Link Log for March 24

Categories: Animals, Art, Books, Celebrity Gossip, Crafts, Frugal, Funny, Health, Music, Pain, Phenology, Piracy/Plagiarism, Poetry, Politics, Recycling, Social Issues, Writing...this post is long enough; I'm not going to call this post "#1," but I'm not ruling out the possibility of a "#2."

Animals 

The African moon moth looks a great deal like the American luna moth...but the differences go beyond one being yellow and one pale green. The African moon moth can become a pest species. Liz Klimas reports about an individual moth who found a more individual way to be a pest.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/24/what-a-moth-did-to-a-reporters-ear-during-live-shot-left-him-saying-yuck/?

More exotic animals from +Angel Sharum :

http://www.personapaper.com/article/27657-chattanooga-zoo-video

One of the ducks my husband and I used to watch in Maryland. This one would have been migrating and would have either skipped the parks near Washington, or passed them by altogether; we didn't see a lot of scaup there. The "share photo" option on my Google + page doesn't show the bird in its beauty or the photo in its fortuity. Click here:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/+RayHennessy/albums/6129404264580802129/6129404264392092898?pid=6129404264392092898&oid=115977797497263198843

I should've posted this long comment here, rather than at Google +:

"Last December, I walked past the trailer house where the five teenagers, four dogs, and several cats used to be crowded together. Now the big boys are gone, so who's left to walk with the big dog? The big dog came out and barked at me. (He looked a lot like the one in the picture, maybe bigger--80-90 pounds of muscle.) I shouted "Go in! Go home!" as usual, and instead of going into his home, he bounded up and grabbed my arm. And Iknow all he meant to "say" was something like "Come and play with me," because if that dog had meant any harm he would've left a lot more than three little surface wounds on my arm. And I called the dogcatcher, anyway...because the boys were never able to provide a healthy environment for that dog, because that dog was a neighborhood nuisance at best, and now that the boys are gone the parents and younger kids aren't even trying."

It was a comment on +Sandy Segur 's post, where she summarized the situation as sad. Very. Here's the post again, in case anyone missed it:

http://myloveofanimalsdogs.blogspot.com/2015/03/dogs-running-at-large-are-dangerous.html

For some people, not sitting down in a home where the dogs and cats roam is a matter of ritual purity, part of some people's Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu practice. I've been thankful that my whole-Bible Christian practice is more practical, less ritualistic...but sanitary living with members of different species really does call for a lot of work. Don't we wish that adorable LOL Dog picture could've been real?

http://www.livewagbark.com/life-with-dogs/how-to-keep-your-home-clean-with-multiple-dogs/

Cute photo essay, serious warning:

http://border-collies-in-the-burbs.blogspot.com/2015/03/tim-border-collie-gets-into-mischief.html

Fans of Valentino, can any of you spare a few dollars? I can't; I got into a Major Bind last week when a client kept postponing a recurring odd job, and I wasn't able to cash out a Paypal payout for online work, so I ran completely out of food and money. I had a snack, not a complete meal, on Wednesday, and then a snack again on Monday morning and a meal Monday night. And I shared that meal with the cats, because they ran out of kibble on Sunday. Yes, you can support this blog, too. (If the "Support My Blog" button isn't showing or working at the top of this page, e-mail salolianigodagewi @ yahoo.com.) Anyway +Ruth Cox and her handsome hound have to move, and e-friends are trying to help them raise the money. If you want to help this dog and his human, here's the link:

https://fundrazr.com/stories/69F982/gp/61I2Q0

Art 

Peek at Park Rae Hyun:

http://themillionhair.tumblr.com/post/114421288474/park-rae-hyun-south-korean-female-painter

Books 

Wendy Welch reviews another book that I've not read, but her review contains a helpful hint for fiction writers:

https://wendywelchbigstonegap.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/the-monday-book-the-grace-that-keeps-this-world-by-tom-bailey/

Online writers of the world, do you need covers for your e-books? +Angel Sharum can make a beautiful one...

http://www.personapaper.com/article/27678-book-cover-deisgn

Celebrity Gossip 

Angelina Jolie shares directly with her fans...via a site that I think is becoming less browser-hostile than it used to be...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/opinion/angelina-jolie-pitt-diary-of-a-surgery.html?smid=tw-share&_r=2

Crafts 

Where Jil Eaton hangs out in real life:

http://jileaton.blogspot.com/2015/03/knit-simple.html

Have you ever tried using laundry markers to enhance the possibilities of Easter egg colors? Sharpies come in a range of colors; Dawn Rae demonstrates how they work.

http://reviewthispersonalreviews.blogspot.com/2015/03/sharpies-great-way-to-personalize.html

Frugal 

+kathleen wallace describes the way frugality is supposed to work. I can't say it's worked for me in the past ten years. But it used to work.

http://katyladysjourney.blogspot.com/2015/03/why-i-do-frugal-i-do-and-rich-i-want-to.html?

Funny Stories 

Tsu friend Taylor Swift complained that a standardized test misquoted one of her song lyrics as an example of bad grammar. Somebody actually pronounced that "Somebody tells you they love you, you're gonna believe them" is not bad grammar. Well, neither that nor the misquoted "you got to believe them" is bad in the sense of preventing English-speaking people from understanding the sentence, but I knew better than to hand in either version to a teacher by...oh, grade five at least. (In grade four I liked the way the translation of Anne Frank's Diary retained European-style commas instead of semicolons between related independent clauses. In grade five I learned that, in English, that type of punctuation is marked "wrong." Or in my school days it was. It should be "Somebody tells you she or he loves you; you're likely to believe that person." Of course, C.S. Lewis had told us that in his school days it should have been "If someone tells you that he or she loves you, you are likely to believe that person"--no contractions. Never mind. It's a song.)

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/24/princeton-review-knocks-taylor-swift-for-grammar-in-sat-practice-test-theres-just-one-problem/?

Health (Physical & Mental) 

It's Huffington Post (which seems to work a little better in Chrome than in Explorer, but this web site understands that Gates Foundation computers are programmed to work only with Explorer). And I don't even agree with Maysoon Zayid's belief that responding to trolls helps them; if you enjoy a good flamewar, responding to trolls may amuse you, but I think it actually encourages the trolls. So why recommend this? Because our American cultural mania with "face reading" and eyeball-to-eyeball as substitutes for saying what we mean is hard enough on people with astigmatism, like me, or people with myopia, like Hillary Rodham Clinton...but it's insanely vicious toward people whose cerebral palsy happens to affect their face. The writer known as Shalecka Boone could hardly ever go to a restaurant, concert, movie, even a church meeting in peace, without having to be an activist, and guess what, spastic facial muscles don't make it easy to speak so strangers can understand your words, either. My husband had a student who probably had extensive brain damage, but, like Ruth Sienkiewicz, was always believed to have much more serious brain damage than she had; we had to work to convince people that she could see and hear. So I've seen some of the garbage Maysoon Zayid has had to live with, and I salute her for talking about it and clowning about it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/23/maysoon-zayid-cyber-bullying_n_6912984.html

Nothing else looks as good as being healthy, but some people have always had to learn the hard way...

http://www.velveteenbeauty.com/2015/03/fatal-attraction-terrifying-beauty.html

Music 

Nancy Hardin remembers Billie Holiday:

http://nancywriteseverything.blogspot.com/2015/03/billie-holiday-voice-of-genius.html

Pain 

Just as this document sinks off the front page, into the archive of "Older Posts"...

http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2015/03/priscilla-king-on-painkiller-addiction.html

...an e-acquaintance shares some bad news. Obviously Patrick Nielsen Hayden is going to need to type less, and unless "Dragon" (voice recognition) software has become a lot easier to "train" than it was when a friend got it, he'll have to blog less. This web site joins the thousands of readers of Making Light who regret this, and hope PNH recovers soon.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016176.html

Phenology (with a Mini-Rant)

Big Stone Gap...apparently they got far enough from town that they can still see a sky full of stars like that. I wish I could. I used to look up and see views like that, on nights like last night. Last night I walked out around the house, about 3 a.m., and all I saw was disgusting city-street-type lights, not yet hidden from view by trees. And a dull grey sky with just a scattering of stars. Personally I still find it much easier and safer to let my eyes adapt to starlight than to pollute the night with artificial lights. Walking at night, I may miss some things I want to see, but I can see where I'm stepping--until some idjit motorist drives past with nasty headlights casting weird shadows that distort the view. I cover my eyes, even when the headlights aren't excessively bright, because I can see where I'm walking better without the artificial light. Homeowners need to be reminded: a flashlight can help you find things at night, and a lamp indoors can help you read, but by and large the natural darkness is your friend. (Artificial light indoors helps control some kinds of mold, but outdoors it's the burglars' friend.)

https://wendywelchbigstonegap.wordpress.com/2015/03/18/how-soon-unaccountable/

In the daytime I've enjoyed the March Thaw, and yes, my crocuses are in bloom, and in town the daffodils on the south sides of people's lawns are blooming too.

At the Cat Sanctuary this has been the froggiest year I can remember. Many frog and toad species are endangered, although Spring Peepers aren't, so some localities are posting signs to try to remind people to protect their natural insect control. You can actually see the "Frog Crossing" sign on the Google+ page; I can't see it on Bubblews:

http://www.bubblews.com/news/9904477-frog-crossing

Thanks to Elizabeth Barrette for sharing the link, and Zirconium for these spring flower pictures from Nashville, Tennessee:

http://zirconium.dreamwidth.org/102440.html

Of course, the nature of the March Thaw is to give way rather quickly to Redbud Winter, which tends to move from north to south:

http://protectoshell.blogspot.com/2015/03/cool-post.html

Piracy/Plagiarism 

Elizabeth Barrette's take on the latest intellectual property piracy issues...very interesting. Oh how I wish this web site's odd assortment of readers were as generous as her niche audience apparently is.

http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/3605745.html

Poetry 

Alice Walker shares three new poems, free of charge, to celebrate spring. My favorite is the one about the sweetpotatoes. American farms produce "irregular" fruits and veg, just like Mexican farms. If you live on the farm, those "irregulars" are what you eat, and they are delicious and nutritious, and nothing you find in a store will ever be quite as good. If it's a factory farm, the "irregulars" are likely to be wasted; whoever picks and sorts the harvest will be told to leave them on the ground to rot. But on a small family farm, the "irregulars" you eat are always fresher, therefore tastier and more nutritious, than the "perfect" fruits and veg in the store.

http://alicewalkersgarden.com/2015/03/poems-to-welcome-spring/

Audrey Howitt on the permanence of words:

http://audreyhowittpoetry.blogspot.com/2014/06/words-and-anomaly-of-time-or-words-make.html

Politics 

Arlene from Israel reports on the election there:

http://noisyroom.net/blog/2015/03/23/overwrought/

Here in the U.S., do we need "surveillance reform"? This link offers an overview...and this web site recommends that, before making a commitment to anything in the U.S. Congress, you go to Popvox and make a real effort to read the whole thing. The benefit of reading legislation pending in Congress at Popvox is that, if you understand it after reading it, you can vote and comment on it there.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode-Voices/2015/0324/Opinion-Meaningful-surveillance-reform-must-prioritize-civil-liberties

Recycling 

A few years ago, this web site responded to a proposal to extend town sewer lines into a suburb with a discussion of water-free toilets and roaches. That gross-out post became the all-time most profitable post ever to appear on this web site. Now, with due apologies, this web site will share Liz Klimas' gross-out post...not only on The Blaze but with an icky graphic, explaining exactly why some of us might some day shift from charring our nightsoil into harmless soil, to selling it for actual money. (The link as it appears here has been edited.)

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/23?

And, while on this theme, she also found someone recycling styrofoam:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/23/finally-another-use-for-those-annoying-packing-peanuts/?

Social Issues 

Mei Liang Hoe shared Ashton Kutcher's complaint first...he's right, of course. All public restrooms should contain a place to change a diaper. And a way to make that place sanitary enough for a precious baby to touch. Women have been complaining that many restrooms designated for our use don't meet these criteria, either, for a long time.

http://themillionhair.tumblr.com/post/114482983879/hella-nootella-micdotcom-sometimes-gender-roles

Oliver Darcy reports on people who are and aren't proud to be American. (Suggestion: If they're not, maybe they should try being something else. We have plenty of people here.)

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/23/fox-news-asks-people-on-the-street-if-theyre-proud-to-be-american-its-safe-to-say-some-arent/?

"Gift economies" are like communism. Are, in fact, a form of small-scale communism. As systems enforced upon a whole country they'd be unsustainable. As systems developed and practiced by small groups of friends, they're wonderful. More people should open themselves to this delightful experience.

http://www.ic.org/the-richness-of-giving/

Was this middle school bully's punishment too harsh? I've posted the question on my Google + page for those whose browsers can't handle The Blaze. 95% of Blaze readers think the punishment described on the sign the boy is holding up in the picture was just about the right sort of thing to do if your child is a bully.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/03/23/after-this-dad-found-out-his-son-was-a-bully-he-decided-to-teach-him-a-lesson-he-wont-ever-forget/?

If a celebrity visited your home, how would you treat him or her? All very well to say, as Arthur Chappell does, that you'd treat the celebrity just like anyone else. Some celebrities might enjoy simple entertainment, but you'd have to find room, and offer some entertainment, for the entourage as well.

http://www.personapaper.com/article/27630-fit-for-a-king

Writing 

Lots of reviews...including my review of the classic Easter Egg story.

http://marshasspot.blogspot.com/2015/03/super-sunday-reviews-linky-week-of-32215.html