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Sharon Boston, media relations manager at University of Maryland Medical Center, normally spends her days fielding requests from the media. But when it comes to weekends and vacations, it's a safe bet that she's on the road, traveling to visit homes once occupied by presidents, writers and other historic personages. Boston cheerfully bills these perambulations that she began in 2001 - some right here in her own backyard - "Nerd Trips. " She also writes an illustrated blog she fittingly calls, "Nerd Trips!

In Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall , young Richard Cromwell says to his uncle, the rising Thomas Cromwell, "You are practiced at persuading, and sometimes it's quite difficult, sir, to distinguish being persuaded by you from being knocked down in the street and stamped on. " That's what I aim for at this blog, being persuasive.  

Yesterday's post on a maladroit paragraph in Slate   that used mantle  for mantel , and which would have been a shoddy piece of work even if it had been written the other way around, prompted a reader named Chris Harris to take me to task on Facebook: You are being unusually prescriptivist on this. And for what it's worth, I'd stack my credentials against yours in knowing how and when to cite the OED. Get off your snobby horse, John. Fight a real battle.

Jean Pfefferkorn, a Howard County Public Library staff member, posted an online item about a week ago on seasonal affective disorder, which carries symptoms ranging from increased appetite to suicidal thoughts. Dr. George Groman, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine's Howard County General Hospital, explained in another post that there's good and bad cholesterol — and the ideal number for the two combined is below 200 milligrams per deciliter. Dr. David Monroe, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins, posted an item last spring on the way synthetic marijuana, known by such names as Spice and Black Mamba, is sending teen users to the emergency room.

Maryland Weather blog readers predicted a wide range of potential snowfall this winter in Baltimore, but on average, did not stray far from history. On average, readers are predicting 20.4 inches of snowfall in our annual forecasting contest , slightly above the average of 20 inches. Guesses ranged from a light 6.9 inches -- still 5 inches more than last winter's paltry 1.8 inches -- to 37 inches. The median guess was 20 inches, meaning readers are evenly divided in expecting an above- or below-average season.

After a nearly five-and-a-half-year run, Recruiting Report is heading into retirement. But that doesn't mean my writing days at The Sun are over. Starting this week, anything I write about Maryland will appear on Tracking the Terps , and local hoops recruiting will be posted on Varsity Letters . Local college hoops coverage will either go in our college basketball section or the Baltimore Sports Blitz . Recruiting Report blog posts will still be accessible through search, but this blog will no longer be promoted on baltimoresun.com.

Tumblr, the popular mircoblogger service, has been a beset a potty-mouthed worm that rails against the evils of adult My Little Pony fans. (Seriously, I'm not making this up.) But many of Baltimore's prominent tumblr bloggers have seemed to have escaped the wrath of the worm for now. Sad really because there would be something kinda hilarious about having " DRINK BLEACH AND DIE YOU EMO, SELF-INSISTING, SELF-DEPRECATING, SELF-INDULGENT EMPTY HUSKS OF HUMAN BEINGS " posted on the Maryland Historical Society Photographs tumblr.

The Baltimore Sun's 4th annual Mobbies It's nomination time for The Baltimore Sun's 4th annual Mobbies competition for Maryland's Outstanding Blogs. Nominations are now being accepted for your favorite blogs and social media accounts through Oct. 25. Voting begins Oct. 29. Yes, there's a category for Best Food Blog. Read the full rules . And go nominate . Baltimore Sun blogs compete in a separate category. Baltimore's best restaurants and bars While you're at it, go vote for your favorite Baltimore restaurant and bar . As part of our guide to the Baltimore area's top restaurants and bars, we want to hear from you. Tell us your favorite restaurant/bar in or around Baltimore, and you could win a $50 gift card to the winning restaurant/bar.

The joke of the week returns:   http://widget.newsinc.com/_cfvp/playlist16x9_player.html?CID=12884&WID=14560&VID=23832728&freewheel=91005&sitesection=baltimoresun_blg_ent_sec&external_url=http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/language-blog/

The timing was perfect. A day after journalist Sarah Kelber launched her family blog “Homefront,” a major news story hit that was the ultimate fodder for a parenting-themed discussion. The story on the cover of Time was about attachment parenting, and it caused a wave of controversy not only because of its content, but because of the photograph attached to it: a mother breastfeeding her 3-year-old son. “I was like - I have to write about this, but what am I going to say?