Link Log for April 28 (#1)

This one is getting long, because I'm catching up, and heavy, because of the Baltimore riots. There will be a Link Log #2; it should contain more cheerful links. Today's Categories: Animals, Baltimore, Books, Citizens Fighting Crime, Communication, Crafts, Makers & Takers, Music, News of the Weird, Politics, Privacy, The Events of September 11, Writing.

Animals 

Cute political cat picture:

http://rightwingart.com/8b0592e2-08c2-4d4b-b5a0-912ee6781a2c/artupload.aspx

Baltimore 

What one of the best doctors in Baltimore is saying:

http://www.gq.com/blogs/the-feed/2015/04/ben-carson-baltimore-plumber-police.html

What the rest of the world is saying:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32400497?ocid=socialflow_twitter

Fair disclosure: I've been in Baltimore, and seen things that made me pretty dam'mad, and I'm not even Black. Like trying to summon help on behalf of a disabled geriatric patient, who happened to be Asian, and the dispatcher saying, "Is the patient Black or White?" and then, since the patient was in a Black neighborhood anyway, in the care of a Black nurse, nobody came out. In the present century that happened. The last time I was there, in 2006, Baltimore was still as functionally segregated by hate and bigotry as Johannesburg ever wanted to be. Nevertheless, the position of this web site is that rioting is not a useful way to communicate any of the reactions any decent human being ought to share to the lingering effects of the race war in Baltimore. Have these people in Baltimore ever heard of documenting stuff on a blog, like?

Or, as the very young would express it:

http://freedomfightersofamerica.blogspot.com/2015/04/those-american-girls_28.html?

Here's an older, more sophisticated student's point of view:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/28/dont-judge-blacks-differently-black-student-activist-says-black-rioters-should-be-judged-like-other-races-with-no-excuses/?

Here's a Baltimore Raven's point of view:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/28/legendary-baltimore-ravens-linebacker-has-a-message-for-the-rioters-in-his-city/?

But people in Washington aaalllways ridicule Baltimore, in all ways, serious or otherwise, and nobody takes it seriously. If people in Baltimore want to call attention to and enlist support for the changes they need, they have to document it themselves. Ta-Nehisi Coates is one living Baltimore writer who's widely read, trusted, and respected in Washington:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/nonviolence-as-compliance/391640/

Except that, if Baltimoreans tried harder to think like Martin Luther King, it wouldn't be compliance. It would be boycotts and shut-downs and sit-ins that would make people sit up and take notice, all right...only without killing anybody.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/016230.html

Billy Graham is deliberately recycling an old sermon here...closest thing to MLK I've read today.

http://billygraham.org/story/billy-graham-on-social-injustice/

The President is trying to think like MLK, too. Should we celebrate and take a day off bashing this bashable administration?

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/28/obama-no-excuse-for-the-kind-of-violence-seen-in-baltimore/?

Here are some of the nicer residents of Baltimore:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/28/photos-to-help-restore-your-faith-in-humanity-see-how-some-baltimore-kids-used-tuesday-to-do-good/?

Books 

Nancy Hardin's review of The Transplants brings to mind a whole genre, from Out of the Silent Planet through A Wrinkle in Time, The People, Native Tongue, and the Acorna series, where the aliens are more enlightened than humankind. (Some speculative fiction I've written also fits into this genre.)

http://nancywriteseverything.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-transplants-book-review.html

Citizens Fight Crime 

Who says schoolteachers aren't Real Men? This one didn't even have a gun.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/27/hero-teacher-may-have-prevented-mass-shooting-at-washington-high-school-this-is-not-a-joke/

Communication 

Scott Adams tries on Ozarque's shoes...(Note to foreign readers: that's an English idiom meaning he's trying to do some part of the job she used to do so well.)

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/117606386746/things-that-cannot-be-communicated

Here's a simple introduction to personality psychology (and communicating with other types of personalities). Although even the Myers-Briggs personality inventory is obviously oversimplified, and the four-temperament personality inventory is obviously four times more oversimplified, when it comes to describing any real person...nevertheless, I prefer this one myself. Why? Because more complicated personality tests measure some traits that may be primarily based in learned behavior patterns, such that people may find themselves in the middle ground--both thinking and feeling, both judging and perceiving. The LaHaye test measures only four traits that have been shown to correlate with hereditary physical characteristics: you have them or you don't. When people's LaHaye temperament profile changes, it's probably because they've either developed or recovered from a physical disease condition that was altering the expression of an hereditary trait.

http://www.timlahaye.com/Home/Product/147

Crafts 

American knitters have seen books about Latvian knitting, books about Estonian knitting. Where's the book about Lithuanian knitting? (Yes, there are differences...tiny, like the countries.) Here it is...and if it were on Amazon, it'd be on my Wish List.

https://pubslush.com/project/4723

Makers & Takers 

Heavenforbidandfend this web site should say anything against people with genuine disabilities who, over time, recover some ability to do some sort of useful work and even help others, like my late lamented blind client George Peters, or the late lamented wheelchair-bound writer known as Shalecka Boone, or like the real-life friends known here as Right Hand Man and Left Hand Man. When people like that use any part of their pensions to employ other people or even launch businesses, they are Makers Not Takers times two; they are giving something back to society, with interest.

Then there are the plain old welfare cheats, also known as the Trash Class, described here:

http://allenbwest.com/2015/04/the-obscenely-easy-way-people-are-ripping-off-taxpayers-for-69000-a-year-in-benefits/

Music 

Have you been to a place that was photographed and used on an album cover? These people have:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/apr/21/the-places-behind-the-music-share-your-photos-of-album-sleeve-locations?CMP=twt_gu

News of the Weird 

Idjit wants to be protected from any exposure to language lessons at, of all places, a school:

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/28/what-a-man-yelled-when-a-woman-started-speaking-spanish-to-the-audience-at-kindergarten-concert-got-him-kicked-out/?

Even more idiotic judge bullies the public over the "emotional damage" they did by not participating in the wedding of two spoilt brats who, at this point, are coming across as the kind of people who really ought to be given the publicity they so crave by being sent up on a space probe.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/04/28/christian-bakers-detail-the-scary-and-almost-horrific-things-the-govt-has-done-since-they-refused-to-make-a-lesbian-wedding-cake/?

I hate to think of the busybody bakers as representing "persecuted Christianity." Why aren't the out-loud evangelical Christians more interested in less sexy Christian issues...e.g. the Bible's mandate for helping able-bodied widows stay off welfare? Nevertheless, since Gofundme.com has taken sides and censored the bakers, here's a link you can use if you feel moved to encourage the Kleins in some way. (Note that this site, like too many otherwise excellent sites, uses pop-ups and cookies and spyware that this computer thinks it can handle, but that may foul up some computers; I wouldn't know.)

http://eaglerising.com/17785/gofundme-bans-christians-from-trying-to-help-other-christians/

Here's a random sampling of everyday weirdness in Tennessee:

http://www.timesnews.net/article/9087120/caller-seeks-police-insights-on-making-bath-salts

Politics 

If your computer handles PDF documents well, this one-page PDF by Publius Huldah is worth printing out and framing:

https://publiushuldah.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/chart-showing-federal-structure-3-1-part-a2.pdf

Privacy 

Wow...here's a bicycle pedal attachment that enables a bicycle to document your every trip, just like a "smart car"! (Actually, I'm publicizing this because I do like the idea...of removing the thing while you are riding your bike, and reattaching it when you park your bike so you can track any thief who might be riding your bike.)

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/connected-cycle-pedals

More seriously: It's time for the heinously misnamed "PATRIOT Act" to expire. U.S. readers, please notify your Senators...unless you want recordings of you laughing at your Significant Other's dirty jokes to be stored and potentially made available to the terrorists, when they take over, because law enforcement has been distracted by federal employees listening to private dirty jokes.

http://www.freedomworks.org/content/patriot-act-renewal-action-happening-fast-see-whats-coming

https://popvox.com/bills/us/114/s1035

Like these little kids who are apparently being recruited for careers in spying and snooping?

http://www.freedomworks.org/content/heres-how-nsa-trying-get-kids-interested-career-spying-innocent-americans

The Washington Post reports on young people feeling abused and depressed after they've been talked (or text-messaged) into sharing dirty jokes or nude pictures, which, under the PATRIOT Act, may become available to future employers or blackmailers or terrorists or who knows what. Rightly so. My question is: are they depressed merely because they acted on a stupid suggestion, or did they act on the stupid suggestion because they were depressive in the first place? With the obligatory message to The Nephews: anybody who tries to get you to participate in explicit talk, or share any kind of picture, in cyberspace, is not your friend.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/04/28/the-sexting-scandal-no-one-sees/?tid=sm_tw

The Events of September 11 (2001) 

Do you want to rake up the muck and find out what was in the 28 pages of documentation you weren't told about in 2001-02? Y'know, actually...I don't. But, if you do, Jim Babka has a petition you might want to sign.

https://downsizedc.org/etp/censored-pages/

Writing 

Have you written something--not necessarily as long ago as 1967!--that seems about as relevant today as it did a few years ago? If it's online, you can link and publicize it here:

http://challengeyourwriting.blogspot.com/2015/04/throwback-tuesday-link-ups.html