Why I love heritage tomatoes

But really, reading Why Supermarket Tomatoes Suck makes me want to skip tomatoes altogether from October through May...(sob)

It is more profitable for them and their large fast food and supermarket customers to handle and sell tomatoes that are harvested in two or three passes when they are green, indestructibly hard, and impeccably smooth skinned and have a couple of weeks of shelf life ahead of them. Taste does not enter the equation. "No consumer tastes a tomato in the grocery store before buying it. I have not lost one sale due to taste," one grower said. "People just want something red to put in their salad."

Ack! Gotta get a garden plot up and running!

Not always what you imagine

Here are some misconceptions about introverts that resonate with me -- that's right, nay-sayers, I am a person who dances, jokes, and makes small-talk, but actually recharges while in woods, reading, or by myself. Yes, high-school interviewer, the answer is "introvert" -- thanks for not waiting for an answer! Anyway, it's useful to see these laid out...

(via kottke)

Friday baby-blogging: Summer frolics edition

Finally some new kid pictures, yay!


Ran into an old gym class pal at the playground...


Much watery frolic ensued (complete with cute ball-sharing and hops)...


This one looks innocuous, but the thing here is that Speck is driving --
she's a regular master of the mouse as of the last couple of weeks!

Rip van Sullivan startles to life

Andrew Sullivan notices that the Republican Party has left him (and rationality) behind:

On these terms, today's GOP could not be less conservative. I'd insist it's less conservative than Obama. It does not present reality-based reform for emergent problems. It simply reiterates dogma and ruthlessly polices dissent or debate.

I don't know what it will take to undermine the ascendancy of the Tea Partiers and other frothy right-wingers, but I hope that some sanity can return before they drive our country to financial ruin and the loss of any moral authority that our national ideals once gave us.

No really, we were trying to find him too!

Apparently Pakistan is rounding up the informants who helped the CIA locate bin Laden, and their fate is unknown. But these guys are our friends, right?

Link dump: Cheerful edition

Fascinations:

• Ever wonder where your tax dollars go? Enter a few numbers and find out using this spiffy White House form.
  
  
• Vitamin Poppers May Make Less Healthful Choices -- got my healths all covered now!
  
  
• (In)(di)visibility -- a fascinating exploration of differences in how we treat people relative to "failings" that they can be "blamed for" (e.g., weight) versus those they "can't help" (e.g., autism) and what it says about those doing the judging.

  But for most of us, achieving the state expected of us wouldn’t just be a matter of trying, it would be the equivalent of earning a Ph.D. in astrophysics while simultaneously working swing shift as a police officer and raising triplets as a single parent — and we’d never get to stop. Maybe someone can actually do this, but expecting it to be a routine occurrence is, frankly, an expectation not supported by existing evidence.

• When Did You Know Your Gender? -- another of those questions (like "when did you choose to be straight?") that make you rethink your assumptions/privilege.
  
  
• How Teens Understand Privacy -- as a much more subtle and multifaceted matter than we tend to give them credit for!
  
  
• Lost in Translation -- the experience of taking on something new, mastering it (you think), gaining humility, and learning some more... Funny and insightful.
  
  
• Top Ten Myths About the Brain

Amusements and cheer:

• A Texas letter-to-the-editor asks why we don't hold politicians to results standards like we use to "motivate" teachers (among other philosophical musings).
  
  
• Translation of General Misogyny to Uncomfortable Truth -- a web screed "translated" to expose its blindness to white male privilege. Full of truth and satisfyingly snarky along the way.
  
  
• Ben Greenman’s Museum of Silly Charts -- priceless!
  
  
• Books - That is exactly how they work -- a picture that captures the joy of reading.
  
  
• Unsuck It -- business jargon unpacked (and served with a side of snark).
  
  
• Is it possible that the national mind is open to the factual delusion of the Republican party? One can only hope...
  
  
• Speaking of which, Schumer To House GOP: You Still Own Your Vote To Privatize Medicare -- I hope they follow through!
  
  
• 10 Modern Movies That Are Better in Black and White -- fun to watch, for the visuals and for the snippets of movies you loved or never saw.
  
  
• 'No Homework' Debate Finds Support In New Jersey -- we gotta do something to find a balance for our kids!

Just plain awesome:

An amazing collaboration between Yo-Yo Ma and dancer Lil Buck -- Ma just keeps on pushing the boundary of where people think a classical cello should go. This is lovely and joyous.

Poem of the day

You, as you are, you're just right.
Your parents, your children, your daughter-in-law, your grandchildren,
they are, all for you, just right.

Happiness, unhappiness, joy and even sorrow,
for you, they are just right.

The life that you tread is neither good nor bad.
For you, it is just right.
Whether you go to hell or to the Pure Land,
wherever you go is just right.

Nothing to boast about, nothing to feel bad about,
nothing above, nothing below.

Even the day and month that you die,
even they are just right.

- fragment of a Shin Buddhist poem in Taitetsu Unno's book,
River of Fire, River of Water

(via whiskey river)

Where tribute ends and remake begins...

Have been listening to Lady Gaga recently, and I like her stuff very much, but it's impossible to have been a teen in the 1980s and not hear classic/early Madonna in many of her songs (as well as influences from other stars of a similar era). I picked up that the bridge in Born This Way was a hat-tip to Vogue, but I had no idea that the parallels ran this close; give anything 30 years and it's new again, in the right hands at least. More power to her for having learned the right lessons from that previous incarnation -- boppin' pop + continually repackaged outrageousness can make for serious longevity!

Graphical good taste

I tend to an excess of seriousness in picking my wines, but am in no way above appreciation of this categorization of wine labels as an alternative way to make sense of the crowded shelves. Hilarious (and not without truth)!

The air's just fine where *I* am!

I'm pretty much just going to cut and paste from Atrios about the state of our economy and the lassitude (or stupidity) in dealing with it:

The overall May 2011 unemployment rate still hovered around 9% and the rates for African Americans (16.2%) and Latinos (11.9%) were even higher, not to mention the youth unemployment rate (24.2%). But guess what the most relevant rate for those Washington insiders themselves might be? Probably the rate for individuals over 25 with at least a bachelor's degree.

Now that was a relatively puny 4.5% in May. Which explains why the Village can concentrate on worrying about the deficits.

Deficits, schmeficits. We need to do something to create jobs -- short-term, long-term, make-work, whatever -- before the bottom really falls out of things. When 60% of the unemployed have been out for more than 6 months, you're looking at a huge swath of people just giving up...

Peaceful stimuli for a Friday afternoon

Two bits that are pretty neat:

• A video montage of images and short clips that make neat visual or intellectual pairings. I don't want to spoil it for you by saying more...
  (via dooce)
  
• Similar but different, out-of-phase pendulums make a constantly varying and remarkably beautiful set of patterns. Almost poetic.

Have a good weekend, all!

When logic and selflessness meet

This is pretty touching: some elderly Japanese former engineers have volunteered to clean up the contaminated nuclear reactor, sparing the futures of the young people who would otherwise do the work. I can hardly begin to respond to this...

Filthy hippies proved right again

That is, cell phones may well increase cancer risk -- not enough data to confirm, but enough to flag as a concern. Now who's paranoid?

Update: boing boing points out that there's actually no new information here, just a legalistic designation. So ignore the whole thing, I guess, or continue as you were...

Tunes

Enjoyed this video survey of people's listening habits, in part because my brand new iPod has made me think about my dissipated listening habits and more curious about how others fill their audio time. But also, the video captures an interesting mix of people and musical types, and it's hard not to see it as a reflection of how fractured and complex the space of musical possibilities has become, when one might recognize only a small percentage of what was being enjoyed by folks walking on the street next to you.

Working blind

I think that the Patriot Act is a pretty grim document, so I'm more than unnerved to hear that the government has a secret interpretation of that legislation that expands its reach beyond what the public realizes. I'm sure that massive data-sifting feeds into how intelligence agencies think they'll foresee terrorist activities, but the dangers it raises for average citizens are not at all trivial...

Quotes of the day (aging-related)

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

- Louise Erdrich

I have learned to be happy where I am. I have learned that locked within the moments of each day are all the joys, the peace, the fibers of the cloth we call life. The meaning is in the moment. There is no other way to find it. You feel what you allow yourself to feel, each and every moment of the day.

- Russ Berrie

You have used up the years and they have used up you, and still, and still, you have not written the poem.

- Borges

(via whiskey river)

It's not just me!

Man, it's hard to get a key to work decently in our front-door lock. Turns out that copying is even worse that I expected -- the photo makes it clear that by a half-dozen copies you're not even dealing with the same key any more! I suspect that ours are all at least third-generation at this point (although presumably *somebody* that we know has the original)...

Link dump: Latest outrages and frustrations

Man, most of these deserve a freestanding post, dissection, pull-quotes... but it's just not going to happen. Here's a heap of things that just make me want to cry in a darkened room (or maybe bite somebody).

• School Officials Often React Poorly to Student Suicides, Experts Say -- many of the classic actions to help the community mourn actually glorify the act of suicide and encourage others to consider it (!)
  
  
• Why Do Americans Pay More For Healthcare? -- summarized in visual form, and likely not the reasons you may have been told...
  
  
• Eight facts and three thoughts about Social Security -- also not what tends to get discussed, but important facts and conclusions here
  
  
• Cartoon: The Wage Gap and Women’s Choices -- seems so obvious, but...
  
  
• South Dakota Banning Abortion Without Banning Abortion?
  
  
• Scott Walker wants you to die alone if you married the wrong person -- to whom else can this putz flip the bird?
  
  
• Top Doctors Opt Out of Airport Security Scans -- make of it what you will
  
  
• Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill compared lawmakers trying to block raising the debt ceiling to "al Qaeda terrorists."
  
  
• CBO: GOP Budget Would Increase Debt, Then Stick It To Medicare Patients
  
  
• Reading Is Fundamental Funding Eliminated -- and this one is already done
  
  
• Barbour Says Everyone In Mississippi Has Access To Health Care -- But 18% Are Uninsured -- yes, folks, these are your elected representatives!
  
  
• Poll: Miss. Republicans think inter-racial marriage should be illegal -- I'm constantly amazed to learn what decade/century we live in...
  
  
• How Quickly We Forget -- race isn't the only thing driving right-wing fervor against Obama
  
  
• He Won -- bin Laden, that is; we've sold our liberties for "security" in too many ways...
  
  
• To *enter* the post office in downtown Athens, US Marshals are demanding photo ID -- what on earth?!?
  

Quote of the day

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

- G. K. Chesterton

(via riskywiver)

No plastic at all?

Have been driven to action by this study, which indicates that it's not really safe to store any of your food or drinks in any kind of plastic.

The researchers were able to measure some type of estrogenic chemical leaching from roughly 95 percent of all the plastics tested, including 100 percent of the food wraps and 98 percent of the plastic bags. Even when the plastics were unstressed and just exposed to various solutions, they still leached estrogenic chemicals.

Am trying to find glass or stainless steel alternatives to our mishmash of plastic containers, while also factoring in the need for unbreakable toddler options and leakproof lunch solutions. Looks like a pretty big project, but I expect to have many decades yet in which my body can thank me...

Quote of the day (Twitter edition)

Since the media is so stuck on the passive-aggressive phrase "openly gay", can we also get them to use "current wife" for politicians?

- urbanbohemian (Brian Gray)

(via nowthis)

A little quiet here...

...because we have a significant local election tomorrow. (Speck helped us slide lit under doors yesterday!) I have many links queued up for dumpage here, so presume I'll get to them later this week.

Without past, without conscience...

The modern GOP: I just can't decide whether they think playing with fire is harmless or just don't understand our nation's history and principles. Sure, an amendment like this is pretty much dead on arrival, but what does it even say to propose such a thing? (and every such proposal, of course, makes it more imaginable in the future...)

Poem of the day

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic - decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

- Louise Erdrich
Original Fire: Selected and New Poems

(via whiskey river)

Planes, trains, and automobiles

Really, with regard to making train security as stupid as plane security, I agree with Atrios. Even in the abstract this makes no sense.

Awesome

Reflections on Mother's Day, from a mother to those she's raising. So much loving, so much letting go...

(via Free Range Kids)

To Speck at 38 months

Wow, hard to believe that 6 months have sneaked by, but I seem to have the list of new developments to support it. Most obvious to the casual observer is that you've become a creator of games -- crawling or slithering across the floor, jumping down the stairs ("don't touch!"), making up rules for kicking and chasing a ball outdoors (even if not always followable by mortal parents), and inventing other silliness on the fly. You love to pop any bubblewrap that crosses your path (initially it took great zen-like concentration, but recently you discovered the destructive power of dancing across a sheet of the stuff on your heels!). And you craftily substitute a triumphant raspberry for the occasional good-night kiss, much to your own amusement.

Language continues to be your unparalleled forte, wowing your teachers with your fluency and continually surprising us with your dexterity and variety of words. There are still plenty of signs of Work in Progress -- most notable is that as you began to give some common words their full three syllables, they didn't always end up in the right place ("beanna," "amitals," and "elphantant" are the most notable). But you've picked up on the family game of substituting topical lyrics into familiar songs (especially anything that can be sung to the theme of "Maisy"), and you like to make up your own words for things (like "cun") and ask for them to be worked into books that are read to you (a challenge to tired parents!). Further, there are *many* signs that you are hungry to be able to read: you want to take your turn at "reading" favorite books aloud, sometimes riffing on the images and other times working in turns of phrase from the original text; you recognize all the names in Winnie the Pooh, and can integrate them smoothly into your concoctions when you read those tales to us; and you are picking out more and more individual words (apparently deciding for yourself the controversy between word-recognition and phonetics modes of learning).

There are things we have enjoyed less: a period when you wanted us to read you one book while you flipped through another; the congealing of the frog nap game into a sort of running discipline proxy battle; a rise in violent rhetoric, including threats to "chop you up to bits" (or "make a mama-loaf") or "throw you out of the house"; elaborate rituals of reverse psychology, as when every peanut-butter sandwich had to be accompanied by great shows of longing from Mom, combined with "you missed your chance" taunts; and a return of biting, most dismaying at times when it arose in a context of snuggling and affection. I guess we're getting resigned to the idea that such things are never a phase that is truly past, just a cycle that comes and goes, and to trying to find the connection even amidst the exhaustion and conflict.

Meantime, you've learned to use scissors with amazing success, took a few months of swimming instruction that got you from terrified clinger to confident and cheerful kicker, learned to carry on a nearly functional phone conversation (and became obsessed with same), and decided that 45 is your favorite number (45 minutes also acts as your definition of Nearly Forever). And you expressed your first bit of night fear, talking about "blue dots" that could only be kept at bay by a nightlight.



You like to laugh at the idea that Mom had your bear Tsah (a little battered these days) on a shelf for many years without realizing how special she was. Have no worries for yourself on that front; whatever the challenges, your parents are completely enchanted with you, your explorations, and your crazed giggles. Looking forward to more!

Krugman and what it means to be liberal

I greatly enjoyed this New York Magazine piece on Paul Krugman and his policy critiques of the current and previous administrations. I have much admired Krugman's work at the Times and online, and tend to agree with the way that he would like to see things pushed, so it was nice to see how he arrived at some of his arguments, and some push-back from those who disagree. Am amused by the description of Krugman as the "leading exponent of a kind of liberal purism against which the compromises of the White House might be judged," but we have so few audible voices on the actual left that he indeed has come to fill that role.

If you arranged members of Congress from left to right based on how they voted on welfare-state issues—Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance—it turned out that this left-to-right axis could predict every other vote: On Iraq expenditures, on abortion, whatever. “When you realize the fundamental divide in U.S. politics is just this one-­dimensional thing, and that is how you feel about the welfare state,” Krugman says, “that changes things.”

We have so little basis anymore for discussion of class issues or the value of the welfare state that we seem to be pulled hither and thither by the proposals of conservatives, unable to rally the public to a wider defense on the basis of values arguments. Perhaps we can find our way back, and along the way help Krugman feel less alone...

Before and After

Yeah, 9/11 was ten years ago, blah blah, but still this blows me away. It's just hard to imagine that kids could be so inculcated with the mystique of 9/11 without knowing anything about Bin Laden and Al Quaeda...

Cranky instincts of millions of parents confirmed

Lack of Sleep May Lead to Brain Aging

(via Follow Me Here)

Quote/poem of the day

To This May

They know so much more now about
the heart we are told but the world
still seems to come one at a time
one day one year one season and here
it is spring once more with its birds
nesting in the holes in the walls
its morning finding the first time
its light pretending not to move
always beginning as it goes

- W. S. Merwin

(via whiskey river)

Some subset of missions accomplished, anyway

I will admit I never really expected to see this headline, let alone in Obama's first term. After ten years, it almost feels more like an anticlimax than a victory. (At least to me; the surreal crowds in D.C. and NYC apparently think otherwise.) Ok, then, let's bring home all those troops wasting time in Afghanistan and Iraq, 'kay?

(It's also worth noting that this was a victory for old-fashioned intelligence and human ops, none of this data-sifting and drones. Imagine!)

Friday baby-blogging

Some long overdue kid pictures from the last month or so. I tend to get way behind in processing photos, but a few real winners is a good motivation!


Obligatory pic in Easter finery, although I missed the cute egg-hunting action shots...


Not an Easter egg, but a giant "dinosaur egg" at the zoo playhouse.


Apparently a froggy gullet is an ok place to be...

Poor widdle corporations

Thank goodness our current Supreme Court is there to protect them from any disturbance or unhappiness! Wouldn't want them to have to watch where they're putting their feet down all the time... [head-desk]

(via digby)

A playground for grown-ups!

At least, that's what this parkour practice city feels like to me. Man, those people are athletic, and this stuff just looks like a whole lotta fun!

(via kottke)

Link dump: parenting-related

Arranged loosely by age of child...

• Enough With the Breast-feeding Wars!

  It's a measure of how crazed we have become on this topic that just saying, "It's not such a big deal!" is a big deal. Our culture is hung up on mama's milk, and the undercurrent is: Why should anyone consider what is best for the mom when the baby's whole future is at stake?

  If only sanity had a chance!
  
  
• Why Preschool Shouldn't Be Like School -- figuring things out trumps having it explained every time. More in a similar vein: Let Preschoolers Play!
  
  
• Stealing from Kids, Part II -- we can't forget to teach minimal self-sufficiency.
  
  
• A mom comes up with a project in which her kids can earn badges for mastering skills around the house, from pumping up a tire to sewing to reading a map. Fun and empowering!!
  
  
• Mother of all recessions -- finances are forcing some women off the "mommy track" and back into the workforce, which may be just as well... (a friend of mine is quoted here! :)
  
  
• Outrage of the Week: Mandatory Fingerprinting for Little League Vols
  
  
• Slut-Shaming on the Playground -- it's never too early to counter antifeminist memes
  
  
• TEDxObserver talk on kids and privacy -- Cory Doctorow reassures and challenges parents whose kids are online.
  
  
• Suicide-Proof Your Teen (as Much as You Can)
  

Not what you'd like to see reported

...about police anywhere, let alone many places!

Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists as the greatest threat to the American public.

When civil liberties extend only up to the point where you get arrested (rightly or wrongly), you're not living in a civilized nation. These guys in New Orleans make the 1980s LAPD look sort of mannered!

Friday giggles

This tot has a seriously delirious giggle. Apparently he loves bubbles and his dog does too. Hard to beat a good time for all!

Putting kids in perspective

Just love this piece on the myriad responsibilities that a 9-year-old can take in stride, loving the tasks and the importance of helping out (and keeping her family's farm running).

Because they can, if you just let them. Because sometimes a job well done is a reward unto itself. Because it feels good to be a family member, instead of just a dependent. Because everyone wants to walk strong and smart and confident in this world.

Kids need to play, but they need to feel that they're doing things that matter too. We need to remember that they can manage a lot more than we sometimes think...

Quote of the day

Now winter, the winter I am writing about, begins to ease. And what, if anything, has been determined, selected, nailed down? This is the lesson of age – events pass, things change, trauma fades, good fortune rises, fades, rises again but different. Whereas what happens when one is twenty, as I remember it, happens forever. I have not been twenty for a long time! The sun rolls toward the north and I feel, gratefully, its brightness flaming up once more. Somewhere in the world the misery we can do nothing about yet goes on.

- Mary Oliver

(via whiskey river)

Keep saying it until we no longer have to

Adobe's entry in the It Gets Better movement. Man, so much experience of "if I could just get through this part..." -- we need it to get better today so everybody can "give future you a chance"!

(via NowThis)

Why I love the Internet

There are, of course, many reasons, but the fact that there's a wide outlet for specific kinds of inspired ridiculousness is definitely among the top arguments. Ah, happy Friday!

(via kottke)

A smaller heap of links, of the cheery and interesting variety

Because apparently I barely remember how to blog anymore. Sigh.

• New poll: The public trusts EPA, loves the Clean Air Act, and wants Congress to butt out Please make air standards stricter!
  
  
• Anthony Weiner Sarcastically Mocks GOP NPR Defunding Bill because surely there's nothing bigger to worry about!
  
  
• Illinois abolishes death penalty (calls the system broken)
  
  
• SXSW 2011: The internet is over -- technology moves out into real life
  
  
• Awesome Augmented Reality App Could Save Librarians Hours -- can analyze a bookshelf photo to find books that are out of place
  
  
• A little video on how to iron a shirt efficiently and effectively.
  
  
• Some crazy concepty art/shoe designs that I'd never want to wear but couldn't stop paging through.
  
  
• Toilet paper tubes repurposed as works of art (not unlike diorama Easter eggs).
  
  
• A flowchart to help you determine if you’re having a rational discussion (in case you need moral support for walking away)
  
  
• A photo that asks the impoderable questions... or something.
  
  
• Along semi-similar lines, a touching regret letter from spoon to fork.

Is it Friday yet??

Quote of the day

The truths we have come to understand need to find their visible expression in our lives. It is not enough to be a possessor of wisdom. To believe ourselves to be custodians of truth is to become its opposite, is a direct path to becoming stale, self-righteous, or rigid. Ideas and memories do not hold liberating or healing power. There is no such state as enlightened retirement, where we can live on the bounty of past attainments. Wisdom is alive only as long as it is lived, understanding is liberating only as long as it is applied. A bulging portfolio of spiritual experiences matters little if it does not have the power to sustain us through the inevitable moments of grief, loss, and change. Knowledge and achievements matter little if we do not yet know how to touch the heart of another and be touched.

- Jack Kornfield

(via whiskey river)

What's wrong with this headline?

Budget talks come down to abortion

Quote of the day (Twitter edition)

Impressive that our expectations of government have shrunk to "don't shut down" and may still be unmet.

pourmecoffee

(retweeted by Medley)

Now, isn't that better?

I think what we all need is a cute sleeping puppy to distract us from the fact that our government is about to go to hell shut down. Awwwwwwww......



If that isn't sufficient to stop your head-banging, try this huge gaggle of additional cuties. Now, aren't you feeling all warm and fuzzy?

Link dump: latest outrages edition

• Ohio Town Sees Public Job as Only Route to Middle Class -- too bad that their legislators are trying to gut that option too
  
  
• House Agriculture committee: Cut food assistance, but keep farm subsidies Sigh.
  
  
• Buried Provision In House GOP Bill Would Cut Off Food Stamps To Entire Families If One Member Strikes -- unreal.
  
  
• Republicans want 'In God We Trust' emblazoned on 9,000 federal buildings, cost could top $100m -- of course, see the two previous...
  
  
• Retired General: Republicans Making Nuclear Terrorism More Likely by cutting our programs to help countries like Russia get rid of heaps of nuclear materials
  
  
• Cuts Weren't Enough -- GOP plans to phase out Medicare, so they can stop being annoyed at how successful and popular it is
  
  
• The Death and Life of the Democratic Party -- the withering of unions has pushed the party into the arms of big business, leaving it torn about its principles; see also this cartoon. Sigh.
  
  
• Boehner’s Tough Spot Hides Democratic Ideological Giveaway -- more evidence that the Democrats no longer even see themselves as standing for something
  
  
• Epic irony: Mideast moves forward while America moves backward -- a grim compilation of the war on women's rights, in particular. Related: No justice on earth until there is justice for women -- seems an obvious point
  
  
• Obama administration curtails rights for terror suspects -- same as the old boss?? See also US military's "gratuitously harsh treatment" of Manning condemned by NYT, WaPo, LAT, ACLU and Clinton To Congress: Obama Would Ignore Your War Resolutions -- it all makes me want to cry.
  
  
• TOM THE DANCING BUG: U.S. Bombs U.S. Schools -- kind of sums up my frustrations with our involvement in Libya
  
  
• How a lie enters the political bloodstream -- important piece about how journalists set the terms of acceptable versus fringe debate

  What's key to understand about this model is that what ends up in the various spheres has very little to do with empirical or logical merit. These are not truth categories, they are categories of practice, shaped by social forces. In other words, they are deeply, intrinsically political, though "objective" reporters seem almost incapable of recognizing that they are engaging in political choices.

• Weak Job Market Forces Maine Legislator to Leave the State -- their legislature is part-time, so reps really "feel the pain" just like their constituents!
  
  
• Speaking of Maine, Maine Governor Orders Mural Depicting Labor History Removed From Labor Department -- these guys really take Orwell to heart!
  
  
• Who Screwed the Middle Class?

  A lot has happened over the past 30 years, but if you're looking for a single political sea change that's had the biggest impact on middle class wages—more important than union decline, more important than NAFTA, more important than the end of Glass-Steagall—it's the political consensus that underlies the Fed's reluctance to allow labor markets to stay tight enough to generate wage increases in the real economy. And it's something we're seeing all over again right now, as the DC chattering classes have almost unanimously decided that inflation is our real enemy right now, even though core inflation is running around 1% and unemployment is still near 9%.

• Beware the Vultures -- our policing of parents is making their lives almost unworkable.
  
  
• TSA to retest airport body scanners for radiation -- some have shown 10 times more radiation release than we've been promised so often is harmless. But you can trust the TSA!!

If only...

There are many times when we wish "if only" -- if only smarter people were in charge, if only the media focused on what was important, if only politicians would worry about jobs and not the deficit, if only America appeared to be true to its ideals. Well, having written that list, it's a bit anticlimactic to append the two links that sparked it, but here they are:

1. I wish smart econ bloggers were in charge!

   In a rational world, there should be no discussion of the deficit as policy. Team D and Team R would present their competing visions for what the government should spend money on, and where that money should come from. ... Ideally, we'd have one party that thinks we should spend a bit more on things like social safety nets, and do so with more progressive taxation, and one party which thinks we should spend a bit less, and with more regressive taxation, and the voters would have a reasonably clear choice.

   Sounds like crazy socialist Euro-think!


2. I wish that people wouldn't fantasize that Presidents can fix everything!

   The federal government is full of smart, competent, persuasive people working in a system that prevents them from rapidly addressing even the problems with obvious solutions. Let’s see some realistic thought experiments that address that.

Well, at least there are some homework projects for the industrious among us to contemplate and maybe even work on...

Quote of the day

No one ever said that you would live to see the repercussions of everything you do, or that you have guarantees, or that you are not obliged to wander in the dark, or that everything will be proved to you and neatly verified like something in science. Nothing is: at least nothing that is worthwhile.

-- Mark Helprin
via Mrs. Gamely, in Winter's Tale

Top books of 2010, Speck edition

Speck goes through cycles of having us read to her a ton versus showing interest only at bedtime, but a few books seem to transcend her general pattern to become repeat entertainments all by themselves. Three books really stood out in this category during this past fall and winter, to the degree that I thought they deserved some public recognition.

1. The top of this list would have to be Llama Llama Misses Mama by Anna Dewdney, a book that describes a little llama (star of several other books) on his trepidatious first day at preschool, initially so overcome with missing his mama that he's unable to participate in any of the fun taking place around him, but eventually getting sucked in by the kindness of the teacher and kids and having a good time. Top quotes: "Don't be sad now, little llama! It's ok to miss your mama. But don't forget: when day is through, she will come right back to you!" and "Llama Llama, please don't fuss; have some fun and play with us!"
   
   I initially got this book from the library to help introduce Speck to the idea of preschool, to help her visualize what might be there, how she might be scared and/or might have fun. I thought it might give us some entries to talk about that stuff, and indeed it did, much more than I anticipated. She asked about the line "Mama Llama goes away; Llama Llama has to stay", and we developed a set of discussion points such as "mama has to go to work" and "preschool isn't for mommies!" We talked about the little llama turning away from games and fun, and how he was missing out on possibilities. We speculated that he probably didn't really "hate that book" but was just feeling grumpy and unwilling to give it a chance. We grinned over the way he shouted and dropped his crayons when he saw his momma returned to pick him up, and laughed when she tried to fit inside the playhouse. Most amazingly, we read this book over and over, day after day, exhausting our library renewals and then getting it out again and repeating the process, long after Speck had made her own successful transition to preschool, long after I should probably have already bought the book but kept imagining we'd be done with it soon.
   
   Reading this book (and the next) also became linked to having a snack of matzohs and cream cheese in the afternoon; either could suggest the other. But there was never a single pass through this book. It's been at the library for a month or two now, but writing this has made me realize that I should probably go and get it out again and see what new tidbits it might have to offer...



2. Next up is Night Shift, by Jessie Hartland. This is a rare case where I brought home a library book whose illustration style (something like chaoticized child's drawings) I actively disliked, because it seemed like a neat topic: what sorts of work goes on around a city in the evening hours and overnight, that you never get to see? We visit boat captains moving freight, a museum guard listening to a late-night DJ, and donut bakers getting their wares ready before dawn, among many others. It's long (which appears to be a draw for Speck in certain moods), but offers nice linkages from one player to the next to pull us along until the late-nighters and the early-morningers all meet at a diner for breakfast.
   
   Anyway, she loves it, and it's another that has been read and read until her parents nearly groan to see it coming out of the pile. But there's lots of detail and silliness to pick out along the way, as well as questions to ask about how the world works -- why is there less traffic at 2am? why do the bridge painters paint around a hawk's nest? etc. Speck particularly likes following some oscelots from their shipping crates to their cage in the nocturnal section of the zoo, through various edge-of-the-action cameos (and maybe a diner outing at the end). Anyway, the book has won me over, what with all the rereadings and examination of details, and I now look upon its multicolored pages with affection.



3. Finally, we made a great find in The Year at Maple Hill Farm, by Alice and Martin Provensen. I thought that this might be kind of a stretch for my 2-year-old when I brought it home, but she was entranced with it immediately and had us read it obsessively until she had memorized whole sets of the shorter descriptions. It talks about the months and seasons of the year by way of how they affect the activities of the animals who live on a farm, with horses feeling frisky in the spring and roosters dealing with the indignity of moulting, and does a good job of evoking the seasonal sensibilities of life on a farm without the need for a treacly or historical patina.
   
   The book is full of detailed drawings and quirky barnyard personalities, which later led us to visit the also-wonderful Our Animal Friends by the same authors. Both books treat the animals and their readers with great respect and a little wry affection, and will offer more to readings at subsequent ages. These books were recently reissued in softcover (after original publication in the 1970s, I think), and we quickly bought both, although not all of the color is perfectly reproduced from our well-worn library copies. I look forward to Speck's viewing this one as one of her old friends.

Latest shadenfreude

I'd like to be a bigger person, but for now I'll have to live with the fact that this story just made my day. Can we be done with this "I'll show you mine if..." crap already?!?

(via HunterDK's Twitter feed)

Another almost-funny

The inimitable Fafblog comes through with an appropriate take on our actions in Libya, both funny and painful.We can haz freedoms? Sigh.

(via Atrios)

Where credit is due

Echidne has really been on a roll lately -- on what the Right is up to, on recent anti-union maneouvers, even on what does and doesn't get said about Elizabeth Taylor's roles and what that reveals. I've linked to this week's posts, so just go get edumacated via some chewy analysis of Stuff!

Belated primer

Have been meaning to post this for a while, but it's still useful even if the winds of media have shifted: Some Perspective On The Japan Earthquake, which includes things like some analogies for how large/long the country is and where the earthquake actually hit, and also talks about the nation's preparedness, etc. Helpful for figuring out how much of the country has actually been affected, why your friends in Tokyo are mostly ok, etc.

Passing of a legend

Was a bit surprised to see at boing boing this morning that Elizabeth Taylor has passed away, although a scan through recent images makes it clear that she was failing.

Anyway, for those who have appreciated her movies and her larger-than-life presence, there is a wonderful cross-section of images here, and a short video tribute by Paul Newman here. She certainly left a wealth of screen performances through the decades, many which hold up well to time...

Thought of the day

But won't you be ashamed
To count the passing year
At its mere cost, your debt
Inevitably paid?
For every year is costly,
As you know well. Nothing
Is given that is not
Taken, and nothing taken
That was not first a gift.

- Wendell Berry
lines from Sabbaths 1998, VI

(via whiskey river)

Thoughts from an elevator

Today as I was getting into my office elevator, I was reminded of the widespread superstitions about elevator doors -- for example, the large number of people who are afraid to try to reach out to stop their closing, even if it means a long wait for another elevator, because, I guess, they are afraid that their hand would be caught/crushed/devoured.

And I want to explain that their imagined hand-waving target region is too high, that we live in the post-ADA era, so that you have to think about where a wheelchair would roll, and thus that the target for optical sensors would be about thigh-to-hip height. And that I've many a time stopped such an elevator with a sheet of paper or a hand, at no risk. But my gut is sort of saying, dismissively, "This is why smart people live longer." So I never open my mouth.

Really, on further reflection I realize that there are just a broad class of people for whom the world at large, and technology in particular, is full of impenetrable mysteries. And why is that so? Because if you start with the belief that there's no approach to such matters, you continue to find that true because you have never tried to analyze any of them. Some things may be hard to understand or frustrating, but many many aspects of the world yield to some kind of deductive analysis, whether the outcome is actual facts or just probabilistic insights, and your mind does that kind of work all the time (watching any kid over time is instructive in this regard). You just need to learn to believe in that framework.

So, rather than be dismissive, I wish to change my silent conversation to something like, "Every increment of deductive reasoning that you can bring to bear makes life a little bit easier." Which is not entirely different from saying that smart people function better in the world, but has the added benefit of pointing out a tool that anybody can adopt -- assume that you can reason a way through many of the stupid or mysterious parts of the day. And you, too, will find that you are right! Take heart, fellow travelers!

Babies! What makes those things tick?

Two hilarious videos recently of kids laughing hysterically at everyday things:

1. Tearing paper is the new definition of funny!
   (via Follow Me Here)
   
   
2. Mom blowing her nose -- both terrifying and hysterical! (This kid has just amazing expressions!)

Go on, you know you need a Friday giggle!

Somebody needs to do it!

Parents can do it, and apparently schools can do it too: help students discover the joy of learning and take ownership of their own educations. This sort of experiment terrifies harried school administrators, but the proof is in the pudding.

The students in the Independent Project are remarkable but not because they are exceptionally motivated or unusually talented. They are remarkable because they demonstrate the kinds of learning and personal growth that are possible when teenagers feel ownership of their high school experience, when they learn things that matter to them and when they learn together. In such a setting, school capitalizes on rather than thwarts the intensity and engagement that teenagers usually reserve for sports, protest or friendship.

Inspiring, challenging stuff.

(via FreeRangeKids)

Good to keep in mind

Amid all the destruction photos and nuclear nailbiting coming out of Japan right now, they actually did amazingly well in the face of a really huge earthquake. We tend to focus on what failed, so it's good to remember that good disaster planning -- from construction codes to evacuation procedures -- actually saves thousands (or millions) of lives. We could learn a lot from that, if we still believed in learning...

A quiet book

I much enjoyed the January project of trying to notice/write one brief thing every day (see, e.g., these) -- made me realize how seldom these days I exercise the discipline of putting words to observations, something I love. Anyway, turns out that the organizers were so overwhelmed by the result of their project that they put together a book, which culls some of the most satisfying pebbles and mixes them with a few quotes and observations to make what looks like a great way to dip into the quiet moments in other people's days. Worth a look!



(Note: I make no money from this project in any way.)

In a nutshell

There are just so many ways that this picture summarizes the experience of parenthood -- the cuteness, the pressure, the exhausted parent . . .

Giant pre-vacation link-dump

Infuriating:

• The New Obama Budget (by Krugman)

  ...listening to the administration, you’d think that discretionary spending, not health care, is at the heart of our long-run deficit problems — and you’d also think that the job of rescuing the economy was done, with unemployment still at 9 percent.

  More on this, in a different form, here.
  
  
• Krugman: Republicans want to "eat America’s seed corn" -- along the same lines, Echidne: Eating the Seed Corn. Who Needs Education?
  
  
• Health insurers continue to drop children's coverage
  
  
• Journalists angry over the commission of journalism (fact-checking is upsetting!)
  
  
• Wisconsin Update: Trashing “the Hippies”
  
  
• Frustrated in Florida -- more overprotection of capable children/teens
  
  
• Schools often react poorly to student suicides, experts say -- in fact, the most common responses are precisely counterproductive!
  
  
• Military Personnel Say Pentagon Ignores Sexual Assaults, Harassment
  
  
• Today's Deep Thought -- restricted range of arguments about gender equality
  
  
• Toxic Chemicals and Where the Burden Should Be -- quit blaming moms and let's get some decent environmental regulation!

  But there is only so much time in the day - is my time really better spent researching which deodorants are least likely to cause developmental problems in potential future babies, or is it better spent advocating that the FDA and USDA and other acronyms stop letting poisons into our products in the first place?

• Alaska state rep refuses TSA grope of her mastectomy scars, drives home from Seattle -- and for those who think this is all accomplishing something, there's TSA airport body scan tests miss gun: report
  
  
• The undiscussed elephant in the room: poverty!
  
  
  1. It Takes a Village, Not a Tiger

     The parenting wars look like they are about children, but really they are only about each parent’s own child. That’s why they serve such a useful social function. Without them we might have to think about the frightening place America is becoming for ever more millions of kids. Who knows? We might even feel that we should do something about it.

  2. Class And Social Security

     A 30 percent cut in benefits would represent disaster for tens of millions of Americans, but a barely noticeable inconvenience for VSPs and everyone they know. A rise in the retirement age would be a vast hardship for people who do manual labor, but if anything a gift to VSPs, who don’t want to step aside in any case. And so on down the line.
     
     So going after Social Security is a way to seem tough and serious — but entirely at the expense of people you don’t know.

  3. The compensation-productivity gap

Fascinating:

• The Strange Powers of the Placebo Effect
  
  
• An Interesting Study on Drug Use Prevention
  
  
• My big picture view of Wisconsin -- how people think wealth is distributed (versus how it is, how it should be)
  
  
• Why Do Protests Bring Down Regimes? neat!
  
  
• Quantum Mechanics vs. Relativity: It Depends on What "Understand" Means -- heck, they're both hard
  
  
• TEDxSF - Jill Vialet - 11/17/09 (video talk) -- how critical play is to children, and how amazingly they respond to even a pilot effort
  
  
• The Mad Men Account -- why is the series so appealing (and to whom)?
  
  
• SoundWorks Collection: Gary Hecker - Veteran Foley Artist -- performing sound effects back into movies; amazing!
  

Cheerful:

• Can I Get An Amen? America doesn't run the world.
  
  
• Obama administration replaces controversial 'conscience' regulation for health-care workers -- do your job or find another one!
  
  
• Russ Feingold Launches Progressives United PAC -- aiming at the Citizens United decision, in particular
  
  
• Religious Coalition Tells The GOP That ‘The Budget Shouldn’t Be Balanced On the Backs Of The Poor’
  
  
• Mushroom and BalletBoy Go to the Park! kids need some independence!
  
  
• They Said Shut Up, but mombloggers continue to share everyday life with others working through it
  
  
• The Court would like to balance the scales -- time off, as long as you're excited about any kid you get!
  
  
• Jon Stewart Nails Fox News Hypocrisy On Teachers Vs. Wall Street Pay Levels
  
  
• Parov Stelar - Catgroove -- this guy can dance! great fun!
  
  
• What would Feynman do? -- long but hilarious skewering of stupid interview questions
  
  
• Today’s Silly Question -- what's cuter than a smiling piglet?!?
  
  
• And now for no apparent reason… Kittens… in… Bowls!
  
  

Poem of the day

The Infirmament

An end is always punishment for a beginning.
If you're Catholic, sadness is punishment
for happiness, you become the bug you squash
if you're Hindu, a flinty space opens
in your head after a long night of laughter
and wine. For waking there are dreams,
for French poetry, English poetry,
for light, fire although sometimeskoan
fire must be punished by light
which is why psychotherapy had to be invented.
A father may say nothing to a son for years.
A wife may keep something small folded deep
in her underwear drawer. Clouds come in
resembling the terrible things we believe
about ourselves, a rock comes loose
from a ledge, the baby cries
and cries. Doll in a chair,
windshield wipers, staring off
into the city lights. For years
you may be unable to hear the word monkey
without a stab in the heart because
she called you that the summer she thought
she loved you and you thought you loved
someone else and everyone loved
your salad dressing. And the daffodils
come up in the spring and the snow covers
the road in winter and the water covers
the deep trenches in the sea where all the time
the inner stuff of this earth surges up
which is how the continents are made
and broken.

- Dean Young

(via whiskey river)

Obligatory birthday-related posting

Well, we've had some festivities around the household, and the incremental aging of small persons! With balloons and presents and much bouncing in a Tigger-like way.


Yes, this critter turned 3 years old.


This was the lilypad + frog cake. Stencil a last-minute addition.


This year, she ate the cake! CAKE!!
(chocolate by direct request)

I feel like the first three years have been very tangible to us, with all the sleeplessness and intensity of time-spending, and general infinitesimal subdivision of the day into tiny discoveries and battles. And yet I can feel that things are starting to speed up, that 4 will arrive at a stunning rate, that I will be amazed that time could ever resume its prior rush. This musing, looking backward from the huge distance of 6, made me cry a bunch.

Onward we go.

What doth portend?

Holy crap! Obama Administration finally disavows Defense of Marriage Act, will no longer defend heterosexual privilege in court. w00t!


(via Atrios)

From the department of The More Things Change...

This map of collective bargaining rights in the US includes states that require it for labor contracts, those that are neutral, and those that forbid it. And yet the boundarys correspond to divisions in so many other things... I hate to say it, but there are just places in this country that make it mighty hard to live!

Quote of the day

Take a moment from time to time to remember that you are alive. I know this sounds a trifle obvious, but it is amazing how little time we take to remark upon this singular and gratifying fact. By the most astounding stroke of luck an infinitesimal portion of all the matter in the universe came together to create you and for the tiniest moment in the great span of eternity you have the incomparable privilege to exist.

- Bill Bryson

(via whiskey river)

In case you were wondering

The Republicans make it pretty clear where they stand when it comes to the little guy. Let the buyer beware! I guess we'll all sink together...

Link dump, next: Parenting-related bits

• Leading and Being Led -- a great reflection on the negotiations of everyday childrearing, and also on the recognition of a moment when a child has something to teach us.
  
  
• Here's to Having Kids! -- a reaction to both humorous and humorless put-downs of the childrearing experience, arriving at an interesting perspective.
  
  
• Want a safe place to raise kids? Look to the cities yay!
  
  
• 12 Tips For Choosing A Guardian For Your Children
  
  
• Lesson Eight: I'm Judging You -- more tales of the free advice/judgement offered by strangers and fellow parents. feh.
  
  
• Free Range Kids -- doesn't even have laziness to recommend it, just healthiness for kids.
  
  
• Keizer 3-year-old calls 9-1-1 to save his father -- I guess this is a self-nudge that it's time to teach Speck about 911.
  
  
• The 5 Best Toys of All Time -- lots of room for imagination in there!
  
  
• Earth To Be Made Child-Safe -- some humor from the Onion, heh.
  
  
• Deconstructed Valentines -- a great craft project plus a reminder that nothing in parenting ever goes quite as planned.
  

What goes round...

This is a great parable about modern living, in a city or anywhere else. You can find neighborliness in the densest and dirtiest places, or you can fence out the world in a safe and luxurious area -- have met both kinds.

(via free range kids)

Your Friday dose of cuteness

At least, if you didn't see it on Cute Overload earlier this week. Just an overwhelming cuteness of bunnies in a row! Yay!! It's almost more cuteness than I can take in -- I want the one on the left!

Always a good time for a leer!

Stay Classy, TSA

Quote of the day

The Thing Is
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, how can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.

- Ellen Bass
psychobabble

(via whiskey river)

Power to the people!

Well, this is exciting! I haven't felt so invested in the self-transformation of a nation since we watched people walk for days and stand in long lines to vote in post-apartheid South Africa. Of course, any revolution can go sour, but there's such a feeling of empowerment, of hope for a fairer government and better times, that one prefers to set aside such trepidations and just join in the upswell of joy.

Update: Yeah, well...
Update 2: Hey, it happened!!

Four bits on women (and maybe on who defines/controls them)

• How It Is Done: Working Mothers, Guilt and Childhood Obesity -- bad science used to beat up on working mothers, as though parenting weren't hard enough.

  But whatever the demerits of the study, that popularization really is utterly loathsome. Loathsome! Note that working fathers are not mentioned. Fathers are not mentioned. And the recommendations for women, or rather the scolding: Try not to work so much!
  
  I write about these kinds of crappy studies because they are worms which drill through the skins of women and fester deep inside us. We are not worthy! We are responsible! Nobody else is to blame! We must walk on our hands through life and not fall! I don't write about them because I somehow think that women are perfect, for example, but to show how this thing is done. It is non-stop, really.

• Feminists Make Better Lovers -- doesn't apply to women exclusively, but reveals biases about many things, including what kinds of studies do and don't get popularized. [Hint: the ones that do are the ones that confirm the cultural narrative!]
  
  
• Take Your Legislation Off Me -- some grim legislation being discussed right now, the discussion again revealing all kinds of underlying assumptions, including that men should get to make all the decisions in matters affecting women.
  
  
• On Labor -- a personal story that serves as a reminder that women carry disproportionate risks in creating our next generation.

  Every day women choose to do the hard labor of a difficult pregnancy. Its courageous work, which inspires in me a degree of admiration exceeded only by my horror at the notion of the state turning that courage, that hard labor, into a mandate. Women die performing that labor in smaller numbers as we advance, but they die all the same. Men do not. That is a privilege.

  Amen.
  

A good seed

Holy crap! This video made me cry, right at my desk. He's right that anybody should be proud to have him as a son, just like he's right that families are about commitments to one another, not any external characteristics. Wow.

A little knowledge...

It's true that we hear about Americans' budgetary ignorance on a regular cycle, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. Why have the Democrats become so cowed by the national security folks that they're not willing to point out the bloatedness of our military budget, or the fact that almost no dent can be made in our money woes without looking there? Why don't we counter the foreign aid debates with a couple of key visuals? Heck, one big pie chart with a tiny green stripe for foreign aid and a huge half-pie for Defense might make for an interesting TV sound-bite -- "why are we debating how much to cut this little sliver while completely ignoring the elephant that is our outings in Iraq and Afghanistan?" (A similar pie chart could help us get back to thinking about further health reforms, or at least not gutting the recent ones, but I fear that chat is done for the time being...)

Monday cat-blogging

Yes, you heard that right -- we still have cats! Amazingly, they're on the long side of 5 years old, but still spotty and mewpy, still generally entertaining, although their lives are a bit constrained by the unpredictable whims of a toddler...


Yes, they even have back their beloved cat tree,
which reclaimed the spot from some large kid toy. So happy!!


I love this dangle that Pixel does, as though her arms sort of don't belong to her.
A previous version can be seen here (at 6 months).

Great visual!

The new Starbucks "Trente" size is big enough to hold an entire bottle of wine with room to spare. No straw for me, please!

(Don't recommend the video because (a) most of it is him opening the bottle, and (b) he doesn't even rinse out the cup before putting in a perfectly good bottle of red wine!! ack!)

Quote of the day

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's own, or real life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day; what one calls one's real life is a phantom of one's own imagination. This at least is what I see at moments of insight: but it's hard to remember it all the time.

- C. S. Lewis

(via whiskey river)

Just what the doctor ordered

Do a lot of tech support for your parents? Google has put together a little selection of step-by-step videos for some commonly tricky tasks that you can send as an email care package to help empower the struggling user. Brilliant.

(via FreeRangeKids)

That makes sense

I had wondered why violence didn't really erupt in Egypt until after Mubarak promised to step down -- sour grapes? an attempt to get a do-over? TPM offers the likely explanation that this is about positioning for the aftermath. Probably if we knew a bit more about the players, we'd know who was benefitting from the conflict, politically or tactically or whatever...

Link dump II: Cheerful and/or interesting

And hey! I had more of these than of the grumpy kind!

• The 10 weirdest physics facts, from relativity to quantum physics
  
  
• Ten Weirdest New Animals of 2010: [National Geographic] Editors' Picks -- why let physics have all the fun?
  
  
• The Truth Wears Off -- Is there something wrong with the scientific method? Talk about weird!! (!!)
  
  
• Leave Your Tasks Unfinished to Maintain Momentum and Avoid Mental Blocks -- counterintuitive at first glance, but spiff!
  
  
• The prettiest woodpile I've ever seen -- neat.
  
  
• The Human Incubator -- human contact can trump high technology.
  
  
• Turbine-free wind power -- a neat alternative in development
  
  
• Poetic sensitivities -- the limits of perception expressed in everyday terms (accidental poetry).
  
  
• Senate Passes 9/11 First Responders Health Care Bill -- ok, this was a while ago, but good to celebrate rare shows of sanity.
  
  
• Now We're Talking -- the argument you never hear: why the retirement age should be lowered, not raised. Atrios echoes and extends the idea here.
  
  
• Also too rarely seen: Muslim and Christian, Egyptians stand together against violence (this is before the current political unrest)
  
  
• Also uplifting: A Victim Treats His Mugger Right
  
  
• Don't Touch My Junk! Jesse Ventura Sues The TSA -- he might be just the guy to press this issue.
  
  
• Another dumb idea gets its comeuppance: Dubai's artificial islands "sinking"
  
  
• Totally inspired (and addictive) resource: Wikipedia's List of common misconceptions, from sports to religion and everything else.
  
  
• The Unspeakable, in Its Jammies -- how we deal with difficult language in literature (as in the recent Huck Finn controversy), and a touching account of discussing the matter with kids.
  
  
• Chop, Fry, Boil: Eating for One, or 6 Billion -- three basic approaches to cooking can do everything you need.
  
  
• Characters from The Wire broken down by appropriate D&D alignment -- soooo right.
  
  
• Brimming with Holiday Spirit -- Tom Tomorrow gets to the heart of why worry about Assaults on the Holidays are absurd...
  
  
• The Fun Theory -- can making things fun help people do the right thing? Dunno, but these little demonstrations make me pretty happy.
  
  
• My Blackberry is not working -- pure British sketch silliness.
  

Look out! Link dump!

Just too many tabs, languishing at the top of the screen forgotten. Just barely feeding this blog these days, as with so much else in my life... First installment is from the Grumpy files: latest outrages, ongoing woes, etc.

• The Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics -- magical thinking explains a lot of counterproductive behavior by our leaders, especially with regard to unwinnable conflicts.
  
  
• Alan Grayson CALLS OUT Obama's Blue Dog Only Cabinet -- I'm sure all the recent corporate additions have really improved the range of ideas coming in...
  
  
• Top Wisconsin Court Ok's Putting Non-Sex-Offenders on Sex Offender Registry -- there's no tool for depriving folks of rights that we can't gleefully spread in ever wider directions.
  
  
• "Politically Correct": The Lazy Bully's Label of Choice

  In short, any move to be more inclusive in extending consideration or respect, anything that challenges the comfortable world in which certain people quietly maintain their privileged status, may be met with a roll of the eyes and a sarcastic "Oops. I forgot we have to be politically correct here …"

  Comes up again and again.
  
  
• The Stupid, It Burns -- gender policing: it's always in fashion!!
  
  
• Renewed Push to Give Obama an Internet "Kill Switch" -- I don't want any one person to be able to turn off the Internet/free speech/internal communications. Is this really a serious proposal?!?
  
  
• Heritage Asks Issa To Reverse Decades Of Worker, Consumer, Environmental Laws -- so excited about this new GOP majority!
  
  
• Math and Economics Are Hard! -- like "reducing the deficit," "increasing productivity" is something that might not be a good goal during a serious downturn like ours. Too bad that those in charge of the recovery don't seem to understand that (among other things)!