Several unrelated articles, all together, because LJ is being silly

One on a town for the deaf.

( Article Inside )

One on the Olmecs.

( Article inside )

One on euthanasia of infants....

( Article inside )

One on the suicide of a prodigy

( Article inside )

And a bunch of links from CNN...

One on how Notre Dame (the college) is preserving the Irish language.
One on an Ebola-like disease in Angola.
One on a "face phone". Really, isn't this old news?
One on a pro-democracy riot in Kyrgyzstan. We think my mother's father's family may have been from there originally.
Oh yeah. Happy Mid-spring, everybody!

(And, for the record, May Day is the start of summer. Midsummer is exactly that, mid-summer. When Shakespeare compares us to a summer's day, he talks about rough winds in May, not late June.)

If you're happy and you know it clap your hands...

[Poll #458509]

If you think that *insert popular case* is overhyped, fine. I admire your convictions.

But you lose the right to say that when you've just spent five minutes going on and on about why you think the fundies/godless heathens are making a political battle out of somebody's personal pain, and why they should do what rational people/good Christians do.

Seriously. If you think that it's a personal issue, just shut up about it, whatever it is.

Thanks to spacemuffin

For the record, I think it's a combination of more diagnoses and more recognition - the two feed off each other.

( Notable quotes )

Really, it's not nearly as bad an article as I'd hoped. Drat. Those are more fun to mock.

And today's griffen link update.

Somehow, he neglected to include any links from me. I'd be more displeased if these weren't really cool links.

Guys? I need some help...

I need to find numbers for hospitals in downtown manhattan. It's really nothing serious, I'm just looking them up. Any ideas on the fastest places to look?

Have I told you guys lately how much I adore Hilari Bell?

This is one seriously underrated author. Blows JKR completely out of the water (like that's hard) with the depth of her world-planning - and with the way she writes it. She (mostly) doesn't fall into the trap of explaining things the characters find everyday and commonplace... "And so LongName went to the privy. While they had only heard stories about the mysterious "flush toilets" outsiders used, it was still a sophisticated tool, she thought. The waste went into a river via...."

*sighs happily*

There are some things which I find hard to swallow. Not one, but two characters in a book, adult characters, learning entirely new languages in under a year? Only a few months, even? I'm not sure I buy that - though they did have pressing reasons to learn a new language, both of them, so maybe I'm judging too harshly.

You know who else is underrated? H. M. Hoover. Anybody getting me one of her out-of-print books will be greatly lauded.

If you can spell properly, do so.

I understand some of my friends can't spell, and they have their reasons. However, if I know for a fact you can, and you don't, you're very close to getting your comments automatically screened until you learn to be courteous to other readers.