I was going to try to get more done this afternoon, but I've spent more time than expected on the computer, looking at the news from Paris.  My heart aches for the victims of this atrocity.  The scale of the attacks is truly awful.  My heart aches also for those affected by the bombings in Lebanon earlier in the day, where over 40 people were ( Read more... )

I spent an awful lot of time reading news reports about the murderous rampage near the University of California Santa Barbara.  Mass shootings are always upsetting (and they should be), but this one hit me especially hard both because of the where and the why ( Read more... )

Hello, Internet!  I am largely absent this weekend because it's time for Contra Carnivale, a dancing weekend event in San Luis Obispo.  There's gorgeous music, thrilling dancing, and the chance to hang out with some fun dancers from out of town. Also, the weather is mysteriously drop dead gorgeous.  Even for California, this is weird for this time ( Read more... )

Has anyone heard about the giant traffic jam in China and thought of cat-nuns and giant crabs?  That's definitely where my mind went.  This traffic jam is 60 miles long, has traffic moving at a third of a mile a day in the worst part, and is predicted to last until mid-September.  Most of us are officially never allowed to complain about traffic ( Read more... )

I bring you some interesting things from around the internet.

-News that sounds like the start of a movie:  Neuroscientist who studies the brains of psychopaths discovers that he has multiple murderers in his family tree.  He tests himself and finds that both his brain activity and some genes match traits of psychopaths.  In movies, this discovery ( Read more... )

Time for a gloomy news roundup!  It's time for some crude talk about oil spills.

( scary yet visually striking photo (no animals in distress) )

According to the BBC, the adorably named English town of Westbury-sub-Mendip has turned a disused phone booth into an honor-system library. It's a lovely idea, provided you have the sort of community that will take good care of it. However, it would be SO much more awesome if the box in question was actually a TARDIS. A TARDIS-lookalike police ( Read more... )

-A federal judge found that a hospital was within its rights to allow a woman to die without her family at her side because the family in question was the woman's female partner and their adopted children.   The surviving woman wasn't even kept properly updated on her partner's condition.  How do people working at a hospital have so little sense of ( Read more... )

First, this NY Times article about kids coming out in middle school was really heartwarming.  Yes, there are really upsetting statistics about how many queer* youth experience bullying, but plenty of these kids are receiving support from at least some of their friends, family, and school officials in a way that would have been unthinkable not so ( Read more... )