Sculpin

These are my links for June 16th through August 1st:

• Science News / Wake Up And Smell The Java - “Cells in sleep-deprived rats sniffing freshly brewed coffee turn up the volume of genes that soothe stress and prevent cell damage… Rats exposed to the scent of coffee for 24 hours amped up production of products from genes that encode antioxidants.”
• Bicycle Saturdays and Sundays - 2008 dates for carfree days on Lake Washington Boulevard in Seattle.
• Creature Comforts: D.I.Y. Paper Wrapped Soaps - How to wrap soap neatly and attractively for gifts.
• Vintage Chinese Children’s Hats Silk Embroidered - Charming, beautiful, evocative hats for small children. Many of the hats are in the shape of animal heads with pointy ears and big googly eyes.
• Crooked Timber » » Libertarians and global warming - John Quiggin writes some critical notes on the general response of libertarians to climate change, referencing Jonathan Adler. (Nice point about the Pacific Island nations.) Conversation ensues.

From the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “The rejection of moral rebels: Resenting those who do the right thing.” (pdf), by Monin, Sawyer, and Marquez (2008):

Four studies document the rejection of moral rebels. In Study 1, participants who made a counterattitudinal speech disliked a person who refused on principle to do so, but uninvolved observers preferred this rebel to an obedient other. In Study 2, participants taking part in a racist task disliked a rebel who refused to go along, but mere observers did not. This rejection was mediated by the perception that rebels would reject obedient participants (Study 3), but did not occur when participants described an important trait or value beforehand (Study 4). Together, these studies suggest that rebels are resented when their implicit reproach threatens the positive self-image of individuals who did not rebel.

See also the venomous freakouts in the Seattle P-I’s Soundoff pages any time that bicycles or farmers’ markets are in the news.

(Thanks, Siderea!)

These are my links for May 26th through June 8th:

• stereotypist: comix for the 21st of january - The Death of Garfield. Perhaps the greatest Garfield comic ever made.
• Militia Fail « FAIL Blog - Fail Pictures at Failblog.ORG - Via Making Light. Sweet mother of God. That isn’t… no. Nobody I know. But jeez… the resemblance to a certain former KateHauser is uncanny.
• Margarita Fick - handcut unique papel picado (cut paper) creations - Killer papel picado. Damn.
• Union Station Photo Flap - “A local news crew was interviewing an Amtrak spokesman at D.C.’s Union Station who told the reporter that photography is allowed in the station. During the interview, a security guard interrupted them to say that photography/video was not allowed.”
• Brain and Mind - Video lectures from prominent neuroscience researchers, recorded in 2004.
• Silicone Plastique - Food Grade Silicone Mold Making Rubber - *covet* *covet* *covet*

These are my links for May 2nd through May 19th:

• The Lost Art of Writing About Art - WSJ.com - Fans of the Postmodernism Generator may be happy to see that empty, impenetrable artspeak is getting rightly trashed by some art insiders. (More.)
• Spokespeople - Short, monthly neighborhood rides that start in Wallingford.
• The Champagne of Blogs » Makin Bacon - Make your own bacon at home.
• Compass Roses - Links - I’ve had a fondness for compass roses for as long as I can remember. Since elementary school, at least.
• Recovering Grey - I’ve been thinking about taking up chip carving, but nothing like this. Monumental, beautiful, mysterious, enticing thing. Or as Josh keeps muttering, “Man, that’s nuts.”

These are my links for March 17th through May 1st:

• Numpty Physics - Numpty Physics is a drawing puzzle game in the spirit (and style?) of Crayon Physics using the same excellent Box2D engine.
• YouTube - Depression Cooking Ep:1 - 91 year old cook and great grandmother, Clara, recounts her childhood during the Great Depression as she prepares meals from the era.
• Studs Terkel : Conversations with America - Terkel interviewed hundreds of people across the USA for his book on the Great Depression of the 1930s. In 1973, he selected several interviews to be broadcast on the Studs Terkel Program. Here are the interviews in those programs.
• G6090 Home Fruit Production: Grape Training Systems, MU Extension - I’m almost out of time in which to get around to pruning that grapevine. Yeep.
• Match It For Pratchett -

These are my links for March 8th through March 10th:

• Pastefix - “Pastefix is a brutish little utility that strips or converts non-ASCII characters out of UTF-8 and other fancy encodings in text selections from your clipboard so they can be pasted into old-school venues such as IRC”
• American Livestock Breeds Conservancy - Conservation Priority List -
• Chicken Breed Chart: Henderson’s Own - Notes on various backyard breeds, including temperament.

These are my links for February 22nd through March 6th:

• Botanicalls Twitter DIY - Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What’s up with your plant? It offers a connection to your leafy pal via Twitter status updates. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know, and send its thanks when you show it love.
• Killer Military Robots Pose Latest Threat To Humanity, Robotics Expert Warns - Surly Ben was right: “A robotics expert at the University of Sheffield has issued stark warnings over the threat posed to humanity by new robot weapons being developed by powers worldwide.”
• Meat Wagon: Cow-feed misdeeds | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist - Distiller’s grain left over from ethanol production isn’t so great an animal feed after all: it seems to make cows even more susceptible to E. coli 0157 than whole corn, poisons their brains, and greatly increases potassium in their manure. Boo.
• The Monastery Store Architectural Fittings - I covet that inchworm sculpture.
• Onigiri On Parade: A guide to onigiri (omusubi) rice ball shapes, types and fun | Just Bento - Gosh, I haven’t made rice balls in ages.

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.

These are my links for October 30th through December 20th:

• The Theory of Honest Signaling - A nontechnical introduction.
• Exploratorium: Science Snacks About Perception - A gallery of try-it-yourself perception experiments.
• Brownie Points - Beet Marshmallows - Beet powder, allspice, orange oil, and a little maple syrup, all in marshmallow form. The cook dusted them with a little more beet powder to look like blood clots and served them up as “tissue samples” for Halloween - brilliant!
• LivingSmall - Greenwashing Our Valley - What’s wrong with the Ameya development.
• Tigers & Strawberries - Is Alice Waters an Elitist Food Snob? - “What I took to be a bunch of liberals reacting to the recent full moon in a bizarre fit of sudden onset Tourette’s Syndrome is actually a case of a bunch of folks filled with liberal guilt all trying to defend their food choices all at the same time.”