Home » Links

Category: Links

Natterings

I start­ed play­ing around with Social­Whois today, which led me to vis­it Friend­Feed and add Dis­qus and DandyID to this site. And that led me to vis­it­ing a bunch of oth­er sites for the first time in ages, like Blog­lines, which wants me to claim my site all over again.

DandyID has the most exten­sive list of social net­work­ing sites I’ve ever seen. I mean, who wants to be part of some­thing called my​.curse​.com? Ick! I couldn’t even begin to guess what some were about. I think I may set a mora­to­ri­um on sign­ing up for any new ones unless there’s a seri­ous­ly com­pelling rea­son to do so. Odd­ly enough, they don’t have Rav­el­ry list­ed (but I did sug­gest that they add it).

Miscellany

I lost track of who originally linked to what, so I can't credit them properly. But thank you to whoever they all were, anyway!

Filed under "another reason I'm proud to be a homeschooler": California court rules that private school can oust lesbian students. I do understand that it's a private religious school, and that their denomination doesn't approve of homosexuality. On the other hand, the girls' parents chose to send them to that school, not the girls themselves. And demanding that everybody in the school be heterosexual makes every bit as much sense as demanding that they all be right-handed! (It also sounds like the school went WAY the hell overboard in interpreting the "evidence.")

Can I get an "Amen"?! Ending Weight Bias: The Easiest Way to Tackle Obesity in America

This is news? Readers build vivid mental simulations of narrative situations, brain scans suggest

Not Good News: Mercury found in kids' foods - and in pretty much anything else that contains HFCS. I'm confident of my ability to kick the soda habit, but totally avoiding HFCS pretty much means avoiding all processed foods. GAH!

This is so cool! Implants Tap the Thinking Brain

No surprise to me, at least: Watch out. The Internet will cut you

Reality check: Sorry, you don't have a 200 IQ

Another no-brainer: Video Games May Hinder Relationships

Any Knitters Who Like Graphic Novels?

linked to Hand­knit Heroes yesterday. 

Imag­ine you’re a teenag­er, and you have some… spe­cial pow­ers. Maybe even super pow­ers. And one day, at a sleep­over, your best friend in the whole world tells you—you’re not alone. So begins the adven­ture for a cou­ple of teenagers, a sin­gle mom and yarn shop own­er, and a whole bunch of hand knit­ted fun.

Hand­knit Heroes is the first graph­ic nov­el for knit­ters. Each issue fea­tures a great sto­ry­line with knit­ting super­heroes, ter­rif­ic art­work, and a beau­ti­ful (and easy) knit­ting pattern.

I’m vast­ly amused, and I nei­ther knit (yet!) nor read graph­ic nov­els. I know that does both, though, and I fig­ure there are prob­a­bly others.

Bisexual Species: Unorthodox Sex in the Animal Kingdom: Scientific American

This could have gone in my last post, con­sid­er­ing Porter’s life 😉 Thanks to Scott Bragg for the link.

Bisex­u­al Species: Unortho­dox Sex in the Ani­mal King­dom: Sci­en­tif­ic American

… as many as 1,500 species of wild and cap­tive ani­mals that have been observed engag­ing in homo­sex­u­al activ­i­ty. Researchers have seen such same-sex goings-on in both male and female, old and young, and social and soli­tary crea­tures and on branch­es of the evo­lu­tion­ary tree rang­ing from insects to mammals.

Unlike most humans, how­ev­er, indi­vid­ual ani­mals gen­er­al­ly can­not be clas­si­fied as gay or straight: an ani­mal that engages in a same-sex flir­ta­tion or part­ner­ship does not nec­es­sar­i­ly shun het­ero­sex­u­al encoun­ters. Rather many species seem to have ingrained homo­sex­u­al ten­den­cies that are a reg­u­lar part of their soci­ety. That is, there are prob­a­bly no strict­ly gay crit­ters, just bisex­u­al ones. “Ani­mals don’t do sex­u­al iden­ti­ty. They just do sex,” says soci­ol­o­gist Eric Ander­son of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bath in England.

Lawn Sanity!

I detest grass. I’m so aller­gic that I con­sid­er the stuff a per­son­al attack. Beyond that, I’ve always con­sid­ered all the mon­ey and ener­gy that is put into ined­i­ble crops that aren’t even pret­ty to be a dis­gust­ing form of con­spic­u­ous consumption. 

I cheered out loud when I read this arti­cle: The Incred­i­ble, Edi­ble Front Lawn

It makes so much more sense – and it’s pret­ti­er, too! Peo­ple actu­al­ly eat­ing what the grow, instead of grow­ing it to cut it. Wow.