YouTube

Random comment: one very good thing about YouTube is that their video streams are pretty darn reliable. Yeah, there's typically get a stutter or two in every video as it streams, but mostly they just work for me. By contrast, I was just trying to watch the first episode of "This American Life: TV version" on Showtime's website, and I cannot get it to work; at best it will play two seconds, then pause, then play two more seconds, and so forth. Comedy Central's video player is also pretty bad: last time I used it, it would skip completely over the clip I wanted to watch and go directly to the next one on its list. Maybe that's just my experience, but I wish these folks would learn a thing or too from YouTube.

Laryngitis

I've had a cold for the past couple of days. It started suddenly; one minute I'm fine, the next I have that post-nasal-drip feeling. (Normally that only comes after I've been stuffy for a while.) The cold has also given me laryngitis: I can speak only with difficulty. A temporary condition one hopes, but I've discovered that I miss singing--not whole songs, but little snippets of song as they pop into my head. Didn't realize that was such a part of my day. :) (Or maybe I was just musically inspired today, dunno.)

They say that whispering does more damage to the larynx than quiet talking, but does that apply to all whispering, or is gentle whispering OK? I can understand that trying to whisper loudly might be a problem, but shaping one's mouth to modulate the sound of expelled breath: what's so bad about that?