I at one point thought I might have to stay the night at work, but we've got one car running half-way decently, anyway...

So it's been a little busy, and this will be a little short...

Still, I hate to not leave you with something. Go here to TOUCHGRAPH and type in a URL---as long as it's not novanotes.com, which for some reason doesn't show up for me....and see its connections in Google. Graphically.

That's just lovely...like watching a crystal forming.

Odd how information becomes beauty.

Just lovely.

It's odd how you can find beauty in the oddest places. I was thinking that as I was watching some of the war pictures, and some of the lovely green places in northern Iraq, where you wouldn't expect it....

Or the beautiful sight of Bagdad, at least before the bombs burst.

Bagdad. Hard to associate Hussein's stronghold with Houron Al-Raschid and the Arabian Nights.

You can find beauty in ingenuity...

The Chinese were pestered by people putting up illegal advertisements, putting in cellphone numbers to be contacted...so, instead, they did phone spam.

Every twenty seconds, the cellphone would be rung. The only way to stop it is to change cellphone numbers---which is a nuisance and negates any good the advertisements might do, since it goes to the wrong place.

There are also reports that the CIA is spamming the higher echelons of Bagdad with email and voicemail invitations to surrender.

Spamming as a deadly weapon. It was just a matter of time...

A beautiful idea.

I once long ago defined fantasy as this: a literature that searches for beauty, as science fiction searches for plausibility, and mainstream literature searches for truth and realism.

There are few more beautiful places in literature than Lothlorein, or, in a grotesque way, Gormenghast.

If you cannot find beauty in reality...and these days, it's hard to do...

Fantasy is always available.

Beauty is always available.

Thank goodness.