Snorking Mucus SIckness

There has been much sneezing and snorting and puppy snot at our house since yesterday. The weasels are definitely not feeling well -- they're at about half-speed, if that. We've had to pick Rowan up and take him outside to pee a few times now, otherwise he just sleeps and snorts and blows little puppy boogers all over the place. Yuck!

So, off to the vet this morning. They aren't feverish, and there isn't anything obviously wrong with them, so she thinks it's probably just a respiratory bug and put them on antibiotics and antihistamines to get rid of the snorkling.

I get them home, give them the pills and then, this is all I've seen since:

Parade of Homes

This is the fourth (fifth?) year we've gone to the Denver Parade of Homes -- it's always fun to see what a 2 million+ dollar house is like, and see the design trends and nifty stuff in these showplace houses.

Last year, there was one house that was such a standout in the group that we went back to see it three times. This year, nothing really stood out much. THey were nice houses, but seemed 'overdone', and also seemed to be much more expensive than I would expect. Some of the houses this year were 2.6 and 2.7 million dollars. While the house itself is pretty big (most were about 6,000 square feet), the lots were TINY (smaller than our lot) and the price just seemed outrageous, even if you could classify the houses as "shorefront" because they could see, off in the distance, the small lake.

The theme this year was oceanfront/beach houses, and each house had a strong thematic element of the ocean, the shore, beaches, blue sky, that sort of east-coast-Cape-Cod sort of house. Rather odd for the middle of Colorado, if you ask me. It was also down in Aurora -- about an hour drive for us.

One home had a three-story gazebo sort of thing in the backyard, with a great pool that had an in-pool bar and waterfall; another had a spiral staircase to an "Artists Loft". Out of the five houses, I really liked only one of them -- the ranch-style -- which had a great vaulted and beamed ceiling in the kitchen and living room, and a ton of "outdoor" spaces. But, at 2.6 million (including furnishings) the price was a astonishing.

Still, it's fun to take pictures and notes and dream about your own "perfect house" -- and each year, some detail from each of the houses ends up on our lists. This year? The extra-tall doors and pedestal slipper tub for me, and the five tankless water-heaters and washer-dryer in every bedroom for the Adorable Husband. Oh, he liked the huge garages, too, of course.

Lies, Damn Lies & Statistics

Global warming, organic produce, hybrid vehicles, low-carbon lifestyles. Just about every day brings a story about one of these topics into my inbox. The claims range from "global warming is a myth" to "get 100 mpg!" and it's always a bit of a hoot to read through and see what particular brand of pseudo-science or statistical manipulation form the basis for the claim.

I'm not a scientist, of course. But I hope that I'm a decent evaluator of information and can at least identify the whackoloons and crackpots. (Well, Snopes helps, too.)

For example, I spent a lot of time trying to explain to people on a pet food board that organic does not necessarily equal "safe" -- nor does it mean "better" or "more nutritious"-- when the pet-food tainting story came out a few months ago. There might be many reasons to choose organic produce or free-range chicken, for example, but that is no automatic guarantee of safety and goodness. Taking herbal supplements or using homeopathic remedies is not safe simply because it's "natural", whereas taking aspirin is dangerous because it's made in a lab.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics, right?

So I was amused to find an article in the Times of London that makes the rather outrageous claim that it actually "costs more" in terms of carbon emissions and energy usage to walk around the city than it does to drive. The analysis is flawed (for example, not taking into account the cost of making the automobile and providing gasoline, while counting everything in the lifetime of a cow and assuming that 100% of our energy comes from meat) but the article is in a major (read: non-tabloid) newspaper and makes some rather outrageous claims that sound persuasive and reasonable. I'm sure that most people reading the article will file it away as "correct"

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

Mr Goodall is a Green Party parliamentary candidate. Obviously, this sort of analysis supports his particular campaign, but the logic doesn't quite stand up to scrutiny. The article is not entirely wrong, of course -- Goodall makes some good points that we need to consider the distance that our food travels as part of the "cost", and how much energy is needed to process, store, and then cook the foods that we buy. It's not an unreasonable suggestion, of course, but the misleading claim that 'walking is worse than driving' tends to make me skeptical about the rest of his "science".

Rum Runner

Years ago, the Adorable Husband spent some time in Key West, FL, most of it lounging about on the beach and drinking a lovely frozen concoction called a Rum Runner. We used to have the faded square of plastic the he cut from the glass he ordered it in, with the recipe on it; it disappeared somewhere in one of our moves.

Why did this come up all of a sudden? I got a catalog from Frontgate (a lovely, albeit very high-end house-stuff catalog) that included this lovely item: Granita Frozen Drink Maker. Basically, a home Slushy machine! At $2500 bucks, it's a ridiculous appliance, but it reminded me of how lovely those frozen slushy Rum Runners were. We often joked about renting a slushy machine to have them at a block party.

So I sent out to find the recipe and met with a bit of frustration -- about fourteen sites claim to be the "Original Tiki John's Rum Runner" recipe -- from the Holiday Isle Beach Resort & Marina, Islamorada, Florida, submitted, the story goes, by a bartender called Tiki John. The recipes were all a bit different, but the two primary options are these:

1/2 Oz. Rum Light
1/2 Oz. Rum Dark
1/2 Oz. Banana Liqueur
1/2 Oz. Blackberry Liqueur
1/2 Oz. Grenadine
1/2 Oz. Lime Juice (Rose's)
1/2 Oz. Rum 151-Proof

Or:

3/8 oz. Bacardi Black Rum
3/8 oz. Bacardi 151 Proof Rum
3/4 oz. Creme de Banane (Preferably Hiram Walker's)
3/4 oz. Blackberry Brandy (Preferably Hiram Walker's)
3/4 oz. Lime Juice
Dash of Grenadine (Preferably Giroux's)

In both cases, blend with ice in a blender and serve in a 12oz glass. That Granita Maker is looking pretty alluring.

MN Bridge

Listening to the radio last night, I heard a few things about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis that surprised me -- one, they finally have a navy salvage dive team going through the wreckage, and two, that the bridge had been classified as "structurally deficient" for almost two decades. Not that 'structurally deficient' was any particular reason for the bridge to fall -- hundreds of bridges in the US are in the same or worse shape.

The dive team wasn't really a surprise, I guess , but it took quite a while for them to be involved. The local rescue organizations simply don't have the right equipment or the right training to dive into the swift-moving water amidst the wreckage of the both the concrete and steel bridge, and the cars. There are still eight people missing.

Yesterday, rumors emerged that the problem with the bridge may have been something called "gusset plates", which are used to connect steel girders and are used in many bridges, not just the 35W bridge. There seems to be some concern that the bridge was under-designed from the start. They are even suggesting that the additional weight of equipment that was being used to repair the decking of the bridge may have been enough to cause the failure in these bolted plates. But the bridge has been cited for years as having severe problems -- corrosion, cracks, even missing bolts.

It's certainly making me look at every bridge I drive over or under with a much more critical eye.

Unnecessary Parsing

I've been reading a lot of commentary on the recently demanded (and granted) powers in the new FISA act -- which basically expands the ability of the government to spy on citizens, using some fairly specious arguments about national security and the ever-present Terra! fear.

There's been much discussion about whether the new rules would allow any incoming or outgoing foreign call from the US would allow surveillance, or whether it has to be a foreign-to-foreign call that just happens to use some US circuits (huh? How does that work?). Even more discussion about how sunsetting the rules somehow makes all this "ok", and that anyone worried about is must be a "tin-foil-hat conspiracist" because the government wouldn't be able to spy on Americans. I think it's been rather conclusively proven that they have, indeed, spied on Americans -- but the rules they defined are such that they don't have to tell anyone about it. See how nicely that works? They can do anything illegal that they want, because they aren't required to actually defend the act, because they explicitly exempt themselves from having to tell anyone about what they do.

But all of this is just unnecessary parsing -- there's no need to pick this apart. Once the executive is empowered to spy on citizens without a warrant, for any reason, and to claim that the details of the surveillance are secret because they impact some nebulous idea of "national security" and do not need to be justified or even revealed to congress or the courts..well, then the executive is empowered to spy on any citizen, any time, for any reason. Period.

Handsome Fuzzy Weasel

Bigger Weasels

They're starting to look more like dogs and less like puppies. In fact, Rowan's puppy fur is almost all gone and he has regular hair instead of fluff. Berit is still pretty puppy-fluffy, though. Of course, she's the less snuggly of the two.

They have learned that we don't appreciate being nipped, but that realization seems to occur to them only after they've done it once or twice. In the last day or two, both of them have taken to sidling up to us and licking us gently -- puppy kisses -- which seems to be a prelude to biting us like sharks. Lick lick lick...CHOMP! And they manage to look very surprised when we yell!

Our neighbors brought over a wading pool for the weasels -- it too a few days for them to decide they liked it, now they either stand in it or flop down in the water and become soggy puppy sponges. It's been hot and humid here, so it feels pretty nice.



Rowan always looks so worried.

They eat mulch. Not just chew on the sticks, or gnaw on things...they seem to actually eat the stuff. It's a losing battle to keep taking it away from them, so we've taken the tack that it's just roughage. So far, so good.


And more pictures in flickr, as usual.

Competitive Bunny Jumping

Yes, I'm serious. There is Competitive Bunny Jumping in Denmark.

It's kind of cute, really.

Enhanced Internet Experience

We had been with Sprint Broadband since about 2000, and we have been really happy with the service. About a month ago, however, we suddenly started having serious problems -- timeouts, unable to connect, download speeds so slow I was convinced that they were handwriting the packets and delivering them via camel train.

We've had minor issues in the past. We think that it's related to either a) the power lines between us and the tower, or b) everyone around us getting Mesa Networks antennae, which are rumored to cause interference with everyone else. Each time before, they've been able to tweak things or move the antenna a bit and thigns went back to normal for a while. This time, though, no joy. No matter what he did (on three separate visits) got us reliably connected. Since I work at home most of the time, having a connection that's fast, reliable, and consistent is pretty important!

So we swapped over to Qwest DSL, which offered us a much faster connection. We went from 1.5 Mbps to a possible 7. In reality, we're getting about 5 -- but still! Enhanced Internet Experience!



I got to do a brief 'told you so' dance about our new DSL connection, though. One of the requirements is that you have a special filter on all phone lines (DSL comes over the copper phone line, and you need to filter out the higher frequences so taht your phone still works). The Adorable Husband put filters on all the phones we use, ad disconnected (he thought) all the others. Our phone was still full of hissing and popping. I was sure that we still had a phone somewhere that wasn't filtered and he argued ith me that it wasn't necessary to filter ALL the phones, only those that you might talk on. As long as the filter was one the phone you were using, you'd be fine.

Well, hah! I was right. We had forgotten the telephone connection from the cable box downstairs and once I unplugged it not only did the phones clear up immediately, but the download speeds on our connection went through the roof! Yeah!

King's Cross Station, London

Rise of the Undead

This site might be one of the most disturbing things I've seen on the web in quite awhile.

Photo retouching for children's photos -- from snapshot to glamor shot.

Eeu. I mean, I get squicked out by the whole thought of kiddie pageants anyways -- the whole five-year-old beauty queen thing, and the weirdness that is a Pageant Mom are really just...kind of sick.

Some of the photos are just plain creepy. Like little dead children with perfect makeup applied by the mortician. I've seen dolls that look more alive than some of the retouched "after" pics.

The photo retoucher is technically adept-- if you like that sort of undead zombie teeny sex-queen effect. The retouches of the wedding photos are good, and seems more normal. Why on earth would anyone want their little girl to look like the "after" photos, though. Can you imagine the poor kid looking at the pictures and not even recognizing herself?

Anyway, make sure you keep clicking on the "see more samples" on each page -- there are a good dozen or so bizarre, undead-looking photoshopped versions of kid pictures, each weirder than the last.

You're not invited

Apparently, Bush is going to "visit" Minneapolis and the site of the collapsed bridge on Saturday.

Great, like the Twin Cities really need to deal with the shutdown of other freeways, more clogged traffic, and the airport security for a presidential visit so that his highness can run his motorcade through the city and get his picture taken next to the ruins. Why? What possibly purpose is there for him to come to the site, that couldn't be handled by an actual, heartfelt statement from his vacation? Oh -- and Laura will be visiting all those kids who were in the bus and escaped serious injury.

Because Bush's response to Katrina was so woefully inadequate, it looks like we are going to be forced to endure his PR visits every time there is some sort of accident?

We're supposed to believe they care, I guess. Yeah. Right. If you cared, you wouldn't cut funding for federal projects, and then try to blame the state of Minnesota for the problems without acknowledging that perhaps a teensy bit of blame belongs on the Federal government as well, for a federal highway. Pfah.

Meanwhile, 80,000 bridges in the US are inadequate, infrastructure is failing in multiple cities (water mains in New York, sewer systems in Detroit, just in the last few weeks) and no one really seems to care until there's a tragic accident that kills enough people to make the evening news.

Domestic Goddess Lessons

If you're like me, folding fitted sheets involves bundling them with most of the edges squashed in, and sort of mashing them into the back of the linen closet in roughly blobbish form (or, as I've done lately, just shoving the entire set of sheets into one of the pillowcases willy nilly).

Of course, Martha Stewart has instructions on how to actually fold fitted sheets so they look nice and stack into the closet.

Martha frightens me.

Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis

A 35W bridge in Minneapolis, near the University, collapsed at about 6:05 this evening. Over 50 cars were on the bridge when it collapsed, many of them went straight into the Mississippi river -- although there were a lot of people (including a bus full of kids coming back from a field trip) who walked away from the collapsed bridge. There is more information on the Star Tribune web page.
[image from Yahoo/AP]

Everyone in our extended families is ok -- no one was on or near the bridge when it collapsed. This is the bridge that my sister drives on every day, though. She's a bit shaken up, since only a last minute change in her plans kept her from being on the bridge around six o'clock.

Daid of Cuteness

This video is adorable, and it's not even my puppies!

Whistling Puppy

Aspergers

Everyone knows several people who are just slightly ...off in social situations -- a bit socially inept, uncomfortable with chitchat, often sort of oblivious to the social cues in a normal situation. I know that this is often related to mild Asperger's, a which syndrome on the autism scale and usually manifesting as problems with social behavior. Estimates of how many people are affected run from 3-71 people per ten thousand. It affects males much more than females.

I found a link to an interesting (if completely non-scientific) questionnaire to determine if you have tendencies to Asperger syndrome, with information on some of the social effects. I'm always a sucker for a questionnaire, and I scored a 12. Hm.

Education is Important? Bah.

Well, lawmakers in South Carolina have made it very clear that they don't actually value education, unless, of course, it furthers their political and religious agenda. Supporting a private school with a very specific political and religious agenda (and let's not ignore that these two are linked more often than we'd like) is ok --apparently even if you have to change the rules to allow a substandard, non-accredited school. Wasn't the legislature in SC nice to make such a special exception for Bob Jones University?

State lawmakers shot down a request for extra financial help for low-income students who will attend South Carolina's public colleges and universities next year.

Meanwhile, they approved $2.5 million to help low-income students attend Bob Jones University, a private school in Greenville.

The State Commission on Higher Education had requested $10 million to increase grants for some needy students attending public colleges and universities. Last year, low-income public school students received, on average, $1,158 in grants while their private-school counterparts received $3,100, nearly three times as much.

It's not that I'm upset that private schools get grants (although, why they would need 3X the public support than a public school is a bit questionable)--Private schools have been able to get grants in NC for years, of course, as long as they were accredited schools, non-profits, with a major campus in SC. But, the rules were changed so that any school that gives bachelor degrees and was started before 1962. Hey! That describes Bob Jones University to a T! What an amazing coincidence, isn't it? Like it was designed just for them!

And then, well, we better made sure that we fund the program enough so that can attend BJU with financial aid. Oh, we don't need to increase the amount for non-private schools! But look at all the people who want to attend BYU and just can't

Eddie Shannon, executive director of the Tuition Grants Commission, said that with the extra money, the commission can give about 800 low-income Bob Jones University students $3,200 next year. That's the same amount most other needy private school students will receive, he said.

The bill to include Bob Jones University was sponsored by Sens. Michael Fair, R-Greenville, and Darrell Jackson, D-Hopkins. Shannon said that although the bill didn't specifically mention Bob Jones University, "it happens to be the only new one that qualifies."

Must be nice to have he legislators looking out for you, eh? And it seems a pretty innocuous piece of legislation (you can view the actual text here) -- unless you, like me, actually value education.

In general, the rest of the collegiate world views Bob Jones as a bit of a joke, and for years they wore their non-accredited state as a badge of honor -- making it very clear that they were more interested in indoctrination and specious curriculum than reality. But hey, you can't focus on religion and dogma if you are actually being held to some sort of standards.

Bob Jones, like many other ultra-conservative religious instituations, teach creationism in their science department instead of, you know, actual science. One of the sponsors of the bill was also a sponsor of the failed bill to require teaching intelligent design in schools in SC last year. Well, this just deftly bypassed the Instead of funding highly accredited schools like Clemson, the University of South Carolina, legislators decided to keep South Carolina in the Dark Ages.

Bob Jones University is finally an accredited school (in April 2005) -- no, wait, that's not entirely true. They are accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools. TRACS grants accreditation only to evangelical Christian institutions of higher learning. One of the nurses that works at the same hospital as the husband was denied the ability to join the military as a nurse, because her degree was not considered from an "accredited institution" -- in this case? BYU.

Yeah, they need all the help they can get.

Free Ebooks

Since I got my (fabulous!) Sony eBook Reader for Christmas last year (best present ever!) I've been constantly searching for good ebooks to load and read. They have a Connect Store, which has a ton of the newest releases, and I have a program to reformat Microsoft Reader files that I buy. I've also discovered that there are thousands of free eBooks from the Gutenberg Project.

A few other places to fine free (and legal) books --
baen sci-fi -- absolutely free books in several formats, from the venerable Baen sci-fi line.
wowio -- a variety of books (mostly new releases) that are free for those registering for the site with demographic information.

I signed up for Wowio two days again, and have received no spam or other email trash that appears to be related to the signup process. They require a verifiable email address (not hotmail or yahoo or other anonymous-type emails), and that always makes me a bit nervous, but so far, nothing has arrived.

Very cool.

Running with the Big Dogs

We go to puppy class twice a week. It's not actually class, of course -- it's more playtime with a five minute lesson in there somewhere, but the Weasels love it. Puppy Kindergarten is supposed to be for puppies 8 weeks to 16 weeks -- we're worried that in another two weeks or so, they're going to be so big we can't bring them to puppy class at all. They're already the youngest puppies in the class, and just about the biggest (the adorable Newfoundland puppy has them beat). It's so important that they get all the socialization that we can cram into their little brains, so hopefully we can manage!

At the vet today for their 11-week shots, and they weighed 24 and 26 pounds. I need to stop calling them Weasels and look for a larger animal. Badgers, maybe. Or wolverines, with those sharp fangy little teeth!

I don't have pictures of puppy class, but here are some puppy pictures to tide you over. This is what they do 90% of the time:

Look, I know there's something in there. C'mon! Dig with me!


Talk to the Paw!


Snarly Snarly Bitey face:

Drinking from the Big Dog's Bowl:


The cuteness is killing me daid. Of course, more photos on Flickr.