Catching up on mail and a bunch of LJ

[skreidle]

Sorted all of my mail, filed or handled most of it. Have a nice rebate check from Epson to deposit (yay!) and a medical bill to pay that almost cancels it out (boo!) as well as W-2s to pass off to my dad and several months of checking statements to think about balancing. :) (I also learned that a) MBNA moved up the next due date a couple of days, which necessitated canceling this month's repeating bank-mails-a-check and going to the website to pay directly--where I learned that they allow for AutoPay now, so I set it up through there (it's faster, no paper) and cancelled the bank-originated payments entirely.) Also, the Feds notified me that signing up for electronic debit dropped my APR by 0.25% and thus my monthly payment by about $30 (yay!) but that since I was three days late on one payment in month 3 of repayment, I lose the 1.5% up-front rebate I got--incentive to make the first 12 monthly payments on time--adding $360 or so back to the principal. (boo!)

And now some of the better links culled from the last several hundred entries on my friends page, since I've been reading offline and not commenting/following links. :)

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On Politics:

michaelduff's election predictions

From deusinnomen: "Religion and politics: Are they inextricably intertwined?"

futuregirl reveals how Nader's not such a great guy after all, and may in fact be quite the hypocrite. Ingest with a few salt grains, I'd imagine.

Support for the anti-Nader topic from michaelduff: Ralph Nader is a giant fraud? and More details about Nader's exortion racket

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On Gay Marriage:

Orson Scott Card speaks out against gay marriage, and covielle speaks out against his argument in wondrous and insightful ways.

michaelduff analyzes repercussions of Bush's hard anti-gay-marriage stance.

From macguyver, a beautifully satiric listing of Why Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal.

futuregirl proposes a better method of civil disobedience to support gay marriage.

Why chicken_hunter thinks gay marriage is wrong and will never be right.

From sebatical: Governments shouldn't interfere with private lives

From alacrity: An open letter to Bush on his opposition to gay marriage, from a Unitarian reverend. How do we explain it to the children?

From evelynne: Accepting What Cannot Be Changed -- accepting homosexuality from a Christian perspective.

From several--GWB's proposed amendment. *snrk*

From covielle: I hope Wil Wheaton's right.
There is a wonderful opportunity here, though, that I haven't heard anyone talk about, yet: we are now forced, as a nation, to acknowledge and confront the widespread discrimination against gays and lesbians, and I believe that Americans will unite against segregation now, just as we did during the Civil Rights movement.

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The Offbeat Stuff:

Ha! From lanikei, PandaMania--new street art for DC from May through September, following the success of the Party Animals statues. :D

Impressive! From motorcycles: PopSci shows off the world's first autonomous motorcycle.

Ahh.. From reabhecc, Wired.com explains the reasoning behind the Passion movie spam comments--not to interest the readers, but to trick Google.

From sebatical: Rioting: Because it's fun, see? Just a craze, like stuffing phone booths full of people, and swallowing goldfish!

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Shame my luggage hasn't shown up. Guess I'll call in the morning to find out when it'll be getting here.

Comments

[iamjanjan.livejournal.com]

thanks for all the links - would it be possible to use lj-cut in the future?

thanks!
jan