Link Log for January 9

First, with due apologies, a very annoying link. Anger Busters should not click on this one. Glyphosate is safe to eat, claims Tom Vilsack. He's not just a common or garden variety fool, Gentle Readers. He's being paid to say this. Well paid. But I'd bet that something out there will give him the celiac reaction I've been having to glyphosate-treated foods--which has kept me on the "not too sick to work, but acutely uncomfortable and angry as a whole nest of hornets" list for about half of the past year--and I'd like to find it and feed it to him.

http://www.naturalnews.com/048237_glyphosate_contamination_USDA.html#

Contaminating food is deliberate genocide? Hmm. Remember what happened to the American Buffalo?

http://www.naturalnews.com/048238_genocide_food_supply_Western_governments.html

Time for some cheerful news? Here's a nice list of recommended reading, from a fiction editor.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016099.html

Crowdfunding for a short story? Do you have the patience to read a short story in short-short chapters? Would you like to read the rest of this one?

http://thebonesofferalletters.dreamwidth.org/62848.html

At home, I'm seriously playing around with the idea of rewriting a novel in the form of blog posts and letting funders pay me to post them in order on Live Journal. Ten cents per post, or a dollar a month to stay on the LJ friends list and read as many posts as other people pay for. What do youall think?

I do feel sorry for the women who've reported incredibly bad drugged-and-drunken episodes involving Bill Cosby. Reactions to various substances can feel as if a person had been sexually abused in some way, and if the person had been drinking with, or fooling around with, or even fantasizing about a young, upwardly mobile movie star while drinking...one of the women used a very revealing word to describe her alleged date. "Nightmare." Like a bad-trip nightmare from which you try to wake up and can't. Even so, I wouldn't worry so much about Cosby, at his present age. I'd worry about the booze and/or the pills!

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/08/the-nine-words-bill-cosby-directed-to-woman-at-standup-show-resulted-in-loud-gasps-from-audience/?
This Blaze page is linked to a nasty pop-up ad that snagged my browser, so beware...but I want Glenn Beck fans to know that I read this story, and I think the title is missing a vital word. Any phrase that includes "where fracking has not caused earthquakes" needs to include "yet."

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/08/co-author-of-study-being-used-as-ammunition-against-fracking-says-one-very-important-point-is-being-overlooked/?

This web site (mine) will not run things that make fun of the prophet Muhammad, as a point of common courtesy. This web site only got around to retweeting that violence is bad, and censorship is bad, after the response to Charlie Hebdo's obnoxious cartoons started to look like war reportage. Acts of war are not the best way to enforce rules of courtesy. But, why say "the prophet Muhammad" if I'm not convinced that he was God's true and final anointed messenger to this world? Because there are a lot of other people called Muhammad. And I'd like to call attention to an analogous usage from what may be obscure local history. Anyone studying the history of the Shawnee nation recognizes the names of the great war chief Tecumseh and his brother, "The Prophet." English-speaking people called that historical figure "Prophet," although they didn't take him seriously as a religious leader, because they had trouble spelling and pronouncing the name his friends used.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/396011/why-do-media-refer-prophet-mohammed-ian-tuttle?

Think spring!

http://essentialwildlifegardeninggifts.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-promise-of-seeds-thoughtful-gift.html

Richard Rowell felt well enough to post this from the front lines of the battle with cancer:

http://www.lifesuccessfully.com/the-ultimate-random/why-there-is-no-page-6-of-365

British bird stationery, anyone? This picture is so cute...

http://raintreeearthdesign.blogspot.com/2015/01/tree-sparrows-on-feeder-note-card.html

What do youall think about this story, shared via Twitter? We had a similar case in Gate City a few years ago--at one point the woman cut off a child's hair to post pictures suggesting that the child had cancer (she didn't). I can sort of empathize with the panic when someone notices something that might be cancer. I had that, myself, around age twenty-one, when I had "chronic mononucleosis" and some cases of "chronic mononucleosis" were turning out to be a rare form of lymphoma and one of my lymph nodes was forming a big ugly cyst AAAHHH...but I also had enough common sense and decency to back down, and admit that I'd scared myself and a few friends unnecessarily over something that hardly even justified calling a doctor.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/09/fake-cancer-woman-sentenced-defrauding-donors?CMP=twt_gu

This web site has supported the Keystone pipeline idea, but this web site does want supporters of the pipeline to avoid "destroying the homeland" of any person who doesn't believe money can compensate for the temporary inconvenience of hosting it. If that means re-routing or re-designing to such a degree that it becomes impractical...??? Maybe some oilmen out there who know more about the issues can help people reach a solid agreement on this. (Yes, I know the Guardian tends to be left of where I think most readers, certainly most correspondents, are; that doesn't mean they don't have valid points.)

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/09/keystone-xl-would-destroy-native-lands-we-fight?CMP=twt_gu

John Stossel Twittered this quote from Harry Browne that's too good not to share, even though it's too short to link. Thanks, JS.

"A  free society rewards virtue and punishes irresponsibility. Government does just the opposite. – Harry Browne "

Kevin Williamson is brilliantly funny about this, and I'm sure left-wingers (and Humane-Genocide-for-Domestic-Animals Society) types can think of ways to make common decency toward chickens into a great big boondoggle that could indeed end up depriving poor people of cruelty-free protein. Actually, just removing restrictions on keeping hens as pets could supply poor people with more cruelty-free protein, better quality, and cheaper, than factory farms do. (More details? Demand that your favorite book publisher buy my easy-reading book, Chickens Are Yard Birds, the stripped-down outline of which I sold as an itsy-bitsy picture book last summer.)

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395996/new-royals-kevin-d-williamson?

Cute plastic canvas crafts here...

http://butterflyof4.blogspot.com/2015/01/dec-2014-one-thing-and-another-and-i.html

(Hiatus: At this point I left Gate City's miserable excuse for a public-access computer center and walked to the Dog Sanctuary and previewed bills in the Virginia legislature all afternoon. Some readers had steered me to the site where that e-conversation took place. For other U.S. readers, bill discussion at Freedom Connector begins next week. Virginia readers not already familiar with lis.virginia.gov are hereby invited to check out that site now; some legislators have posted their proposed bills, some have not.)

My corner of Virginia didn't get snow this week, but Fairfax County did. Here's the alarming picture of a scene that could have become tragic; thank goodness it didn't...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/who-had-the-worst-week-in-washington-fairfax-countys-schools-superintendent/2015/01/09/a31d57ea-9766-11e4-aabd-d0b93ff613d5_story.html?

Official Tennessee source for a Tennessee news story:

http://www.tricities.com/news/article_ffe84898-983f-11e4-952b-57583f3b4079.html

Personally, I'd like to see more Republicans ignore income inequality in some ways...like respecting those of us who work for low pay (including writers!) as much as those who've gone for the big bucks. It doesn't bother me at all that people my age who've done almost any other job for 25 or 30 years make more money than I do. It does bother me that people my age (in all four political parties not to mention overseas) automatically assume that those people must be more dedicated or more intelligent than I am just because they make more money.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/396107/should-republicans-ignore-income-inequality-james-pethokoukis?

Jabbar (yes, that Jabbar) writing a novel about Sherlock Holmes' even brainier brother? ??? This I must read, even if I can stand to wait for the public library to get a copy.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/kareem-abdul-jabbar-to-publish-a-novel-about-sherlock-holmess-brother-mycroft/?_r=0

All posts by Debbie Dunn are good news...but would you let your sixth grade girl (typically age 11-13) go out on a movie "date" with a boy who's even a year or two older?

http://www.examiner.com/article/hero-s-journey-story-little-jackie-approaches-the-inmost-cave