Friday, February 13, 2004

Each Dish Harmless Might Mix Inside, Lub-dub

[Clash Combat Rock]

Home for a late lunch yesterday, a gobbled Ethiopian fingerplate waiting to be eaten since the weekend, injera and spicy, saucy globstuff. The President's dentals were on CNN, pearl rows pocked with 1973 repairs. Proof, X-rayed evidence of military service in the Alabama National Guard. This turned me, while mash-wrapping the fabulous red-lentil heap, to the Wonka candy I tangled with the night before, late Wednesday: Nerd Ropes. What story will dental records tell of this in 31 years? I ate two of them with a bottle of water--tacky cherry syrup ropes roll-coated in assorted Nerds. It was late; I needed a kick. If they'd had these at the Palatine Hill, what?

Took the yarn quiz via Quizilla via Culture Cat. Would've preferred Mohair, but as it turned out, the test told me

You are Dishcloth Cotton. You are a very hard worker, most at home when
you're at home. You are thrifty and seemingly
born to clean. You are considered to be a Plain
Jane, but you are too practical to notice.
What kind of yarn are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Cleaning? Yeah, I'll get on that right away.

Via Slashdot, I looked at this article about open source insecurity. So I'm wondering about trust in technology, about good faith in the machine, and about the transference of this way of thinking about open source as a "fertile ground for foul play" into non-software-writing sectors, such as education. Why should we prefer costly, closed-source course management systems to open source alternatives? Foul play? Well, maybe. Here is where I get by thinking while writing rather than planning all of this out ahead of time. It's just that closed-source systems seem much more likely to suffer harm-intended hacks.

Posted by Derek Mueller at February 13, 2004 9:03 AM to Gobstuff