to tell the story. She says that only in the last few years have writers really taken advantage of this flexibility instead of relying on simple plots that tied themselves off nicely in the allotted airtime. I tend to agree, but with a caveat that SO MUCH TV is made right now that there's plenty of dross to burn off to get to the good stuff. (This is a Salon article, so you have to view an ad for full access. Sorry about that.)

Thing 5: THE QUESTION: Has anyone switched to Google's Blogger Beta sign-in and template? I'm freaking out about it because I think they want to strip us of our complete editting power with our templates. They're doing it for the people who don't design and want creater flexibility without learning CSS and HTML, but for me? NOT COOL. If you've switched (or know someone who has and can explain the differences) tell me how it went and what you do/do not have access to with your new interface. Thanks!