Chicago Tribune | The Chicago Gardener Chicago and the surrounding suburbs are going a little crazy waiting for the 17-year cicadas to emerge. I’ve lived here 11 years, and apparently the noisy buggers that annoy the shit out of me every summer are nothing compared to the much larger swarms of noisy buggers that emerge on the 17-year cycle. As I was leaving work, there was a “puff” piece on the local news with a lady newscaster and a whole bunch of schoolkids dressed up in pink construction paper cicada hats. They were all mighty disappointed, because the cicadas failed…
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Artists: Bill DouglasNew Age Music I ran across this composer on a Hearts of Space compilation – his setting of Shelley’s “The Cloud” is amazing. He’s based in Boulder. The rest of the CD, Universe 5, is good too.
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Filler in animal feed is open secret in China – International Herald Tribune (tags: melamine smokinggun health Food pets) Spiked wheat. (Schuler Grain Co. uses additive to artificially boost the protein content of its wheat) – Encyclopedia.com WE were doing it before the Chinese – spiking wheat with additives to make the protein percentage appear higher. (tags: adulterated wheat urea melamine) Itchmo – Melamine Recall Foods List and Information (tags: Cats petfood recalls melamine) “Dr” Laura’s “Family” Values Her own “family unit” has been dysfunctional at best. She describes her childhood as “difficult,” due to the rocky, “unloving” marriage between…
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My husband David and I spend most evenings in front of the television, and I’ve blogged before about what we watch. Our watch list includes a lot of criminal investigative shows, and yes, we watch all three CSI shows – the original set in Las Vegas, the one set in Miami, and the one set in New York. These three shows have a definite hierarchy in our viewing habits and in our attitudes toward them; we like and respect the original show, we diss the Miami one but watch it anyway, and we like and respect the New York outing.…
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Boing Boing: Objectophiles who harbor passionate sexual love for buildings… Cory Doctorow: Der Spiegel has an article on the theories of Volkmar Sigusch, a German researcher whose studies of “neo-sexuality” have led him to assemble case-studies of men and women who fall in deep, passionate, sexual love with objects, from the Berlin Wall and the Twin Towers to a toy steam engine. Back in 1979, Eklöf tied the knot with the Berlin Wall and legally changed her name to mark the occasion (“Mauer” means “Wall” in German). Ever since she was eight years old, Sandy K. was hopelessly in love…
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Lovely days like today don’t come often enough. It was warm, pleasant, and I had time to both tinker around online and dink around outside sticking plants in to my two whiskey-barrel containers. David drilled a whole in the one barrel that didn’t drain properly, and now it’s useable and not a yucky object that looks and smells like a swamp. I added a couple of handfuls of rock mulch to keep the drainage hole clear. Tore out some more of the prickly bush that insists on growing up through the roots of the one bushy pine shrub, and even…
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I’ve been having issues with the editing interface on this blog for a week or more, because I recently found out that the built-in rich text editor has some “hidden” buttons I’d like to use. I had been using a perfectly good plugin called WP-WYSIWYG, but there was no way to make an extended post using that method. And that was hanging me up, because that forced me to only do extended posts while using my home computer, where I have ecto, a cross-platform desktop publishing program. Meanwhile, I got suckered into trying the built-in editor because of the extended…
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pb-easyDiv « Extend › Plugins Might be worth a look…
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This looks good – we would try it with the yogurt and without the cilantro, as my husband David can't have the sour cream and doesn't like the taste of cilantro. Simply Recipes: Chicken Curry in a Hurry Recipe If you want to use yogurt instead of sour cream, just make sure that the yogurt sauce never simmers. If it does, it will curdle. 1 Tbsp corn, grapeseed, or olive oil 1 medium onion, sliced 1/3 cup golden raisins (optional) Salt and freshly ground pepper 1 1/2 teaspoons yellow curry powder, or to taste 4 skinless, boneless, chicken breast halves…
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…because the Letters to the Editor section sometimes contains material like this: Salt Lake Tribune – A woman's place I think it is a serious mistake to assign Brig. Gen. Kathleen Close as the commander of the Ogden Air Logistics Center ("Change of guard at Hill," Tribune, May 17). I believe it's contrary to social, military and Christian strengths and values (Proverbs 31:3; 1 Cor. 11:3). For obvious reasons, I can't imagine a woman coaching the Dallas Cowboys or the Chicago Bulls. I feel the same about a military leadership position. I adore womanhood, but I also respect manhood, and…