Job's done.

Happy birthday (just past) to torakiyoshi. Happy birthday (just coming) to woodburner. And because she'll get after me until I do this for her, happy birthday (significantly past) to annaonthemoon.

With that said, my summer vacation began today, as my last day of work has come and gone. Nevermind that classes start on Tuesday. It was kind of neat - I got a nice card and a send-off party from the people at Ann Arbor. I was covering for someone on things being short-staffed at Ypsilanti, so not everyone was there to say g'bye. But it's all done. I made it through another chapter and got the required things to move on. One school year to go before we find out whether I get the "Good Ending" or not...

And I helped annaonthemoon move all the rest of her materials out tonight. Took me only two trips, of which I have my land barge of a vehicle and my mother's packing genes to thank for it. Now it's just a matter of getting her home before we drive each other utterly batty. She's looking into options that don't involve my driving her home and then taking a flight back. If that does happen, though, I'll have to coordinate with some people about how and when I'm going to get back to home. If things fall flat, it's likely going to happen about the end of next week. I'll keep people informed that I might need to bum a ride from. Or that can tell me how to navigate the train maze to get back home. From there, well, it'll be a ways, but I can probably walk, unless eleme or getsource, or anyone else feels generous enough to give me a lift.

I harp on religious types for making their kids promote their messages, ones that I think they don't really understand and probably haven't been able to give a lot of thought to. Thus, seeing the photos of an anti-war protest in Salt Lake City has a solider and his 9-year-old daughter. Even though it's for a cause that I like, I'm still slightly unnerved that a young child is in attendance, and I worry that the same thing is happening, just on the side I support on this issue. Now it's quite possible that the 9-year-old understands things well enough to make a decision to come along, and in that case I have less issues with it. I just don't like the idea of kids not having the option to think and to express an opinion that's different. It's asking a lot out of a young child to have them think about issues, but it will help them later on in life, I'm sure.

Which bring us to the Forty-Second Skeptics Circle, promoting thought and having hacks at erroneous thoughts (and some botched math, too). And the story of a priest who tried to walk on water and failed.

Flat Daddy - a program from the military to replace soldiers with cardboard cutouts! Actually, it's sending an image of a soldier home that's large enough to be mounted on some foam board and used as a surrogate for the real thing - trying to avoid the whole depression/sadness/dad's away thing. It seems to be working in spots here and there. Honestly, though, the real fathers should be back with their children, and the cardboard cutouts can probably fight and manage the situation in Iraq better. We'll slip in a very quick FEMA-bash here - the outpouring from foreign governments for relief has not been spent well or quickly, when it's been spent at all.

A blog called "Pure Pedantry" asks for Congrescritters and their districts to support a law designed to criminalize intimidation of researchers engaged in research that harms animals. The example used would be harassment by the law's current standards, I would hope, assuming that it was possible to retrace the telephone calls to their originators and fine/arrest them. I also hope that we can find solutions and tests that don't involve animals wherever feasible. So really, I'm not sure what opinion I have on this - give me one?

There will be a very real shadow government in Mexico. This has the makings of a very violent ending to it. Either that, or the spirit will drop out of the protesting groups. If this shadow government gets up and running, though, and carries momentum, we could be seeing two factions on the streets of mexico. Perhaps now would be a good time for Joshua Norton II to make an appearance and arbitrate the whole matter?

Ziggurat/"Pyramid"-style objects unearthed in China. I think I'll sit on this one and wait to see what else might arise around it. If it's real, that makes several places around the world where the ziggurat exists. Maybe we can track a migration using these.

The definition of being a grown-up. Or maybe just of being a youth librarian. Either way, it's awesome. Another potentially awesome thing is the announcement of a method to make molecule-sized transistors. That'll up the density on your standard chip. Another awesome thing - something coming out of the Google project to digitize - free PDF copies of popular public-domain books.

That's what I've got for tonight. I think I'm going to try and sleep in tomorrow. But there's a laundry list of errands to run, so I may not get as much sleep as I want to.