Amazon
Once in a while, this site's Amazon photo link is not a book. Here's something for those who want a pretty green lawn that never needs mowing:
..."
Baltimore Update
"Blood-boiling," Reason warned, and they're right. If you have any blood pressure issues whatsoever, don't read this one. Take their word. I recently wrote a happy science fiction story about a future Baltimore where people mind their own business and treat their neighbors decently...because ninety percent of the population have succumbed to a plague. If that's not what it takes to get emergency responders to stop asking, before they respond to a report, "Is the person in danger Black or White?" (even after being told the person is actually Indian, so help me!)...I will be glad. I'd like to see people in Baltimore treat each other like decent human beings rather than, er um, Baltimorons.
Books
Liz Curtis Higgs
announces a sale on Embrace Grace:
announces a sale on Embrace Grace:
Dan Lewis
shares fun facts about Dr. Seuss:
shares fun facts about Dr. Seuss:
Charity
If you support food banks...in theory I do, because there will always be someone whose house just burned down or collapsed in a storm who really needs free food...but...
And...
Crafts
Nice quilts, and an easy way to make them:
Economy
So here's the problem with these United States: People who call themselves Christians are letting this woman be punished for doing something honest and decent, instead of queuing up to buy her tamales. Then they wonder why so many other people in her situation are welfare-cheating, running drugs, or worse.
Education
Fidgeting in their seats actually helps students focus on their work...why does this not surprise me? (Anyone in the cafe can tell you I fidget in my seat while blogging!)
Here, students, are seven more ways to "get smarter" for the school year...Do they work? Hmm. I use them, and I made the Dean's List at Berea. I learned them from my father, and he got the maximum possible scores on all ten parts of the U.S. Army intelligence test. Maybe it's a gene. Maybe not. Try these ideas yourself, if you've not been using them all along, and see if they boost your grade-point average.
And here's a way Common-Core-afflicted schools are getting dumber...Thanks to Michelle Malkin for sharing this one. Actually I had a teacher who tried the oldfashioned, low-tech version of what Common Core purports to do, by staring at students and yanking down the window shades the minute anyone looked out the window. She thought it was distracting. She didn't realize that (a) staring out into space is what my "different," ear-thinker, math-challenged brain does when I am thinking about math, and (b) my astigmatism kept the view out the window a view "out into space" when I glanced up from the paper, and (c) hating all math people, the way I did when she pulled down the shades, was much more distracting to me, at that age, than watching a whole dang movie would've been...
Faith
Thanks to Neil Vermilion, whoever he is, for tweeting this:
Our little minds don’t have capacity 2 comprehend the uncreated God. He’s NOT like us. He is holy!
Green
Or should this go under "health"?
Like...will fracking even pay? Pennsylvania? I say we give it up. Give the oil a chance to ooze into a real oil bed, and go clean, Green, safe, and off the grid...with individual solar power. I'm dreaming of a white Christmas where everyone can just broom or blow the snow off their collector panels and no whole neighborhood finds itself sitting in the cold and dark because one power line, somewhere deep in the forest where it'll take the crew three days to get to, has collapsed. The technology is here.
And Virginia, a coastal state, could own it. Even old-school grid energy. We could be selling clean energy...wiring it up to rained-on, landlocked, wealthy Vermont. You have to respect our coal people...but I'm convinced that coal is obsolete. This is the kind of thing our coal people should be getting into.
Here's another Green energy source that's abundant in Virginia. Note that, although it's a Guardian story, it was shared by Weaselzippers as being funny, which I agree that it is...the serious Green idea is in the previous links.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/10/cow-methane-reduction-california-dairy-industry?
In the less-awful-than-it-might-have-been news department:
Health News
I'm fairly sure this web site shared the McDougall Advanced Study Weekend happening in September. Why are the McDougalls (Mary, Dr. John, and now Dr. Craig too) e-mailing this announcement again? One reason: to introduce another speaker. Another reason: not enough vegans have signed up. Hey, you can skip a lecture and enjoy the spa if you really want to. Beautiful Santa Rosa! Excellent vegan food!
For those who don't want to go to California and/or think September is too early, here's some news you can use...how to keep mosquitoes (and Zika virus) away from your yard. The site is on the clunky side, but I was able to scroll up and down the whole "slideshow" on one page, hurray. I'll even throw in a ninth natural mosquito repellent you may find easier to use, right away, than these fresh herbs...cucumbers! Cut a slice off an end and rub it on your exposed skin.
(One year I was on Assateague island during mosquito season. People were talking about the mosquitoes and I was nonchalant, "Oh well mosquitoes hardly ever bite me." We landed on the island, about a dozen mosquitoes swarmed around the person who'd been telling us mosquitoes always bit him, another half-dozen came to bite each of the people who were occasionally bitten on the mainland, and then a couple of mosquitoes bit me. That's how I learned about the Saltmarsh Mosquito or Jersey Devil, an evil yellow hairy mosquito that doesn't even look much like the native species that don't bother me, or like the Asian Tigers that do...but they bite harder, and can easily bite through bluejeans and even sock cuffs. They don't like Deet while it's wet, but they'll resume biting you the minute it dries. And the one thing that keeps them away, apart from staying underwater the whole flippin' time you're on Assateague, is regularly anointing yourself with cucumbers.
Asian Tigers do not like cucumber juice either...but I have to remind those who don't appreciate my insect friends: paper wasps and White-Faced Hornets know how nature intended the mosquito to be loved: for breakfast!)
International
These four links from Avaaz, an international organization, were e-mailed to us in aid of a petition that gets into foreign policy...Canada and New Guinea. This web site doesn't do foreign policy. However, the science here may interest some readers:
Deep Sea Mining: An Invisible Land Grab (National Geographic)
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/21/deep-sea-mining-an-invisible-land-grab/
Nautilus Minerals continues to consider alternative financing (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSASC08VK8
The Ocean Could Be the New Gold Rush (National Geographic)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/deep-sea-mining-five-facts/
Tiny sea creatures are saving us from hell on earth. So why are we endangering them? (Grist)
http://grist.org/science/tiny-sea-creatures-are-saving-us-from-hell-on-earth-so-why-are-we-endangering-them/
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/21/deep-sea-mining-an-invisible-land-grab/
Nautilus Minerals continues to consider alternative financing (Reuters)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSASC08VK8
The Ocean Could Be the New Gold Rush (National Geographic)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/07/deep-sea-mining-five-facts/
Tiny sea creatures are saving us from hell on earth. So why are we endangering them? (Grist)
http://grist.org/science/tiny-sea-creatures-are-saving-us-from-hell-on-earth-so-why-are-we-endangering-them/
Michigan Update
Veronique de Rugy critiques proposed solutions for Detroit, then runs out of space without offering much in the way of better ones.
Phenology Link
Information about things I've seen a lot of during the past week...I actually had a little inedible mushroom sprout right out of the ash heap. This article explains how that's possible.
Politics
September 10’s Farm Festival promises to be a regular Tea
Party party:
Political humor here:
Seriously, this is an informative post about how bills fail to become laws. What's interfering with funding for Zika research and prevention? Two "poison pills" added to the bill that would authorize such funding: allowing DDT poisoning to resume in the United States, where we've known DDT kills birds and causes cancer in humans for most of my lifetime (and one of Dr. Tom Dooley was enough to lose!); and also, throwing in a proposal to restore more federal funding to a charity that's come under intensive scrutiny. This kills many otherwise good bills in the U.S. Congress. Someone proposes something that sounds good to lots of people, then someone else throws in something that's less likely to succeed, then those who don't want to enact the "stealth" proposal can end up killing what started out as a nice, likable bill...our e-friend Jim Babka has been promoting proposals to block this nasty, sneaky kind of politicking for years now.
Politics (Election 2016)
Agreed: We have nobody to vote for. We can only vote against. John Stossel supplies the latest reasons why:
Recipe
I linked to a previous version of this recipe last winter, but I'm linking to this version with a new tip. If you want to make either meat or vegetable patties (or "burgers") cohere when served in sauce, without using wheat gluten, you could use egg...or you could use instant mashed potato flakes, which are what hold Grandma Bonnie's Veggie Burgers together. Not quite as gluey as cracker crumbs, but tastier.
Science
Dan Lewis explains why airplane windows are round.
Sports
Dave Barry goes to Rio. The Huffington Post e-mailed out the story first, but if you click on this link you can see The Great Phelps...if your computer can handle the video.
Venezuela Update
Or, your daily economics lesson from Tom Woods.
Washington, D.C., Update
Sometimes the news from Washington is good (and "Yes, Mother, we are talking about the same Washington," as the Goosemyer cartoon once put it).
Websites
Tom Woods shares his top seven:
Blogbourne is certainly jammed with ads. If and when they earn some revenue from said ads, they promise to start paying bloggers. I don't know...I suspect this blogger should keep her day job.
http://www.blogbourne.com/weekly-smash-up-adventures-of-a-landlady/
Word
I loathe, in any context, the word "honey." I hate the taste of bee digest, I hate cleaning bee digest off dishes or tables or floors, I hate food that people try to make "healthier" by substituting bee digest for sugar so the result is either choking-sweet or bready-blah, I hate mentions of body secretions in conversation, I hate the trashy habit of throwing around terms even of sincere endearment at strangers, I hate the insincere endearment the word "honey" has always been, I hate the sound of the word, and I automatically lose all respect or affection for anyone I hear addressing anyone (including any of my cats, at the veterinary clinic!) as "Honey." Like my little pet name for that person shall henceforth be "Trashbag," ha ha, just being friendly, "Stickybuns," I mean, "Cowflop"...
But some people loathe the word "moist." Dan Lewis seems to think it's only the sound of the word. Here's a clue, and I hope putting these three words together in one sentence doesn't violate our contract, but this is how English is used today: "Moist" describes the condition of a "pussy" covered in "honey." In other words, "pussy" does not primarily refer to a cat, "honey" does not primarily refer to a food product, and "moist" does not primarily describe succulent cakes or oily skin, either. If you never use any of these three words again, it'll be fine with me.
http://nowiknow.com/a-moist-upsetting-word/
Zazzle
Adorable postcard:
And would you like postage with that?
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