A post I want to entitle "Errata" but can't

I have it in my head that "errata" should mean a collection of miscellaneous, meandering things, wandering here and there, but it doesn't. Pity.

I've submitted my senior project, had my board. The semester -- the year -- college -- is ending. I've got my Class of 2005 shirt on right now. Lots to be said about that, but I don't feel like going into it at the moment. So instead, I'll empty out some links I've been collecting.

First, because of all the language and lit blogs I read, stuff about ... well, language and lit.

An April Fool's joke proposing a march to end the abuse of the widely misused phrase, "beg the question." Sounds like a worthy cause to me.

It came up in our field studies class, so Bill sent us all a list (several lists, actually...this was the first and seemed sufficient to me) of collective nouns for groups of animals. I knew there were some crazy ones, but there are some crazy ones. A charm of hummingbirds? An ostentation of peacocks? I like "a memory of elephants" and "a storytelling of rooks" ... and "a tower of giraffes" is pretty amazing, as is a "crash" or "bloat" of hippotami. Last of all is the impressive "zeal of zebras"...

I may have posted this previously, I may not have. It's a bit old, but the sarcasm point is introduced.

Booksellers in Scotland stage a promotional book-burning.

The entire literary edifice of the West is built on a lie. According to one suspicious sleuth, "Proust didn't know from madeleines,", and his famous crumbly scallop-shaped cookie never existed.

Harvard students win prizes for the quality of their personal libraries. I want one of those. I also want a prize-worthy library.

Reasons Why the Female Characters in Certain Male-Written Fiction Are Not Like Actual Women at All.

All right, now some other stuff. Let's have a go at religion.

High-schoolers don't know enough about the Bible. They're talking about history and literature, so I agree with them there. I really need me a student's lit Bible.

From The Onion: "Scientology Losing Ground to New Fictionology".

A beautiful comic for the creationists: Science vs. Norse Mythology.

Let's see, what category next. How about "stuff I like."

A Yahoo! News story explains how fairy tales are linked to violent relationships. Seems Andrea Dworkin was right about all those passive heroines waiting for Princes Charming.

I'm increasingly considering copyediting as a profession. Which is probably why this article, an interview with a number of copy editors discuss the details of their largely uncredited and overlooked work, is interesting to me and me alone.

They're having a concert in California of orchestral music from video games performed live. It's called Video Games Live, and Jack Wall, the composer of the brilliant music in Myst III: Exile, is one of the people behind it.

The Forbes.com article Is Sex Necessary? discusses all the beneficial effects conferred by "having regular and enthusiastic sex."

Last category...a kind of alarming article that I post for the public benefit:

"The End of Analog TV? Will America's favorite technology really go dark next year?" Analog television broadcasts are supposed to be discontinued next year, to be replaced by entirely digital broadcasts. It was all part of a federal ruling aimed at switching everyone over to digital -- only no one bought digital, and now the deadline for the change is coming up. Even if it doesn't happen next year -- it will likely be postponed -- it will be happening pretty soon, and currently there is no warning in place for those who buy new analog tvs telling them that their sets might be obsolete in a year! So if you buy a new tv -- buy digital!

I think that's all for now... I'll post some talky stuff later.