Above: I'm sending my charger to someone who's on 24-hour hospital duty six days a week, and the airmail theme sort of made sense. Every piece of the charger is decorated for easy identification. (Stuff in hospitals tend to get "misplaced" veeery easily.) Washi tape is, as usual, from Hey Kessy.

This week's link love includes some fantastic nail art, fiction recs, vocabulary tips, and news about the controversial Cybercrime Law.

This week in nail art:

• Drippin' Dots - a new twist using the old dotting tool
• Black Cats Galore - perfect for Halloween
• Candy Mermaid Nails - so cute!
• Geometric Orange Nails - classy without being boring

A Wrinkle in Time, worthy graphic novel adaptation

[A] really wonderful and worthy adaptation of the original. Larson is very faithful to the original text, and the graphic form really suits the story, as it allows for direct illustration of some of the more abstract concepts (such as the notion of folding space in higher dimensions to attain faster-than-light transpositions of matter).

This looks really interesting! I remember loving the book as a teenager in college, amused by the references to mitochondria; intrigued by the concept of tesseracts. This article provides a generous excerpt of the comic, and Hope Larson's illustrations really bring it to life.


The Importance of Building Your Vocabulary (And 5 Easy Steps to Doing It)

The overuse of a word to describe a wide range of seemingly unrelated things saps it of any meaning. If a corn dog, a YouTube video, a job promotion, and the Great Wall of China are all “awesome,” then awesome ceases to have any meaning at all. Think of your vocabulary like the dial on an amp – if it’s always turned up to 11, you don’t have anywhere to go when trying to describe something truly impressive. Your only resort is to add empty intensifiers: “But seriously, it was really awesome.”

When I entered med school, my consumption of fiction books dropped to nearly zero, with an accompanying drop in my eloquence. I tend to use the same words over and over again in papers and blog posts. I've forgotten everything Strunk and White advised. This article offers quick and modern tips to expand your vocabulary, and thus enable you to communicate more effectively.


The miseducation of Juan

Romantic ignorance was popularized by Cory Aquino during her presidential run against Ferdinand Marcos. It was also the last time it was properly used. Answering Marcos’ criticism of her as a mere housewife who “knew nothing,” she famously said: “Oo, wala akong alam. Wala akong alam sa panloloko, wala akong alam sa pagsisinungaling, wala akong alam sa pandaraya.” It was a watershed moment in Philippine politics, and perhaps unwittingly, in the state of Philippine intellectualism: the intellectually-disadvantaged asserting her superiority elsewhere – in the field of morality. It was a tact used by Joseph Estrada to win the Presidency and eventually defile it. It is why Lito Lapid is still somehow our Senator, a legislator who has repeatedly admitted that he knows nothing about the law, yet this is more than okay because he always votes according to his conscience anyway, although what it is exactly his conscience comprehends is anyone’s guess.

[...] This new Romantic Ignorance is an affront to our teachers and to our educational system as a whole. It presupposes that education is a form of elitism. For politicians to suggest this would be the height of social irresponsibility – higher education continues to be a privilege because of a flawed educational system that they’re directly responsible for.

An interesting opinion piece that hits two birds with one stone: the inadequacy of our education system, and the recently implemented Cybercrime Law.


Cyberlaw backers blink

More lawmakers in the Senate and the House of Representatives are coming out in favor of amending the cybercrime law. Four out of five reelectionists on President Aquino’s senatorial slate, including Escudero, want the online libel provision stricken out of the new law that lawmakers said was initially meant to control pornography and fraud on the Internet.

Calls for amendment a day after the Cybercrime Law was put into effect. Smacks of hasty decisions on the part of our lawmakers. Were the implications of its provisions not realized was the bill just not thoroughly read?


Computer school to sanction students for ‘cyber libel’, text message

By Monday, September 24, the students who posted and even those who commented and liked the posts were asked to appear before the College Administrator’s office. Those who sent text messages were also summoned. According to [Jan Garcia, a 2nd year BSIT student of DCCP-Vigan], the College Administrator Mrs. Luzviminda Quilenderino said they could be charged with libel and asked him to have his lawyer ready. Garcia then explained that they were merely voicing out their opinion.

If this is true, then it's the first example of the Cybercrime Law being implemented to Big Brother levels.


Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (free download)

The novel is about four teenagers in San Francisco who, in the aftermath of a terrorist attack on the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge and BART system, defend themselves against the Department of Homeland Security's attacks on the Bill of Rights. The novel is available for free on the author's website under a Creative Commons license, keeping it accessible to all. (via)

I read this book on my iPhone a few years back. Though it's written for young adults, it's really hard to put down -- and relevant to the rising trend of government monitoring of our online shenanigans. I love that Cory Doctorow is a champion of creativity and experimentation, especially for kids, and that he is making his work accessible to all by virtue of its electronic versions being free.