My friend's son had the Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease a few weeks ago. Naturally, he gave it to my children, my friend's husband, and, finally (I hope it won't go any further), to my husband. The worst manifestation of this horrible plague is the rash. It hurts and itches and results in my not sleeping. Instead of sleeping, I was busy feeling bad for the children. 

I haven't been reading LJ, only came back and tried to catch up a couple of days ago. I was extremely busy at work and at home with the plague. On the other hand, I've been reading more of real books: the Penderwicks series, which I started reading for my daughter (she was interested, but the vocabulary was too advanced for her) and continued for myself because I loved it, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, and, now, Too Much Happiness by one of my favorite writers, Alice Munro. 

Too Much Happiness is a collection of short stories. I'm on the short story after which the book was named: Too Much Happiness. I was surprised to find out that it was about Sofia Kovalevskaya. I remember her portrait in our classroom so well. Our class' head teacher was a math teacher, and our classroom had portraits of famous mathematicians on the walls. I remember Kovalevskaya so well because she was a woman. I also remember Leonhard Euler's portrait because he was blind.

I'm not done reading the story, but I checked Kovalevskaya's wiki page, and found that she died of flu when she was 41. 

Note to self: 

1. People do not necessarily like it, if one demonstrates her low opinion of these people.
2. If one observes a trait in a person that one can't stand, letting it slide once is enough. Twice, four times, months, and, in at least one case, years, is pushing it just a little bit. So when one observes the aforementioned trait twice, it's good to peacefully retreat, if possible, or be very careful, if not possible, without making a fuss (see 1).

From Beware of Images.

. . . I think that education in a market economy is an uneasy fit. Education is invariably sacrificed for job training . . .

source

I don't think it's possible to put it better than this. 

Vancouver physician Gabor Mate and the social roots of addiction.

You know, all this noise about Ann Romney suddenly reminded me of the welfare reform and 'welfare mothers'. How they are fat, dirty,  lazy, and make a bunch of kids with the only purpose of doing nothing and receiving our hard-earned money. Suddenly, raising children is hard work, even with staff in multiple houses.

Wisconsin Equal Pay Law Repealed Because “Money Is More Important For Men”
There are many, many more, I just don't have time to add them all, seriously: forced trans-vaginal ultrasound and Tennessee Creationism Bill (not the trial in 1925, the one they are trying to pass in 2012), to name a few.

Sometimes I wonder if in 1939, when Communists and Jews were being rounded up in Germany, and when Poland was being invaded, some of the Germans would say conversationally: You know, I'm just not into politics.

I have a list of about 300 books that I want to read. I keep this list in a spreadsheet in my Google docs. I have another list in my Facebook account, in weRead extension. I have lists for my children, two for each child, one for Russian books and one for English.

I thought several times, that I need to write an application to store book titles. I would keep them in a list. Each book would have tags: fiction, sci-fi, popular science, and the users would be able to create custom tags. When I'd want to pick a book to read from the list, I'd select tags, and then ask the software to pick a book for me, or pick it myself. When I finish a book, I'd change its status, and write a little something maybe, and/or rate it for myself.

Then I was thinking that it'd be nice to have some social features, like when you can suggest a book to another user, or discuss it online.

Anyway, weRead.com is such a program! Not the extension for the FB, but by itself. It does exactly what I wanted. You can export your books, you can rate them, you can comment on them, socialize, suggest, and other wonderful things. It can even find the book in the libraries near you, seriously.

I think I'm in love.

P.S. If you decide to join, and you would like to my friend there, I'd be happy to oblige.

I've had this account for six years. It was my first venture into the internet world. Here's what I've learned so far about what people are interested in:

1. Pictures. People will subscribe to your blog if you post pictures. It doesn't matter what pictures you post, in most cases, but the cornier, the better. Boobs are always a hit. It can be a collection of random images from the web. You don't need to actually take the photographs or paint the paintings; it's enough to link to somebody's image. The proof to that is ms. apraksina. Her very popular journal was suspended several times for copyright problems; she now has a very popular web site.


2. Humor. People want to laugh. Especially, they want to laugh at other people. Post or re-post jokes and your popularity is virtually guaranteed. One very successful activity is browsing the social sites and taking pictures of people posting stupid comments or just making typos.


3. Relationships. Your relationships, other people's relationships, theory of relationships, gossip (I assume you can't write about celebrities because you are just a regular person with no access to them), it's all good. These are not for women only, oh no. Of course, women are the majority: it's more important to them to have somebody they can take care of, and reading about other people's relationship is a form of entertainment.


4. Something thematic. It can be politics or woodworking, it doesn't matter. You don't really have to know much about it. What's important is to keep your posts one page long, use simple language, and post only on the chosen topic.


5. Um. I'm sure there are other things I can't think of at the moment. It helps a lot if you are articulate. I know I'm not. I write about every other thought that comes to my head. What I write is perfectly clear to me, of course, especially when I'm writing it. Sometimes, when I come back and re-read what I had written, I can't understand it myself . . .