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So, scary bridge tragedy in Minnesota.

Just the other week some public radio show had a piece on our infrastructure that is showing many signs of wear and tear.

It seems like this bridge had been recently inspected, but still. Seeing as how it coincided with the schedule groundbreaking of a new half-a-billion ballpark (that I think had some public funding controversies), I wonder if people will be re-evaluating that whole situation.

I guess there are some political cheapshots to be had here, about pouring billions into Iraq's infrastructure (and sometimes to very little avail, the number of failed projects there is alarming) and neglecting our own.

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Alphabet of the Moment

--Type the sky on slanted.de. An alphabet made from the negative space of neighboring buildings, looking up.

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Emoticons of the Moment

Amy Cohen, an author and a former dating columnist for The New York Observer, joked that she could "tell the whole story of a relationship in emoticons: Happy, happy, happy, sad, happy, sad, sad."

As the article points out (but with distracting commas) that's
:)   :)   :)   :(   :)   :(   :(  

I learned something else: it seems common for Russians to forgo the eyes on smilies but multiply the smiles, and just do something like ))))

And like I kisrael'd a few years ago, Japanese online folk tend to do eye-centric, horizontal smilies, ^_^ but they're helped by a font with more characters.