Friday Night Miscellany

Hola darlings! Hard to believe, but I actually survived another week. It's been tough at the office; some changes are in the works (I'm not responsible for all, not by a long shot, but for a few, yes, I admit) and the tension is thick enough to slice with a knife. In the end, I hope for a better situation for myself, but who knows? Be that as it may, it's been crappy weather here - we're about 15 degrees F below normal temperatures for this time of year, and today we dodged several bullets in Milwaukee County by avoiding any tornado touchdowns or really severe weather. The danger is not over, though, more of the same is on tap for tomorrow. So much for yard work! I'm not into squishing 3 inches into muck while attempting to rake, no thank you! This has all the makings of a classic "La Nina" spring/summer - which means no spring, and then one day it's 90 degrees F with 200% humidity for the next 2 months before it drops t0 30 below zero. Welcome to Wisconsin! Maybe the yard work won't get done this year... Except I must do SOMETHING, as it's an absolute disaster in my backyard, after a season of endless windstorms and norwesters totally trashing my trees (and I don't even want to talk about what my "lawn" looks like, no no no) and Isis, Michelle and dondelion will be visiting again in July, yippee! I switched gears today and updated Chess Femme News with the latest on the 2008 European Individual Chess Championships (chess femmes only, of course!) so please check it out for the latest news. There's a lot of BS out there, per usual (baloney sausage, that is, ahem), and most of it isn't even worthy of putting up a link here (I have a very exclusive readership after all, double ahem). For what it's worth, here are my selections this week. Hope you enjoy! England passed a law recently attempting to regulate phoney-baloney "psychics": The Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951 is being scrapped, and they will in future come under the new Consumer Protection Regulations. Let the commentary begin. LOL! How J.K. Rowling and her "Harry Potter" novels were systematically deleted off the "Best Sellers" lists - and triumphed anyway. Very enlightening about how New York Publishing works - what a bunch of schmucks. Oh oh! Exposed: the great GM crops myth/Major new study shows that modified soya produces 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent. Why am I not surprised? Great ball of fire! Nomads saved astronauts Startled people saw a burning capsule fall from the sky down to Earth Okay, I'm not even going to attempt to write a by-line for that headline... The Black Death changed the world. It wiped out approximately 50% of the world's population at the time - in some villages, everyone died. It is estimated that at the time (during the 1340's) some 75 million people were killed by the Plague. So, what would it be like today, if something similar would hit us and wipe out about half of the world's current population - some 3 billion plus people? Think about it. What would it be like? Leave it up to a female...