Steampunk Gypsy

Just what you wanted, I'm sure! Actually, it's really very cool: [ Source] Easter is one of the Christian religious holidays without a fixed worldly calendar date. It is celebrated on the first Sunday after the ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or soonest after March 21. Easter season begins on Easter Sunday and lasts seven weeks. In 500 years (from 1600 to 2099 AD) Easter was and will be most often celebrated on either March 31 or on April 16 (22 times each) – the latter incidentally being this years' date on which Easter Sunday falls. [ Source ] Now, it makes sense to me that there would be this curve - dates to either side occur less frequently as Easter shifts about, and the middle dates would occur more often. I can even understand the wave pattern, so that we have four high dates, with dips between them. But I need someone to explainto me that big dip on April 9. It seems odd that it drops so suddenly for that date, and then jumps back up.  Any

Actually, the whole line is down. I had a thing to say, but then I got home really late and I was tired and I grabbed a popsicle, but someone had taken two bites out of it and put it back in the wrapper and the box, so I'm sitting here finishing this popsicle and can't remember what I was going to say. Here's a pretty picture: Links! Library Land Happy  101st birthday, Beverly Cleary! Related: Happy  Drop Everything and Read Day! Celebrating this one is easy - just drop what you're doing and read! Also, we encourage you to celebrate this particular holiday every day.  Help Young Readers Understand the Refugee Experience with Picture Books "With all the fear, uncertainty, and difficulties that adult refugees face, a young child’s experience is likely to be exponentially more challenging. In encouraging understanding and empathy—especially in schools and other kid-centric institutions—picture books can be especially useful as validation for the refu

I haven't the energy to be too outraged tonight, so you'll have to make do with a pretty picture and some links. The dryer quit, and we tried to fix it, and it melted, and we immediately regretted not having a professional come in to look at it, and so I spent more time than I like (which, let's be honest, is 'any') at a laundromat. But we have clean clothes for at least a week, and I'll worry about the rest later. Here's the pretty picture first: Links! Library Land EServer.org, an alternative niche for free quality content (including ebooks) in the arts and humanities  "Eserver is (justifiably) proud of its community and describes itself this way: The EServer is a growing online community where hundreds of writers, artists, editors and scholars gather to publish works as open archives, available free of charge to readers." Very cool!  Health, Science, & Technology Ancient Manure is Latest Clue in Biblical Mystery   "A tea

Today was our library's 7th annual Edible Books Festival! It was my first, though. It was great. If you're not familiar with the concept, please note: we don't eat the books. (Please don't eat the books.) Instead, members of the community make or bake things that are book-related. We then take a day to judge them - that was today - and then, the next day (tomorrow), we eat them.  I am very much looking forward to the eating part. This was my first time participating, and here was my entry: Aw, poor lemon cake... Don't worry - it'll all be over soon. If you're not familiar with the book,  The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake , you should go pick up a copy and read it. It's the delicious story of Rose, a young lady growing up with a magical gift - or perhaps it's more of a curse: she can taste the emotions of those who prepare the food she eats. In the novel, we see how difficult it can be to love those you know the best, while

U.S. FCC chairman plans fast-track repeal of net neutrality   FCC Chairman Ajit Pai wants to repeal net neutrality classification and just have ISP promise sweetly to keep the Internet open. We can trust them to do that, right? I mean, sure, they've argued all along that they don't want an open Internet, and they stand to make a  lot  of money if net neutrality dies - without even doing anything! - but if they  promise to be nice... totally trustworthy and who needs government protections when Big Business comes to play? Gah. Pretty picture time: Links! Library Land How a Browser Extension Could Shake Up Academic Publishing  "When an Unpaywall user lands on the page of a research article, the software scours thousands of institutional repositories, preprint servers, and websites like PubMed Central to see if an open-access copy of the article is available. If it is, users can click a small green tab on the side of the screen to view a PDF." L

I had to start with the Pretty Picture today, because I couldn't pick just one story below to talk about, so enjoy the picture and then check out the links. But let's first get out in the open the one I have next to know information about:  US launches strikes against Syria Links! Library Land Why Authoritarians Attack the Arts  "We need the arts because they make us full human beings. But we also need the arts as a protective factor against authoritarianism. In saving the arts, we save ourselves from a society where creative production is permissible only insofar as it serves the instruments of power. When the canary in the coal mine goes silent, we should be very afraid — not only because its song was so beautiful, but also because it was the only sign that we still had a chance to see daylight again." Telling Trump’s Story to Children: For Book Publishers, It’s Tricky   "After an election cycle whose divisive effect on voters is still being felt, p