Fear My Leet ConLang Skills, Bitches

I decided to get serious about my fantasy world's language construction. (It's been a good way to distract myself from the election disaster.) My first step was to determine how the planet was settled, with humans starting from a central point and migrating outwards from there. You can see the map of the migrations here (800 KB). (Some of you might remember a similar map from the World of Greyhawk Gazetteer, which fascinated me a a kid.) Then I worked out the language families, based on these migrations and my knowledge of the world:
( Giant diagram fun behind the cut tag. )

Sabbath Gasbags Ignore the Poor

I caught some This Week with George Stephanopoulos at my parent's house this Sunday morning. It reminded me how much I hate those shows. The centerpiece was a discussion of "values" in the campaign, featuring Gary Bauer, some other evangelical, a black clergyman, and a fourth guy, who had a brain. At one point, the Bald Guy with a Brain pointed out that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, and there are only a few stray references to it in the rest of the Bible. Far, far more emphasis was placed on helping the poor (see Zompist's list for some quotes), something the US isn't too keen on, and which is of no interest at all to the Religious Right firebreathers. Nobody challenged this argument; nobody, in fact, addressed it at all; they just returned to the horse-race blather ("How much did the moral issue hurt John Kerry?" blah blah blah), and only the most banal thoughts passed anyone's lips.

Since November 2 many have asked, "Where are the liberal clergy? Why don't we hear from them?" I know where they are; I grew up listening to them, since they dominate the mainstream Protestant churches, and their sermons are filled with appeals for the poor, calls for tolerance, and increasingly open attacks on George W. Bush and his smug, bigoted buddies. They are running charities and working in their communities, far too busy to spend time bloviating with Stephanopoulos and George Will. Sadly they have far less influence than they ought to have.