Righteous curmugeonhood

A blog after my own heart: The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks. I have to agree that strange signage of these sorts makes me scratch my head. (Flowers "for any" occasion??)

(via Twisty)

Adventures in produce I: Spring veggies

Spouse and I have signed up for a five-month partial share of a farm cooperative, which means we get a box full of produce every other week. I was a bit skeptical of this, imagining ever-growing heaps of zucchini or nameless, tasteless greens. After one delivery, though, I'm already totally psyched, because we got a bunch of early spring vegetables that I know nothing about, and now I imagine that, in addition to eating more fresh produce, we might get to learn a bit about what grows when and also discover some new gems. Here was the yield of our first box:


Here is the least surprising subset: spring green mix, bok choi, mustard greens.
(The last of those is much stronger in flavor than I've experienced before.)


Here we have baby bela mushrooms, red scallions (beautiful!), and radishes.


Here are the two real novelties: pea tendrils and fleur-de-choi (flowers of bok choi).
Both edible raw or cooked (according to the email that comes in advance).
I tasted the "fleur," which was a little like broccolli, but with a more pleasant aftertaste. Didn't try the tendrils raw. However, sauteed the pea tendrils, fleurs, and mustard greens, added a little goat cheese, and had a great pasta dish with fettucini. Also, Spouse subsequently made a great quiche with the peas, fleur, scallions, and mushrooms (and eggs and cheese, of course) -- also delicious. Still plan to throw some radishes into our next salad, and a recipe for bok choi in bacon sauce is sitting on the kitchen counter... fun!! Can't wait to see what comes next!

Women prove to be idiots again

Luckily, the Supreme Court noticed! Silly woman, not noticing that she was being paid less than her male counterparts until it had been going on for years! Didn't she know right away? Didn't she survey her colleagues every month to be sure that a gap hadn't appeared (thus guaranteeing that she'd be seen as a bitch and demoted)? Alito and Roberts know she should have!

Just knife me now!

(via XOverboard)

Found art

I don't know why, exactly, but I find these photos of a melted keyboard somewhat transfixing. Must be the cross between zen pebbles and the warping of everyday work objects...

(via boing boing)

Undermining your safety for corporate interests

Yes, the Bush Administration is fighting on the side of mad cow disease, telling small farmers that they may not test their entire herds for the disease. The fear? that giant agribusinesses might have to follow suit or lose market share to the innovaters.

-- Sound of forehead hitting already dented desk --

Tidbits of info you never knew you needed

Lost your car in a big parking lot? You can use your own skull to amplify the car alarm signal from your keychain and increase your range for finding your car...

Never say I never did anything for you.

(via Follow Me Here)

A monument to the ludicrous

Apparently the US is building a new "embassy" in Baghdad -- I use the quotes because these plans make it look less like a diplomatic enclave and more like the playground of the pashas, recreated for whatever contractors, military folks, and Friends of Bush might stop by. 100 acres? 380 families? The colossus of Baghdad isn't a bad description, especially if the $billion per year in maintenance plays out, and it's sure to emit a steady stink of imperialist occupation long after the troops have come home. Sickening.

(via This Modern World)

Burn-out

Cindy Sheehan is getting out of activism after getting her share of abuse from both right and left. I'm not surprised that it's not fun being the face of the antiwar movement, however much the country wants the war to end, but this is sad to read:

The most devastating conclusion that I reached this morning, however, was that Casey did indeed die for nothing. His precious lifeblood drained out in a country far away from his family who loves him, killed by his own country which is beholden to and run by a war machine that even controls what we think. I have tried every since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful. Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months while Democrats and Republicans play politics with human lives. It is so painful to me to know that I bought into this system for so many years and Casey paid the price for that allegiance.

This war is indeed eating up and spitting out many good-hearted folks, from activists like Sheehan to the generals and intelligence agents who have left government service, and not least the soldiers getting killed while policing a civil war. Heck, even those of us just watching from our couches are getting worn down. How much longer, and for what?

(via Medley)

Even a short week needs some cuteness

Very important doses here:

pup

kitty

As you were.

Poem for a long weekend (posted belatedly)

When no one listens
To the quiet trees
When no one notices
The sun in the pool.

Where no one feels
The first drop of rain
Or sees the last star

Or hails the first morning
Of a giant world
Where peace begins
And rages end:

One bird sits still
Watching the work of God:
One turning leaf,
Two falling blossoms,

Ten circles upon the pond.

- Thomas Merton

(via whiskey river)

Put on your colored glasses

Pretty spiff: the Top 10 Best visual illusions of the year, with animations and attempted explanations. You're sure to be amazed and perplexed . . .

(via Follow Me Here)

Looking after their own

Google is known for its great employee perks, among which is that it runs its own transit service to make sure that commuting time isn't frustrating and unproductive. I'd be happy if my local bus/subway service were just a bit more reliable -- wireless service and live-tracking of late buses is a pipe-dream.

(via rc3.org)

Thursday bengal-blogging

Hard to believe that Pixel has turned two, and Pasha will this summer. These cats have so much personality it sometimes just fills the house right up...


Here they are just after Pasha's arrival (September, 2005),
having some pounce-and-chase on the stairs.


Here they're about 18 months old (November, 2006), showing
their darker coats and a moment of lower activity...
[yes, they've switched sides here too]

Things I keep meaning to blog

Piling up the tabs of interesting stories, but no time/energy for lots of posts today. So here's a few things that may be of interest:

• McJoan at dailyKos points out the absurdity of the paternalistic argument being used to justify abortion restrictions -- as she notes, the fact that women sometimes regret getting married isn't being used as an argument against the institution of marriage...
  
  
• An interesting phenomenon with disturbing implications: People Often Think An Opinion Heard Repeatedly From The Same Person Is Actually A Popular Opinion. Could this contribute to an echo-chamber effect among blog-readers?
  (via Medley)
  
  
• Wired presents the odd story of a guy spooked by getting onto the TSA watch list, and his response to make himself boring by putting himself under exhaustive surveillance, posting photos of himself and details of his daily activities many times per day. Amusing to some degree, unsettling as well -- especially the fact that it's all motivated by the fear of disappearing into Gitmo...
  (via boing boing)
  
  
• David Sirota is worried that the US is in the midst of a class war, particularly targeting workers and unions, and gives an example that provides hope that a strong (populist) offense can turn things around.
  (via dailyKos)

A swingy future?

Apparently there's a company specializing in the idea that flexible buildings -- say, where every floor can rotate separately -- are a wave of the future. I didn't know quite what to make of this until I saw their plans for a building in Dubai, in which wind paddles between the floors will generate more than enough electricity for the building to run on. (Apparently there are other benefits to the flexible aspect, but not all of those came clear to me from wandering their site, although it was fun.) Spiff!

(via kottke)

How time flies... (or, home is where the heart is)

Love is speaking in code, it's an inside joke -- love is coming home.

-- The Format

(via Mr. Skullhead's character profile in KoL)

Nobody cares about the subtle reasoning

Way to give up from a position of strength, Dems. Maybe there weren't the votes for this or that ideal solution, but certainly even sending the same bill back again and again would be better than giving Bush an apparent win for no real gain to anybody else (our troops included). Disappointing is just the half of it.

Live and let live

It's been a long time since I lived with housemates, but this exchange took me back to any number of personal and vicarious house-/roommate conflicts past... I'd hate to see the refrigerator wars there!

(inspired blog found via Bitch, Ph.D)

Quote/truth of the day

The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.

- Mignon McLaughlin,
journalist and author (1913-1983)

(via A.W.A.D)

Creepy

Turns out that banner ads on blogs and websites can affect you subliminally, even if you don't read them or click through. Makes me glad I have flash turned off on my browser (yes, you just click to launch things you want to watch)...

Coming to life

Another installment of neat art created by cutting up paper -- in this case, pulp fiction books, whose covers or illustrations are brought into the third dimension and artfully photographed. The effects are really fabulous, and much in the spirit of the original books.

(via boing boing)

Quoting Atrios whole hog

Because he just says it right about our problem with Iraq:

The resistance of many pundits to the notion that we just need to get the fuck out is due in part to their belief that We Must Be Able To Do Something. Things are fucked, and someone needs to fix the poblem. It's understandable that people gaze at a disaster, especially one of our own making, and imagine that there's something we can do to somehow make things better, but that doesn't mean that we can. More than that, our presence is a not insignificant part of the problem even if our absence won't cause the pony to appear.

We didn't have the ability to unshit the bed two years ago, and we don't have it now. More than that, this basic belief is part of what caused otherwise sensible people think we could fix things in Iraq in early '03.

Sometimes cutting your losses is all that remains . . .

Consequences

There is plenty of evidence that Bush and his policies have wrought havoc on the country, from undermining disaster preparedness to scarring the image of America and its values abroad. Two recent stories catch a couple recent pieces of evidence that -- surprise! -- decisions have consequences:

1. Anger against the US presence in Iraq has become so intense throughout the MidEast region that the conflict is now a money-maker for Al Qaeda...

   In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda's command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.

   (Read the whole thing, especially the grim if compelling quote from Kevin Drum.)
   
   
2. In a cheerier vein for the Opposition, Bush's insistance on using every Congressional recess as the excuse to appoint more unqualified extremists to empty posts has finally riled Harry Ried to action.

   We hear that over the long August vacation, when those types of summer hires are made, Reid will call the Senate into session just long enough to force the prez to send his nominees who need confirmation to the chamber. The talk is he will hold a quickie "pro forma" session every 10 days, tapping a local senator to run the hall.

   His fellow Senators aren't too excited about losing their lush summer vacation, but this puts a wrench in Bush's game and makes a pretty clear statement about the need to respect both the players and the process...

A better mousetrap?

Or rather, is it possible to improve on the glory that is peanut-butter? (Say, with banana or curry?) Bring it on!!

In related news, companies are likely to do better and give better stock returns if they -- wait for it -- focus on customer service. From your lips...

(via boing boing)

Them's our boys!

A short video over at BagNewsNotes makes the point that there are some reasons for keeping soldiers from blogging and posting to YouTube -- we might see the grim loss of perspective that gets a person through a hellish couple of years...

Stop the war, I wanna get off!

Trying to have it both ways

John McCain is busy talking about Iraq and defending the President's policies, but he apparently can't be bothered showing up for the votes on the matter -- just too busy for the important stuff, or trying not to leave a paper trail that could be held against him if things get even worse?

(via Talking Points Memo)

Quote of the week

The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp.

Charles C. Krulak (commandant of the Marine Corps, 1995-1999) and
Joseph P. Hoar (commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, 1991-1994)

(via Talking Points Memo, and others)

To each his vice

I was going to do another little sheepish post to admit that I'm spending time every day playing Kingdom of Loathing (see my little clip of their cartoon monsters in the footer to this blog), but I think I'll roll that in with another art project display. In preparation/practice for the Philadelphia puzzle that we made for our niece, we made another puzzle for our own amusement using some classic images from KoL:


A little tricky, since it's a black-and-white stick-figure game (see the logo 2nd from left in the upper row, which is an adventurer with sword and martini in hand), but these seemed to work pretty well, and it makes us giggle. We're particularly proud of the brainsweeper (top right), which is essentially a disembodied brain in a lab jar, animated on a set of broom feet.

Yay for Spouse and the jigsaw! Yay for weekend fun!

Don't let the door hit ya'...

A writer at Slate provides an apt reflection on the passing of Jerry Fallwell (on Tuesday). (Man, I'd never heard the quote on feminists! like a parody of a chauvenist!)

(via Follow Me Here)

We are governed by thugs

The latest evidence -- Card and Gonzales tried to get Ashcroft to approve warrantless wiretapping from his hospital bed, where he was barely conscious, and only armed guards prevented them. yeesh.

Yesterday's absence

We had a primary election here in Pennsylvania yesterday, and it was a big one in Philadelphia, with an open mayoral primary and all the City Council members up for reelection (as well as lots of judges and other offices, and a list of ballot questions as long as your arm). Anyway, I worked the polls all day, which was its usual blend of rewarding and exhausting. And the results were a mixed bag of the sort I suppose you always get if you're interested in more than one candidate. So I wasn't here, and now I am, but with a lot of catching-up to do on life, news, and all the rest, and perhaps a few days' rest needed to regain my connection to it all.

Meantime, meet our next mayor, Michael Nutter! whoot!

Anxiety sells

That is, female anxiety, as demonstrated by J. Goodrich at The American Prospect in her piece called How the Media Skew Gender Research (token reg. required). She notes the wealth of studies showing the benefits of equal parenting by men and women, which get no media attention, as opposed to those that raise questions about the "dangers" of day-care, or which show gendered differences in Internet usage, which get blown all out of proportion in widespread media coverage.

A difference of at most six percent became an absolute gulf between the sexes, and the media exclaim, "Women are relational, men are factual!"
. . .
Over and over again, studies that appeal to anti-feminists and social conservatives gain media traction, while the ones that come to opposite conclusions languish in obscurity.

It appears that the goal is to grab the attention of already nervous affluent women, but Goodrich notes that this slant feeds the needs of conservatives (and patriarchy promoters) quite nicely. Worth keeping in mind, the next time some of this junk social science hits the airwaves.

(via Echidne, Goodrich's night job)

Quote of the day

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.

- Yasutani Roshi,
Zen master (1885-1973)

(via A.W.A.D.)

Predators are overrated

How can I tell? Because this tortoise rules the yard, driving cats before him like the wind...

(p.s.) Lots of fluff at the moment, because too much politics going on locally. Hopefully I make it to/through next Tuesday...

Wisecrack of the day

From Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo:

Richard Perle lays into George Tenet on Post OpEd page (appropriate venue). Like a cage match between See No Evil and Evil.

hehehe

Left me speechless

It's been a while since we've had a good parody song about the Bush whitehouse, and this one seems to fill that gap admirably...

Thursday photos -- family fun

No cats today -- instead, a silly wooden puzzle (of the clumsy toddler type, where the pieces drop down in) that Spouse and I made for our niece, Sophie this spring. Classic Philadelphia sights of varous types (please tell me you were able to guess them!)...




Hope your 3rd birthday was a good one, Soph!!

Well, now this *is* something!

That is, it appears that some of the "missing" emails contain evidence of deliberately obscuring Karl Rove's role in the replacement of US Attorneys around the country with Administration loyalists. More here.

Meanwhile, over on Gonzales' end of the mess, he turns out the A.G. broke his oath of office almost immediately upon taking it. These guys really have no shame.

Tee hee

This post captures perfectly the interior conversation of the average pet-owner (here with a dog, but we cat owners get much the same, in different tone). I laughed out loud and alarmed my office-mates...

(via Medley)

Update: um, now the link is right... yeesh.

In case you wondered

President Bush's handling of national disasters demonstrates that he's a putz. That our states are facing such hurdles without their National Guard contingents is more evidence of the folly of this ceaseless war. I don't think we can make it another 2 years -- Congress, save us!!

Today's giggle

...comes from the incomparable McSweeney's:

The Names of Snow White's Seven Dwarfs
After Being Prescribed Paxil, Ritalin, Prozac,
Lithium, Provigil, and Benadryl.

(via MindHacks)

Antidote

A little late-day cuteness to offset the grim news elsewhere:

puppy!

kitty!

(Yeah, and that's Pasha over at right, at around 5 weeks...)

Bad news cluster

• A fascinating graphical look at the minimum wage in real dollars over the last 70 years. Most notable to me was the observation that the MW has *never* been sufficient for climbing out of poverty.
  (via Rebecca's Pocket)
  
  
• Creepy and intrusive laws introduced to restrict the reselling of CD's -- in essence, a waiting period and a background check. Surely you jest! Watch your favorite used disc place(s) go out of business.
  
  
• China undertakes forced resettlement of Tibetans, apparently with the goal of disrupting their unique culture. Cruel and unbelievably short-sighted in this day and age.

Holy crap!

I've never seen an entire town just wiped off the map, but Greensburg, Kansas appears to have had just that fate -- one wide tornado front left it completely flat. whew!
That link over there at the right still works...

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

History is still being unfolded

This seems neat: archaologists have found Herod's tomb. Will it be gilt and wonder inside, or just a neat row of dried corpses? I'll be looking for updates...

(via Rebecca's Pocket)

An appropriate tribute to/for Mother's Day

Forget Hallmark -- the origin of Mothers' Day is as a peace movement, and the video at this link is a powerful reminder of how much work there is to do (and a little ray of hopefulness that perhaps it can still be done).

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Sniff.

Carnival of Republican freaks

Just too weird, the stories that started my day: there's

• the agnostic operative who views Christians as "a marvelously effective voter delivery system"...
  
  
• the 3/10 Presidential candidates who deny the process of evolution (just part of the greater repression of science/denial of reality theme) -- oh wait, make that 4
  
  
• the Utah party official who claims that Satan wants to eliminate national borders, drives illegal immigrants to undermine our nation, and works with Democrats to set up "a godless new order."

I don't just want these people out of my government -- I want them kept a safe distance from my family!!

Update: I don't even know how to describe this one! Mormons in space!!

Cool idea

I'm generally a paranoid defender of privacy and of keeping the government off of my phonelines, car recorder, and other gizmos that note my passing. But somehow the idea of using cellphones as a kind of distributed detector for a range of possible risks -- radiation, say, or some subset of chemical and biological substances -- strikes me as pretty neat. It's in line with the use of GPS cell phones to track traffic slow-downs, and generally makes use of the distributed-wisdom sort of thing that drives Wiki (or investigations over at Talking Points Memo). Plus, using the input from a substantial population means that false positives pretty much get drowned out. Probably technically near-impossible, but a neat concept, very Web 3.0 or whatever...

(via Follow Me Here)

America's liberal values

I've often heard it said that people tend to agree with liberals/Democrats on the issues, even if for some reason they've learned to distrust the label/party. But I was still pleasantly surprised to see the depth of that agreement -- I think I'd have imagined widespread support, say, for broader healthcare, but not necessarily for the government's guaranteeing food and housing for all citizens . . . (Commenters also raise some valid questions about how the questions are phrased, but I still think it shows pretty promising starting material for bolder leadership.)

Putting a price on inefficiency

The problem with "letting the market manage" things as we like to in the U.S. is that the wider societal costs are often distributed, while the benefits are concentrated -- take the corporation that drains a local resource for its own ends as an example, or the broad problem of air pollution. It's interesting to see ways that people can come up with to make the invisible prices tangible and give people (or other entities) incentives to change their behavior.

One solution that's getting some discussion in large cities right now is congestion pricing, which charges drivers a fee for traveling through crowded areas at peak rush hours -- the goal is to reduce the pollution from all those idling engines, as well as to increase the ease with which vehicles can actually use the roadways in question, all while generating more customers (and funding) for public transportation options.

The very suggestion that such an idea be considered in Philadelphia caused a minor tsunami in the current mayoral race, and I gather than New Yorkers are squawking too, so I was glad to see in this New Yorker piece that the cities that have tried it have quickly changed their tunes.

Since the London plan was introduced, in 2003, vehicle speeds in the city’s central business district have increased by thirty-seven per cent and carbon-dioxide emissions from cars and trucks have dropped by fifteen per cent. The plan, which the newpapers initially derided as “Kengestion”—after its main supporter, London’s mayor, Ken Livingstone—has grown increasingly popular; in 2004, Livingstone was easily reëlected, and now nearly two-thirds of Londoners say that they back the scheme.

Still, nobody likes paying a fee, businesses can see threats to their customers more easily than they can see the long-term benefits, and everybody worries about anything that could endanger a fragile urban renewal period. So maybe these things will be tried, or maybe we'll wait until the rivers are lapping at the steps of City Hall. Good ideas deserve some discussion, at least.

(via kottke)

Keeping an eye on the ball

Yah, you sure get a feeling of confidence when you hear your Republican Congressmen worry that the worst twist in this endless war is that the space on their memorial wall might run out. Yep, it's the logistics in the rotunda that keep the American people up nights . . .

Clash of Orwellian titans?

Sen. Lautenberg has formulated a clever ploy to force a divide between gun freaks and national security issues in the Republican coalition.

This leads to a double-bind for the GOP--if they support the bill, they do the following:

1. betray their rabidly pro-gun base in favor of federal power to prevent gun ownership, and
   
   
2. give the Democrats a legislative anti-gun victory in the wake of the shootings at Virginia Tech;

If they oppose the bill, they:

1. Deny the Executive authority in an issue of national security; and
   
   
2. Put themselves on record as saying that dangerous firearms should be in the hands of known terrorists.

I applaud his creativity and strategic finesse, at the same time that I am sad to see My Team degraded to playing by the same dirty rules as The Other Guys. (Maybe that's just the game of politics.) I mean, the title of the bill is "Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2007" heh. Will be interested to see how it plays out though.

My elephant is all tangled in the bushes...

The most recent This American Life episode is about Habeus Corpus, and specifically about just who it is that we're keeping in Guantanamo Bay (in near-total isolation from the world). It's not pretty, but it should be heard. (This is an update of an award-winning program from a year ago; these guys have been locked up for years and years...)

Ouch.

Quote of the day

Do not carry with you your mistakes.
Do not carry your cares.
Travel on alone
Like an elephant in the forest.

— The Dhammapada

(via The Coffee Sutras)

The other view

As a sort of converse/antidote to the frustrated world-view of GYWO, I should also offer this rather nicer visual from the peerless Indexed.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...

Pithy

For stretches of time I forget about Get Your War On (even though I wear this shirt with nontrivial frequency), and then I check in and am rewarded with such grim humorous gems as this or this. Pretty good rantiness -- I wish one of our local weeklies would pick him up...

A vicarious stroll

About a week and half ago, Spouse and I went on a lovely hike in the Wissahickon Creek area (which is within the Philadelphia city limits, but feels like it could be hours away). Great outing, great glimpses of spring. Now my readers can take the trip too, thanks to the fabulous PhillySkyline team, who offer Springtime in the Wissahickon as a photoessay. Great photos, great sense of place, as ever. A lovely escape.

It's Thursday, so it must be kitty time!

Just some fun with cats in sun -- combinations of stripes and spots...


Pixel does some cleaning (and gleaming)


Pasha fascinated by her own reflection...

Sho' nuff

You thought it was a scare when some 17,000 pets were killed by tainted petfood? Now it appears that millions of people have probably eaten chicken that was fed melamine (and lots of it was fed to pigs too). How much of that gets through the food chain and into the people's systems is yet to be seen, but this is a pretty slow warning system from the people tasked with keeping our food supply safe . . .

Those must be some mighty thick fumes

They must be smoking something pretty dense over there in the Right Wing if they can, with a straight face, argue that the Bush administration has been remarkably scandal-free. Over here where the air is a bit clearer, it looks like a record number of resignations and scandals, hearings and investigations, and even elevation of crooks to new positions of power. But hey, that's just my crazy reality-based world view, right?

(via XOverboard/Some Guy with a Website)

Update: this ad must make the fume-sniffers nuts, especially with Thompson among their '08 field... tee hee!

Life's fleeting pleasures

Today's sad news is that new car smell is bad for you. Does this actually surprise anyone? What sort of chemicals, exactly, did you think they were?

(via Follow Me Here)

Only so much room in the tubes

Sorry I'm a bit quiet today, but there are hamsters in the tube and my information can't get through. (Because you know, the Internet is not a truck!) Maybe I'll try phoning it in until tomorrow...

Beware the cuteness!!