Thursday, February 28, 2008
Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, that is.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
- Cauliflower lovers, rejoice! Chou-fleur breeders have developed new strains of the underappreciated veggie that'll charm skeptics with their psychedelic neon-green, orange and purple heads. If their day-glo colors don't make your mouth water, their nutritional profile should:
More on the genetic mutation that causes cauliflower to glow at the Biotech Weblog.
In America, where colour cauliflowers have been available for several years, they have been a big hit with foodies. The orange cauliflower has higher than normal levels of beta carotene, a form of vitamin A that encourages healthy skin. The purple colour comes from anthocyanin, which may help prevent heart disease by slowing blood clotting. Tests of the orange cauliflowers in America found that they contained 25 times the concentrations of beta carotene in normal cauliflowers. [Daily Mail UK] - An oldie, but a goodie - the still unauthorized Red Meat Construction Set!
- This morning, NPR had a fascinating piece on yellow fever, "Lessons From America's Tropical Epidemic." Years ago the dread disease carried away young and old, but today, global warming also carries the risk ushering in its return to normally temperate areas. I always associated the term "Bring out your dead!" with the Black Plague and a classic Monty Python skit [YouTube] - but apparently the carts rolled in the streets during America's yellow fever epidemic, as well.
- The cellphone: not just a cool toy that's brought us instant portable communication (and more annoying bus rides), but an innovation that's creating profound change in the way human beings live and understand their connections to one another around the globe. Check out this Gardner Writes blog post discussing the Joel Garreau WaPo article "Our Cells, Ourselves":
Twenty-five years of cellphone technology have brought us to the point that Google CEO Eric Schmidt can say, "Eventually there will be more cellphone users than people who read and write. I think if you get that right, then everything else becomes obvious."
- Apocalypse knitters - purl yourself a swanky (Non-Functional) Gas Mask Hat and be the envy of your neighborhood's Homeland Security fan club. [via Boing Boing]
- Speaking of frightening-but-playful scenarios, Dark Roasted Blend's photoessay "Nightmare Playgrounds" travels to Cold-War Era European (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Israel, to name a few) parks and playgrounds that bring the line "stop crying, kid, or I'll really give you something to cry about!" to garish unnatural life. Think Disney-meets-Hieronymus Bosch.
- Help save GINA! GINA stands for the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, legislation currently on hold in the Senate that would provide Americans a degree of protection and privacy against discrimination based on genetic information in employment, health insurance, and other areas. Read the full article at the Genetic Genealogist.
Labels: links du jour
Friday, February 22, 2008
And now...a plug: I've been a fan of the Last.fm site for a couple of years - it's a delishable interactive social music site that allows you keep detailed track of your cumulative listening habits and share them with friends using the Audioscrobbler tracking system (thanks, Daphne!) - but creating your own personal listening charts, and having exhaustive, anal-retentively accurate records of everything you play on your computer is just the tip of the iceberg with Last.fm. I've also learned that my listening habits are:a) somewhat similar to my real-life friends', and
b) quite similar to 20-something Scandinavians and Brazilians. Go figure? Must be all that Apoptygma Berzerk I've been listening to lately.
If you use iTunes, Winamp or a similar media player* you can get started by clicking here - the basic Last.fm service is free (the UK-based company charges a nominal monthly charge for their enhanced service, if you wish to upgrade).
* No, Last.fm doesn't know where your music comes from - as long as your tracks are properly tagged with artist, title, and album information, no one need know just how you managed to get a copy of the latest ______ album four months in advance, capisce?
Labels: music
Thursday, February 21, 2008
A: That's the #1 question I get about the blog. Actually, when I started the blog I tried other names, but for some reason all were taken on the Blogspot domain (clearly, I wasn't being very original). "Farkleberries" was the 6th or 7th naming attempt, and to my joy I found a unique name! Well, it could have been called "trilled postalveolar fricative."
That's the linguistic name for the uniquely Czech consonant, Ř, which the first initial of my last name if I care to spell it correctly.
I think that would have been a lot worse.
By the way, the serpent-eating-its-tail logo on the right side of this page is an ancient Mesoamerican symbol called the "seven-segmented ouroboros." That name would be almost as unique...
Labels: soapbox
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Not fragility; not
Retreating
Not defeated but
Descending
Fused and fragmented
Captured in flow endlessly slow
Transparency is no barrier to strength, as any skyscraper knows
Labels: photo
Sunset on LSD
