Link Log for January 19

Today's computer agenda began with "Deal with e-mail issues" and then "Catch up on social stuff," so this will be a long Link Log. First of all: Happy birthday to Grandma Bonnie Peters, who turned eighty years old yesterday and still has no immediate plans to retire.

Now the first link...I remember reading Girl in Translation about ten years ago. Here's a nice review:

https://wendywelchbigstonegap.wordpress.com/2015/01/19/girl-in-translation-by-jean-kwok-the-monday-book/

Want to share your business-related resolutions for 2015? (I'm afraid to!)

http://marshasspot.blogspot.com/2015/01/all-business-monday-to-do-list.html

Some people seem to think this is ludicrous, but seriously...the way some people act when I walk to a job shows that yes, here in these United States, we still have some so-called Christians who believe that women should cover ourselves in motor vehicles when we go out on the street. A burqa is much cheaper and easier to wear. Not to mention less likely to kill people.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/19/christian-mom-who-worries-leggings-could-lead-men-to-think-lustful-thoughts-reveals-her-personal-solution-to-the-problem/?

Unbearably cute British bird pictures, and videos if your computer plays them:

http://watching-bingley-birds.blogspot.com/2015/01/meet-long-tailed-tits.html

A nice free-verse poem about niceness here...

http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/3545780.html

I had to read that one because it's about yarn, so here's a personal project update. Last autumn I posted that I'd made it a winter project to knit one of all the projects discussed in Knitting for Peace (using leftover yarn from a scrap bag) and sell the book. I've made most of them, but still have the Warm Up America and Project Linus blankets left to go...saving the blankets for last because there won't be enough of any one yarn to make them look like anything but Odds & Ends anyway. I'm pleased with the garments though; the shawl, especially, contains many luxury yarns and looks as if it had been both expensive and carefully planned, rather than being a quick way to use up scraps. (It's not a Blanket Shawl. I'd planned to give it to a fashionista friend for Christmas, but had to see her reaction to it first. She looked at it and wailed, "It's not as thick and warm as your shawl." So she got a cheaper scarf.) Anyway, if you have (1) knitted or crocheted more beautiful blankets than the people you know need, or (2) started making a blanket but given up trying to finish it, or (3) aspired to be in category (1) but feared you'd end up in category (2), Warm Up America and Project Linus are two legitimate charities that can help with these problems. (Grace Ellen fans may want to read about Project Linus here...

http://childrenscancerrecovery.org/partner/sponsors/? )

Speaking of Grace Ellen, here's her TV interview on You Tube.

http://thesmittenedlife.blogspot.com/2015/01/childrens-hospital-los-angeles-imagine.html

Some things aren't fixable. Fortunately a lot of things are...

http://marshasspot.blogspot.com/2015/01/super-sunday-reviews-how-to-fix.html

For those who've been circulating the fiction that Adolf Hitler was a Christian, Dominic Green recommends some books that discuss his private antichristian views.

http://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2015/01/nazis-islam.html

Too bad for some local lurkers...Green Bay lost the big game yesterday. Dave Urbanski has video:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/18/seattle-seahawks-defeat-the-green-bay-packers-in-overtime-thriller-advance-to-super-bowl/?

For those who've been following the anti-freedom riots in Paris...less violent, but equally censorious, leftists strike the Santa Barbara News-Press. Yes, I stand with the News-Press's right to use a legitimate term that offends some of their readers, if they so choose.

http://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2015/01/say-illegals-and-get-paint-bombed.html

Will any technology ever make it possible to be completely unaware of people around us in real life while we're plugged into the'Net? I hope not. Anyway I commented on this one.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/108361129611/alone-together-technology

How to buy a house for $15,000...yes, there's a catch: it's in Michigan.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/17/when-you-hear-how-little-they-paid-for-this-house-youll-be-shocked-even-after-you-read-where-the-house-is/?

In Florida, a untrained hound points out an egret to his human (armed with camera)...and the egret poses, right on a suburban street, until a passer-by blows a horn. I believe it. I've seen herons who were this "tame," or bold, or whatever.

http://www.dogpawsitivetidbits.com/2015/01/great-white-waterbird-hunter.html

In primary school I remember reading about the heroism of Jesse Lazear, a colleague of Walter Reed who proved that mosquitoes carried deadly diseases by letting a mosquito infect him with one. This Canadian researcher at least seems to have been able to study less deadly pests...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/16/after-allowing-bedbugs-to-feed-on-her-for-five-years-woman-makes-tremendous-discovery/

Hard to be sure from these photos, but it looks as if Hadley, the youngest cat at the Big Stone Gap bookstore, may be some sort of cousin to our lamented Candice (and her father, Pitt, who's not been around the Cat Sanctuary for a while, and her daughter, Heather, who's still our Reigning Queen). Why am I so devotedly following another bookstore's posts? Aren't they The Competition? Not exactly; I'd actually like my real-world store to be a franchise of the Welches'. Well, they said, in The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap, that they don't want a franchise. That's fine. In today's publishing world bookstores can actually network. For a long time good books have been shoved into oblivion before people had time to discover them because publishers kept shoving newer things onto shelves. This can change--it's one of the easier improvements we can make in our world. Today the Internet is a tool that allows secondhand bookstores to function as complements rather than competitors to one another, the way libraries do. When my store has a real-world home again, you'll be able to walk in, ask for a secondhand book that The Other Stores have but we don't, and hear "We don't have that one, but it's right on the shelf in Kingsport or Big Stone Gap...would you like to have them hold it for you, or mail it to you?" Or vice versa. There are too many good older books out there for one store to have all of them, but if multiple secondhand booksellers pool our efforts...

https://wendywelchbigstonegap.wordpress.com/2015/01/16/little-orphant-hadleys-come-to-our-house-to-stay/

Ann Mackie Miller posted another batch of British bird images that's too good not to miss. Scroll down to catch the action sequence. If it's not still shots from a movie, it could be!

http://watching-bingley-birds.blogspot.com/2015/01/nesting-moorhens.html

Another citizen exercising Second Amendment rights to prevent violent crime...I would've given this clerk more points for having grabbed scumbag by the hair, since the clerk had time to creep up behind him and was not alone and could (in an ideal world) have counted on the other clerk to help subdue him without hurting him, and it's such tempting hair anyway, but y'hafta do what works. (And, fashion tip: if you want to have eye-catching long hair, avoid hostile confrontations.)

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/15/robbery-suspect-was-paying-so-much-attention-to-clerk-that-he-didnt-realize-what-was-sneaking-up-behind-him/?

Phil Robertson doesn't need a boost from this web site, but he happens to be right. I can see why some of The Nephews are fans of his.

http://www.bizpacreview.com/2015/01/16/phil-robertson-knows-why-radical-islam-is-winning-weve-lost-jesus-as-a-nation-172968

Mini-biographies of well-known Socialists:

http://freedomfightersofamerica.blogspot.com/2015/01/socialism-around-world.html?

In view of the above, I wouldn't expect to find myself supporting anything called "The Mexican Chapter of the Permanent People's Tribunal." But, just like Mr. Robertson, they happen to be right.
Long live Mexico, and in order to live long (and enjoy it) they should ban GMO corn.

http://www.naturalnews.com/048312_genetically_modified_corn_GMO_ban_Mexico.html

Would you eat this thing? Freshwater trout...lots of mercury built up in its superabundant flesh. But you have to see it, anyway.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/15/man-catches-what-would-have-been-the-largest-fish-of-its-kind-in-state-history-until-he-had-to-throw-it-back/?

Funnily enough, in this collection of quotes from Martin Luther King I found a pair that seemed to speak to the life of a penniless writer. Can other people spot them, too? Or is my finding them just an example of how the human mind projects its own concerns onto everything it perceives?

http://booktrib.com/2015/01/12-martin-luther-king-jr-quotes-that-are-amazingly-appropriate-for-our-time/

Amputee controls robotic arms with his brain alone? I'd like to recommend this page, shared by Ashton Kutcher, no less, to Right Hand Man...but I have to warn you that it's on an incredibly annoying web site that may mess up your computer.

http://aplus.com/a/bionic-arms-man-jhu

Some writers have too many ideas, and some writers are generous with them...

http://www.writingcreatively.org/2015/01/writer-wake-up.html

This idea is definitely not a fun read, but useful information.

http://helpforsingleparents.blogspot.com/2015/01/left-to-die-stories-of-alcohol.html

When I'm particularly aware of the multiple injustices in life, I have a natural tendency to ignore other people's troubles.

http://www.personapaper.com/article/15717-when-life-is-not-fair

If you've not walked four miles yet today (that's how far I walked before and after connecting with a car pool this morning), or even if you have, you might enjoy this beautiful nature walk in Washington state with Vicki Green:

http://border-collies-in-the-burbs.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-winter-hike-on-little-si-trail.html

Ruth Cox shared a pretty picture...on a blog post, or on a body pillow you can actually buy.

http://abitosunshine.blogspot.com/2015/01/sunset-silence.html

I want this T-shirt!

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/+LLReynolds/albums/6105536962763265505/6105536962078714226?pid=6105536962078714226&oid=100464596219726743506

It's hard to ask them, when they're almost thirty miles away, but I think the Cat Sanctuary cats would say "purr" to Lyn Lomasi's post:

http://www.pawsitiveparenting.com/supermom-kind-of/-why-am-i-always-helping-too-many-animals

Whew. I'm stopping now, whether any more plus-worthy links float in or not.