ruminations

... eleven of them.

h/t Yves Smith at nakedcapitalism.com

The "Wando" bush peas are ready for picking with nicely filled pods and a sweet taste. I'm putting them in a pasta salad since the weather's gotten too hot this weekend to eat anything but cold dishes. Wish I'd planted more peas, though I'll be able to sew a late summer crop next month. The Charentais melon is going crazy and I should have given the plants more room. The eggplants have put on size but so far no fruit.

Pulled "Babette" French baby carrots (Renee's Garden Seeds) in garden this evening, had over a pound when trimmed, with lots left for picking later. For the first time this year I'm going to try to keep an eye on yields to see how we do in terms of pounds of food vs. what we spent on supplies. No doubt I'll discover the tomatoes work out to $17.50/lb. Oh noez!

Also made strawberry jam last weekend for the first time after a guy was selling them door to door and I bought a half box/6 pints.

After loading Inspiral Carpets' Singles onto the puter, I wondered if there was a video for my favorite track, the anthemic "Two Worlds Collide" from 1992. There is.

Italian airline Alitalia has apologised after its in-flight magazine printed a map leaving off the Mediterranean island of Sicily.

I can see how this would raise hackles as la Sicilia is often the butt of mainland jokes. In a great 1964 Italian movie called Sedotto e abbandonato (Seduced and Abandoned) a thoroughly exasperated policeman assigned to the island uses his hands to block out Sicily on his wall map of Italy and mutters "Meglio." I.e., "That's better."

From the ACLU:

Anti-terrorism training materials currently being used by the Department of Defense (DoD) teach its personnel that free expression in the form of public protests should be regarded as “low level terrorism.” [...]

Among the multiple-choice questions included in its Level 1 Antiterrorism Awareness training course, the DoD asks the following: “Which of the following is an example of low-level terrorist activity?” To answer correctly, the examinee must select “protests.”

BTW, per ACLU pdf, the multiple choice selections are:
1. Attacking the Pentagon
2. IEDs
3. Hate crimes against racial groups
4. Protests

Amendment I states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

ZOMG! Like a protest? That slight tremor you feel is no doubt the founding fathers (or should that be low-level terrorism enablers?) spinning in their graves. Either the Constitution still means something or it's now become some quaint artifact to look at and say weren't we special? once upon a time.

At last, I can say I've seen Twilight.

h/t to Chris Clark of faultline.org who posted this hilarious (and strangely cathartic) BlogWarBot, the Automated Internet Political Argument.

gacked from mojave_wolf. I'm posting 2 quizzes in a row, but this one is more interesting than the last.

Comments on the results: I really liked Pullman's HDM trilogy, but thought the movie version of TGC was terribly flat. I'm drawing a total blank on Tove Jansson's work. Browsed through Gene Wolfe at the bookstore once but I was a little too conscious of his writing style, so for action I'll take David Gemmell and his world weary heroes who remind me of the AtS characters. I read The Hobbit when I was 12 or so, bought a calendar, but never caught the Tolkien bug in a big way. The LotR movies were just too overtly Teutonic/Christian/Male to thrill me, though I understand why people found significant meaning in them.

( cut for long results )

You Are a Black Coffee

At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable At your worst, you are: grumpy and stressed You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it Your caffeine addiction level: high

I used to drink it black long ago, but now I gotta have my coffee au lait. Hmm, go have more coffee or dig up and move the clump of montbretia? Tough choice there.

Natasha Chart's subject line at Open Left really says it all: "Contraception Opponent Appointed to HHS".

I was outside last night sewing the last of my green bean seeds and got dive bombed by a mockingbird flapping past 2 feet from my head. There's no place close to my veggie garden that it could have had a nest, but having been flown at by them before, I got on with my work as fast as I could while it kept flying back and forth landing on top of a tomato cage getting all squawky and pissy, but at least staying away from my head. Sheesh, territorial much?

As I finished up and watered in the seeds I decided to give the nearby limas and carrots a little extra squirt with the hose and the mystery was revealed. Out from under the lima leaves comes waddling a slightly damp little ball of mockingbird patterned down. The parent was really freaking out by then, so I threw down the hose and went away to give them a chance to regroup.

Hope the little birdy found a better hiding place than the vegetable bed because the neighborhood cats are fond of hanging out there too. Of course I've seen adult mockingbirds flying low after cats chasing them, so I can't be sure who might come out the winner.

My 'Bright Lights' Swiss chard had been growing on in a window box container, with some intended to be dotted around as ornamental edibles the rest for cut and come again. They'd been growing very well and when 4-5 days ago some leaves started looking a little pale, I just assumed they were getting a little crowded and needed to be fed or planted out soon. Turns out they were absolutely clobbered by black aphids, curling the leaves around their nasty little colonies and sucking the life out of the plants.

We have a lot of ants outside which keep the damn aphids going, but they usually hit the roses first and a good blast from the hose gets rid of them. But chard of all things? That hasn't happened before. A blast of water isn't going to do much more than shred the crinkly little leaves with aphids intact. So the 4 in the ground plus the unplanted ones I'm trying to save have been getting intensive care with q-tips dipped in insecticidal soap (the safe stuff, mind you) bathing aphids from the undersides of the curled leaves. I'm going to keep it up for a few more days and then direct sew seeds if they don't improve. I assumed the aphids had jumped from some more likely host but can't find them anywhere else.

I'd never have the equanimity for serious growing.

Reuters reports on Geithner's first trip to China as Treasury Secretary.

"Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.

His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home.

A suggestion that women take over running the world for a while, from that guy in the Guardian who once made me laugh out loud and dribble cereal on my chin, aka Charlie Brooker.

Now I know to put down the cereal first.

ETA: I had a look at the comments. He hit a nerve. Apparently afflicting the often very comfortable with over the top silly satire is no longer to be tolerated.

No such speecies! Snailz all basement snailz, mean to daisies and cosmosus. :(

Note to self: Should self-moderate use of loltalk after unwittingly typing halpful for helpful in an email the other day.

Spinal Tap is touring again and headed for the big time arenas, playing Wembley this June. Alexis Petridis has got a nice long article about the band that brings back fond memories of first seeing the movie in the mid-80s. Especially since my friend and I thought we were going to an on campus showing of Woody Allen's Zelig. We somehow missed the signs and ended up in the wrong auditorium. At first we thought we were watching a trailer or short subject, but TIST just kept going and going and getting funnier until we shrugged, stayed for the whole thing and loved it even if we were kinda arty-farty and hated heavy-metal. I'm tempting myself into a rewatch to see how it's held up over the years.

From the 1992 return album Break Like The Wind:

Via Think Progress

G. Gordon Liddy on his radio show yesterday said of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.

This utter crap should have gone the way of the dodo back in the time of Margaret Thatcher (like her or not) and instead, here in the U.S. at least, it gets worse and worse. Sadly, it's not all that much of a surprise that Liddy would think and speak so contemptibly about any woman appointed by any Democrat. But saaaaay, wasn't the first female SCOTUS Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a Reagan appointee. Guess Liddy holds her in contempt too, no pun intended.

Having learned over the last 3-4 years that it's shockingly easy for liberal women to get themselves called b¡tch/c*nt/whore/hag in supposedly progressive circles (oh yes, indeedy!), I note that this is a broadly directed smear, effectively saying to all women, even conservative ones, no matter who you are, what you believe, what you achieve, you're nothing but your body and you always will be. Misogyny differs only in degree, never in kind. This is the same argument that was used to deny women the vote and other basic rights for centuries--we are biologically condemned to be "other" since we have no "seat of reason", only reproductive organs. It's the slur that still won't die. It still hurts us in ways large and small every day.

Well done, Liddy, et al. You've firmed up the sub-demographic of white guys who also happen to be bad-tempered creeps with no social skills to speak of. As you tenderly clutch your "white man's burden," Kipling might well cringe at you.

So let me say to Liddy and his fellow misogynist asshats in my coolest, most non-emotive, not even remotely PMS-y way:
"I'm fucking sick of this shit, guys. Grow up and clean up your act, starting five minutes ago. You're dismissed."

[Two things:
--Based on actual case rulings [gasp!] on privacy and upholding the now defunct global gag order, Sotomayor doesn't sound all *that* liberal. Would be ironic.
--The racially-based comments against Latinos are also despicable. My not writing about them doesn't mean they've not been noticed and utterly rejected.]

"President's [sic] should not be allowed to appoint judges, attorney generals, etc., as it undermines the division of power and checks and balances intended by the Constitution ......"

Hello? The U.S. Constitution might that be? Article 2, Section 2?

[The President] shall have power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law: but the Congress may by law vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.

I swear I'm gonna start a blog called "Unbelievable shit I read on the internet today." Suggestions for improvement of the blog title will be gratefully considered.

The CA Supremes upheld mob rule via Prop. 8, except for a lucky 18,000 couples who married before the November election. Since IANAL and the SSC website has been unavailable, I've been following this at places like Talk Left (where andgarden who is a lawyer has some good comments about parts of the decision).

I frankly didn't see how they could split this one: seemed to me they would either uphold Prop. 8 and dissolve the marriages or overturn it and rule the marriages were valid. Instead they split the decision. The problem here is that the CA SC is the final ruler on matters of the state constitution whereas state laws could be appealed to the 9th Circuit or up to the SCOTUS. OTOH how the holy feck is this not a question of "equal protection" when some same sex couples are married and others now can't? I can't believe some state could bring back a variety of the miscegenation laws into its constitution and it would stand.

So it looks like the only way to overturn this mess is going back to the initiative process, the same process which bears a chunk of blame for having brought the state to the brink of financial collapse it now faces.

It's corny, but I love my adopted state. People have a lot of false ideas about Cali: that we all hang out at the beach or that we all live in 90210 style. But that sense of promise made possible that was part of the mythos rang true for me in the years after I moved here. Today, not so much.

ETA:

[Justice Carlos] Moreno, in [the lone] dissent, argued that the initiative process must not be used to allow a majority to deny fundamental rights to a historically persecuted minority.

The ruling, he said, "is not just a defeat for same-sex couples, but for any minority group that seeks the protection of the equal-protection clause of the California Constitution."