Sculpin

These are my links for May 27th through May 31st:

• On summer memories and politically correct peanut butter | By Roz Cummins | Grist | ‘Tis the Season | 31 May 2007 - “Here’s a recipe and a guide to custom-blending your own peanut noodle sauce.”
• Mass deletion sparks LiveJournal revolt | CNET News.com - SixApart is extraordinarily good at pissing off its customers. “Our decision here… was based on what community we want to build and what we think is appropriate within that community and what’s not.” My paid membership is staying lapsed.
• solar_cooking: Hello, Everyone - It’s looking like a good time for me to bring out the solar oven again. Mine does not look much like this one. Egad.
• Kirigami - a photoset on Flickr - Intricate, precise cut-paper mandalas
• Biodiesel boom scares seed growers - “For generations, [Skagit] valley has run on a system of gentlemen’s agreements governing who will grow the crops and which land they will use. Canola is changing that trust.”
• The Ethicurean: Chew the right thing. » Blog Archive » Congress could shove transgenic food down states’ throats - A disaster for Washington’s seed industry may be looming.

No more only children! I, too, have known more than one man who is an only child, and the essential selfishness is insurmountable. They can’t help it, it’s who they are and what they know. Sharing and compromise are unknowns in their landscape.
– anonymous letter in response to a Cary Tennis column

Reading this reminded me of being on a crowded bus a couple of months ago, where a couple of loudmouthed college kids in the aisle next to me were hollering at each other about some mutual acquaintance whom they felt to be terribly inferior to them. (Apparently she had… dropped out of a class! And wasn’t sorry! Oh!) They informed each other, and all the rest of us on that bus, that she is an only child and therefore incapable of sharing, compromise, and common courtesy. Her character is irredeemably flawed. Gosh, don’t we feel good that we’re normal people with siblings so we know how to be good people. We hate her even more now! Squee, we’re bonding over it! We aren’t selfish! Yes, people with siblings have learned how to be polite!

“Go ahead and keep telling yourselves that, cretins,” I did not say. At first I gritted my teeth and stared straight ahead, and then I had some fun spotting the other people who were gritting their teeth and staring straight ahead: the Invisible Non-Brotherhood of Only Children.

It’s an odd thing — I’ll go for months contentedly drinking my one cup of morning coffee. Then suddenly it’s as if a switch gets flipped in my brain, and I want more, mooooore. I start having two cups of coffee in the morning on occasion, and then every day, and I’m still wanting more and enjoying it less. I shamble blindly to the kitchen every morning like some kind of coffee-seeking zombie. Four cups of coffee starts to sound about right. That’s my cue to knock off the caffeine for a few weeks.

Today’s my first day without caffeine. I was going to start next week, but I’ve got a cold this week, and I figured I might as well get all the headaches over with at once. Doing it this way has some benefits: for instance, I do not think, “If only I had a cup of coffee, I’d feel fine,” because no, I’d feel lousy anyway.

Congratulations to Josh’s sister Mary and her husband Jason, and hello, Jackson Thomas!

I’m looking forward to finding out over the years what my nephew is like. Josh has been telling me we ought to buy him a machete (”What kid doesn’t want a machete?”), but I’m not so sure. Maybe when he’s six.

These are my links for May 13th through May 14th:

• blog.talkingphilosophy.com » Diversions - Includes philosopher Julian Baggini’s cackle-worthy “digested” versions of philosophical classics. So far he’s done Aristotle’s Ethics and Plato’s Republic.
• Mastermaid - A Norwegian folktale of Aarne-Thompson type 313 (”The girl helps the hero flee”) from D. L. Ashliman’s library of folktales, folklore, fairy tales, and mythology.
• Wezirmes Saves the Narts from the Famine - With links to more Nart tales.
• Kyle Van Houtan and Daniel Pauly - trawler mudtrail images - Shrimp trawlers churn up such pervasive and smothering mud trails that in some places they’re operating as a significant new geological force. The satellite photos of trawlers off the coast of China are flabbergasting.
• Speaking of fake ‘butter’ and industrial corn … | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist - Fake butter flavor — diacetyl — causes irreparable, sometimes fatal damage to workers’ lungs. (Can the fumes be harming consumers, too? Nobody knows.) industry flacks insist that there’s no substitute for fake butter. Hm.

These are my links for May 11th:

• The Crow Vending Machine - The Crow Vending Machine is a device that uses Skinnerian training to teach crows to insert found coins in exchange for peanuts.
• littera_abactor: I Has a Sweet Potato - “WE JUST WON’T HAVE ANY ROOT VEGETABLES ANYMORE. THERE. ARE YOU HAPPY?”
• Casaubon’s Book: Starting the Riot for Austerity - A couple of bloggers will try to reduce their usage/emissions to 7% of the average American’s in seven areas: electricity, gasoline, heating fuel, food energy, water, consumer purchases, and garbage production.

A friend of a friend has been taken away by the government he investigates. From Ophelia of Butterflies and Wheels:

This is terrible. I know Tasneem - well not know, exactly, but we’ve swapped emails, he’s a fan of B&W and sends me links to his excellent articles; I think of him as a friend in Bangladesh. I also think of him as a brave, at risk friend in Bangladesh, and sure enough, they showed up at midnight and took him away. This is not good. Bangladesh does not have a good record on this kind of thing - which is exactly what Tasneem has been reporting on - which is why they showed up at midnight and took him away. Make noise. If you have any way to make noise (blog, newspaper, captive audience, etc), make it. Spread it around. I was alerted by an email from Tasneem’s wife (sent to a bunch of people); I forwarded it to a few people who can make noise; I even took the liberty of forwarding it to Amartya Sen. No, I don’t know him, but I was pretty sure he’d be interested, so why not.

Tasneem Khalil is an investigative journalist and a part-time consultant for Human Rights Watch. He’s also a blogger. I hope updates will appear at HRW’s Bangladesh page.

Update: Reports are that Tasneem has been released after 24 hours in custody. He’s very shaken but physically okay.

Today I planted the collards. They’re transplants from Backyard Greenhouse via the Tilth sale. The variety is “Champion”; they’re supposed to be good eats for a couple of weeks longer in spring than other collards. I hope they become huge; I’ve certainly planted them with “huge” in mind. Grow, collards, grow!

These are some darn good-looking transplants, I have to say: sturdy, well-hardened, and just the right size for transplanting, not at all root-bound. If I were going to be anywhere near West Seattle on Sunday, I’d check out the Backyard Greenhouse plant sale.

Via Think in Pictures.