Amazon Link
Here's my latest e-purchase, made with an Amazon giftcard. (By the way, if you don't do Paypal and do want to show appreciation of this web site, you may use the widget at the bottom of the screen to send Saloli a giftcard; you may even send our Message Squirrel an e-mail mentioning a new book you'd like to see reviewed here.) I'm looking forward to this book; I've made and sold things based on designs in Lorna Miser's first knitting pattern book and, although second knitting pattern books are often less inspired than the first ones, I know I'll get lots of inspiration from looking at LM's hand-dyed yarns.
Animals
Cute polar bear picture...white on white...
http://thevagabondtabby.tumblr.com/post/150664392908/bearsbearsbears-young-polar-bear-playing-in
Vultures. (The position of this web site is that vultures, themselves, are not a gross-out, although the things they eat are.) Vultures on the wing, and vultures' place in nature, are beautiful.
http://paso-robles-daily-photos.blogspot.com/2016/09/looking-up-to-turkey-vultures.html
Armed Citizen Fights Crime
The Blaze shared it first:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/09/19/hes-a-hero-off-duty-cop-who-shot-minnesota-attacker-is-a-competition-shooter-nra-member/?
Armed Citizens Who Don't Rate Comparison with Burros
Seriously. This "man" leaves a loaded gun lying on a bed for a toddler to play with, tries to tell the police a nonexistent criminal wandered in and stole his gun, then'fesses up when an older child with a little sense of self-preservation reports him. U.S. citizens should have the right to own and carry weapons, but this guy should not be considered a U.S. citizen. He should become a citizen of the local mental hospital.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/09/19/police-arrest-two-after-4-year-old-girl-fatally-shoots-herself/
Books
Whether you buy it or not, Wendy Welch's review of Syne Mitchell's Last Mortal Man is funny. (Funny enough that you might buy the book.)
https://wendywelchbigstonegap.wordpress.com/2016/09/19/the-monday-book-the-last-mortal-man-by-syne-mitchell/
Cybersecurity
Once again...I'm glad Elizabeth Knox posted this reminder that nothing on the Internet is really private, so I didn't have to.
http://elizabethknoxonline.com/blog/yes-i-will-google-stalk-you-heres-what-you-should-do-about-it/
Education
David Solway takes an enjoyable, historically informed, bash at the crybabies who don't want to have to learn about anything that feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable to them. (Or, if you're not ready to wrap your mind around a lot of new, unfamiliar, possibly unpleasant ideas, y'know, someone else might make better use of the space you'd be taking up in college. Since few U.S. colleges have age limits, you can always go back if and when you're ready to learn hard, cold facts about a hard, cold world in which most of humankind never have agreed with you about everything and never will. People who belong in college actually find those facts interesting, and do not want to be protected from them...no, not even from the vicious things that have been written about groups of people to which we would have belonged, in the past. When we read a line like "Hope not for mind in women: at their best / Sweetness and wit, they are but mummy possessed," we say, "Hah! John Donne obviously didn't know us," and read on, enjoying Donne's better thoughts and laughing at his stupid ones.)
https://pjmedia.com/blog/the-infantilizing-of-the-academy/?singlepage=true
So, in response to Valerie Strauss's article...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/09/11/enrollments-surge-at-historically-black-colleges-amid-rise-in-racial-tensions/
...this web site replies that there are excellent reasons for choosing an Historically Black College or University, and pathetic ones. Excellent reasons include that you're a Black American and want to support your community, or that you're not a Black American and want the intercultural experience, or that you want to live or work in the part of the world where that school happens to be, or take a course that's offered at that school, or learn from a teacher at that school. Pathetic reasons include that you don't want to be around people different from you. Here's a free link to an historically Black college...
http://www.oakwood.edu/
...that used to keep it real, as in keeping tuition relatively low, by sending students as far as Washington, D.C., to put on fundraising events in big, rich churches. I'm giving them a free link for nostalgia's sake. At the age of sixteen, I earned my G.E.D. and was baptized in a Seventh-Day Adventist church, all in one week, during a winter break in Florida. Church members from all over, and beyond, the United States recommended me for immediate admission to the colleges and universities they'd attended. My first official letter of acceptance from a college came from Oakwood, but they wanted to make sure I knew I'd be, at the time, something like the fifth legally White student who'd ever gone there. Having just received an official letter of automatic rejection from Berea, where the official position was that most students weren't prepared for Berea even after finishing grade twelve, I thought seriously about it. Being a good little girl who'd been told that (a) education and career plans would automatically be wasted if a girl ever got married and/or had babies, and (b) interracial sex was a major sin, I thought going to Oakwood might be one way to make sure my education wouldn't be wasted. My parents quietly watched me think about this for a few weeks, until the official letter of acceptance from Columbia Union College arrived, and then they quietly notified me that if I was determined to go to college at seventeen I would be going to C.U.C. Needless to say, at C.U.C. we frequently hosted visiting students on tours from Oakwood; we went to the churches that raised funds for Oakwood. Later, as an adult with a disposable income, I used to give the-school-I-almost-attended more money than I ever gave to the schools I had attended. (I thought I'd already given them enough.)
By now I'm sure only the computers are keeping track of how many legally White students have attended schools like Oakwood, but yes, they have participated in the "minority scholarships" package that encourages non-Black/non-American students to consider the H.B.C.U. (So, despite this web site's snarky comment, has Howard University.) And yes, I think these scholarships have started a trend that should continue. Specializing in ethnic, local, or other interests (even academic interests, wow, what a concept!) is a fine goal for a school but the school should also expose students to people different from themselves. (Berea used to advertise itself as being "For Mountain Youth," and spell out, for those who were interested, that that was specifically intended to include students from Tibet.)
http://www.collegescholarships.org/scholarships/white-scholarship-guide.htm
End of rant. Here's a completely different take on education, as in self-education via the Internet. Do you ever look up useless fun facts online? Do you use Bing? If you use Bing, you may get e-mails that invite you to click on a link to get a screen that's just plain fun...
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Elephants+swimming
Etiquette
Mr. Ruedinger claims he means to warn any friends the weekend's muddled Muslim murderer may have had, not Muslims generally, away from his restaurant. He didn't have enough letters. Sorry, I'm with the Muslims on this one. If you mean terrorists or murderers, you should say terrorists or murderers. If you don't have enough letters to post what you mean to say, you don't have to post anything.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/09/20/its-my-right-restaurant-owner-defends-muslims-get-out-sign-amid-criticism/
And here's a sillier story about the questionable right to display questionable words...A kumquat is a fruit, like a miniature orange, that grows on a miniature tree in the back yards of every reasonable person in Florida. They're bite-sized and are usually popped into the mouth peels and all. They taste like natural marmalade. They're probably the cutest fruit on Earth. The first half of the word has, however, picked up an obnoxious meaning, like one or two of the possible meanings of "honey" only more specific and thus ruder.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/09/07/in-reference-to-the-personalized-license-plate-kumquat/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na
Faith
Though this post cites a classic Christian book, it's about faith, generally.
http://itsjustlife.me/the-beauty-of-a-door/
Food (Yuck)
It is soooo yuck that I have to put M&Ms in this category, because as a road food peanut M&Ms always used to be my all-time favorite "yum." Tidy enough to eat anywhere, available almost everywhere, enough protein and fibre in the peanuts to offset the chocolate and make a packet feel like a substitute for a real meal, more natural nut than sugar in every delicious bite, and M&Ms move fast enough that you hardly ever found a stale peanut...and then Monsanto and their GMOs came in and ruined M&Ms for me. They still taste good, but the last couple packets I ate made me sick. I can still eat Reese's Pieces, but they don't feel like a substitute for a real meal, and it's just not the same. I want my naturally gluten-free, bordering-on-healthy M&Ms back! Waaahhhh!
http://thesavvyage.com/distribution-of-mm-colors/
Health
Will this winter's Hawaii vacation with the McDougalls be their last?
http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=5e58f59d97611f910916b6276&id=c8ba1972a8&e=4d57a9fdfb
Phenology
In Virginia, too, only a few leaves are starting to change color. Sycamore leaves turn yellow in September in response to light. Most trees wait for chilly weather--not necessarily frosty, but cool--and this is being a long, hot summer.
http://naomi-the-naturenerd.blogspot.com/2016/09/a-little-color.html
Politics
If Senator, possibly Vice-President, Tim Kaine were on trial for being a left-winger, there'd be plenty of evidence to convict him. Norb Leahy has assembled an impressively long article for reference:
http://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2016/09/raising-kaine.html
Meanwhile, Candidate Trump wants to slap up more overpriced yuppie "developments" in yet another nice, scenic waterfront area where hundreds of water-flush toilets will be drained into the water. In Ireland, yet. ("If elected, I will be impeached and deported. If impeached and deported, I will hide behind this..." Feel free to draw and share any cartoons this thought may suggest.)
http://www.savethewaves.org/stoptrumpsirishwall/
Sports
Yo, NYMets, don't diss our K-Mets! Tebow has a lot of fans in my part of the world, whether he ever actually plays professional baseball or not.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/09/20/stunt-even-with-jerseys-and-books-to-sell-tebow-says-no/
Writing
What's Klout? (I suspect, after visiting this site, that it's one of those sites that holds out the promise of increased traffic to your web site by selling information about you to spammers and scammers. I'd like to have seen something more encouraging, but I did not.)
http://www.mostlyblogging.com/klout-score/
Zazzle
This blanket grabbed my attention because "Addison" and "Alexandra" are popular names, and I happen to know one of the families where both of them are in use in the same house. Of course, it's Zazzle, so the designer invites you to customize it with your own children's names and colors.
The whole point at Zazzle is that things are printed on demand, so if you like a design there's usually some possibility for ordering a variation on it. See a design on a T-shirt that you'd like to have on a sweatshirt? Zazzle will probably do that. Change the colors? Zazzle doesn't promise every color of the rainbow, but usually offers a few color options.
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