cinaed

I realize my LJ has been mostly doom and gloom due to graduation and personal stuff, so I thought I'd try a list of stuff that made me happy.

1. Susan Boyle.

2. The American Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, edited by Hugh Greene. Or more specifically, the first story in the collection:

'Cinderella's Slipper' by Hugh C. Weir

...You GUYS. *flails* YOU GUYS. The year is 1914. Meet Nora, a female reporter. Meet Madelyn Mack, private eye. Together, they ~~fight~~ solve crime! It's AWESOME!

3. The discovery that while the collection of Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective is only available in its 1914 version for uh $200 (though Lily found me a copy at $78 in yen!), Google Books has the entire book available to d/l in PDF format for free.

...I don't know how that's legal, but, um, I can't bring myself to care. *fangirls Google Books*

Nora! And Miss Madelyn Mack! Kicking ass and taking names! You GUYS. *delighted flailing*

AND! Madelyn Mack was apparently inspired by a real-life detective named Mary Holland, who was friends with Hugh C. Weir. She ran a renowned detective agency in Chicago, and she and her husband (whose name I can't be bothered to look up) published a criminology magazine!

4. Winning second place in the university's poetry contest. (Second year, second place again. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride, but the girl who beat me is amazing and writes wonderful poetry so I don't feel bad at all.)

5. Receiving an invitation to attend the Department Scholar Recognition Ceremony. Apparently if you get a 3.5 GPA or higher in your major, they throw you a party!

6. Figuring out that I'll probably be graduating Cum Laude from university. Go me!

Current Mood: cheerful

The Dionaea House

Marijuana Use Linked to Testicular Cancer

Key stuff from the article:

Marijuana use may increase the risk of developing testicular cancer, in particular a more aggressive form of the disease....

The study of 369 Seattle-area men ages 18 to 44 with testicular cancer and 979 men in the same age bracket without the disease found that current marijuana users were 70 percent more likely to develop it compared to nonusers.

The study found the increased risk appeared to be in the form called nonseminoma testicular cancer. It accounts for 40 percent of cases and can be more aggressive and more difficult to treat....

...

*facepalms* Like I said, bet all those people who argued that "Marijuana isn't addictive and is healthier than cigarettes!" feel pretty dumb right now. (Not that cigarettes still aren't terrible for your health, but you all know what I mean.)

Current Mood: awake

1964 BBC Interview with MLK, Jr. (He discusses the possibility of a black president within 25 years. I admit it, I choked up.)

Immortal jellyfish roam the ocean (Okay, my fear of going into the ocean because of jellyfish? TOTALLY JUSTIFIED. Immortal jellyfish, ARGH.)

Obama signed an equal pay bill into law (It's called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.)

Fighting hunger with flood-tolerant rice (Scientists breed a new strain of flood-tolerant rice, which can survive 17 days of complete flooding rather than three days, and will no doubt help fight hunger.)

Good old Youtube. I've spent the past half-hour listening to classics like Judy Collins' "Both Sides Now" and Phil Ochs' "I Ain't Marching Anymore."

Links for the interested:

Both Sides Now by Judy Collins

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all

Who Knows Where the Time Goes by Judy Collins

Sad deserted shore,
Your fickle friends are leaving,
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go,
But I will still be here,
I have no thought of leaving.
I do not count the time

Who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?

Since You've Asked by Judy Collins

As my life spills into yours,
Changing with the hours
Filling up the world with time,
Turning time to flowers,
I can show you all the songs
That I never sang to one man before.

I Ain't Marching Anymore by Phil Ochs

For I marched to the battles of the German trench
In a war that was bound to end all wars
Oh I must have killed a million men
And now they want me back again
But I ain't marchin' anymore

What Did You Learn in School? by Pete Seger

What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine?
I learned that Washington never told a lie.
I learned that soldiers seldom die.
I learned that everybody's free.
That's what the teacher said to me.
And that's what I learned in school today,
That's what I learned in school.

Custom and Myth by Andrew Lang.

A story is told of Zeus: Zeus means sky, and the story is interpreted by scholars as a sky myth. The modern interpreter forgets, first, that to the myth-maker sky did not at all mean the same thing as it means to him. Sky meant, not an airy, infinite, radiant vault, but a person, and, most likely, a savage person. Secondly, the interpreter forgets that the tale (say the tale of Zeus, Demeter, and the mutilated Ram) may have been originally anonymous, and only later attributed to Zeus, as unclaimed jests are attributed to Sheridan or Talleyrand. Consequently no heavenly phenomena will be the basis and explanation of the story. If one thing in mythology be certain, it is that myths are always changing masters, that the old tales are always being told with new names.

Myths of Babylonia and Assyria by Donald A. Mackenzie

It is only within the past half-century that the wonderful story of early Eastern civilization has been gradually pieced together by excavators and linguists, who have thrust open the door of the past and probed the hidden secrets of long ages. We now know more about "the land of Babel" than did not only the Greeks and Romans, but even the Hebrew writers who foretold its destruction. Glimpses are being afforded us of its life and manners and customs for some thirty centuries before the captives of Judah uttered lamentations on the banks of its reedy canals. The sites of some of the ancient cities of Babylonia and Assyria were identified by European officials and travellers in the East early in the nineteenth century, and a few relics found their way to Europe. But before Sir A.H. Layard set to work as an excavator in the "forties", "a case scarcely three feet square", as he himself wrote, "enclosed all that remained not only of the great city of Nineveh, but of Babylon itself"

Ten Boys From History by Kate Dickinson Sweetser

It was an April day, and Haarlem, an old Dutch town near Amsterdam was gay with tulips, for there in Haarlem are grown the most famous tulips in all the world, as well as hyacinths, and if you had driven through the country roads on that April day, you would have seen the meadows and roadsides overspread with a brilliant carpet of the vari-coloured flowers, while the air was full of the sweet perfume of the hyacinths, and you could have carried away with you as many flowers as you had time and patience to pick.