Link Log for November 1

Categories: Animals, Blogjob, Charitable Cause, Fun stuff, Obamacare, Writing.

Animals

Pets seized from those who owe back taxes?

http://nowiknow.com/why-cat-owners-in-siberia-really-need-to-pay-their-taxes/

Blogjob

Blogjob is one of many sites that doesn't work for public access computers. Here's an article I read there:

http://blogjob.com/rusty2rustyschatter/archives/256

...and here's the comment I intended to post:

"I like the idea of charities negotiating some sort of exchange with people who request help...and personally, if I were asking for help, I'd much, much rather do something in return for whatever someone was offering to do for me, rather than just beg. If somebody can, e.g., fix my leaky roof in exchange for me doing some garden work or interior painting, that's not a handout, that's a decent and friendly deal based on mutual respect. We need more deals based on mutual respect and mutual recognition of mutual need, and fewer attempts to put people into boxes as either donors or "The Needy." Reality is that most of us have needs and most of us have the ability to meet someone else's needs. Even people with major disabilities have something to give (and the ones I know want people to recognize that fact--they want to be "the writer" or "the builder" or "the programmer," not "that poor little wheelchair-bound woman" or "that poor man with all those scars and injuries"). The Welfare State idea that 20% of the population are "below the poverty level," which is defined as poorer than 80% of other people, and should just sit back and beg for the rest of us to take care of them, is a deeply sick idea.

I'm sure that, the bigger an organization is, the more impractical and demeaning its efforts to replicate a fair deal between individuals are likely to be. But I still like the general idea of converting handouts into fair exchanges."

Charitable Cause

Here's a blog with sponsors who reward readers by donating a small amount of money per comment to a different charity each month. This month's charity at least sounds like fun:

http://www.itsjustlife.me/showering-love-with-comments-for-a-cause/

Fun Stuff

Lloyd Marcus has created an American History Calendar. If you visit the web page where he promotes this calendar ("only nine days to order it for Christmas!") some of you should also be able to listen to his songs, free of charge.

https://www.reverbnation.com/c/fr5/artist_700364?eid=A700364_27697410_53315195&fsc=0de8c729817

Obamacare

What happens when the medical care system is based on the insurance racket. Everybody's motivated to waste other people's money, so forget about what makes either financial or medical sense.

https://www.change.org/p/federal-trade-commission-stop-the-price-gouging-at-the-for-profit-hospital-corporation-of-america?

Writing

Blogspot automatically indexes links to each post by month and year. Blogjob doesn't. Live Journal "archives" links, but in what some would call a clunky way. What do you think? Do blogs need monthly summary posts?

http://blogjob.com/rusty2rustyschatter/archives/291

This one's not really about writing, but it's worth reading for the story of a wonderfully weird bookstore. (Can people, even fast readers, read one substantial adult-sized book per day and get anything else done? I don't, really; there are days when I read multiple books, especially if we count children's stories, but then again there are books that deserve to be chewed and digested for a week or more, even if you read words fast, which I do. I still have book reviews to post, one a day, as soon as I get back onto Blogjob...because I've been writing them for many years; some of the reviews I've been posting were originally written in the 1980s.)

http://www.dailygood.org/story/1157/illuminating-the-power-of-gift-culture-marie-goodwin/