Links Links Links

I went out to run errands this morning and almost got totaled twice by a person who decided to change lanes without looking and move over on top of my car and the guy in a giant semi truck that decided he was bored sitting at the stop light and would just let the truck roll backward because it's not like there were other cars in the world to run over. This one would have crunched me like a bug.

If you kill me in a car accident because you can't bare to get off your phone to drive, I will be the ghost who drags you screaming to a hell of eternal torture. Just FYI.

I can't remember who originally linked to these:

Photos: Visiting The Secret Train Platform Beneath The Waldorf-Astoria Over the weekend we had a chance to visit the long-abandoned Waldorf-Astoria train platform, which allowed VIPs to enter the hotel in a more private manner—most famously it was used by Franklin D. Roosevelt, possibly to hide the fact that he was in a wheelchair suffering from polio. The mysterious track, known as Track 61, still houses the train car and private elevator, which were both large enough for FDR's armor-plated Pierce Arrow car.

Salon.com If Tolkien were black
One of the most celebrated new voices in epic fantasy is N.K. Jemisin, whose debut novel, "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms," won the Locus Award for best first novel and nominations for seemingly every other speculative fiction prize under the sun. Another is David Anthony Durham, whose Acacia Trilogy has landed on countless best-of lists. Both authors recently published the concluding books in their trilogies.

Although they came to the genre from different paths, both Jemisin and Durham have used it to wrench historical and cultural themes out of their familiar settings and hold them up in a different light. "I never felt that fantasy needed to be an escape from reality," Durham told me. "I wanted it to be a different sort of engagement with reality, and one that benefits from having magic and mayhem in it as well."

C.S.E. Cooney csecooney linked to the YouTube videos from her recent school program KidsRead Earthsea with the students of a public school in New York:

1/3 (on magic and consequence)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuLl7LuCKD4&feature=related

2/3 (on the power of names)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZUcCwv_Abw&feature=related

3/3 (on fears and how to use them)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWpLT3QRKJo&feature=related