Nothing like a little "innovation" to make bloggers feel like The Grinch. Attention web administrators: tweaking features of web sites that are working for the people who use those sites is very, very naughty, and you deserve a whole boxcar-load of coal, right on top of your beds, while you're sleeping in them. Cut it down to just a stocking-full of coal by memorizing this principle: If a frequent user has checked "Keep me logged in," that does not authorize you to depend on cookies on that computer; it authorizes you to remember that computer's "IP Address" and use that to log that computer into that account, in a literal moment and no wasting so much as half a second, for all time to come.
Anyway, today's Categories: Animals, Books (lots of), Charity, Christian, Crafts, Food, #FreeNazanin , Health, Holidays, Mental Health, Music, National Security, Obituary, Philosophy, Pictures, Weird, Women's Issues, Word.
Animals
Cat day, because Mudpie's Human's post was cuter than usual...
http://www.mochasmysteriesmeows.com/2016/12/mudpies-letter-to-santa.html
(I still need to...post this web site's Christmas wishes. My favorite episode of "Seinfeld" is...all the ones I've seen seemed funny at the time, and I fully approve of the one with the brand-name candy: a good product placement is better than a million commercials. I don't think my cats recognize the word "Christmas" but they always appreciate treats.)
 |
| Amazon linker fouled up. Click here: http://amzn.to/2inVI2Z |
 |
| Brenda from Merrifield (Virginia): https://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/36861319 |
 |
| Georgia from New York--not the most photogenic cat in New York, in fact that tiger-like face might be almost as much of a handicap as Mogwai's face was, but I loved Mogwai. Anyway Georgia is a senior cat who needs a good home fast: https://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/36520066 |
 |
| Jade from Atlanta: https://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/35193756 |
For the dogs...unfortunately, greyhound racing is not as animal-friendly as it ought to be. The dogs are friendly, make great pets, behave well, and they naturally love to run fast enough to entertain people, rather like Thoroughbred horses. This web site has reservations about the assumption that all animal racing is cruel because, if you listen to the P.E.T.A. lunatic fringe, all animals are supposed to be wild and free and uncorrupted by any association with humans...I have no idea where they get that line of idiot babble, and don't endorse it. I'm not signing the petition linked below, because its title exposes craziness instead of an honest, legitimate hope to expose and correct specific problems. But I would like to see Florida friends and readers demand decent care for Orlando's greyhounds.
https://www.change.org/p/orlando-solar-bears-end-partnership-with-cruel-greyhound-racing-industry
https://www.change.org/p/orlando-solar-bears-end-partnership-with-cruel-greyhound-racing-industry
Books
I've not read any of the Daily Good picks. I'd be interested, though, especially in reading what left-winger Arlie Hochschild has been able to understand and/or failed to understand about Tea Partiers.
http://www.dailygood.org/story/1468/greater-good-s-top-books-of-2016-jill-suttie-kira-m-newman-diana-divecha-laura-saponara/
Charity
It's not too late to help G.I. phone home:
https://secure.uso.org/1612_pre-christmas/
Christian
This is sooo bad...I wanted to link to this on the first of the month, and have forgotten it. Watch this blog (or the blog feed on your right) for January's Bible verses. (Yes, Cantosyoraciones is in Spanish. If you'd rather read the texts in English and have the Biblia add-on in Google Chrome, you can instantly pull up each verse in English; I've not checked whether Biblia is available for the other languages into which Blogspot blogs automatically translate themselves, worldwide.)
http://cantosyoraciones.blogspot.com/2016/11/envio-su-hijo-al-mundo-porque-de-tal.html
Separate topic: Up to about ten years ago, I would have fully endorsed exactly what Norb Leahy says here...
https://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2016/12/divine-guidance.html
Though now I have to add:
"
This is unjustifiably personal since NTL Conservative is one e-contact that's never asked me for money, but since you've asked...I *did* pray about why things that had been paying quite well had suddenly stopped paying at all...oh, during the first year after my husband died anyway. And a thought, not necessarily what people call a Vision but I don't normally think in pictures, came to my mind. It was the image of a sick patient trying to press the button for the nurse but not being able to use his/her hands. I understood it to mean that the church is the living Body of Christ. When Christians fail to support one another's ventures, then Christians don't prosper in spite of their good honest work.
I am still not living in prosperity.
I am still offering good honest work...in real life, at my Blogspot, and at Fiverr. The Blogspot is primarily about books and also displays some samples of things I've written for payment, from informative leaflets for health clinics through short stories, song parodies, and Amazon product reviews. Fiverr is an apparently legitimate "agency" site that transfers money between clients and writers-for-hire. I use the same screen name everywhere and am easy to find online.
"
Unfortunately, what's true for The Guardian is true for your very fa-a-avorite underfunded web site:
"
(If I use their words, it's only fair to add a link those who don't mind left-of-center reportage can use to pay for theirs. Now, to pay for this web site, you could either send a postal money order to the P.O. Box at the very bottom of the screen, or send an e-mail to our Message Squirrel Saloli, also at the bottom of the screen, for information about sending Paypal payments.)
Third separate topic: This is an example of what I'd call releasing the emotion. The offender, or "trespasser," doesn't even have to repent of doing some things. You know kids didn't intend for a campfire to burn acres of land and kill dozens of people. I'm glad this man isn't clutching hate like a viper against his heart, but...this is not the same thing as forgiving a murderer. (Yes, IJR is still a truly ugly web site, with irrelevant pop-ups and visual clutter galore. Read at your own risk.)
http://ijr.com/2016/12/759994-his-wife-kids-were-killed-in-tn-wildfires-heres-his-powerful-letter-to-the-teens-accused-of-starting-it/
Crafts
Elizabeth Barrette shares crochet memories:
http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/4204686.html
For us knitters...this is what I once fantasized that a weekly Knitting Blog ought to look like. Lovely clear photos documenting a Lace Phase:
https://gannetdesigns.com/
Food (Yum)
Fruit salad...hold the coconut and mayonnaise if you're serving it to me, but in any case it'll be vegan, gluten-free, and brimful of vitamins.
https://niume.com/post/201078
For anyone who manages to get tired of chocolate:
http://themarthareview.com/delicious-peanut-butter-fudge/
All-American sweet-and-sour chicken:
http://brainbuzz.learningrx.com/brain-food-grilled-chicken-sweet-sour/
Free Nazanin
There has to be more than this story than is being released...Change.org having failed to #FreeNazanin , Amnesty is taking up her cause. I've not read of any serious charges pressed against the British mother-of-a-tot who's been imprisoned since what's been claimed to be a routine short visit to relatives in Iran. Did she actually do something "suspicious"? Did any of the relatives? What is going on?
https://write.amnesty.org.uk/write-for-rights/action/nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe/thank-you
Although her husband's petition on Change.org didn't mention the possibility, some people, like the Real Twit known as @harleygirl3465 , think it's religious persecution (Nazanin Radcliffe apparently having been identified as a Christian):
"
No nothin at all they lied on her and said she did something religious against them she didn't
"
Here's the update from Change.org:
https://www.change.org/p/6989030/u/18826667
Health
First the unpleasant news: Because it's hard to prove that any one specific thing causes cancer in humans, the E.P.A. seems to be poised to ignore all the many unpleasant things glyphosate causes, which may in some cases include cancer, and so, so much more:
http://www.ecowatch.com/epa-panel-glyphosate-cancer-2159628674.html
Causation and correlation...people who are sicker are less likely to sit up and read books, but still:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/312167.php
Holidays
Hanukah...tweets flew, but the actual post came in yesterday. Today my Twitter feed has been dominated by reactions to Rand Paul's "Airing of Grievances." Ah yes..."Seinfeld"...Festivus...and this web site is not going to link to B&J's suggested ice cream sandwiches, although wheat eaters will probably search for it and find it, because the idea of an ice cream tostada suggests to this web site that some people have been into the adults-only eggnog during business hours. (Hoot.)
http://www.benjerry.com/whats-new/2016/festivus-inspired-sundaes
Mental Health
Why are more children not adopted?
https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/f_homstu.pdf#page=2&view=Elements of the home study process
Music
Is anybody interested in a "thoroughly depressing" anti-Christmas un-carol?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/12/17/how-a-thoroughly-depressing-joni-mitchell-song-became-a-christmas-classic/
National Security
FYI...in the event of religious persecution, people should be proud to be persecuted for their faith anyway. I personally think we as a nation should avoid enabling future religious persecution by storing this kind of data, and we as individuals should do our bit by publishing our beliefs but not our identifying information on the Internet. (I was so pleased when Yahoo notified me that the latest "security breach" might have involved contact information for our Message Squirrel...whose "address" is a tree, who has no phone and no credit cards, and whose name would be a dead giveaway for any identity thief trying to use it. Saloli Anigodagewi is a cyberspace entity that exists, in squirrel form, for the specific purpose of filtering out hackers and forwarding legitimate purchase-related inquiries to individual humans, which is why you can't send Paypal payments directly to Saloli. Just try using "Anigodagewi" as an individual name, around anyone who speaks even a smattering of Cherokee, and see what you get. Hah!)
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/154810597041/can-the-government-deduce-your-religion-without
Obituary
Heinrich Schiff, 65.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/dec/23/world-renowned-cellist-heinrich-schiff-dies-in-vienna?CMP=twt_gu
Philosophy
Scott Adams endorsed this interview:
http://sixtyandme.com/8-controversial-life-lessons-from-the-creator-of-the-dilbert-comic-strip/#.WF05MxCMo3U.twitter
Pictures
I can't photograph lights with my cell phone at all. +Beth Ann Chiles shares some beautiful pictures of Christmas lights, with clear colors behind them:
http://itsjustlife.me/christmas-at-the-biltmore/
Here's the best this phone can do to commemorate the cafe's "upside-down" Christmas tree. Well, it might have done better if I hadn't aimed out the window into the sun, but I didn't want to photograph any people:
Weird
"Weird" is where you look for news of Penn Jillette, master of weird effects and author of laugh-out-loud-weird books, right?
http://reason.com/archives/2016/12/21/penn-jillette
This "interactive" page is sort of weird: I clicked on a link supplied by a Twitter-friend to read what it had to say about his home county, and the link automatically opened what the Nytimes.com survey had to say about the data for my county. The one in which I'm sitting, I mean. Well, basic cookie technology, but...I don't actually like sites that automatically guess what somebody thinks you want to see based on where you are, or what else you've read lately, or any other information about you. I have more faith in sites that don't ask for information about me, but just put what they have out there for me to take or leave. Weirdly, the site's findings about Scott County, Virginia, are almost identical with its findings about the Twit's home county in Ohio, so I typed in the names of (every other county I could think of offhand) just to confirm that there is a difference. I'm making no guarantees about how accurate their numbers are, but there is a difference: if you take the average "upward economic mobility" or lack thereof as an indication of a child's future prospects, which is not necessarily more reliable than using the child's horoscope, Scott County may be a better place for a child to grow up than Berrien County, Michigan, though not as promising as Montgomery County, Maryland.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/03/upshot/the-best-and-worst-places-to-grow-up-how-your-area-compares.html?_r=0
But for serious weirdness...Matt Drudge shared it, but then again it comes from a country where news of the weird can be hard to verify. I don't know.
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/villager-in-china-uses-grenade-to-crack-open-walnuts-for-25-years
Women's Issues
Mr. Dale Partridge says it better than women can. (See warning about the web site linked, above. If watching the page open makes anybody out there sick, I apologize.)
http://ijr.com/2016/12/759479-husband-who-works-all-week-says-theres-a-gift-that-too-many-men-steal-from-their-wives-on-the-weekend/
Word
In the continuing education of the writer known as Priscilla King...Grue is the French name for a large, long-legged bird, a.k.a. a crane. I knew that. I was not aware that, by simple back-formation from the English word "gruesome," the computer game world has spawned a type of monster called a grue. Basically, it seems, a grue is what nyctophobic people are afraid will eat them in the dark. Thanks to Gannet for sharing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grue_(monster)
Charity
It's not too late to help G.I. phone home:
https://secure.uso.org/1612_pre-christmas/
Christian
This is sooo bad...I wanted to link to this on the first of the month, and have forgotten it. Watch this blog (or the blog feed on your right) for January's Bible verses. (Yes, Cantosyoraciones is in Spanish. If you'd rather read the texts in English and have the Biblia add-on in Google Chrome, you can instantly pull up each verse in English; I've not checked whether Biblia is available for the other languages into which Blogspot blogs automatically translate themselves, worldwide.)
http://cantosyoraciones.blogspot.com/2016/11/envio-su-hijo-al-mundo-porque-de-tal.html
Separate topic: Up to about ten years ago, I would have fully endorsed exactly what Norb Leahy says here...
https://ntlconsulting.blogspot.com/2016/12/divine-guidance.html
Though now I have to add:
"
This is unjustifiably personal since NTL Conservative is one e-contact that's never asked me for money, but since you've asked...I *did* pray about why things that had been paying quite well had suddenly stopped paying at all...oh, during the first year after my husband died anyway. And a thought, not necessarily what people call a Vision but I don't normally think in pictures, came to my mind. It was the image of a sick patient trying to press the button for the nurse but not being able to use his/her hands. I understood it to mean that the church is the living Body of Christ. When Christians fail to support one another's ventures, then Christians don't prosper in spite of their good honest work.
I am still not living in prosperity.
I am still offering good honest work...in real life, at my Blogspot, and at Fiverr. The Blogspot is primarily about books and also displays some samples of things I've written for payment, from informative leaflets for health clinics through short stories, song parodies, and Amazon product reviews. Fiverr is an apparently legitimate "agency" site that transfers money between clients and writers-for-hire. I use the same screen name everywhere and am easy to find online.
"
Unfortunately, what's true for The Guardian is true for your very fa-a-avorite underfunded web site:
"
More people are reading the Guardian than ever but far fewer are paying for it. And advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.
If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps to pay for it our future would be much more secure.
"(If I use their words, it's only fair to add a link those who don't mind left-of-center reportage can use to pay for theirs. Now, to pay for this web site, you could either send a postal money order to the P.O. Box at the very bottom of the screen, or send an e-mail to our Message Squirrel Saloli, also at the bottom of the screen, for information about sending Paypal payments.)
Third separate topic: This is an example of what I'd call releasing the emotion. The offender, or "trespasser," doesn't even have to repent of doing some things. You know kids didn't intend for a campfire to burn acres of land and kill dozens of people. I'm glad this man isn't clutching hate like a viper against his heart, but...this is not the same thing as forgiving a murderer. (Yes, IJR is still a truly ugly web site, with irrelevant pop-ups and visual clutter galore. Read at your own risk.)
http://ijr.com/2016/12/759994-his-wife-kids-were-killed-in-tn-wildfires-heres-his-powerful-letter-to-the-teens-accused-of-starting-it/
Crafts
Elizabeth Barrette shares crochet memories:
http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/4204686.html
For us knitters...this is what I once fantasized that a weekly Knitting Blog ought to look like. Lovely clear photos documenting a Lace Phase:
https://gannetdesigns.com/
Food (Yum)
Fruit salad...hold the coconut and mayonnaise if you're serving it to me, but in any case it'll be vegan, gluten-free, and brimful of vitamins.
https://niume.com/post/201078
For anyone who manages to get tired of chocolate:
http://themarthareview.com/delicious-peanut-butter-fudge/
All-American sweet-and-sour chicken:
http://brainbuzz.learningrx.com/brain-food-grilled-chicken-sweet-sour/
Free Nazanin
There has to be more than this story than is being released...Change.org having failed to #FreeNazanin , Amnesty is taking up her cause. I've not read of any serious charges pressed against the British mother-of-a-tot who's been imprisoned since what's been claimed to be a routine short visit to relatives in Iran. Did she actually do something "suspicious"? Did any of the relatives? What is going on?
https://write.amnesty.org.uk/write-for-rights/action/nazanin-zaghari-ratcliffe/thank-you
Although her husband's petition on Change.org didn't mention the possibility, some people, like the Real Twit known as @harleygirl3465 , think it's religious persecution (Nazanin Radcliffe apparently having been identified as a Christian):
"
No nothin at all they lied on her and said she did something religious against them she didn't
"
Here's the update from Change.org:
https://www.change.org/p/6989030/u/18826667
Health
First the unpleasant news: Because it's hard to prove that any one specific thing causes cancer in humans, the E.P.A. seems to be poised to ignore all the many unpleasant things glyphosate causes, which may in some cases include cancer, and so, so much more:
http://www.ecowatch.com/epa-panel-glyphosate-cancer-2159628674.html
Causation and correlation...people who are sicker are less likely to sit up and read books, but still:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/312167.php
Holidays
Hanukah...tweets flew, but the actual post came in yesterday. Today my Twitter feed has been dominated by reactions to Rand Paul's "Airing of Grievances." Ah yes..."Seinfeld"...Festivus...and this web site is not going to link to B&J's suggested ice cream sandwiches, although wheat eaters will probably search for it and find it, because the idea of an ice cream tostada suggests to this web site that some people have been into the adults-only eggnog during business hours. (Hoot.)
http://www.benjerry.com/whats-new/2016/festivus-inspired-sundaes
Mental Health
Why are more children not adopted?
https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/f_homstu.pdf#page=2&view=Elements of the home study process
Music
Is anybody interested in a "thoroughly depressing" anti-Christmas un-carol?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2015/12/17/how-a-thoroughly-depressing-joni-mitchell-song-became-a-christmas-classic/
National Security
FYI...in the event of religious persecution, people should be proud to be persecuted for their faith anyway. I personally think we as a nation should avoid enabling future religious persecution by storing this kind of data, and we as individuals should do our bit by publishing our beliefs but not our identifying information on the Internet. (I was so pleased when Yahoo notified me that the latest "security breach" might have involved contact information for our Message Squirrel...whose "address" is a tree, who has no phone and no credit cards, and whose name would be a dead giveaway for any identity thief trying to use it. Saloli Anigodagewi is a cyberspace entity that exists, in squirrel form, for the specific purpose of filtering out hackers and forwarding legitimate purchase-related inquiries to individual humans, which is why you can't send Paypal payments directly to Saloli. Just try using "Anigodagewi" as an individual name, around anyone who speaks even a smattering of Cherokee, and see what you get. Hah!)
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/154810597041/can-the-government-deduce-your-religion-without
Obituary
Heinrich Schiff, 65.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/dec/23/world-renowned-cellist-heinrich-schiff-dies-in-vienna?CMP=twt_gu
Philosophy
Scott Adams endorsed this interview:
http://sixtyandme.com/8-controversial-life-lessons-from-the-creator-of-the-dilbert-comic-strip/#.WF05MxCMo3U.twitter
Pictures
I can't photograph lights with my cell phone at all. +Beth Ann Chiles shares some beautiful pictures of Christmas lights, with clear colors behind them:
http://itsjustlife.me/christmas-at-the-biltmore/
Here's the best this phone can do to commemorate the cafe's "upside-down" Christmas tree. Well, it might have done better if I hadn't aimed out the window into the sun, but I didn't want to photograph any people:
Weird
"Weird" is where you look for news of Penn Jillette, master of weird effects and author of laugh-out-loud-weird books, right?
http://reason.com/archives/2016/12/21/penn-jillette
This "interactive" page is sort of weird: I clicked on a link supplied by a Twitter-friend to read what it had to say about his home county, and the link automatically opened what the Nytimes.com survey had to say about the data for my county. The one in which I'm sitting, I mean. Well, basic cookie technology, but...I don't actually like sites that automatically guess what somebody thinks you want to see based on where you are, or what else you've read lately, or any other information about you. I have more faith in sites that don't ask for information about me, but just put what they have out there for me to take or leave. Weirdly, the site's findings about Scott County, Virginia, are almost identical with its findings about the Twit's home county in Ohio, so I typed in the names of (every other county I could think of offhand) just to confirm that there is a difference. I'm making no guarantees about how accurate their numbers are, but there is a difference: if you take the average "upward economic mobility" or lack thereof as an indication of a child's future prospects, which is not necessarily more reliable than using the child's horoscope, Scott County may be a better place for a child to grow up than Berrien County, Michigan, though not as promising as Montgomery County, Maryland.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/03/upshot/the-best-and-worst-places-to-grow-up-how-your-area-compares.html?_r=0
But for serious weirdness...Matt Drudge shared it, but then again it comes from a country where news of the weird can be hard to verify. I don't know.
http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/villager-in-china-uses-grenade-to-crack-open-walnuts-for-25-years
Women's Issues
Mr. Dale Partridge says it better than women can. (See warning about the web site linked, above. If watching the page open makes anybody out there sick, I apologize.)
http://ijr.com/2016/12/759479-husband-who-works-all-week-says-theres-a-gift-that-too-many-men-steal-from-their-wives-on-the-weekend/
Word
In the continuing education of the writer known as Priscilla King...Grue is the French name for a large, long-legged bird, a.k.a. a crane. I knew that. I was not aware that, by simple back-formation from the English word "gruesome," the computer game world has spawned a type of monster called a grue. Basically, it seems, a grue is what nyctophobic people are afraid will eat them in the dark. Thanks to Gannet for sharing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grue_(monster)
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