Link Log for February 20

Categories: Animals & Plants, Chortles, Education, Food, Fun Facts, Politics, Weather, Writing

Animals 

Especially recommended to the Bubbler known as Jabo: Raymond Barlow shares a close-up of a pair of hummingbirds photographed in Ecuador:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/+RaymondBarlowphotography/albums/6020103359830570657/6118017252761107762?pid=6118017252761107762&oid=112400934564866517730

+Jasmine Ann Marie has photos of a bird and a flower:

http://diaryofwildgarden.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-last-snow-of-year-first-snowdrop.html

That AC link so many readers enjoyed is permanently broken, but the Decorah eagle family are back in the news...this time Liz Klimas has videos.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/19/the-video-of-a-bald-eagle-thats-gotten-over-300-million-views-america-in-an-eggshell/?

Beating the Odds 

A little over eighty years ago, every doctor in Oklahoma agreed that the baby now known to cyberspace as Grandma Bonnie Peters could not have a normal life. If born, it would be "a vegetable." That's how GBP came to be born in Kansas...her mother kept telling her father and sister, "We're going to another doctor." Obviously all those doctors were using crystal balls, and were using the "see-and-say" reading method to decipher what they found there. GBP is still working...but for about half of her life she has been a vegetarian. (Oh, by the way, it's now considered normal for diabetic mothers to give birth to healthy children. In 1934 that was considered a miracle.)

Will little Ellis Rodriguez astonish the medical world, too?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/20/doctors-said-this-babys-condition-was-incompatible-with-life-but-when-they-removed-her-ventilator-something-miraculous-happened/?

Chortles 

I didn't merely chortle at +Coral Levang 's post. I laughed out loud!

http://www.personapaper.com/article/24416-the-pot-did-not-clean-itself

Education 

Karen Bracken shares the most informative 11 minutes from what was actually a 90-minute phone conversation about federal education law.

https://soundcloud.com/alice-linahan/anita-hoge-on-the-women-on-the-wall-conference-call-page-552-eseanclb

Now, about personal education...I belong to Postloop, and somebody on a Postloop forum asked for information about "speed reading," an education fad of my youth. Although I've been called a natural "speed reader," I enjoy slow reading more and also agree with the (semi-discredited) Bates Method school of vision preservation that speed reading is harder on the eyes. However, Liz Klimas shares a (flashy, potentially not browser-friendly) video that...well, doesn't work for this computer at all, but she thinks it may interest some people.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/20/can-you-keep-up-see-how-fast-you-can-read-using-this-technique/

Food 

How can you tell when a Tea Partier is going overboard with the politics? When s/he doesn't love Ben & Jerry's ice cream. Fortunately for me their new U.S. flavor contains wheat, which helps protect me from going too far with Opus's dictum, "With ice cream ye shall be a pig." U.S. readers, would you drive up to Canada to check out the "million flavors" pint?

http://www.benjerry.com/whats-new/world-flavors?

Frugal 

Years ago, my husband stopped complaining about my yarn stash when he noticed how well boxes of yarn along the north wall kept drafts from making the floor in our cool den too chilly in winter. Currently, as my yarn stash diminishes, I have stacks and shelves of books along the north wall of my warm room at home...

https://wendywelchbigstonegap.wordpress.com/2015/02/20/heating-with-books/

Fun Facts 

When ancient Greek artists painted Amazon warrioresses, were they just fantasizing, or painting something someone had actually reported seeing? Elizabeth Barrette was interested enough to collect several links to web pages supporting the theory that the captions on Greek pottery may have translated real names...or nicknames. (PG-13 advisory: some of the names sound raunchy.)

http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/3574486.html

Haters 

"Be careful of stones that you throw"...Arlene from Israel reports on what can happen when a stupid kid prank causes a motor vehicle accident. (The prank that caused young Adelle Biton to suffer for two years before she died was motivated by hate. In view of the weather here, I find myself thinking of stupid things like driving unnecessarily, or letting a dog chase a car, or calling somebody on a car phone...this is the kind of day when those things could kill a child too.)

http://noisyroom.net/blog/2015/02/19/the-stuff-of-heartbreak/

Challenge to those who don't hate widows, who don't hate Christians, or who do support freedom of speech, belief, and thought: Make the hateful, obnoxious jerks here aware of a backlash effect, without becoming haters or targeting all same-sex couples. (This web site actually supports people's right to be part of same-sex couples, or trios, or whatever else they want to be, in peace, as long as they don't abuse other people; just as this web site, on Wednesday, supported Muslims' right to live and even evangelize in the U.S., as long as they don't try to enforce Sharia law or raise money for active enemies of the U.S.) Censorship is hate. Censorship of one person's opinions in the name of another person's feelings does much more harm to all of us than could possibly be done to the subjective feelings of one of us.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/19/judge-rules-that-elderly-christian-florist-violated

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/19/ex-atlanta-fire-chief-who-ignited-controversy

Politics 

Where to meet Publius Huldah in real life:

https://publiushuldah.wordpress.com/2015/02/19/art-v-convention-event-in-asheville-nc-on-feb-26/

Where to get material for fresh Obama jokes:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/20/obama-mocks-republicans-singles-out-rand-paul-with-condescending-tone/?

Where to find my politics-related interactions and links:

http://connect.freedomworks.org/node/195382

Weather 

Running water doesn't freeze as easily as water that's standing still, and so, although most of the Northeast is iced over by now and even Niagara Falls has plenty of ice...

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/20/has-niagara-falls-really-frozen-over-no-it-hasnt/?

Icequakes?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/19/dozens-report-hearing-mysterious-loud-booms-in-small-tennessee-city-it-shook-my-house/?

Writing

+Theresa Wiza on how to write a how-to article:

http://www.writingcreatively.org/2015/02/how-to-write-how-to-articles-and-how.html

(This how-to article looks like the product of hard experience:

http://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2015/02/house-buying-fixing-tips.html)