Eccentric Flower:200906/Linkage

This system is extremely dependent upon uniqueness of page titles within a given month, so I'm going to have to be careful not to make seventeen different posts all entitled "Linkage."

While we're on that subject, it's the "random items that caught my eye" post which most make me sad that you can't change the timing of a LiveJournal feed to an interval less than an hour. These things have always struck me as ephemeral and immediate, and even though I know for a fact that most of you don't stop what you're doing immediately and go look at the links, I like to treasure the fantasy that you do (even though, when you do the same, I often don't go immediately myself. Hey, at least I admit to my double standard here).

Anyway.

• Read about the very curious Voynich manuscript and maybe even have a look at it in PDF form, and then you will be ready for today's XKCD. Which, I think, is about as valid as any other theory.

• Hannelore makes a discovery. This should be interesting.

It's okay, you're allowed to admit you don't know what it is. I can't keep all the manga-genre terms straight myself sometimes, nor do I much bother. Here.

• Very interesting article from the Phoenix, in the genre of "I knew it was bad but I didn't know it was that bad." Here's my favorite bit, which I have condensed to read well outside of context - but the whole article is worth a read:

(Emphasis mine.)

I wrote some years ago (it's in the LiveJournal set so it has not made it into archives here yet) a long list of points where "If you are __/believe in __, and you are a Republican, something is wrong." The three biggest ones were if you were non-white, non-heterosexual, and non-male. Apparently people are realizing the truth of this statement. Women have not abandoned the Republicans; instead, what is becoming the (collapsed, white-dwarf-matter) core of the Republican party has abandoned them. Long since, in fact; it's just impossible to ignore now.

• You may also want to read this article on Katherine Ragsdale, a very interesting piece which - for a complex of reasons - I present to you without further comment.

• And, finally, if you didn't read the whole text of Obama's speech in Cairo, you really should. Really.

This speech is the kind of thing that will cheer some, disappoint others, anger others. Reaction to it has run the predictable gamut. (If you'd like to collect reactions, Sullivan reports on many of them from various sources in subsequent posts; just rummage a bit.)

But the thing to amaze is that this speech was made by a sitting President of the United States at all. Can you imagine any other President making this speech, at any other point in our recent history?