Take a look: The Sev­en Sides of Sam Chupp « Leon­Dale­Pho­tog­ra­ph­er

The Para­ble of the Show­er by Leah Bobet is an absolute­ly hilar­i­ous short sto­ry.

The angel of the LORD cometh upon you in the show­er at the worst pos­si­ble moment: one hand placed upon thy right but­tock and the oth­er bear­ing soap, radio blar­ing, hum­ming a hea­then song of sin.

Thanks to Sarah Mon­ette for the heads-up!

If you’d told me yes­ter­day that there’s a fish with a trans­par­ent head, I would­n’t have believed you. I cer­tain­ly would­n’t have imag­ined that any­thing would look up and around through its own head for a greater range of vision! But that is exact­ly what the bar­rel­eye (Macropin­na micros­toma) does.

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).

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

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.

In lieu of a real post, which would require actu­al thought…

New Eliz­a­beth Bear short sto­ry: The Girl Who Sang Rose Mad­der

Rumi­na­tions on sci­ence fic­tion, fan­ta­sy, etc.: Ask­ing the Wrong Ques­tions

Dr. Hor­ri­ble recast with My Lit­tle Ponies

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.

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.

I’m not feel­ing so good, so I’m most­ly post­ing links. But they’re good ones!

Mar­velous­ly fun toy:

Killjoy Cook­ing With the Dun­geons & Drag­ons Crowd

Gays mar­ry, world does not end