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December 27, 2006

Party food: Fat Balls, dips, quiche, caviar and fondue

Still on vacation...

Fat Balls: Despite their name, the only fat in these cookie balls with dried fruit comes from two eggs -- and the oil they're fried in. Recipe: Oliebollen (fat balls) from The Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press.

Dips: We used organic packaged dip mixed with sour cream on Christmas, and were underwhelmed. Penitent, we're back to scratch. The first two appeal to me, and may grace the Pats-Titans game here Sunday.

All in one story (Delectable dips) at the Manitowoc (Wis.) Herald Times Reporter: Caramelized Onion Dip, Sun-Dried Tomato Basil Dip, Spicy Stone-Ground Honey Mustard Dip, Bonnie's Sweet Mustard Dip.

Spinach quiche: You can take the high road or the low with these two recipes, both found at the Helena (Mont.) Independent Record. The first, from Go Greek without the guilt, Crustless Spinach Quiche, uses nonfat milk and "Makes 8 servings, each about 125 calories and 6 grams fat."

There's no calorie or fat information with this next one. Use your imagination. It's Ring in the quiche: Meat and Spinach New Year’s Quiche. Pictured above, it uses bacon, sausage, sour cream, heavy cream or half and half...

Black caviar and smoked salmon with egg, red onion, lemon and sour cream.

Poor man's New Year's Eve caviar: True caviar is sturgeon eggs, with Beluga going for $150 an ounce, but here's a knockoff that will pass in my unexalted circle. Romanoff makes red lumpfish caviar, and golden or black whitefish caviar, that can be had in small jars at many markets for about $2.50 an ounce, in 2-oz jars. They offer great art possibilities.

A traditional presentation of caviar includes toast points, crème fraiche (or sour cream -- we're pretending here), chopped shallot (or red onion), chopped boiled egg and tiny lemon wedges. The flavor is very strong and salty, so you don't need much caviar -- use a half-teaspoon plus the goodies above per toast point, and let those with stronger palates add more. Indeed, you might include thin smoked salmon slices for those who like the idea and the accompaniments but not the caviar.

Or you could make a molded Russian Caviar Mousse with golden "caviar." (I made it with red roe once, and it was a pleasant pink color.) The recipe calls for two 1.75-oz. jars, so save a half-ounce from two jars for decorating the unmolded mousse.

All go splendidly with champagne. Or whatever you're serving in those flutes.

Fondue: Fondue Savoyarde (Cheese) -- using gruyère, beaufort and comté -- from Chocolate and Zucchini, the elegant Parisian food blog.

From the Toronto Guelph Mercury, "...Authentic fondue from Switzerland. It is from 'Cooking with Booze' by Jennings and David Steele (Whitecap)." Uses Emmenthal and Gruyère.

This is nearly identical to Epicurious's Cheese Fondue, but there are other fondue recipes there as well.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 2:58 PM | Permalink

December 25, 2006

Happy Christmas...

AP
Sara Nabil, 24, Sulaimaniyah, Iraq.

Peace on earth, really, ferschizzle.

The penguin arrived!

Joy.

Happy Christmas to you...

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 1:05 PM | Permalink

December 24, 2006

Santa game: Patriots at Jacksonville, 1 p.m., CBS; Playoff geometry

Sizing up the NFL's playoff races: Ashley Fox of The Philadelphia Inquirer did the grunt work so you don't have to.

This is the time for giving and receiving, and - for many teams in the NFL - for pulling for your enemy.

No kidding. Jets fan Greg Wyshynski of SportsFan Magazine (The Jester's Quart: A Holiday Wish for Santa Belichick):

The Jets have two games left: at Miami on Christmas night and Oakland at home. They are 8-6, in a four-way dance for the two Wild Card slots in the AFC with Denver, Cincinnati, and Jacksonville. Thanks to Peyton Manning's laser rocket arm last Monday, the easiest path to an improbable playoff berth for Gang Green is to win out and have two of those three teams lose at least once. For the first time, the Football Gods have smiled upon us and Cincy faces the Broncos this weekend, all but guaranteeing a loss for either of them.

Here's where you come in, Coach. For one weekend, Jets fans will don the red, white and blue of Patriots Nation. Because we need your boys to take down the Jaguars in Jacksonville for us.

Buffalo Bills fans are rooting for the Pats, too:

Wins over Tennessee and Baltimore, Miami beating the Jets, Patriots over Jacksonville, and the Bengals to lose their last two. Which would mean PLAYOFFS. Can you imagine?

This is how weird it is, from the Philadelphia story:

With 17 teams vying for the six remaining playoff spots, the NFL's playoff picture is as messy as it's ever been. Twenty-three have a shot to play in the Super Bowl, the second-highest number this late in the season since the league adopted a 16-game regular-season schedule in 1978.

The playoff scenarios are so complicated that last week the league had to issue a correction to its detailed report.

...So much is riding on the Eagles-Cowboys game on Monday night. While Dallas already has clinched a playoff berth, the Cowboys can win the division with a victory. What seemed improbable three weeks ago, the Eagles can clinch a spot in the playoffs by beating Dallas.

Despite losing five of its last six games, New York isn't out of it yet. The Giants can clinch a playoff spot with a win over New Orleans, an Atlanta loss to Carolina, an Eagles win or tie against Dallas, and either a Seattle win or tie against San Diego or a San Francisco loss or tie to Arizona. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, there is a scenario in which the Giants get in by losing their last two games.

On the AFC East:

Prediction: New England wins its fourth consecutive division crown and hosts a first-round game. The Jets win out and capture wild-card berth.

Today: Both Laurence Maroney, at right, and safety Rodney Harrison went to Jacksonville with the team; they're listed as questionable but don't be surprised if they play.

At Jacksonville.com, NOTEBOOK: Taylor ruled out with bad hamstring, from the (Florida) Times-Union:

Jaguars running back Fred Taylor missed practice Friday and won't play Sunday against the New England Patriots.

Listed earlier in the week as questionable, Taylor will miss his first game of the season after re-injuring a strained right hamstring that he originally tweaked during a Dec. 10 win over the Indianapolis Colts.

...As part of his contract, Taylor receives $40,000 for each game he dresses, and missing the contest likely will cause him to lose additional incentive pay.

Taylor has rushed for 1,120 yards this season, and he was set to receive an additional $140,000 for reaching 1,300 yards and another $140,000 for each 100 yards up to 1,600.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:55 AM | Permalink

December 22, 2006

Trombone Shorty's 'O Holy Night' mp3; Science of UPS; Chateaubriand; Hubble telescope cards

NOLA.com: A musical Christmas miracle
All of America is buzzing about Trombone Shorty's prime-time performance of 'O Holy Night'

Download the mp3

YouTube video of the Studio 60 episode containing the tune (and an out-of-nowhere bit of TV drama).

New Orleans Tipitina's Music Foundation

Efficiency experts: The science of UPS. Milwaukee JournalSentinel. I wouldn't want the job, but I'm glad they're getting the packages out efficiently.

Christmas dinner update: We're blowing the rent on a tenderloin, cut into steaks for Chateaubriand for Christmas Eve dinner. We'll all have gathered for the Patriots game anyway, so this will be our feast.

Legend has it that Montmireil, chef to Vicomte Francois Auguste Chateaubriand, invented this recipe in 1822, grilling the steak between two flank steaks till the outer, tougher steaks were charred and the Chateaubriand was perfectly pink throughout.

Turns out the Stop & Shop butcher from whom I ordered the tenderloin serves his family the same thing on Christmas. He's going to cut mine his way, and I'll pick it up Sunday morning.

"How many bags of money should I bring?," I asked him.

"You should mortgage your house," he said.

I'm looking at these recipes: Chateaubriand with Vegetables; Herbed Beef Tenderloin (Chateaubriand). With Martha Stewart's sauce recipe:

Sauce Bernaise:
2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar
2 tablespoons dry white wine
1/4 cup very finely chopped shallots
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper, more if desired
1 tablespoon finely chopped tarragon leaves
3 egg large yolks
6 to 8 ounces (1 to 1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, very soft
Coarse salt
Pepper, if desired
Lemon juice, if desired

Combine vinegar, wine, shallots, black pepper, and 1 1/2 teaspoons tarragon in a small saucepan. Cook over medium heat until reduced to 1 tablespoon, 5 to 10 minutes.
Add egg yolks and 1 tablespoon water to reduced vinegar mixture. Whisk until thick and pale, about 2 minutes. Set pan over moderately low heat and continue to whisk at reasonable speed reaching all over bottom and insides of pan, where eggs tend to overcook. To moderate heat, frequently move pan off burner for a few seconds, then back on. As they cook, the eggs will become frothy and increase in volume, then thicken. When the bottom of the pan is visible in the streaks left by the whisk and the eggs are thick and smooth, remove from heat.

By spoonfuls, add soft butter, whisking constantly to incorporate each addition. As the emulsion forms, add butter in slightly larger amounts, always whisking until fully absorbed. Continue incorporating butter until sauce has thickened to consistency desired. Season with salt, remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped tarragon and, if desired, pepper. Add a few droplets of lemon juice if necessary.

Yield: about 1 cup

Here's to my late aunt Helen McQuillian, whose motto was, "You only go this way once." She'd love to be with us for this one.

Starry nights: Shelley Powers: HubbleSite has card designs that you can use to make your own cards.

They're very nice, especially for printable free cards.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 10:49 AM | Permalink

December 21, 2006

Christmas shopping story: Penguin lost in blizzard

Tue, 19 Dec 2006 00:23:13 -0500

From: Sheila Lennon
To: playfairtoys.com

Amazon at 7:09 pm last night reported that my order (xxxxxxxxxx) had been shipped by you, with a tracking number and containing,

1 of Folkmanis Black and White Kitten Puppet
1 of Emperor Penguin Puppet by Folkmanis

. Shortly thereafter, at 8:30, Amazon reported a refund:

Item: Emperor Penguin Puppet by Folkmanis

Reason for refund: Item out of stock

I ordered this a week ago.

My grandson is a member of a penguin club. I want the penguin, don't care about the kitten. The kitten was just something for the penguin to talk to.

This is awful.

You waited a week, said you shipped both, then refunded one while still taking orders for it.

This is not how a reputable firm does business.

I ordered it in plenty of time to get it, paid Amazon for it, and you said you shipped it!

Send me a penguin, please, in time for Christmas.
That's what you agreed to do, and said you had already done!

Sheila Lennon

12/20/2006 12:59 PM

Dear Sheila,

I have gotten you a penguin and have sent you the penguin free of charge, via express mail overnite. I would not expect it to arrive overnite, however, as we are in the midst of a blizzard here in colorado. The post office has informed me that they will be delivering from now through Christmas Morning all express packages so you should receive the penguin.

Thankyou,

xxxxxxxxxxx
playfairtoys.com

This is customer service.

The aptly named PlayFair Toys ("Toys with Conscience") is in Boulder, Colo. Live Boulder cameras.

May I suggest alternative shipping?

(Don't tell the kid about this yet.)

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments 1

December 19, 2006

iPhone launches: By Linksys, not Apple; More alt-holiday tunes; Border fence firm uses illegal workers; "Vanished' truly vanished

Scooped: From the BBC, iPhone surprises technology world:

iPhone has been launched by Linksys just weeks before analysts were expecting Apple to release a similarly-named device.

The wireless iPhone allows users to make free or low-cost internet phone calls using the Skype service. ...

Beyond "Santa's Boots": A new series of holiday mp3s begins at BigO Singapore, released a few a day. So far:

Graham Parker - New Years Revolution
Marshall Crenshaw - Felice Navidad
Sam Phillips - It Came Upon A Midnight Clear
John Hiatt - Happy Xmas (War is Over)
Dave Alvin - I’ll be Home For Christmas
Syd Straw/Rikki Lee Jones - O Holy Night
Tom Waits - Silent Night
Patti Smith - White Christmas
Del Lords - Merry Christmas Baby
Elton John - Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

See the full playlist and download them here.

And... Derek And The Dominos, Cincinnati 1970, Side 2 is up now.

Bidness as usual: In Rolling Stone,

The Golden State Fence company, a firm that builds border fencing to keep illegal immigrants out of the San Diego area, has just been fined $5 million for… wait for it… employing illegal immigrants to build its border fencing.

Vanished vanished: Fox cancelled Vanished, a conspiracy drama series about the disappearance of a Georgia Senator's wife, after dooming it to the Friday 8 p.m. timeslot, and announced it would show the last four episodes only online.

Apart from cutting off those not on the Web, Fox has limited viewing to those who can download and install a proprietary video player (PC only, I.E. only, U.S. residents only) to watch them live at Fox's MySpace site. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

A Mac-owning friend is ripped, and wants the last episodes as a Christmas gift.

Fox, you're forcing former viewers to the darknets -- "private, encrypted spaces where social groups can communicate with each other and exchange files"* -- just to watch the end of the show you hooked them on, then dropped.

Off the hamster wheel: Today is my last day at work until Jan. 2. I haven't had such a long time off in years, and don't know what will happen. Maybe after Christmas I'll slow down enough to write something here, as anon suggested.

Till then, I'll be running around like you. Pheasant faded as a candidate for Christmas dinner -- too expensive, too unknown. Since the family will gather Sunday at one for the Patriots game anyway, we'll do a roast Christmas eve. I may make a small turkey Monday, just so the house will smell right on Christmas. (But now there's a movement afoot to have fish and stir-fry veggies, light... I'm easy.)

Late-night find: Conscious entities: A consciousness blog. On its blogroll, thinking meat offers "Thinking meat gift ideas and a reading list that's too short on fiction.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 11:15 AM | Permalink

December 18, 2006

Joy in Patsland, bitter howls from Houston

New England Patriots linebacker Rosevelt Colvin sacks
Houston Texans quarterback David Carr in the second half of
a game the Patriots won yesterday, 40-7, in Foxboro, Mass.

The Pats are back! We remember them, the confident, successful engine that could. (Who knew Ellis Hobbs could score touchdowns?) For fans, no nailbiting this time, just pure Sunday fun.

Houston suffered. Suffers still. Their fans, especially the loud, rude ones in the Chron newsroom, are disgusted.

Texans have disastrous showing vs. Patriots. John MCClain:

FOXBOROUGH, MASS. - For most teams, if your quarterback throws for more yards than Tom Brady and your leading rusher outgains Corey Dillon and your defense limits the Patriots to 230 yards, you don't lose to New England by 33 points.

But the Texans aren't like most teams. They're one of the five worst teams in the NFL. And their quarterback, David Carr, threw a career-high four interceptions that the Patriots turned into 16 points on Sunday.

That's why the Texans were pulverized 40-7 on a cool and windy afternoon at Gillette Stadium. And that's why they are 4-10 and so far down in the AFC South basement they need a telescope to see Tennessee, Jacksonville and Indianapolis.

"We were outcoached and outplayed," a gloomy Texans coach Gary Kubiak said afterward. "We got our butts kicked in every phase of the game. Apparently, we weren't ready to do our job, and that's on me."

Carr was awful, and the special teams were almost as bad...

McClain also blogs, and in a post after today's shellacking -- Is there a quarterback in the house? -- he launched a contest.

"Send me your ideas for the Texans' new theme song based on how miserable they've become in this 4-10 season," he wrote. As I type this there are 169 comments on this post, many calling for quarterback Carr's head, some with song titles.

One reader posts the complete lyrics to Bobby Bare's version of "Drop kick me, Jesus, through the goal posts of life."

Jerome Solomon, blogging at King Solomon's Mind (The Texans didn't get off the plane, and it's my fault), is "starting to feel sorry for David Carr."

A reader asks, "Can we send the Texans on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney?"

Richard Justice is the most bitter (This loss is convincing):

The Texans got off the bus, put on their uniforms and rolled over like dogs.

At least it's not us this week. With any luck, Sundays will just keep getting better.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:00 AM | Permalink

December 17, 2006

Ever cook a pheasant? Photos of Paris restaurant meals

I've dropped by Chocolate and Zucchini often to marvel at the exotica of Clotilde's . But only tonight, as a result of a search, did I discover a section of her site devoted to documenting dining out: clotilde's moblog: Resto Archives

She photographs meals as they are served to her in restaurants, and these restaurants are all in Paris.

All of the presentations are appealing. Many portions are tiny. Roasted curried scallops sprawl in giant shells, but there are only three. Some distract from their scarcity with panache, such as the cod with yellow carrots, above. In the chic 6th arrondissemont, they serve pigeon, with muscovado sugar and glazed turnips, below.

My eye stopped on the soup bowl of concentric metal rings, below. If you're going to eat "scrambled egg and sea urchin mousse/soupe," it should come as the center of its universe.

(Which came first, the egg or the urchin?)

But what led me there originally was a search for recipes for pheasant or guinea hen. The family is tired of turkey, and wants an adventure for Christmas dinner. Pheasant came to mind after we had it during our monthly splurge at Chez Pascal this week.

Not greasy like duck, not soft like chicken; more dense, the texture recalling pork loin, with a rich dark flavor of very good chicken. A thick sauce, traditional with pheasant, obscured it a bit, but we thought we could improvise to our own taste.

So far, I've found it's expensive -- about $20 to serve four, but at Christmas you might expect to roast a pair (called a brace, I learned); guinea hen, an alternative, are about $17. But it might not be a bad idea to eat lightly but well.

Both birds are allegedly prepared the same. So far this recipe seems least complicated.

Lex Culinaria suggests brining the bird first, then roasting with garlic, citrus, honey and white wine: Lemon and Garlic Roasted Pheasant:

If you've made either pheasant or guinea hen, I'd love to hear from you.

BonusL Also at Lex, Xmas Baking #1: Cheddar and Cranberry Cookies.

(Come January, I intend to live on soup and stir-fry.)

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 12:33 AM | Permalink

December 16, 2006

Dispirited Houston fears Patriots revival

Houston Chronicle: No rest for weary defense: After failing to corral Young, Texans must face Brady, Manning the next 2 Sundays

The caption on a photo of one of Brady's forgettable moments last Sunday reads,

The Texans hope to rattle Patriots quarterback Tom Brady like the Dolphins last weekend.

Jerome Solomon of Chron sports blog King Solomon's Mind: It could get ugly in New England

Peter King at SI.com:

Houston (4-9) at New England (9-4) If the Patriots lose this one, I honestly think Tom Brady's head is going to explode. New England 31, Houston 16

That's not a pretty thought.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 4:45 AM | Permalink | Comments 1

December 15, 2006

'Dodge That Anvil': Great gift game finally in full version; The last of 'Santa's Boots'

A little light news to use this morning before I head downtown.

Wabbits at last! I thought yesterday was game day here, but this morning I learned that Dodge That Anvil, which I wrote about in February, has finally rolled out a full version.

This carrot-pulling game has you as a rabbit dodging anvils that come to life with fangs, balloons that explode and boxes falling from the sky that contain helpful tools -- hardhats, flippers, super magnets -- to help you survive and complete the harvest.

Here's the original discussion back then at Jay Is Games.

Screenshots are here, and there's a playable online demo. You can also download the demo, a better idea, since it runs full screen. If you're still hooked after playing its different skill levels through the first few harvests, you can buy full version -- now with over 40 levels -- for $19.95. This would be a terrific gift for anyone who likes fun, addicting family games.

I liked its colorful graphics and fun game play so much that I signed up to be notified when the full game was ready, and the email just showed up in my inbox.

The hits just keep on coming... but this is the end. The last of Santa's Boots are up:

Pretty Paper - Chris Isaak Greensleeves - James Taylor
Love Came Down at Christmas - Shawn Colvin, Patti Griffin
The Christmas Song - Steve Berlin, Cesar Rojas
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer - Smashing Pumpkins
Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home) - Bruce Springsteen
River - Shawn Colvin

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 11:25 AM | Permalink

December 14, 2006

New holiday games to play online or download

Busy time, racing around, how about some mindless fun?

Mission in Snowdriftland is a platform game set up like an Advent calendar -- one new level opens every day in December.

It's a tricky little jump-and-run game -- over slippery icebergs -- collecting 24 crystals per level and some stolen files. There are some creatures you can knock off by landing right on top of them, but any other contact and you die. You also die if you fall in the water, and your weight sinks the icebergs, so this is a real danger.

I've been playing for 15 minutes or so, died a half-dozen times and got no farther than about 10 crystals in.

The 9-year-old will be more nimble-fingered than me.

Jay is Games has comments and spoilers.

Art toy: Winterbells is the latest from the amazing Ferry Halim at Orisinal. Jay describes it as,

...a very simple wintertime game with the same elegant presentation of all Ferry's work. In Winterbells you control a snow-white rabbit who hops onto falling bells as they drift down from the night sky. Use the mouse to move the bunny left and right and time your jumps to keep moving upwards. The longer you stay hopping the higher your score, and pouncing on a bird gives you a nice bonus. It's a wonderfully atmospheric coffee break game that's perfect for this time of year.

It will be difficult to make your flight through the bells last more than a few seconds if you pop every bell -- leave some below to land on when you start to fall. There are tips and bragging about this one, too.

Grow it your way: Grow Ornament is the seasonal entry in the Eyemaze series -- the order in which you click determines what grows. Grow ver. 1, the latest, is on my list to try tomorrow night.

Bawdy elves: Since we became fans of Elf Bowling a few years back, these snickering elves have been busy making new versions. The premise is simple and hilarious. Wikipedia sums it up as, "In Elf Bowling, Santa gets revenge on his striking elf employees by using them as bowling pins" and documents the six versions so far. (Free downloads, PC only.)

In addition to the original, they are:

# Elf Bowling 2 involved using elves as shuffleboard pieces on the deck of a cruise liner where the player could also shoot penguins off of an iceberg and risk having your elves eaten by sharks or crushed by a falling Easter Island monolith.

# Elf Bowling 3 involved slinging elves in Mrs. Kringle's ample brassiere onto distant ice-bound targets.

# Super Elf Bowling (Elf Bowling 4) was a 3-dimensional upgrade of the original with more complicated ball control and a wider variety of backgrounds, elf antics and elf jokes.

# Elf Bowling - Bocce Style (Elf Bowling 5) used the elves as bocce balls.

# Elf Bowling 6: Air Biscuits involved bowling the elf over a mound of snow which sends the elf airborne. The elf could remain in the air by using "fart" power.

These started as free Flash games but I've seen at least one time-limited demo floating around. A press release details some of the history behind the elves, and other, similar Santa dude games at both and explains how some ended up at Kewlbox and some at NStorm:

Kewlbox itself has been swept up in the wild swings of the dot-com era. First known as NVision, it quickly gained notice for Elf Bowling and Frogapult. Vectrix Business Solutions acquired Nvision in late 1999 but filed for Chapter 11 shortly afterward. Elf Bowling and Frogapult were auctioned to another company (Elf Bowling 3 was recently released by the Dallas firm NStorm), and Mr. Ferguson and Mr. Bielinski regrouped to form Blockdot.

A 2005 release notes, "Media General, Inc. (NYSE: MEG) today announced that it has acquired Blockdot, Inc., (www.blockdot.com) a Dallas-based advergaming and game development firm known for successful product innovation and services for many Fortune 500 companies..."

So Media General owns Kewlbox and Santa Balls now, along with several newspapers and TV stations.

You can still play that fun, addicting, matching game online at Kewlbox. Oliver the Elf will insult you as you do.

I thought he was funny and talked back to him, but the then-5-year-old didn't like being taunted by an elf, and would ask me to turn the sound off.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:00 AM | Permalink

December 13, 2006

Updated: Entire video of Chafee on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Update: At Comedy Central, with commercials, the entire segment (3:50, 3:20): Part 1 / Part 2

7:08 a.m.

Sen. Lincoln Chafee on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Monday night.

Update: From Comedy Central, with commercials, the entire segment: Part 1 / Part 2

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 11:28 PM | Permalink | Comments 4

December 12, 2006

Readers' links, and 1970 Derek/Dominos; Craigslist CEO stuns peers; Taste; Grow furniture;

OurTunes: Reader Matt Ramos writes,

I found mp3s of Handel's Messiah and Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Ballet at the Peabody Institute's web site.

On the Morning News I followed the link to a video of the amazing Time Fountain, in which dripping water moves in slow motion. (screenshot at right)

I then searched for more info on the music used in the video and ended up at the Peabody Institute.

It's amazing where links and searches will take you.

Matt

http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/743
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/headlines/2006/December/08/
http://cre.ations.net/creation/the-time-fountain

Thanks, Matt!

There are more Santa's Boots at BigO:

Christmas Twist - Syd Straw & Los Lobos
Happy Christmas (War is Over) - John Hiatt & Los Lobos
Angels We Have Heard on High - Christmas Heritage Band
Dradle, Dradle - Chris Isaak

And a 1970 Derek And The Dominos concert: Live at the Music Hall, Cincinnati, November 26, 1970. (If you're drawing a blank, it's Eric Clapton and friends.)

And Randy Newman, San Francisco 1972.

And Bill Marsland comes back with some more: holiday links:

Thanks for the "Lovely Mrs. Davis" link. That was fun.

I've found some other places for holiday music and fun you might want to share.

First, a clever little holiday 'toon version of White Christmas at http://badaboo.free.fr/merryxmas.swf which takes about 2 minutes to watch.

I found the link at http://bongobells.blogspot.com/ and they warn:

"Santa and his Reindeer Sing White Christmas. You are just one click away from a very cute Christmas diversion; if you are at the office take a two minute break and invite cubicle mates over for some entertainment."

Look around bongobells to find a copy of a Robert Goulet Holiday album, several Christmas swing .zip files and the treasure chest find, a link to a list of links by http://easydreamer.blogspot.com/2006/11/christmas-audio-2006.html

Craigslist's "for us, by us" baffles Wall Street: This is a hoot. Just An Online Minute... Stunning Wall Street, Shunning Profits. The perp is Jim Buckmaster of Craigslist. Wendy Davis of MediaPost writes,

IN WHAT TURNED OUT TO be a culture clash of near-epic proportions, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster spoke to the investment community this morning at the UBS global media conference in New York. UBS analyst Ben Schachter asked Buckmaster a standard financial world question: How does the site plan to maximize revenue?

The CEO of the online classifieds site answered as follows: "That definitely is not part of the equation. It's not part of the goal."

"I think a lot of people are catching their breath right now," responded Schachter, as the crowd absorbed Buckmaster's remarks.

Buckmaster, on stage in jeans and a blazer, insisted that the company--which has emerged as a significant threat to newspapers and other companies that sell classified ads--doesn't especially want to make money....

The photo is of Buckmaster in Providence last year, when he dropped by the Journal to be interviewed by a few of us and photographed by Kris Craig. The San Franciscan was surprised that he couldn't stop at any corner here and pick up a wi-fi signal.

Taste: How Art Can Be Good Paul Graham, author of Hackers and Painters. "For us by us" again:

What counts as a trick? Roughly, it's something done with contempt for the audience. For example, the guys designing Ferraris in the 1950s were probably designing cars that they themselves admired. Whereas I suspect over at General Motors the marketing people are telling the designers, "Most people who buy SUVs do it to seem manly, not to drive off-road. So don't worry about the suspension; just make that sucker as big and tough-looking as you can."

Grow your own furniture: How to help nature make you a three-legged stool. For the patient.

In about five years the frame should be sufficiently robust to allow you to harvest it and to add the top of your choice.

Tech magic: How to Turn an Ordinary Photo Into an Extraordinary Photo. Another useful Photoshop how-to. Worth looking at even if you don't know how to do anything but resize a photo.

Basement Congressman: On the Hill, the sound of silence: John Sweeney, still reeling from re-election loss to Kirsten Gillibrand, fails to show for votes.

WASHINGTON -- Since losing re-election last month, Rep. John Sweeney (R-N.Y.) has played hooky in Congress, skipping votes, dodging reporters and avoiding his new make-shift office in a basement cubicle set up for lame ducks.

Sweeney's friends and colleagues Capitol Hill say the Republican from Clifton Park is still stunned about the outcome of the Nov. 7 election when he lost to Democratic challenger Kirsten Gillibrand.

Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, a close friend of Sweeney's, says the four-term Republican is "frustrated and angry" and feels he was unfairly attacked a week before the election after the Times Union and other newspapers disclosed that police had investigated a domestic dispute between Sweeney and his wife on Dec. 2, 2005....

Strange:

Sweeney believes he picked up "a bug" during congressional trips to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Sessions.

"A bug got into his system and lodged in his brain," Sessions said. "It caused unimaginable pain and stress."

Stranger:

He said he had offered Sweeney a phone and a bed in his own office last week, in case he doesn't like the make-shift temporary basement cubicles near the cafeteria storeroom where House members who lost elections were moved from their grand office suites.

If you lose, you're banished to the basement to finish out your term? Isn't that a bit harsh?

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:00 AM | Permalink

December 10, 2006

Plant walls; Words; Holiday mp3s and bad '50s recipes

Living walls: Vertical Garden: The art of organic architecture: Amazing photos at the Japanese design site pingmag of my kind of wallpaper.

The living wall at right is inside the home of French botanist and creator Patrick Blanc. (This all-Flash site is worth the irritation to watch the slideshow of his public and private living walls. )

Pingmag asks how. Blanc answers,

The Vertical Garden is composed of three parts: a metal frame, a PVC layer and felt. The metal frame is hung on a wall or can be self-standing. It provides an air layer acting as a very efficient thermic and phonic isolation system. A 1cm thick PVC sheet is then riveted on the metal frame. This layer brings rigidity to the whole structure and makes it waterproof. After that comes a felt layer made of polyamide that is stapled on the PVC. This felt is corrosion-resistant and its high capillarity allows a homogeneous water distribution. The roots are now growing on this felt.

Watering is provided from the top with the tap water being supplemented with nutrients. The process of watering and fertilisation is automated. The whole weight of the ‘Vertical Garden’, including plants and metal frame, is lower than 30 kg per square meter. Thus the Vertical Garden can be implemented on any wall without any size or limitation of height.

The key is to select the right plants. in the right climate, this is also stunning. Below, the facade of the famous daily market at Les Halles in Avignon.

For the love of words: 33 Names of Things You Never Knew had Names at Canongate. Too easy? Try 23 Obscure and Obsolete Words

This one set my husband off on a round of quibbling with the definitions, and alternate meanings. Who knew?

Darfur day: Micro-donations for Darfur at Wise Bread.

Perfect headline at Wired: Me Translate Pretty One Day. Spanish to English? French to Russian? Computers haven't been up to the task. But a New York firm with an ingenious algorithm and a really big dictionary is finally cracking the code.

Holiday mp3s: PCL LinkDump: Christmas Audio 2006 is a giant list of mp3 links.

Sing and eat badly: Back before corporate America discovered the Web, there were lots of sites as weird as this. Now, it's amazing to stumble on it. Swankola's Audio Advent Calendar offers a tune a day, complete with a "festive recipe" from the forgettable cuisine of the '50s. (If all that clicking on the right square slows you down too much, just keep hacking the URLs -- edit the location field of your browser to change http://swankola.com/advent/dec01.html to ...dec02.html, etc.)

John Prine, Christmas in Prison, comes with instructions for Cheese Puffs and Hot Cheese Balls -- whose ingredients include 1/4 teasp. monosodium glutamate.

The tunes tend toward weird, too. They're not all Christmas songs, although many of those seem to be Hawaiian. Many are simply odd vinyl the blogger has picked up this year. But the recipes...

I could only gawk at something called Bouchées Grenelle that includes "1 package frozen sweetbreads, 2/3 cup dry white wine... 1 can frozen shrimp soup" and a bit more that all ends up in patty shells.

Most of the recipes are awful, canapes that involve rolling something into balls and poking them with toothpicks, or salmon and bacon on toast, or tongue with scrambled egg and cottage cheese. Carefully culled, these might be worth considering from this trainwreck:

The Yjr Canadian quiche and the leek pie might work; the tray made of bread pictured above offers art potential.
Grilled Coconut-Rum Shrimp with Curried Peanut Dipping Sauce and vegetarian Hell Turds beckon.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:43 PM | Permalink

December 8, 2006

Sen. Byrd's farewell to Chafee; Video: John Lennon; Santa vs. St. Nick; More 'boots'; Burning Man panorama

AP / Kevin Wolf
Sen. Lincoln Chafee (D-R.I.) takes a globe apart before packing it as he vacates his Senate office.

There's a nice story today by John Mulligan of the Journal's Washington bureau about Sen. Lincoln Chafee wrapping up his term in Washington -- packing up his Senate office for the trip back to Rhode Island, casting a vote, saying goodbye to colleagues. (Chafee packs up, moves on).

In it Mulligan mentions a tribute to Chafee by Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, and I went looking for it. The printed text is not what exactly what he said, but here it is, from the Dec. 6, 2006 Congressional Record:

Lincoln Chafee

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, "Profiles in Courage," Senator John F. Kennedy extolled the virtues of political courage. "Surely, in the United States of America, where brother once brother," Senator Kennedy wrote, "we do not judge a man's bravery under fire by examining the banner under which he fought."

For 7 years I have watched and admired the courage of Senator Lincoln Chafee, who sits on the other side of the aisle, and who will be leaving us at the end of the 109th Congress.

I have watched and admired his firm stands against his own political party, the Senate leadership, and the Presidential administration as he followed the dictates of his conscience. "A man does what he must," wrote Senator Kennedy, "in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures--and that is the basis of all human morality." This was the basis of Senator Chafee's tenure in the Senate.

Senator Chafee was appointed to the Senate in 1999 upon the death of his father, the beloved and respected Senator John Chafee. He immediately proved himself to be, to use an old cliche, a "chip off the old block." Senator Lincoln Chafee proved himself to be a Senator of immense integrity, great dignity, and high principle. And, like his father, he proved himself a Senator of incredible courage.

He was the first Senate Republican to oppose the Bush tax cuts in 2001.

He was a Senator who helped preserve the Senate as the institution that was planned and handed down to us by the Framers of our Constitution, and all the great lawmakers who served in this Chamber before us. Senator Chafee was one of the seven Republicans who composed the so-called gang of 14 that was ready to block the majority leader's use of the "nuclear option" that would have destroyed the U.S. Senate as a unique and sacred institution by curtailing the ability of the minority to filibuster.

I, of course, will always remember, admire, and appreciate Senator Chafee as the only Senate Republican to vote against the Iraqi war resolution. He was one of the immortal 23 Members of this Chamber who stood against popular opinion, stood up to the President of the United States, and threw himself against the forces of war in voting against the resolution to launch an unprecedented military assault on Iraq. If only there had been more Senators like him, we would not find ourselves in a bloody quagmire in Iraq.

In voting against the war resolution, Senator Chafee was determined not to hand over to President Bush, or any President, the power to declare war. That power, according to our Constitution, belongs to the Congress. With his firm belief in our constitutional doctrines of the separation of powers and checks and balances, Senator Chafee opposed many of the worst provisions of President Bush's efforts to create an all powerful Department of Homeland Security. He opposed, for example, the administration's plan to reduce the civil service protections and dissolve the collective bargaining rights of federal employees in the newly created agency.

Although he will soon be leaving Congress, there is a bright side. Senator Chafee will now have more time to spend with his wife Stephanie and their three children and to ride his horse Trapper. I wish all of them happiness and success in their future endeavors, and many happy hours in the saddle.

The tributes to departing colleagues -- from Sens. Durbin, Salazar, Obama, Feingold, Kennedy and Akaka -- are more interesting than you might expect.

Working Class Hero
John Lennon
October 9, 1940 - Dec. 8, 1980

Update: At Dallasnews.com, there's a Flash e-card with scenes from Lennon's life that ends with the image above. Send it to someone who remembers.

Santa vs. St. Nick, by humorist David Sedaris: Six to Eight Black Men. Wonderful.

..."Helpers," I said. "Does he have any elves?"

Maybe I'm just overly sensitive, but I couldn't help but feel personally insulted when Oscar denounced the very idea as grotesque and unrealistic. "Elves," he said. "They're just so silly."

The words silly and unrealistic were redefined when I learned that Saint Nicholas travels with what was consistently described as "six to eight black men." I asked several Dutch people to narrow it down, but none of them could give me an exact number. It was always "six to eight," which seems strange, seeing as they've had hundreds of years to get a decent count.

The six to eight black men were characterized as personal slaves until the mid-fifties, when the political climate changed and it was decided that instead of being slaves they were just good friends. I think history has proven that something usually comes between slavery and friendship, a period of time marked not by cookies and quiet times beside the fire but by bloodshed and mutual hostility. They have such violence in Holland, but rather than duking it out among themselves, Santa and his former slaves decided to take it out on the public. In the early years, if a child was naughty, Saint Nicholas and the six to eight black men would beat him with what Oscar described as "the small branch of a tree."

"A switch?"

"Yes," he said. "That's it. They'd kick him and beat him with a switch. Then, if the youngster was really bad, they'd put him in a sack and take him back to Spain."...

Holiday mp3s: More 'Santa's Boots':

Merry Christmas, I Don’t Wanna Fight - Joey Ramone
Early On One Christmas Morn - Bruce Cockburn
Cry of a Tiny Babe - Bruce Cockburn
A Christmas Song - Ian Anderson

Download at the link above.

More goodies at The Lovely Mrs. Davis.

You are there: Here's a panoramic photograph of Burning Man, and yes, it puts you there.

Crossing the Sahara years ago was enough desert for me, and I remember how surprised I was when the endless sand abruptly fell into the ocean, in Mauritania.

Burning Man would be lovely with an ocean, too, but there'd condos in a flash and that would end it.

How about a dinghy festival, feeding swans, listening to music and (gently) rocking?

But for those who crave the hot dry, you'll feel it.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:00 AM | Permalink

December 7, 2006

Senate panel hears proposal to end Pell grants; 1895: Lowell on Mars water, canals; More holiday mp3

Inside Higher Ed reports on a hearing Tuesday before the Senate Finance Committee, Aiding Needy Students — By Ending Pell (Grants)?

...at a time when Congress is about to change hands and the Democrats are poised to take power are eager for fresh ideas, the one big concept that emerged from Tuesday’s hearing — and that Democratic leaders on the Finance Committee seized on — would be seriously controversial in many financial aid circles.

Susan M. Dynarski, an associate professor of public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, suggested that the government’s student grant programs, including the Pell Grant Program, and the various federal tax breaks for college costs be merged into one mammoth tax credit program...

Discomfort ensued.

Subterranean green men are next:
Mars by Percival Lowell, 1895. Astronomer Lowell observed canals on Mars, and water:

That the blue was water at the edge of the melting snow seems unquestionable. That it was the color of water; that it so persistently bordered the melting snow; and that it subsequently vanished, are three facts mutually confirmatory to this deduction. But a fourth bit of proof, due to the ingenuity of Professor W. H. Pickering, adds its weight to the other three. For he made the polariscope tell the same tale. On scrutinizing the great bay through an Arago polariscope, he found the light coming from the bay to be polarized. Now, to polarize the light it reflects is a property, as we know, of a smooth surface such as that of water is.

2006: NASA's Mars section, Signs of Water Flowing on Mars: Story and photos.

More "Santa's Boots" at BigO:

Christmas Day - Bruce Springsteen
Little Road to Bethlehem - Shawn Colvin
Mary - Shawn Colvin/Patti Griffin
Christmas Time is Here - Stone Temple Pilots

Download this latest installment here.

Noted:
Smashing the Clock: No schedules. No mandatory meetings. Inside Best Buy's radical reshaping of the workplace.

Work is no longer a place where you go, but something you do. It's O.K. to take conference calls while you hunt, collaborate from your lakeside cabin, or log on after dinner so you can spend the afternoon with your kid.

How to Remove Tourists from Your Photos

The Outdoor Life Winter Survival Guide

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:00 AM | Permalink

December 4, 2006

Rhode Island music video; Links dump

I just wrote a long, semi-coherent post about the projo.com redesign, apologizing for the inconvenience etc., Good news: There's now a music video by a Rhode Island musician, Bea Barclay (who returned to her native Liberia after 20 years away and brought home a lively performance clip), on our Music page, the beginning of a companion for our long-running (since 2000) mp3 site

And then my system crashed and all that was left was the links dump I had made earlier in case our coding and page-fixing marathon burned me out. It did. Here's that. I lost the rest. Bah humbug.

Don't Ask … Don't E-mail: The half-open closet in which Mark Foley spent his life was a recipe for disaster, say those few who tried to intervene.

Two opposites who 'hated each other' changed the course of American history (Woodward and Bernstein).

diggdot.us is now called doggdot.us

Probe's powerful camera spots Vikings on Mars

How to Make a 3D Paper Snowflake at - WikiHow,

This is a little more complicated than a two-dimensional paper snowflake but it looks excellent and is a suitable craft for children adept with scissors and who have patience in making crafts. It will produce a 6-armed three-dimensional snowflake decoration that makes a perfect tree decoration or window-hanger.

Related: How to Make a Paper Snowflake, How to Make a Paper Chain

Best Blogs of 2006 that You (Maybe) Aren't Reading

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 8:08 PM | Permalink

Detroit disses Lions; How to reduce the electric bill; Rockabilly, beatnik, military etc. holiday tunes

Providence Journal / Mary Murphy
New England Patriots running back Corey Dillon hugs Detroit Lions quarterback Jon Kitna on the field after yesterday's game.

Bad fans:
Detroit Free Press: Patriots’ comeback gives Lions same old ending

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- Here were the Detroit Lions with an opportunity to upset an elite team on the road. The New England Patriots were playing poorly -- marred by penalties and turnovers -- and the Lions led by eight in the fourth quarter.

But the Lions being the Lions, they blew it and lost, 28-21...

Detroit News: Patriots struggle, but beat Lions, 28-21

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- Sooner or later, the real New England Patriots came out to play -- just as expected.

So did the real Detroit Lions.

When the imposters stepped aside, the Lions and Patriots played for real in the fourth quarter Sunday afternoon. It was no surprise that the Patriots dominated the fourth quarter to escape with a 28-21 victory at Gillette Stadium.

Any number of meaningless platitudes can be thrown the Lions' way for pushing the Patriots to the breaking point for three quarters. But in the end, they reverted to character -- a losing team that folds in the clutch...

Hey, Motor City fans: Do you root for your team?

Wax works: Pete Goldlust carves crayons: More at the link.

$ave on electricity: Surprise: Not-so-glamorous conservation works best. The Christian Science Monitor:

When high school science teacher Ray Janke bought a home in Chicopee, Mass., he decided to see how much he could save on his electric bill.

He exchanged incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescents, put switches and surge protectors on his electronic equipment to reduce the "phantom load" - the trickle consumption even when electronic equipment is off - and bought energy-efficient appliances.

Two things happened: He saw a two-thirds reduction in his electric bill, and he found himself under audit by Mass Electric. The company thought he'd tampered with his meter. "They couldn't believe I was using so little," he says....

More holiday music: Very longtime reader Bill Marsland, of Rumford, emails,

How are you?

Thanks for the holiday music. Please, keep it coming!!

Have you mentioned http://www.falalalala.com/ ?

They post a new song every day until Christmas. Then they give you the art work for a CD jewelcase so you can burn a CD of all the songs as a present or for your collection.
Looks like they have been doing this for a couple of years. I discovered them last year and collected the CD. This year they are offering the complete 2005 as well as the 2004 cd's and artwork as zip files under the heading Past ADVENTures. Might be a limited time posting as they use rapidshare.com to get you all of their music. By the way, rapidshare will try to get you to join up for a fee but you can very easily use their free service with a little patience.

Also look below the "Past ADVENTures" section for more holiday fun like a zip file containing 14 versions of the classic "Baby, iy's cold outside".

This is a fun site.

Also, you might want to check out the NORAD Santa Tracking site http://www.noradtrackssanta.com/en/default.php . It has some military band holiday music, a way to track Santa on Christmas eve and a fun puzzle you can solve.

Thanks for another great year. You are still my "go to daily" portion of projo.com and have been now since you started.

It's more than nice to hear from otherwise-invisible readers -- and Bill has periodically piped up for 4 1/2 years now.

Related: Big Rock Candy Mountain offers three tunes from Rockabilly Xmas:

Cordell Jackson: Rock'n'Roll Christmas (mp3)
Mark Anthony : Mama's Twistin' With Santa (mp3)
Marguerite Trina: The Rocking Tree (mp3)

and a couple of beatnik Christmas songs, including Yulesville by Edd ("Kookie") Byrnes* -- "a flurry of drums and be bop jazz-lite, with Byrnes giving his finger snapping version of The Night Before Christmas."

*"Kookie" parked the cars on the TV detective show 77 Sunset Strip (1958-64). Videos and theme song here.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:00 AM | Permalink

December 3, 2006

The power to resist life

Benumbed by Joy is a book review at Wilson Quarterly of Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class by Ronald W. Dworkin.

You can read the beginning of the book at this Amazon page. This key section defines "artificial happiness": "Although his life is miserable, his mind is happy... Artificial Happiness's distinctive feature is its power to resist life." (Do you wake up when it's over?)

Reviewer Florence King begins,

There’s nothing like an authoritative, well-documented Grand Guignol horror story. If you’ve ever wondered about the source of those big, ecstatic American smiles or the frantically cheery commands to “have a nice day” that have become an inescapable part of our national life, read this riveting book and wonder no more. Chances are that the perpetrators of the friendly fire are zonked out on antidepres­sants, floating on magnetic clouds of alternative medicine, or overexercised into a state of euphoria. All three instrumentalities have a common goal of “artificial happiness”—happiness as an end in itself, an induced emotion with no connection to the facts of one’s life.

An M.D. who is still a practicing anesthesiologist, Ronald W. Dworkin (pictured at right) is also a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute with a Ph.D. in political philosophy—that rarity, the doctor-as-intellectual who’s educated in the humanities and well read in something other than his narrow specialty...

We breeze through Norman Vincent Peale, past the "Mother's Little Helpers" and Tim Leary, landing squarely in the present, where King sums up Dworkin's demolition of the three props holding up a majority of modern Americans' plod through life:

Dworkin presents a gallery of legal druggies who are so content with their artificial happiness that they have lost all incentive to take action against what made them unhappy in the first place... Dworkin believes that society is the victim when millions choose this stupefied state of least resistance, because it eventually destroys conscience and character on a national scale. As others have noted, we need only imagine Abe Lincoln, a clinical depressive, on Prozac: “Well, the Union is finished, we’re two countries now, and slavery is a fact of life, but hey, I feel good about myself.”

Except for certain chiropractic techniques, Dworkin takes an equally dim view of alternative medicine. Meditation, yoga, acupuncture, magnets, herbs, and aromatherapy are all variations on the placebo principle. They bring patients to “a state of weakened rational activity, filling the emptiness in their lives with romantic notions and grabbing hold of them with useless substances.”

He’s at his most mordant on the fitness craze...

Mild exercise isn’t enough to produce artificial happiness. It has to be obsessive, “a testament of piety and rectitude; going to the gym regularly became medicine’s Sunday school version of life.” The happiness of fitness freaks is more like convert’s zeal. It is also the happiness of schaden­freude, “expressed most commonly in contempt for fat people and an elevation of trim people to sainthood.” The culture of exercise “is not about health; it is about pride.”

Ouch.

Sparta was never my favorite culture. The art and music-soaked '60s and early '70s may not have been Athens, but they offered a promise of a richer, more interesting life off the grid and grindstone. Maybe we could be freer than our parents, surround ourselves with loving families, do meaningful work and change at least a small part of the world for the better.

Henry James believed the cultivation of consciousness was the only thing worth doing. The struggle -- the need to try -- was understood as essential to being fully alive.

The America Dworkin describes now reminds me of my sole experience with the painkiller Vicodin a few years ago when I broke my forearm: It still hurt like hell, but I was too numb to care.

Related: Plato's Cave... The Hollow Men... The Invasion of the Body Snatchers... Dover Beach... Come to Poppa (Listen at YouTube)...

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments 1

December 2, 2006

Stonehenge a hospital? Mp3s: Cream 1967, more Christmas; Niece interviews Helen Thomas

Sacred Sites photo by Martin Gray
Aerial view of Stonehenge

Stonehenge spring theory: Provocative piece by Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins elevates the idea that the ancient circle of bluestones is the remains of a healing place, a Druid's Lourdes. The CSI moment:

"...the burial mounds round Stonehenge are not just unprecedented in their number but also in the deformities of their inmates."

The locals' comments outshine the original piece, Not a fortress, or a temple, or a calendar. Stonehenge was a hospital, with a flurry of entertaining discussion. Samples:

-- I think we know it was a computer. Only yesterday we noted the article, "Mysteries of computer from 65BC are solved", with a photo of a reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism.

And there we have it: before the vessel was sunk by pirates, clearly this mechanism was bound for Stonehenge. The completion of an order placed by the Druids, for transportation by the Romans; after having been recently cleaned and serviced, by the Greeks.

--If the wells & associated stones are supposed to have healing properties, why didn't the sick guys just go to the source in Wales - would seem a lot simpler than dragging the stones to Middle England.....you know, Mohammed going to the mountain, rather than vice versa....

-- Only way to see the place btw, by starlight. The stones go all the way up.

-- youngacademic
'I am so utterly exasperated, that I'm not entirely sure what to write.' (Stonehenge was not a hospital.)

Just go for a random stream of conciousness. It seems to work for the rest of us.

More tunes: Cream 1967 at the Whiskey A Go Go in West Hollywood. Disc 1 this week, Disc 2 next.

Santa’s Boots [no label, 2CD]. From the BigO 'zine blog:

Here are... more Christmas tracks for you:

9. God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen Jam - Jerry Garcia and David Grisman
10. Christmas Must Be Tonight - Rick Danko
11. White Christmas - Chris Isaak
12. Run Rudolph Run - The Grateful Dead
13. Crystal Ball - Jackson Browne with Bruce Cockburn
14. All I Want For Christmas Is World Peace - Jackson Browne with Bruce Cockburn
15. Blue Christmas - Chris Isaak
16. Merry Little Christmas - Shawn Colvin

Click the link above to download these and earlier tracks.

Helen Thomas interview: Suzanne Geha of WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Mich., interviews her aunt, longtime Washington journalist Helen Thomas. She's obviously relaxed, discussing the nine presidents she has covered.

It's a high-level family oral-history project, getting the elders on camera to tell their stories and sum up their times. Geha has anchored the evening news at Wood for 25 years while mothering four children, according to this citation.

Eating on $1 a day: Hungry For a Month: Hungry for a Month documents an experiment in poverty -- Evan Lansing eats what a dollar will buy each day. Read up from the bottom of that link.

The lessons learned are in how I came to think about food differently, how my body adapted around the challenge, and in the conversations I've had this month.

He ate a lot of rice and Ramen noodles and lost 18 pounds. (Had he known how to cook, he might have included a bit more nutrition and flavor. He had $2.72 left over, which could have bought onions and garlic, maybe even bouillon cubes for soup.)

On Day 30, he reveals what prompted this.

He plans a new experiment each month. He's already embarked on Cartoonist For A Month, giving new meaning to "starving artist."

I'd struggle in this fourth grade: To help the 9-nine-old with his math homework, we first had to solve the language problem:

How would you regroup 4 tens to find the difference between 341 and 228?

None of us understood the question. After we found the problem (verbatim, from 2003) online, we reverse-engineered it and explained it to each other.

Answer is at the bottom of today's links.

New blogger: Ilene Weismehl, a Rhode Islander who'll be in Jerusalem till May, is writing a guest blog for us, with photos: Jerusalem.

Answer to the the math problem.

How would you regroup 4 tens to find the difference between 341 and 228?

341 = 300 + 40 + 1 = 300 + 30 + 11
228 = 200 + 20 + 8
341 - 228 = (300 - 200) + (30 - 20) + (11 - 8) = 100 + 10 + 3 = 113

I had to revisualize it as a normal substraction before it made sense to me:

 341
-228
---------

So did the 9-year-old.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments 1

December 1, 2006

The Visual Telling Of Stories

Cassandre poster for Fortune 1937

The Visual Telling Of Stories: Click a letter of the alphabet there and browse the indexed images in hundreds of categories, or search its topics.

Where was this last week when we were all looking for Thanksgiving photos? I've never before seen most of the images on this page. When clicked, the images at this site enlarge significantly.

I love dinner with grandma at the juke joint. There's a smiling black man offering a flaming turkey there, too -- the fuel is Four Roses bourbon.

This is an alchemical title page, circa 1830, described as "like a child's toy theater."

More amazing, the posters above and below this post are two of four: Cassandre posters for Fortune 1937.

There's a story behind the story. Scroll down below the alphabet on the index and you'll see a note from collector of all this Chris Mullen that begins,

This site records a range of material dedicated to the study of the Visual Narrative. The original site, intended for part-time students and other interested parties was closed down by the University of Brighton when I taught there and I was subsequently denied accessto the original images most of which however were in my own collection.

I am in the process of re-building the Visual Telling of Stories on my own Server in an expanded and improved format which I hope you continue to enjoy. It remains exclusively educational and is in constant use. Many thanks to those in the UK and beyond who shared my irritation at events....

I'm lost in there.

Many thanks to Travelers Diagram for the pointer.

Cassandre poster for Fortune 1937

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:00 AM | Permalink