A quick one: two links that fascinated me.

Lava flow on Kilauea, in the dusk.

Some years ago, I headed off to Ole Miss, the university at Oxford, Mississippi, for a conference.  Because the haul from Sydney to Mississippi is quite a long trip eastwards (always the worst for jet lag), I decided to break the trip in Hawaii, and slipped over to Hilo, so I could have a look at the lava flows on Kilauea, and the observatories on Mauna Kea.

Me, my hat and the lava flow.  It was close
enough to frizzle the hairs on my legs.

Then I discovered that the Pacific Tsunami Museum was located there, and spent a couple of useful hours there.  I had always found tsunamis interesting, but I came away finding them awe-inspiring and fascinating.  That said, I don't really want to be close to one.  But if ever I need to write about one, I know the sort of stuff I will draw on, thanks to my friend Robin posting a link today to a personal account of the Japanese tsunami.


The author is an American who has been living in Japan as a teacher of English, but look, just read it, OK?


The second link came from the same email list.  I need to explain here that I am a social climber: I hang out with librarians. That means I have a few rudiments of what cataloguing is about: not enough to qualify me as a shelver's second deputy assistant, but I have a sense for it. I suspect that even without it, you would enjoy this contribution from Lois. It is a blog entry called 'A digression on literary categories' at the blog Making Light. A word of advice: read the 200+ comments, because they are severely hilarious.
Go on! What are you waiting for? There's nothing to see here!