Sculpin

These are my links for February 10th through February 21st:

• Five great auditory illusions - From the _New Scientist_’s special issue on music. I found especially spooky the “phantom words” and “temporal induction of speech”.
• BRITAIN RUNS OUT OF PASTA AS COSTS SOAR - Sunday Mirror - The biofuels market is making the price of Italian durum wheat skyrocket.
• Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America - Did you know that there’s a Shinto shrine in Granite Falls? I didn’t.
• Misery is not miserly: New study finds why even momentary sadness increases spending - In a new study that links contemporary science with the classic philosophy of William James, a research team finds that people feeling sad and self-focused spend more money to acquire the same commodities than those in a neutral emotional state.
• Boots in the Oven: The Fattest Duck of All. - Dinner at the cutting-edge restaurant The Fat Duck. (For Amare — this is the place with the beet and orange jellies.) “Heston and his team don?t just want you to have an awesome eating experience; they want to fuck with your head.”

These are my links for January 6th through February 8th:

• Swiffer Mop Pad (a reusable one!) - Instructables - DIY, How To, home, craft - Sew a reusable pad out of old t-shirts and a wool blanket for your Swiffer-type mop.
• Seth Kantner’s Changing Alaska - Dispatches From the Edge | Orion magazine - From his vantage ? both as a resident of the Alaskan coast and a man who grew up attuned to the land and its ways ? Seth Kantner experiences climate change and globalization almost daily.
• bookshelves of doom: Books I’ll be watching for this year. - Lots here for me to watch for too.
• Bake-in-Pie Spatula | Baking Bites - Ahem, Josh.
• Secrets of the Ocean Realm - Years ago, Josh and I watched a memorable episode of some PBS nature show with time-lapse footage of sea creatures stalking and eating other sea creatures. We call it “Carnage On The Deep”. I’ve been trying to track it down for years. This might be it.

Sheldon Brown taught Josh and me to ride a tandem. Oh, not personally, but through his generous website. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone to sheldonbrown.com, and always I’ve left the site thinking, “This is one of the most helpful people on the face of the planet. I’d like to know this guy.” His instructions were always clear, precise, and cheerful.

Sheldon had multiple sclerosis; that meant he switched to a recumbent trike and pedaled very slowly, but he kept on going. As somebody with a chronic illness, Sheldon’s straightforward attitude and overflowing enthusiasm for cycling helped give me courage to get on that saddle and figure out how to make bicycling work for me. I figured that if Sheldon could do it, I could do it. I remember looking at the bike once and whining silently to myself about poor me and my crapped-out mitochondria and how hard it was to get used to riding a bicycle, blah blah blah; then I thought, basically, “What would Sheldon do?” And with Sheldon in mind, I blew off my own whining, got my bum on the bike, and had a fun ride. Thanks, Sheldon.

Last night, Sheldon died of a heart attack. I never knew him, but I’m sad. My condolences go out to his family and friends, and to the cycling community in general.