ruminations

Cat lady has cats...

2009-06-29T15:26:28Z

... eleven of them.

h/t Yves Smith at nakedcapitalism.com

"Wando" peas

2009-06-28T17:06:42Z

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.

Haz carrots!

2009-06-21T02:19:47Z

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.

Friday night lo-fi: Madchester flashback edition

2009-06-20T03:58:31Z

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.

Lost island...

2009-06-19T00:49:39Z

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."

Headbang du jour

2009-06-18T20:20:28Z

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.

Saturday evening at the movies

2009-06-14T03:20:33Z

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

Is this the blog for an argument?

2009-06-13T22:02:50Z

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

"Which fantasy writer are you?"

2009-06-10T03:41:54Z

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.

Your result for Which fantasy writer are you?...

Philip Pullman (b.1946)

11 High-Brow, -3 Violent, 11 Experimental and 33 Cynical!

Congratulations! You are High-Brow, Peaceful, Experimental and Cynical! These concepts are defined below.

Philip Pullman was already a prominent author of children's books when he published his most praised work to date, the trilogy known as His Dark Materials (1995-2000). In this work, set both in parallel worlds and our own, Pullman made a courageous attempt to write a book for young readers which incorporated a whole vision of the universe, as well as a discussion of ethical issues. He managed to combine this with a burst of thought-provoking and entertaining imagination, bringing to life a Europe where the church is still in control, "souls" that have been externalised as animal presences, intelligent, sentient polar bears and much more. The series have been described as a sort of "anti-Narnia", as Pullman's attempt to write an updated variant of the kind of books C S Lewis, whom Pullman has criticized for having racist, misogynic and preaching tendencies, wanted to write. His Dark Materials has also spawned some controversy among Christians, who see the the work as an attack against Christianity, Pullman being one of Britain's most outspoken atheists. Other Christians have, however, claimed to have found spirituality in the books.

Either way, Pullman's combination of renewal and expansion of the genre, his profound messages on the value of life and his refusal to under-estimate his young readers' ability to see life as it is makes Pullman one of the most interesting and important writers of modern fantasy.

You are also a lot like Tove Jansson.

If you want something some action, try Gene Wolfe.

If you'd like a challenge, try your exact opposite, J R R Tolkien.

Your score

This is how to interpret your score: Your attitudes have been measured on four different scales, called 1) High-Brow vs. Low-Brow, 2) Violent vs. Peaceful, 3) Experimental vs. Traditional and 4) Cynical vs. Romantic. Imagine that when you were born, you were in a state of innocence, a tabula rasa who would have scored zero on each scale. Since then, a number of circumstances (including genetical, cultural and environmental factors) have pushed you towards either end of these scales. If you're at 45 or -45 you would be almost entirely cynical, low-brow or whatever. The closer to zero you are, the less extreme your attitude. However, you should always be more of either (eg more romantic than cynical). Please note that even though High-Brow, Violent, Experimental and Cynical have positive numbers (1 through 45) and their opposites negative numbers (-1 through -45), this doesn't mean that either quality is better. All attitudes have their positive and negative sides, as explained below.

High-Brow vs Low-Brow

You received 11 points, making you more High-Brow than Low-Brow. Being high-browed in this context refers to being more fascinated with the sort of art that critics and scholars tend to favour, rather than the best-selling kind. At their best, high-brows are cultured, able to appreciate the finer nuances of literature and not content with simplifications. At their worst they are, well, snobs.

Violent vs. Peaceful

You received -3 points, making you more Peaceful than Violent. This scale is a measurement of a) if you are tolerant to violence in fiction and b) whether you see violence as a means that can be used to achieve a good end. If you aren't, and you don't, then you are peaceful as defined here. At their best, peaceful people are the ones who encourage dialogue and understanding as a means of solving conflicts. At their worst, they are standing passively by as they or third parties are hurt by less scrupulous individuals.

Experimental vs. Traditional

You received 11 points, making you more Experimental than Traditional. Your position on this scale indicates if you're more likely to seek out the new and unexpected or if you are more comfortable with the familiar, especially in regards to culture. Note that traditional as defined here does not equal conservative, in the political sense. At their best, experimental people are the ones who show humanity the way forward. At their worst, they provoke for the sake of provocation only.

Cynical vs Romantic

You received 33 points, making you more Cynical than Romantic. Your position on this scale indicates if you are more likely to be wary, suspicious and skeptical to people around you and the world at large, or if you are more likely to believe in grand schemes, happy endings and the basic goodness of humankind. It is by far the most vaguely defined scale, which is why you'll find the sentence "you are also a lot like x" above. If you feel that your position on this scale is wrong, then you are probably more like author x. At their best, cynical people are able to see through lies and spot crucial flaws in plans and schemes. At their worst, they are overly negative, bringing everybody else down.

Take Which fantasy writer are you? at HelloQuizzy

"What Kind of Coffee Are You?"

2009-06-09T23:12:01Z

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

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

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.

Faith-based government, v.2.0

2009-06-09T18:37:47Z

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

Oh chard, poor chard

2009-06-06T21:51:21Z

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.

Stand-up in Beijing

2009-06-02T23:21:07Z

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.

White man unburdens himself

2009-06-02T00:38:48Z

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.

Ceiling snailz?

2009-06-01T03:13:06Z

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.

Wha-hunh-howzat?

2009-05-29T06:14:36Z

"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.

It's not good

2009-05-26T18:23:08Z

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."

Awaiting the ruling

2009-05-26T10:29:14Z

Later today (10 a.m. PDT) the CA Supreme Court will announce its ruling in the case to strike down Prop 8 which passed last November much to the state's shame. The L.A. Times has background here.

... the court is dealing with three different legal issues: whether Proposition 8 amounts to an impermissible revision of the state Constitution; the attorney general's challenge contending that marriage is an "inalienable" right that can't be taken away without compelling justification; and the fate of existing same-sex marriages.

Fingers crossed Prop 8 is overturned. Gay, straight, or can't be bothered, it should scare the crap out of anyone that all it could take is a simple majority vote to deprive a minority of a right they've already been granted.

I'm putting my "No on 8" sign back in the window, just for luck.

Susan Boyle returns to Britain's Got Talent...

2009-05-24T22:23:04Z

...singing "Memory." She has a little wobble at the start, probably due to nerves, then gets her breath back under her. I saw Cats on Broadway, have heard this song scores of times and still I can't completely explain why listening to her moved me to tears.

Made of common clay

2009-05-20T20:10:02Z

How hard is the clay soil around here? While digging I smacked the big spading fork down on a major clod to break it up and the fork bounced.

Reading through a garden forum the other night I realized that I've been pruning my tomato plants wrong lo these 9 years I've been growing them. D'oh! So when I went out to prune some excess leaferage the correct way, I discovered that I've got some little green tomatoes already forming on two plants--the salad sized "Juliet" and the slightly larger sized "Stupice" (Stew-PEEK-uh). Woohoo! The heat wave over the weekend cost me some blossom drop on the later bearing tomato and the eggplants, but with luck they'll catch up without having to wait too long for the first fruits. The "Bright Lights" chard is putting on growth in a container. And I'm slowly going through some older flower seeds in my stockpile, using up old packets to sprinkle hither and thither in hopes some are still viable.

I discovered an American source for Franchi Sementi seeds from Italy. The seed packets are huge and colorful with a generous seed count and they carry a wide selection of tomatoes (quite a few heirlooms so you can save the seeds), sunflowers (i girasole = turning with the sun) as well as lotsa other fruit and veg. Northern Italy, where the seed company is based, is pretty comparable to the Mid-Atlantic states vis a vis growing conditions; I'm sitting in a Mediterranean climate here in NoCal, so these should work fine in the states. I saw display racks of these seeds at markets in Italy but neglected to buy any. (Though customs might have gotten picky about an agricultural product.)

11% is no solution at all for SCOTUS: action item

2009-05-20T17:21:14Z

From my Senator, Barbara Boxer, an easy e-mail form to let the White House know you would like to see a woman nominated as the next Supreme Court justice.

32% of the legal profession are women (via Women Count's estimate) so this isn't a case of let's have a quota. I simply don't accept that there is not a qualified woman among that number.

Administration Press Secretary ~~Ari Fleischer~~ Robert Gibbs has dismissively opined that any push to nominate a woman is "counter-productive." An WH source said such efforts could "backfire." This is insane troll logic. So if Americans don't tell them what they want, TPTB might or might not do the right thing because they don't know what people want. But if they do know because Americans let them know, they'll do the opposite, even if it might very well be the right thing to do. Okaaaaay. Let's apply this logic to a few cases from the past.

c. 1933
Unemployed: "President Roosevelt, we want jobs, we need to get back to work for our families, for our dignity."

Roosevelt: "Well I was thinking the WPA was a darn good idea, but you should have kept quiet because now I won't. Ptui."

c. 1965
African-Americans: "President Johnson, we may be a minority but we are Americans too and insist on the same voting and civil rights as any other American."

Johnson: "I was going to armtwist and call in every political favor ever owed me to pass the Voting and Civil Rights act because it's the right thing to do, but you're just too pushy, so I won't. Neener, neener."

I've been hearing the sit down, STFU and we'll see about you later argument applied against every advance forward in my lifetime. Now I'm hearing it from Democrats? Bull-bloody-shit to that.

If any of you sign, please let me know and you'll make my day. :)

ETA: A big thumbs up each to Sen. Boxer and her Republican Senate colleague Olympia Snowe for having delivered a letter to the WH urging that a woman be appointed the next SCOTUS justice.

Leave James Garfield alo-o-o-ne!

2009-05-18T13:48:52Z

Geez, first Garfield is shot and dies only 6 months into his presidential term and 127 years later a statue of him has been beheaded the day after it was dedicated.

OMFG!

2009-05-18T04:36:40Z

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly zeroes in on just one part of a GQ article about Rumsfeld as SoD And He Shall Be Judged. Rumsfeld's involvement in the response to Hurricane Katrina is described by former Bush administration members (pp. 6-7).

there were search-and-rescue helicopters available for New Orleans, but Rumsfeld refused to approve their deployment, despite the belief from the commander of Joint Task Force Katrina that they were needed.

Chertoff of DHS tells Rumsfeld troops will be needed for the critical situation in NOLA. Rumsfeld didn't think so.

Even Bush* yelled at Rumsfeld who later grudgingly came up with a deployment plan on the Saturday following the hurricane.

"Rumsfeld, what the hell is going on there? Are you watching what's on television? Is that the United States of America or some Third World nation I'm watching? What the hell are you doing?"

National security, eh Rummy? Heck-of-a-job.

* Why it took him until after the 2006 midterms to sack DR I'll never understand.

ETA: Also, check out Chapter 14 in Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine to read the absurd dressing down Rumsfeld gave to workers at the Pentagon on Sept. 10, 2001 (bizarrely enough in terms of the date). For that matter, I highly highly recommend NK'S whole book. There's not a hint of tinfoil and after reading it I'm a sadderbutwiser girl.

93 in the shade...

2009-05-17T23:25:59Z

... deep shade. Depending on where in San Jose you check it's between 95 and 100F. That's not so unusual (alas!) but there's also a nasty wind today that in combination with the heat is collapsing the leaves on long-established, fairly drought tolerant plants. (Anything that manages to remain alive in my garden, believe me, is tolerant of drought.) So I've just been out soaking the bases of plants, since sprinkling would be a waste with the breeze. Thankfully I didn't try to put in any transplants the past couple days, except for a Charentais melon seedling (mmm, melons), which has afternoon shade.

I can have hot flashes all on my own thank you very much! My brain turns to mush in heat like this and if any joker says "hot enough for ya?" I don't promise to be responsible for my reactions.

pedantic peeve

2009-05-16T06:13:12Z

tenet and tenant are not the same damn word and mean very different things.