Priscilla's Zine & Bookstore: September 22 Link Log

Thursday, September 22, 2016

September 22 Link Log

Categories: Animals, Books, Cybersecurity, Green, Health, Movie, North Carolina, Politics, Washington, Weird, Zazzle.

Animals

As +Nancy Hardin reminded us...there's no need to kill horses. There's not even a real need to spay female horses or burros, although neutering is highly recommended for males. Horses and burros are pets in search of homes.

https://www.change.org/p/say-no-to-mass-killing-of-wild-horses/

Books

Neil Gaiman shares baby pictures and the covers for the new editions of his classics...

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2016/09/its-ashs-first-birthday-bare-chin-is.html

Click on this (not Amazon) book link for a last chance to get one of Tim LaHaye's less widely distributed books (I mean, I don't have a copy yet). This link goes to the heirs of his ministry/industry:

https://www.timlahaye.com/collections/spiritual-growth/products/why-believe-in-jesus?variant=3633471425

This one goes to the author's own site...

http://www.francescasimon.com/horrid-henry-books/storybooks/

in honor of:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/sep/22/the-horrid-case-of-henry-why-authors-need-new-rights-legistlation?CMP=twt_gu

(What rights do we all need? John Stossel gets it right:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/09/21/supreme_court_picks_131845.html)

Now our Amazon link...a fun read for all baby-boomers:

Cybersecurity

Whew. Here's the article I was trying to read...and it was a good article, but don't go there. The National Review site wasted almost ten minutes of my time on cookies, pop-up ads, and efforts to reactivate features I disable on computers I use. If you enjoy National Review writers' work, please join me in a Twitter campaign to demand that nationalreview.com offer text-only articles before displaying, at the bottom of the page, a small innocuous ad widget like the exemplary one you should see in between the blog and my contact information at the bottom of this page.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/440232/sanctimony-hypocrisy-united-nations-summit-corrupt-bureaucrats

Green

Here's a Green volunteer/job opportunity you might not have thought of. First, read:

http://nowiknow.com/the-secret-broken-language-of-fire-hydrants/

What do these fun facts mean for Greens? Who looks after the space surrounding fire hydrants in your neighborhood? Do they dig up weeds...or do they poison weeds? The position of this web site is that if you live near only one hydrant (within range of being poisoned by anything sprayed around it) keeping that space weed-and-poison-free is something you might reasonably "volunteer" to do for your own personal safety; if you're able to walk to several hydrants and tend those spaces, it's a one-day-a-week job for which your community can reasonably be asked to pay.

Meanwhile, here's a feel-good post about a couple of computer geeks who've gone back to the land:

http://www.dailygood.org/story/1392/lessons-from-living-in-nature-nisha-srinivisan/

Health

Not only is it important to know that our fruit and vegetables are GMO-free and glyphosate-free...it may become important to know that what was fed to any animal whose meat or milk we ingest was also non-toxic. (I'm not having problems with local-bred chicken...yet...but some people are reporting them!) That information may be hard to find, so some people may want to reconsider going vegan...

http://us4.campaign-archive1.com/?u=5e58f59d97611f910916b6276&id=f73d6d3fc8&e=4d57a9fdfb

Which means...no "real" gelatin (so far I've not read anything bad about agar)...and no vaccines, or other lab-culture products that might be needed for other lifesaving procedures, are safe either until we stop fiddling around and just ban glyphosate:

http://www.anh-usa.org/glyphosate-in-vaccines-as-well-as-food/

Movie

Recommended to all movie watchers, Wednesday, September 28:

http://thevanishedfilm.com/

North Carolina Update

Much regrettable news is coming in, a lot of it from Jim Geraghty via an e-mail for which he wants you to sign up through obnoxious nationalreview.com. Yesterday a Yougov poll asked "Which do you trust, bystanders' reports or major news media's reports about breaking news?" I trust both about equally; neither type of source is inherently infallible. But here's why I tend to trust the claim that the unfortunate Mr. Scott was carrying a gun. The first thing every child who's ever played cops-and-robbers in the U.S. learns is "Hands up!" In other words, if you leave a car and walk toward a police officer (generally not a good idea unless you're running full speed and warning people that the car's on fire, which of course could be confirmed by the cloud of smoke), you leave weapons, and books for pity's sake, in the car--unless of course you might be looking for trouble. You hold your hands up to show that you're not threatening the police with a weapon. Terence Crutcher had his hands up. Keith Scott should have had his hands up, too.

http://ijr.com/2016/09/697913-witnesses-confirm-charlotte-police-chiefs-claim-keith-lamont-scott-was-armed-with-gun-not-book/

(Lots more at IJR on this topic, some more blood-boiling than others: this is the one I like:

http://ijr.com/2016/09/698598-charlotte-qb-cam-newton-speaks-up-about-citys-violent-riots-we-cant-be-hypocrites/ )

Politics

Violence is so not the way to achieve justice. (An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind...) Perry Willis explains why appeals to big government are the way to achieve...violence.

http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=a62f6d3a19ffbd4c6852a4c85&id=fbf7f71840&e=1ad40b3989

Washington, D.C., Updates

This is sad...the death knell for Metrorail. No, I'll never live in Washington again.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/tripping/wp/2016/09/22/meet-some-metro-riders-ex-metro-riders-that-is/?wprss=rss_story-local-traffic-stream&tid=sm_tw_pl

Note the ongoing reluctance to mention the simple solution to some (not all) of the (older) problems discussed, for which I was lobbying circa 1997: communication cords, like the ones on Metrobus. (And yes, it could be made a crime to pull a communication cord in the absence of an emergency.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/tripping/wp/2016/02/12/heres-what-metro-should-do-to-win-riders-back/

The Weird and the Stupid

More stupid than weird...Like we all know how great the danger is that a person's hair might somehow be braided wrong. I mean, considering that a person whose hair is being braided is strapped down and fully anesthetized and has no way to tell the braider that s/he wants a certain segment of hair to hang down this way rather than that way. On the planet where some protectionist lawmakers think they live, anyway.

http://reason.com/blog/2016/09/22/federal-judge-upholds-ban-on-unlicensed

Zazzle

What Zazzle was really trying to tell me, with today's promotion of Halloween party supplies, is that you can order party-themed party supplies for whatever theme you fancy. Here's one that appeals to me, for "Halloween cat" or cat birthday or cat adoption parties, or whatever: