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November 16th, 2009
 | 08:19 pm - Books
Nation was good. As good as the Discworld books, and possibly better due to taking place in an alternate version of THIS world. Also, reference to Moby Dick was funny XD
I listened to The Language of God by Francis Collins after it. Francis Collins is a biologist who headed the Human Genome Project and is the director of the NIH. He was an atheist, but converted to Christianity while remaining a scientist, and wrote this book that explains how science and religion are not necessarily in conflict. He also founded the BioLogos Foundation.
The book explains how science, especially evolution, and faith can work together as two different sources of truth. Collins repudiates all the common errors people make about evolution, as well as explaining how Creationism and Intelligent Design don't work as alternatives, even while he doesn't give up on any of the basics of Christianity.
He talks about how believers do damage to the faith by denying science (leaving those who believe in the validity of science with no alternative but to reject the faith), and how aggressive atheists irrationally create a conflict between science and religion.
I still have to get caught up on podcasts, but next is The Souls of Black Folk, unless something else distracts me (like The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy).
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November 12th, 2009
| 09:59 pm - Evidence of Antimatter Produced by Lightning
The Fermi telescope, pointed at lightning storms on Earth, detected gamma rays with energy levels only seen when positrons, a type of antimatter, decay. It's local now!
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November 3rd, 2009
| 09:09 pm - Sciency stuff
100 Million Year-Old Unicorn Fly Discovered
Oregon State University researchers discovered a strange ancient fly trapped in amber. It had eyes extended on a horn, probably for spotting predators, and collected pollen from flowers. It may still exist, somewhere; there are many creatures not yet discovered!
"No other insect ever discovered has a horn like that, and there's no animal at all with a horn that has eyes on top," said George Poinar, Jr., a professor of zoology at Oregon State University who just announced the new species in Cretaceous Research, a professional journal. "It was probably a docile little creature that fed on the pollen and nectar of tiny tropical flowers," Poinar said. "But it was really bizarre looking. One of the reviewers of the study called it a monster, and I have to admit it had a face only another fly could have loved. I was thinking of making some masks based on it for Halloween."
Something Very Old Observed
NASA's Swift satellite, designed to detect gamma ray bursts caused by exploding stars, recently detected one and alerted astronomers to take a look. What they saw appeared to be the explosion of a 13 billion year-old star--only 630 million years younger than the universe itself! The light only recently reached us.
"The burst most likely arose from the explosion of a massive star," said Derek Fox at Pennsylvania State University. "We're seeing the demise of a star -- and probably the birth of a black hole -- in one of the universe's earliest stellar generations."
Enjoy your science!
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October 27th, 2009
| 09:39 pm - Parsnips a'Plenty
So last Thursday we dug up the rest of the parsnips! There were 36 in total. Most of them were beautiful... only about four were somewhat bad, I think, and they were okay once you cut away enough. They came in all shapes and sizes though.
Parsnip pile! All washed up.
This one won the prize for weirdest shape:
Though there's also one that looks like a tooth or a mandrake or something.
I wonder what happened to this one. It was tasty inside though.
We've eaten a few, preferring to bake them with oil, salt, and garlic than try to fry them up. Mmmm!
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| 06:17 pm - Science news
A couple of interesting recent things:
The Antikythera Mechanism
It's at least 2000 years old and possibly even as old as the second century BC, a mysterious geared contraption found in a shipwreck near Greece. It has remained a mystery for centuries because people didn't want to risk damaging it by opening it up, but modern imaging technology has allowed resolution of its innards enough to be able even to read the writing on the parts.
"Detailed work on the gears in the mechanism showed it was able to track astronomical movements with remarkable precision. The calculator was able to follow the movements of the moon and the sun through the Zodiac, predict eclipses and even recreate the irregular orbit of the moon. The team believe it may also have predicted the positions of the planets.
The findings suggest that Greek technology was far more advanced than previously thought. No other civilisation is known to have created anything as complicated for another thousand years."
Rhesus Monkey Baby-Talk
Apparently rhesus macaque monkeys behave similar to human mothers when interacting with their infants.
"What does a mother or father do when looking at their own baby?" asked Pier Francesco Ferrari of the Università di Parma in Italy. "They smile at them and exaggerate their gestures, modify their voice pitch—the so-called "motherese"—and kiss them. What we found in mother macaques is very similar: they exaggerate their gestures, "kiss" their baby, and have sustained mutual gaze." In humans, those communicative interactions go both ways, research in the last three decades has shown. Newborns are sensitive to their mother's expressions, movements, and voice, and they also mutually engage their mothers and are capable of emotional exchange. "For years, these capacities were considered to be basically unique to humans," the researchers said, "although perhaps shared to some extent with chimpanzees." The new findings extend those social skills to macaques, suggesting that the infant monkeys may "have a rich internal world" that we are only now beginning to see.
Enjoy!
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October 25th, 2009
| 10:41 pm - Always Remember
If ever you are engaged in debate with someone of opposing views, always keep this in mind: almost everyone sees their side as working for good.
Both pro-vaccination and anti-vaccination advocates believe their opponents are harming children.
Pro-life people believe they are working to prevent harm to unborn people, and pro-choice people believe they are working to prevent harm to women.
Evangelical Christians are working to save people's souls, and evangelical atheists are working to save people's... reason, I guess.
Just keep it in mind. And I will too.
(This isn't directed toward anyone in particular, in case anyone wondered. Just a general reminder.)
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October 24th, 2009
| 07:04 pm - Photography Feature, October 24th
Click for larger image and description and such.
Ornate Shield
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October 19th, 2009
| 06:24 pm - 42 + cocaine
I finished The Sign of the Four, which ended pretty much the same way it started: with Holmes doing cocaine.
Speaking of cocaine, I thought I should mention this: Some researchers developed a vaccine against cocaine that appeared to reduce the amount people used the drug. Unfortunately, it only worked in just over a third of people vaccinated, and only for two months, so there's work to be done before it's useful for treatment. But it's still pretty cool. I imagine it works by inducing antibodies to bind to the cocaine in the body and prevent it from doing anything, so druggies realize it's pointless to take any. Pretty interesting.
Next up, after I get through the weekend's podcasts, is Nation by Terry Pratchett, which I just discovered my library has as an audiobook. I don't know what it's about, but it's by Terry Pratchett, and narrated by Stephen Briggs, so it has to be good.
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October 17th, 2009
| 03:54 pm - The Harvest
As I mentioned a while ago (or rather, a week ago, but it seems like a while), I have pictures, and I'm finally getting around to showing them.
These are from last Friday, when we harvested everything not frost-tolerant because hardly any night this week was above freezing. We even got snow yesterday! It was so pretty, with the leaves still on the snow-covered trees. My dang camera was out of dang charged batteries though, dangit. That frustrates me.
Anyway.
That's most of the winter squash... there are a few smaller delicata squashes in the box to the right. The big yellow-green things are spaghetti, the butternut-shaped ones are butternut, the oblong stripey ones are delicata (I think), and the weird orange-striped one with green at the bottom is um... I'm not sure, maybe carnival. Squash was so weird this year. Both the delicatas and the carnival were designated as "mini-butternuts" by our garden partner, who gave us the seedlings. I'm not sure if she was mislead, or what. The small green zucchini-like one is also a spaghetti, but an immature one on our weird plant. That big orange one next to the carnival is from the same plant, but it's more mature. So... yeah. Just weirdness. Tasty though.
Tomatillos! They get so big, compared to ones in the supermarket! And tasty. I don't think we've even started on this box full yet... been using the ones we got before.
Bell peppers! A friend of ours told us that if we left partially-color-changed ones in the windowsill, they would change fully to their final color. I didn't believe her at first, but it's true! Even some of the green ones in that box have changed. And some haven't, because we ate them. Found a tasty stuffed pepper recipe.
Oh yeah, those dark ones are the purple peppers. They're purple/black on the outside and green on the inside, and I read they change to green when you cook them. We haven't tried them at all, because the one we tried before was too bitter (I think it was immature), and I'm not sure these are much better. We'll see eventually, I guess. They are pretty though.
And, finally, tomatoes:
Top: Our kitchen table, full of tomatoes. Romas at top, a pan of cherries, and then early girls. Oh, and some more tomatillos. And a box of cookies. Etc.
Middle: A bag full of mostly cherry tomatoes. Note: We have since discovered that bags are not the best way to store tomatoes for the long term XD Ohh that was gross.
Bottom: A bunch more early girls. So shiny!
So that's pretty much our harvest. We still have to harvest Swiss chard, kale, and parsnips (and thyme, I guess), but so far I've calculated we've made more than $600 profit, even beyond the stuff we had to buy for the garden. Well worthwhile, I'd say. The most profitable plant was cherry tomatoes, though we might have exaggerated their value a bit, but even if they were worth as little as the romas, we've still made at least $500. Hm, I wonder if it was worth it hourly... maybe like $4 an hour XD Oh well. It was fun and good exercise too. And vitamin D!
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October 15th, 2009
 | 11:21 pm - Science News Item: Spiders!
Did anyone not hear about the discovery of vegetarian spiders? It sounds so awesome! That's probably my favorite type of spider now. Not that I had a favorite before. Also, they're named after a panther.
I tried to modify the itsy-bitsy spider song for it, with limited success:
The vegetarian spider went up the acacia sprout,
Down came the ants to try to drive the spider out...
That's as far as I got.
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October 14th, 2009
| 06:17 pm - Photography Feature, October 14th
Click for larger image and description and such.
Dark Sky, Bright Land
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October 13th, 2009
| 08:13 am - Photography Feature, October 13th
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Projector Beam
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October 12th, 2009
| 12:38 pm - Photography Feature, October 12th
Click for larger image and description and such.
Ninety Degrees
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| 12:24 pm - The Flu and Its Vaccine
Buh, I'm getting sick of all the misinformation everywhere about the 2009 H1N1 flu (swine flu) and its vaccine. Getting sick? Flu? Teehee.
First the facts:
-2009 H1N1 flu is not especially dangerous.
-It passes from person to person easily, but the symptoms are usually mild.
-People over 60 are more resistant than younger people, because they've been exposed to a similar strain earlier in life.
-Conversely, younger people are less resistant, but that doesn't mean their symptoms will be especially bad, just that they're more likely to catch it.
( Now for mythbusting: )
I guess that's all I can think of for now. Feel free to ask me any questions or point out any corrections or things I missed!
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October 11th, 2009
| 07:20 pm - Oh, one more thing.
There's this patch of grass on a street near us where we always look to see if there are any shaggy manes when the weather gets cold. So on the way home from grocery shopping today, I look, and behold! There are.
There was one decent-sized one and one small one that looked like it hadn't emerged completely from the ground. So I took the one and left the other for later, since once you pick them they dissolve into ink in a few hours.
When Roz got home from work, we decided to try our super-secret new mushroom-cooking method in which we put some flour and salt in a bowl, dip mushroom pieces in it, and then fry them. So far this method has worked with everything we've tried, including and limited to morels, shaggy parasols, and green tomatoes. We weren't sure about shaggy manes though, cos they have such a high water content, but we decided to try. Mmm what goodness resulted!
So later, Roz told me to go fetch the other 'shroom. I asked how I should go: walking? By car? I decided to ride my bike! I haven't used that thing since we got married, more than three years ago, though in high school I rode about four miles almost daily. Obviously the tires were flat, but that was quickly fixed by pumping them up.
Roz was trying to discourage me from riding, telling me to drive instead, but it was so close I thought it'd be more fun to ride, just for the heck of it.
My bike is like, stuck in highest gear (or rather, second-to-highest; occasionally it does go to highest), which is how I like it, but I quickly discovered that my bike-fu is weak! I got very tired, and the cold air was hurting my throat and ears, but I kept going. I think it didn't take that long for me to get there and back. When I got to the grass patch, I walked around a bit and found another cluster of shaggy manes, which made the biking all worth it.
I was dead tired when I got home. I felt like I had the 2009 H1N1 flu again: my head hurt and was spinning, my nose was running like mad, I was coughing, I felt cold and sweaty and hot at the same time, and um... yeah that's about it. After lying down for a little while though, I felt better, and eventually I recovered. Faster than I did from the flu, anyway. Otherwise I'd be worried.
So yeah, I'm out of bike-shape. Or maybe I just pushed myself too hard and lost my judgment of biking temperatures. It was pretty fun though.
Eventually Roz admitted that it had been worth it to bike, when we started cooking the manes. She wanted to try something different, so this time, in addition to the flour and salt coating, we squeezed the extra moisture out of them and then added some lemon zest and fresh thyme when cooking. They were pretty good! Hooray for awesome mushrooms.
WARNING: Always make sure you know exactly what you're eating when trying wild foods. You could die!
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| 06:49 pm - Photography Feature, October 11th
Click for larger image and description and such.
Has Spine?
Man, it's been a while. More than a month. I have several now though.
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| 04:25 pm - Stuff and things
Man, can I remember everything that's been happening?
I guess first, most of our garden is over, since it's going to freeze this weekend. So on Friday, in the short space when it wasn't raining (lunchtime), I got the car and picked up Roz and two of our labmates, and we went to pick everything whether it was ready or not.
We got big boxes full of squash, tomatillos, and peppers, and large reusable-type grocery bags of every kind of tomato. Also a few beans. And a snow pea. Heh. A lot of it is still sitting in boxes and bags, since we don't have more room on our table to pile up tomatoes XD I ought to take pictures, really. Look for that.
The end-of-garden-party-goers were paid in produce, of course.
Now all that's left is Swiss chard, kale, snow peas, and parsnips. They're all cold-tolerant, and I think parsnips are actually better after freezing. They'll stay in until we have to move out of our plot, which is probably the last Sunday of October. That'll be exciting, digging them up.
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Recently I sent in a question to the Naked Scientists, a British science radio show/podcast. They emailed me back to ask if they could call and record me asking the question so they could answer it on the air! Excited, I said yes, but the allotted time has passed, according to my calculations, and they haven't called :( Oh well. I guess it's not really something I could put on my resumé.
Here's my question: If an astronaut were in space and he or she had a flashlight (I would say "torch" for the interview ;D) powerful enough to propel him, should he point it toward himself or away?
Hopefully they'll still answer the question, because I'm still curious. Look for the podcast this Tuesday!
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Tomorrow is the last day of Sukkot! We've been sleeping in our sukkah all week (in our bedroom, since we can't make it outside), and Frisky has come to appreciate it, since we make it warm. She likes to sleep inside when we're not there. So one night I brought her into the bedroom and put her on the bed while I took my shower, but then when I got out I discovered she was on my side of the sukkah XD
So I moved her out, lay down, and went to sleep. I think one of my dreams involved my being unable to move my head, and when I woke up I realized it was reality: Frisky was lying on top of my hair, on my pillow XD I moved her off, but I thought it was cute so I let her stay on the pillow. Of course she started purring (loudly), but eventually she and I went back to sleep.
Throughout the night I woke up to her on my pillow, tried to find a comfortable spot, and causing her to purr XD I didn't sleep well, but... it was cute XD I wanted to take a picture. Near getting-up time, Roz got up for the bathroom, and I put Frisky on her pillow instead XD I was like, "I've had to deal with this all night!"
Strangely, that hasn't happened since that night. Not that I would've tolerated it anyway. Enough is enough cuteness.
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October 8th, 2009
| 09:50 pm - 41st: Aiming for 50
Well, today I finished Free: The Future of a Radical Price. It was pretty interesting for something like an economics book... made me think about the value of things, and I'm sure it could be useful for someone wanting to have a business.
After that, I read Red Shadows, by Robert E. Howard, the guy who wrote Conan the Barbarian, apparently. I had no expectations going in, but as soon as the main character said, "Flames of Hades!," I knew it was going to be bad. And it was, hilariously cheesy XD And way too short for its content. And maybe kinda racist too o.o Good for a laugh though, I guess.
Now I'm on The Book of Tea, by Okakura Kakuzo. I dunno what I was expecting, if anything, but it's quite interesting.
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September 14th, 2009
| 11:08 pm - Basil and Mushrooms
So what do those two have in common?
Um.
Not much, I guess. But anyway.
Sunday we cut down most of our seven remaining basil plants, for two reasons: 1) it's getting cold, so they might die, and 2) there's some weird fungus that seems to be attacking them. One had white fuzzies on its stem. Bluuurg.
But they were mad bushy, so I was like, "I'ma make a half gallon of pesto." Enough to last forever. So I stayed up till 2am last night washing it all... not fun, but at least I got through a bunch of audio. Ended up with exactly a half gallon of leaves, but I didn't have the energy to make the pesto until tonight, but I did it, and it turned out well.
We ate some for dinner (with pasta, of course), and the remainder mostly filled a 32-oz yogurt container. Sweet! So that's the end of the basil for this year, unless the few leaves I left on the plants are enough for them to recover, which would be hilarious and awesome. Given enough time and not-fungus though, I'm sure they would do it. Basil is strong.
Now for mushrooms. While hauling the laundry across the lawn, I suddenly exclaimed to Roz, "Whoa!" or something. I don't remember what I said. It doesn't matter. Under one of the big bush/tree things, there were lots of big white mushrooms! They looked so good. So Roz looked them up, and it turns out they're Chlorophyllum rhacodes.
Once we had confirmed this identification, I sneaked out and gathered up the rest of them. I didn't have to sneak, but it sure felt like it because it was dark and I had a flashlight and was crouching under a bush gathering stuff into a box. But we sure got a lot!
More than any other kind of mushroom we've tried to eat! And they're so pristine-looking! It was too late to cook any tonight, but tomorrow we're gonna try a little, to make sure we're not part of the unlucky group of people who are very allergic to them. Then, once my mom's dehydrator gets here, we can preserve them for later! Man. What fun.
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September 11th, 2009
| 10:59 pm - Excitement excitement excitement
Roz and I are advancing in our canning-fu training! Today's lesson was in pasta sauce.
The recipe I found online called for 20 lbs of tomatoes, but since that seemed like it might be almost our whole harvest this year so far, I decided to reduce it to 15 lbs. Later I discovered that every tomato increased the time I had to spend by a significant amount, so I got Roz to reduce it by five pounds, so we ended up halving the recipe, and ended up with 3 pints. Not 3.5, which would've been half of the recipe. But I've learned that's normal: every recipe I've tried so far has left me with one empty jar, for some reason. I guess it's better than extra stuff with no jar for it.
I learned that it's surprisingly easy to skin tomatoes, and that tomatoes are a lot juicier than I thought, and that our roma tomatoes actually are really good for sauce compared to the others. Still, it took a while to squeeze the juice out of all of them, and I ended up with almost a quart of super-tasty tomato juice! How exciting.
We pressure-canned them since we didn't want to add acid, and it seemed to go straight by the book. I have yet to test the seals though.
I'm not sure the three pints are worth the effort (I started around 1:45 and finished around 8), though the tomato juice bonus certainly helps. We'll see how good the sauce is, but lots of salsa might be a better use of our time and tomatoes. It was a good lesson in pressure though, anyway.
I also threw some halved cherry tomatoes in a warm oven for a while, and they're pretty tasty too.
Exciting!
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankhappy.gif) excited
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September 6th, 2009
| 03:57 pm - Production
Current count of garden earnings: $18 profit! We've recouped all costs, disposable and durable. It was all worth it!
Also, my mom came to visit this weekend, and she and I broke out the canner and made some salsa verde! It used a small fraction of our tomatillos. But it worked! Awesome. Here's the recipe.
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September 2nd, 2009
| 07:53 am - Hard drive trouble
Man, I would really like one of those carbon nanotube hard drives that lasts like a billion years right now :/ How does everyone deal with the problem of preserving your data?
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/niaha/kitty/ankangry.gif) frustrated
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September 1st, 2009
 | 08:03 am
Ever curious about what would happen in a zombie attack? Some mathematicians were.
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August 27th, 2009
| 11:21 pm - Swiss Deli-chard! (pronounced like "delicious"), not like "deli")
I'm proud of myself today: I made a tasty recipe from scratch :D
We have a lot of Swiss chard and kale in the fridge... yesterday we made soup that used 4 cups of kale, and that was about 1/4 of what we had -.- And then there are three stuffed bags of chard. So, inspired by a coworker's use of the vegetable, I decided to try something.
So here's the recipe. It's rather vague, as recipes probably tend to start out, but it shouldn't be too hard.
Deli-chard
1 Tbsp. minced garlic
Splash of olive oil
2 medium tomatoes (maybe 5 oz each?), chopped
Splash of balsamic vinegar
2 cups chopped fresh Swiss chard
Maybe about 15 leaves fresh (or frozen) basil
Sauté garlic in oil until it's nice and sautéed. Or fragrant, maybe.
Add tomatoes and cook a little while. Add vinegar and heat through.
Add chard and basil, and cook until wilted.
Serve and enjoy!
It's probably not something most children would like, but Roz and I found it quite good. She says she likes it better than what we had been doing before (like an Asian-style stir-fry).
Still have to figure out what to do with the stems though :/
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| 05:55 pm - Zucchini
Yay, we got a zucchini! Looks like we might get some more too. Now the question is, what to do with them?
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| 05:41 pm - 36 and a half
I finished No Thoroughfare. What a good story that was! Such interesting and quirky characters. And the reader was incredible! He could be professional.
Now I am set to finish Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind, which Roz and I got halfway through on our way to and from Kentucky. I've read it before, but it was back in like, middle school, so I only remember big vague things that happen. I'm not sure if I'll continue the series after I finish this book, or whether I'll wait till Roz and I go on another trip so we have something to listen to then.
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August 26th, 2009
 | 09:02 pm - I just realized something.
What if the zombie uprising happens in winter?
I figure, since zombies are dead and all, that they wouldn't have much internal heat, so they would probably just freeze in place any time they ventured outside. At least in places with temperatures below freezing.
That's one argument for why we should fight global warming, I guess.
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August 25th, 2009
| 11:06 pm - Pickle Recipes
If anyone has any time-tested and tasty pickle recipes, I would appreciate them! I have one for mustard pickles from my grandmother, but I don't think Roz would like it.
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| 11:05 pm - Great Feeling
The other day, when I was shopping for groceries, I started to head into the produce section of the store and then realized that I didn't need any produce... and not because I wouldn't be cooking with produce this week! What an awesome feeling that is.
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August 22nd, 2009
| 03:13 pm - Photography Feature, August 22nd
Click for larger image and description and such.
Don't Forget Me!
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August 21st, 2009
| 09:05 pm - Photography Feature, August 21st
Click for larger image and description and such.
Spotty
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August 20th, 2009
| 09:31 pm - Sundry Curiosities
I would say that at least half of the good one gets from gardening is in things other than the stuff one harvests: exercise, sun, fresh air, and the discovery of interesting things about nature.
Speaking of interesting things, here are a few:
About half our pepper plants are from a seed pack in which we don't know what color the mature peppers will be. They could be red, yellow, orange, white ("diamond"), or purple. Here's one plant that's possibly a purple pepper plant:
I wonder what the other peppers will be like! Right now they're all green.
We have a bunch of winter squash plants, supposedly of three varieties: butternut, mini-butternut, and spaghetti. However, two of these three have at least two kinds of fruit each.
For example, most of the mini-butternut plants have this kind of fruit:
Oblong, whitish (and now with dark spots, I think).
One plant, however, has this:
It's bright yellow and shaped way differently, and looks like an acorn maybe. We're like, "where did our garden partner get these weird plants!"
Of course, our spaghetti plants seem weird too. I showed our first fruit earlier:
It looks zucchini-like. But the rest of our plants have a different kind of fruit:
It's kind of solid-color light green-yellow. Quite strange. Hopefully they'll both taste good though.
In the category of gardening neighbors doing strange things, here's a picture:
Yes, that's basil. In a tomato cage. Flowering everywhere. I feel like it might be appropriate to say, "You're doing it wrong."
End gardening update.
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| 05:44 pm - Photography Feature, August 20th
Click for larger image and description and such.
Field of Sage
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| 12:38 am - Post-Vacation
All week while we were visiting Roz's family (which was fun, by the way), I was worried about what was happening with the garden. So much can happen in a week XD Little did I know.
We had "hired" a friend (with produce) to watch it, so it wouldn't be too bad...
When we finally got back, we nearly went straight there.
( Damage report )
( Good things )
( Sandwich news )
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August 18th, 2009
| 04:22 pm - Discovery
Saw this around campus recently. I guess this is how Google gets their street view pictures!
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August 15th, 2009
| 11:46 pm - Dating 101: Reviving Your Relationship
Last night, I received an email with the above subject from the Nigeria National Petlouem (Petroleum, I guess) Corporation.
( The email read (or didn't, as the case may prove) as follows: )
I thought it best to reply immediately. ( So I wrote out the following: )
I think that should revive our relationship sufficiently.
Current Mood: amused
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August 6th, 2009
| 08:20 pm - 35 and counting
I finished Around the World in 80 Days. It might've been better than the other Verne books I've read, possibly because he didn't have to try to make up science much. Or maybe I liked the characters more. I dunno, something.
Then I read Frenzied Fiction by Stephen Leacock, a Canadian humorist or something. That was good stuff. Some was just ridiculous, some was sharp social satire. It was pretty interesting to see what people made fun of almost one hundred years ago... WWI was mentioned, and Prohibition.
After that was Legend Land, a short collection of fairy tales from the British Isles that seemed sorta like a tour guide: each story was followed by a description of how beautiful was the land in which the story took place, and it did sorta make me want to visit, to see all those natural landmarks the fairy tales try to explain.
Now I'm on to No Thoroughfare, by Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, which seems to be a play but reads pretty much like prose. It's shorter than most of Dickens' novels, though, I guess.
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August 5th, 2009
| 12:58 am - August!
Monthly garden update! In relatively alphabetical order this time. With some special features.
( Potential Bandwidth Threat Ahead. If you have dial-up. )
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August 4th, 2009
| 04:25 pm
Man, someone should figure out what really causes autism. :/
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August 3rd, 2009
| 04:17 pm - :O
I just discovered that "I'm still not entirely sure what this is. But I'll eat it anyway!" is a perfectly rational thing to say in certain contexts!
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July 30th, 2009
| 04:25 pm - Pollyanna Grows Up
Grows up is right! At first it seemed like she wouldn't but then suddenly she went from 13 to 20. At least, she got older... I dunno if she got more mature, though she probably did get less innocent. There was a lot of romance stuff at the end too, which isn't bad, I guess. Not a bad book, overall.
Next is The Life of P.T. Barnum, by Joel Benton, just... because.
Edit: Okay, that was a short book. Next is Around the World in 80 Days. That should be entertaining, as usual for Verne.
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July 28th, 2009
| 02:17 pm - Photography Feature, July 28th
Click for larger image and description and such.
Troublesome Pest
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July 27th, 2009
| 08:52 pm - Photography Feature, July 27th
Click for larger image and description and such.
Beginning of a Bean
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| 01:35 am - Flashes in the Northern Sky
When I went out to do laundry tonight, I noticed the sky was flashing. It was fascinating. Since I couldn't take pictures, as my camera seems to be perpetually out of batteries, I'll just have to describe it.
From the north and west, every two to five seconds, came flashes of white light, illuminating some clouds and silhouetting others. It did not seem like lightning, as the air remained silent, but the flashes continued with amazing frequency. Some came from the west, and some from the north; at times it seemed that there was a conversation held between them, as one would flash and the other respond soon after. In a pause in the dialogue, a shooting star streaked across the sky above.
As I stood and watched (mosquitoes whining around my ears), I began to hear the faint rumblings. One by one, the approaching clouds obscured the stars. An airplane came circling in for a landing at the nearby airport, its headlights projecting twin beams onto the mist. It seemed to come out of one flashing sky and head toward the other, as if it were an old-fashioned messenger in an age of optical communication.
Eventually I returned to my home, but the flashes followed, piercing the blinds with light and a crash of thunder. The roar of heavy rain followed soon after, with more crashes, but soon all was gone, leaving an empty, dark sky.
Well, I hope that gives you some impression of what it was like. Maybe I'll have to start charging my batteries more often so I won't have to miss chances like this so much.
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July 19th, 2009
| 11:40 pm - What Happened Today
Huh, what did happen today...
Oh yeah. Garden stuff. What a surprise.
It was Get Rid of Weeds Weekend or whatever, so people were out with weed whackers all over the place. Or at least a few places. Now the path to our plot is nice and clear!
I felt like getting rid of weeds too, so I took a hoe to those on the west side of our plot. To the surprise of Roz and me, this activity sent a tiny squeaky thing scurrying into our plot, to hide under some row cover. Distressed at the possibility of it snacking on our plants, we hunted it out to take it somewhere far away from our plot.
I got a picture:
Anyone have a guess what it is? Roz guessed baby shrew.
Well, I continued hoeing and found a couple more. But only one entered the plot and was caught. The other disappeared somewhere. Oh well. I cleared out the weeds so they wouldn't hide there anymore. I hope they don't become a problem... so far we haven't had much problem with critters, except maybe birds pecking holes in our swiss chard. Speaking of birds:
A robin made a nest on our neighbor's pea trellis. So random XD
Speaking of peas, we decided to remove our snow pea plants finally today. They all looked like they were dying and stuff, so we just pulled them up. It was weird... they were all brown and shriveled at the bottom. Maybe that's normal for peas this late in the summer; we're not sure. Either that or they had some plague. Though it looks like everyone else's peas are doing the same thing, so it can't be just where we planted them. But we tore them up, and then planted some more in a different part of the garden, so we can keep having delicious snow peas. Mmmm. Not sure what we'll put in their original place. Maybe kohlrabi! Mmmmm.
We have been going to the plot most daily to keep the late blight under control, but we didn't go yesterday. It felt like we hadn't been there in so long XD We were like, "what will have happened!" But not much had.
-Our squash is getting bigger and more awesome
-The plant whose vine got bored is doing fine, fortunately
-The cabbage worms or whatever on the kale are doing more damage, but I think we'll get them under control
-We're not seeing any more late blight on the tomatoes anymore! This is awesome.
-The tomatillos are growing fruit like crazy. It's going to be crazy tomatillo madness soon.
-Lots of other stuff! But I don't want to describe it all, so I'll probably just take some more pictures soon.
Roz (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sontres) is looking into a lot of possible awesome weird plants to grow next year. It'll be awesome! She's been posting about them, but only a few people can see the posts. If you want to see them, add her or send a message or comment or something! Cos it's interesting.
Tonight for dinner we made up one of the awesome stir-fries with almost only garden stuff. Lots and lots of swiss chard leaves, a bunch of kale, and then snow peas and chard stems separately. We even had leftovers o.O Then we had pasta with sauce, which we didn't make or grow, but we put in seitan that I made and fresh basil that we grew. Tasty! Gardening really is great.
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July 17th, 2009
| 11:03 pm - Pollyanna
Well, I finished Pollyanna today. Man, that was a good book. Better than I expected. It was almost too sweet at points, though not quite. The rest of the time, it alternated between really funny and really touching... I guess about what I would expect when a bunch of grumpy adults meet with a mature, innocent child, the kind that I call an angel-child. But for once, the angel-child doesn't die :O And there's a sequel in which she purportedly grows up! So I'm listening to that next.
Anyway, I recommend it. The only problem is that the narrator, who is generally good, is not good at acting grumpy/cross.
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July 16th, 2009
| 10:35 pm - Two Items on the Agenda
I guess I've learned one thing from being in a community garden plot: if a pest or disease exists for a given plant, it will show up in your garden. It's mostly true, anyway. On the other hand, good bugs like bees and ladybugs are quite present too! And probably good fungi, though they're not as visible, usually.
For the past few days, we've been finding just about no late blight on our tomatoes, so I reluctantly conclude that we're safe. Safe :D On the other hand, the bad bugs seem to be increasing. Examples:
-One of our spaghetti squash plants got vine borer larvae in it. They dig into the stem and hollow it out, killing the whole plant sometimes. It's especially bad since we built a trellis for our vines, so if they lose that one stem they have no other roots. Fortunately I think we caught it in time; I removed the larvae, packed dirt around the hole so it can make new roots, and the plant seems to be doing just fine.
-I had been noticing that our kale leaves were getting lots of little holes all over it, but I didn't think I could identify a cause, so I didn't investigate. However, when we were harvesting it today, Roz noticed a bunch of little green caterpillars on the underside :/ Culprit identified! It is diamondback moth larvae. They're supposed to be the most destructive of the mustard pests, but they haven't really done much damage to our plants, so it's good.
Overall feeling: Positive!
Secondly, ...oh yeah. When Roz and I go on trips to visit family, we've begun to like listening to audiobooks while driving. However, since our audiobooks are in digital format and I don't want to use up lots of CDs burning them to disk, and our car doesn't have an aux jack, we can't easily put them on the car speakers. We did have a workaround by getting a car-outlet-to-building-type-outlet adapter thing (like this), into which we could plug some computer speakers, but it still wasn't loud enough sometimes and it's kinda inconvenient.
So I was like, "I know!" And I went to dealextreme.com and ordered another headphone extension cable and an audio cable splitter, so we can just each plug our headphones into the mp3 player with plenty of cable length for both of us. Bam! Problem solved. And it's only like $3 :O I like dealextreme.com.
Overall feeling: Positive! Of course.
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July 15th, 2009
| 05:30 pm - Victory!
The pickled watermelon turned out to be a success! After I finished, I wasn't sure what to think of it... it wasn't what I expected. It reminded me of dried pineapple; more like candy than pickles. So I wasn't sure I had done it right. But then I gave some to some of Roz's Hebrew students, and one of them had had it before, and she said it was good! So I was happy. Roz liked it too. I don't plan to make much more of it, at least not until we run out of this. Maybe if we ever grow our own watermelons. Anyway, it's cool.
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July 14th, 2009
| 10:59 pm - From the Archives
I didn't realize how much fun chat bots could be.
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July 13th, 2009
| 11:52 pm - Virga
Well, I finished Sun of Suns, and I counted that it's my 29th book for the year. It was a pretty good book. I might want to read the sequel sometime.
( Sun of Suns review )
So I guess after I'm caught up with science podcasts, I'll listen to Pollyanna.
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