Wake the Sun

DALLAS = STILL HOT. And overly pollinated. And yesterday, while I was home sick, ants crawled out of a hole in the bathroom and got into Suzie's cat food dish (which I keep in my bedroom). My roommate and I killed all the ants we could find and blocked up the hole with cinnamon (an effective ant deterrent, turns out) but we didn't find all of them... which meant I spent the rest of the day with ants popping up in random places (including on me) in my bedroom.

I hate summer. I really, really do.

On the upside, I cleaned the hell out of the bathroom, then the kitchen (better safe, etc), and lit a couple cinnamon candles. Mmm, cinnamon.

Some linkage:

* To Kill a Mockingbird, Huck Finn, High School Curriculums, and Canon by sanguinity:

Basically: I see some very compelling arguments for seriously downgrading where Huck Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird tend to stand in high school curricula, and even for removing them from high school curricula altogether. Additionally, I get growly when the ALA holds up Huck Finn as OMG THEY WANT TO BAN THIS BELOVED AND WHOLLY WORTHY CLASSIC, SEE HOW WRONG AND MISGUIDED BOOK BANNERS ARE? I've yet to see evidence that anyone is trying to remove Huck Finn from school libraries or otherwise prevent access to it; the usual reason Huck Finn gets on that list is because a parent is trying to have the wholly reasonable discussion of what is worth spending class time on, how, and at what personal costs to which students.

* From the Washington Post:

"Top Secret America" is a project nearly two years in the making that describes the huge national security buildup in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

When it comes to national security, all too often no expense is spared and few questions are asked - with the result an enterprise so massive that nobody in government has a full understanding of it. It is, as Dana Priest and William M. Arkin have found, ubiquitous, often inefficient and mostly invisible to the people it is meant to protect and who fund it.

* sparkindarkness has collected links to articles discussing homophobia and homophobic violence worldwide. WARNING: RAPE AND ASSAULT TRIGGERS.

* On BoingBoing - Donor 45: The weird world of AIDS "non-progressors": Last week, news broke that antibodies discovered in a man known only as Donor 45 could, potentially, be used to create a vaccine to protect against HIV/AIDS.

* Mental Floss has a roundup of interesting library-related links.

* Looks like the rest of the big manga scanslation sites are shutting down - OneManga just announced that they plan to have all scans off the site by next week. It'll be interesting to see how this develops (though on a selfish level I'm worried about how this will affect our Hikaru no Go reread).

* I'm really loving the interview with Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko (creators of A:TLA) about The Legend of Korra. Also, via cofax07, have a hi-res version of the promo image!