Business productivity notice

also from TiaMaria

How to increase productivity

your email of the day from TiaMaria

Facebook take two

Cracked speculates on what do the in boxes/facebooks of your favorite movie bad guy/gal look like...

Recipe of the day

In between the political commentary and the meditations on the meaning of Lent, the Anchoress has posted the recipe for Irish Soda Bread...

YUM.

4 c sifted flour
1 1/2 tsps baking soda
1 tsp salt
3/4 c sugar
1 c raisins
2 tblspns melted butter
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups buttermilk

Mix dry ingredients. Mix butter, eggs and buttermilk. Stir into dry ingredients. Use a 2 qt pan (like a pyrex) because it works the best. Back at 350 degrees for 1.25 hours.

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Attention Virgil Fans

Virgil now is on facebook...

actually, someone has made a fake facebook page...hit LINK and then click image to enlarge...

and if you are really interested in the Aeneid, Stanford has lectures podcast at LINK

(headsup NotCot)

Clues for the clueless

Dustbury writes that Meno's ACE Hardware doorstops include instructions:

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Insert by wedging under bottom of door.

Craft item of the day

crochet a flower sweater for your poochie.


Hmm...somehow I don't think Puti, our killer watchdog, would let me put it on him...

(free registration required for link)

Gift Item of the day

a solar electric toothbrush...





it replaces the eco friendly twig that you are probably using...

(HeadsupWebecoist)

Headlines below the fold

Philip Jose Farmer has died...
He wrote the Riverworld series.

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BrainTwister is now on line at LibriVox...

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The latest enemy of the green zealots: soft toilet paper.
Well, that will solve the flushing problem of those low flow toilets...

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And attention Ubuntu/Linux fans:

Coming soon: Karmic Koala...

Books on line

the ebook download of the day is Rogers-isms: The Cowboy Philosopher on the (versailles) Peace Conference

(headsup Design of a violent century blog)
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SFRA has on line a Digital book on the Teaching stories of Ursala LeGuin....
I like LeGuin, but the book looks a bit above my head...

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Did I mention that CSpan's Book TV now has excerpts on Youtube?

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EScholarship has some of their books on line to read for free...'I've read a few...some are boring, but some are fascinating...

Firefly!

according to Gizmodo, a new "node" on the International space station will be named Serenity...

and no, NASA probably won't allow a professional comfort woman on board.

Greenpeace says no to Nuclear power

the power plant is obsolete and needs a lot of fixing...

and the local Catholic bishop thinks it's just another way for all the local politicians to get rich on kickbacks...

Signs that the Apocolypse is nigh

Famous photographer has to pawn her photos for ten million UKpounds to pay off her mortgage....
Poor dear....next thing you know, she'll have to sell a mansion or two and live in a mobile home park.

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ExKKKSenator calls Obama on power grab.
Subtle issue: Presidential assistants can keep their work secret from Congress, and Obama is essentially appointing assistants instead of cabinet members.
......................
Zimbabwe is so broke that they can't pay their football players...
But don't worry...Mugabe still has 500thousand dollars to spend on his birthday party.

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Sigh. Fifty years of feminism and it's still okay to beat up your girlfriend...
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Treatment Guidelines are based on flimsy evidence...well, duh most docs already know that...
which is why I wrote the "headsup" on the stimulus package that could mandate using guidelines.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
And Dilbert says it all:

headsup Instapundit)

EDSA 25th anniversary

Science headlines below the fold

Will Dark Energy block the signal from the Big Bang?

"Nothing can move through space faster than the speed of light, but space can do whatever the hell it wants as far as we know," says Arizona State University cosmologist Professor Lawrence Krauss.

Even without dark energy, there are regions of space moving away from us faster than the speed of light, he says."

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Mercury pollution treaty proposed...

Wait till they have to figure out what to do with all those "low energy lightbulbs"..
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Chemical in Chinese pigs sickens 70...

Here in the Philippines, the human Ebola Reston count is six, none sick, but they are planning to kill 6000 pigs in Bulacan to stop the spread of the disease.

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Sextuplets mom dies of PPH in Nigeria...
Sigh...

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The Two Tailed Green comet is coming...
And the college student who discovered it has a blog HERE.

__________________
Another video lecture site...link
(Headsup SavageMindsblog)

Headlines below the fold

I have three rants on BNN:

One about a rich media mogul who killed his wife

One about teaching Spanish to Spanish speaking kids in California.

One about cuddly killer Chimps.
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Travel link of the day

AbuFaresBlog rides his motorcycle through the foothills of Syria to visit the home town of actor Ghassan Massoud...best known for his role in Pirates of the Caribbean...

Economy Phooey

I rarely listen to the snarky brits on CNN International (they even rehired the pervert...go figure...can't watch him without thinking of his leash) so I"m not sure what is going on in Wall Street.

But the BBC commentators have been very sceptical of Obama's cash spending spree.

In the meanwhile, what's this about teaparties?

Reminds me of Levittown: When it opened in the 1950's, my parents wondered if they should sell the house (paid for) and buy a new home, getting a huge mortgage. They decided to stay put and live within their means. Our cousin bought the house, and ended up losing it, meaning he had to live in rental housing.

Under Obama, sounds like he'd get his mortgage paid for.

Sounds like the same thing happening now...
the PC version of the Ants and the Grasshopper...
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In contrast, the Economist notes that half of the world is now Middle Class...

Attention Carjackers

Don't forget to wear asbestos boots...

Invention is one of the winners of the annual IgNoble Prize.

another favorite is the scientist who calculated the rate of foam dissapearence from a glass of beer...

Headlines below the fold

NYTimes is shocked, shocked that the Pope appointed a Catholic to be bishop for NYcity...
GetReligion Blog does a "fisking"....

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Media Mogul kills wife....One would expect 24/7 coverage a la Chandra Levy...but the story disappeared...
NOW protests...

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Captain Kirk for PM of Canada!

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What poor people do when they find a rare bird

they eat it of course


rare Fiippine quail was photographed at a northern Luzon palenke before it was sold and presumably eaten.

How to solve the energy crisis

Hamsters in Jackets...
Dr Zhong Lin Wang of Georgia University's Nano Research Group developed the flexible jackets, which are fitted with wires plugged into a nanogenerator that produces energy when they are bent and stretched.

In tests one hamster named Campbell's Dwarf produced small amounts of AC power – around one twentieth of the output of an AA battery.

Although it would take 1,000 hamsters to generate enough energy to power a mobile phone, Dr Wang said the technology could have practical applications when applied to larger animals and humans.

yeah, all you need is lots of slaves to do this...

Music interlude of the day

turn up speakers and try not to cry...

Stuff below the fold

HNN says 2009 is not 1929 but 1909...LINK

Myself, I think it's 1977 and am waiting for the inflation to eat up my savings just like it did when Jimmy was in charge
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First Things has an essay on Susan Pevensie...LINK

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More classic scifi stories at Librivox...

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O'Reilly's on the net!
No, not the loud mouth Fox guy....
and if you don't know who I mean, you're not a geek...
(HeadsupMakeBlog)
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And beware the Cybugs...

the bug can eat it's own food and use that energy to fly, but be steered by the computer chip in it's brain...

so watch what you say when there are bugs around...

Lenten podcast

Daily prayer of the Catholic church at link...

MP3 downloads available by RSS...

after all, lent is coming, and it makes more sense than giving up candy..

Tolkienon line

New lecture on line HERE, mp3 and also video if you have a connection that doesn't go off and on...

and WETA has a new website HERE
and yes, they have a podcast too...

(headsup TheOneRingNet)

Family news

They are fixing the electric lines in this area, so we've been without telephone or internet for half a week...also hot season with periodic brownouts.

We are all well...bit conference here tomorrow...all Evangelicals so I'll have to watch my language...and of course watch George the killer dog...

Headlines below the fold

Hmm...Israel's covert war against Iran?

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Brain tumor from embryonic stem cells...
a real worry that has gotten little publicity...the more they divide, the higher the risk of mutations...and then there is the the Hayflick limit...

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ET Call Home...
hundreds of billions of earth like planets in our galaxy...

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India offers to evacuate Tamil civilians caught in SriLanka civil war...a very nasty war that has been ignored by the press since it wasn't Bush's fault...

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But Obama is busy dissing the Philippines...lots of talk about this on the local news shows

Musical interlude for today

Education headsup of the day

How to count cards to win at Blackjack...

Family news

Slow in blogging because of the heat and also because I've been housecleaning.

Chano is busy with business meetings and trade fairs.

LOL post of the day

more animals

Yes, it's that time of the month

Actually it's a Promachoteuthis Sulcus...

via DRBBLOG

Music interlude of the day

put on your clogs and dance!

Headlines below the fold

Tapping a brother as health care advisor?
Actually Dr. Emmanuel is a well known ethicist and is well qualified for the post.

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They're talking about reopening the notorious graft ridden Bataan Nuclear power plant...the local bishop wonders if a lot of money to refit the plant will disappear into politician's pockets..
and then there is the problem of being on a major earthquake faultline...

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I know they're around here somewhere...Los Alamos laboratory personnel have mislayed 70 computers.
Well, that makes me feel safe...
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The Sky is falling!
When even the NYTimes is printing apocolyptic stories about the "depression" you know it's time to worry...
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WWII Philippine veterans pension in the "stimulus" package: A one time payment....$9000 for Pinoys and $15000 for the Pinoys who became American citizens..."

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and the headline of the day:

Eccentric Exoplanet Gets Hot Flashes

What neuroscientists do in their spare time

Karen Norberg, a research instructor in psychiatry at Washington University in St. Louis, spent a year crafting the brain ....A "semi-professional artist," Norberg got the idea while working on another knitting project whose ruffles "reminded me of the cerebral cortex," the thinking part of the brain...
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more examples at The Museum of Scientifically Accurate Fabric Brain Art

and don't miss their "sistersite" of scientifically accurate wooden brains...


(headsup LionBrandBlog)

Milton

When I was in school, we studied Milton's Paradise Lost, and I was bored and thought Milton didn't like women.

But now I'm trying to get through the YALE podcast course on Milton...by Professor John Rogers...
Don't know if I "like" Milton as a person, but Milton's place in literature and history are interesting...and it will probably take me awhile to digest the lectures.

More HERE and HERE

what got me into the subject was not that it's Milton's 400th anniversary, but because I downloaded a torrent of the BBC radio program on the original Frankenstein story...and Mary Shelley's book has a lot of Milton parallels...her stepmother actually republished the book, so she was familiar with the story of a creature rejecting his maker...

Angels without wings

Not all Angels have wings...this is a Coast Guard helicopter, but the same thing could be said for all the EMT helicopters who evacuate critical patients to the hospital.

viaBlackfive

AIRPLANE!

Saks might be selling suits for $7000 dollars, but thanks to AIRPLANE!, Penneys will go down in history.

Stuff that makes you go WTF

Friday the 13th cartoon series at SavageChickens...



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Via HellokittyHell:
HelloKittyMac Makeup video...

Just count the Freudian references, guys...

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Scientists explain why men like "sloppy kisses":

"What they might be doing is trying to pick up the estrogen cycle in a woman to figure out the degree of her fertility."

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Now that the Neanderthal genome has been discovered, Someone wants to bring a Neanderthal back to life...

Heh...he'd probably fit right in...




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Tight Clothing Budget now that there is a recession?
Saks is having a sale: Suits only $7000...

Come and get it!

from the UKTelegraph

Location: Everglades National Park, Florida

Spotted by: Alan Barry

Gift item of the day

A Smokey Bear Pendleton blanket, designed to honor the Mescalero Apache firefighters...

Inspired by an organized crew of Mescalero Apache firefighters whose first assignment off the reservation was to battle the fire at Capitan Gap, New Mexico where the orphaned cub was found among the scorched trees. He became the living representation of Smokey Bear, the fire prevention symbol used by the U.S. Forest Service.

The only problem?
The design is Navajo...and Navajos and Apaches are different tribes, although there is similarity in the languages...

Stuff below the fold

Welcome to the International year of Natural Fiber...

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Iranian dissident asks Obama to help jailed dissident students..

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Happy Friday the 13th... The big "save the economy" package passed ...I'm not sure what's in it,(aside from lots of pork, of course) but then neither is anyone in congress...

Robert Reich is skeptical...as is Lamar Alexander...
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Huh? Muzak files for bankruptcy?

and StPeggy reports on the depression in NYCity...
Talbott's is closed, bummer.

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Firefighters from New Zealand arrive in Australia, with more coming from Canada and the US to help relieve overworked firefighters there...
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The latest "we're all gonna die" danger: Dark comets.

Things that make you go HUH?

Recipe/craft item of the day:

The meat ship...
Ingredients:
~20 sausages
~48 rashers of bacon
1.2kg of sausage meat
1kg of pork mince
10 franks
1kg of pastry (not 100% meat this time)
1 onion
1 mushroom
2 packets of chipolata sausages
various food colourings
sage
then go to link for instructions...

(via Dave Barry who is also blogging this week's 24...)

Craft item of the day

From NezumiworldBlog
Crochet a small rose

OKLAHOMA HIT AGAIN

• 
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• AP
• AP
• AP
• AP
• AP
• AP
• AP
• AP
• AP

• APPHOTO: A firefighter talks on a cell phone in front of damage to the Chuck E Cheese restaurant following a storm in Oklahoma City Okla.

Tehran's anniversary of the revolution

at above link, Tehran 24 photo blog has lots of photos...a bit different from the angry young men propaganda type photos you usually see on the news.






I'm old enough to remember my Iranian friends telling me about the repression of the Shah, so in this I'm with Jimmy Carter...

Catholic post of the day

February 11 is the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, and the catholic bloggers have all sorts of links.

TeaatTrianon says the best way to learn about the reason is to read Franz Werfel's novel:

Werfel, a highly respected literary writer who was an outspoken anti-Nazi from Vienna, became a Jewish refugee who barely escaped death from the Nazis in 1940, and wrote this moving story to fulfill a promise he made to God....
As he and his wife were hiding out in the little village of Loudres while trying to escape to freedom in the USA during WWII, Werfel felt the Nazi noose tightening around them and realizing that they might well be caught and executed, he made a promise to God to write about the "song of Bernadette" that he had been deeply inspired by during their clandestine stay in Lourdes.


But InCaritateNonFictaBlog is there on a pilgrimage and has lots of photos, if you are curious...he also has Holy Land pilgrimage links.
(headsup Father Z)


There are Lourdes statues in small grottos all over the place here in the Philippines: lots of middle class people have a grotto built into their garden wall... and come to think of it I've seen grotto shrines in the US, New Mexico and Minnesota in church gardens, or on private land...

And this doesn't include the numerous statues of Mary in front of houses...don't laugh too hard at them: Our next door neighbor in PA had one, and he and his five sons were all construction workers or coal miners...

Craft item of the day

at the UKTelegraph or on the Artful Bras website...

Your recipe of the day

Because life is short, and you're gonna die anyway, so why not die happy?

Red velvet cupcakes for Valentine's day

Stuff below the fold

A lot of the violence in Afghanistan is due to drug gangs, according to StrategyPage...

Full report HERE.

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LINK is an article suggesting cheaper ways to improve feed farmed fish to improve omega 3 fats...
more HERE

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That "one in ten" statistic for infidelity is bogus: DNA researchers say it's closer to one in 25...and note that "rare" names often share DNA, whereas "common names" like Smith (which just means your ancestor worked as a blacksmith) do not.
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Nanoparticles in dietary supplements? Should we worry about them? Who knows?

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Behold, the miracle of....ALGAE?

providing food, oil, and getting rid of carbon dioxide all at the same time...

Flu alert

The big news in the influenza department is that the virus this winter is partially resistant to Tamiflu...

and the next time you hear the goverment isn't doing anything about planning, just go here...

Resources for laypeople (Mainly PDF files) can be found on this page...
there are already plans on the books to call up the reserve to treat soldiers and the National Guard to help in civilian areas.

more at the CDC website

Recipe for the day

BoingBoing tells us about making Sauerkraut...

our German nuns used to make it in the cool season when I worked in Africa...you essentially cut up the cabbage, layer it then put in salt then put in cabage, put in salt etc. and cover with a plate with a rock to put pressure on it...

in a week you have sauerkraut...

My kids hated it until I learned to put in fried onions and slices of apple to take away the tart taste...

Although I prefer the Bavarian recipe using caraway seeds.

math post take two

Headlines below the fold

Treating Multiple Sclerosis by using your own body's stem cells to regenerate a new immune system LINK

If I remember correctly, there are also similar studies for lupus and for scleroderma..
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Conservative blogger is shocked, shocked to find midwives in Texan ghettos are faking birth certificates...heck, half my farmworker patients in Idaho got papers claiming they were born there as soon as their English was good enough to fake it...and that was 30 years ago...

another conservative writer doesn't believe that jihadi recruits can be rehabilitated...
too bad, because this is done all the time, including here in the Philippines (both to MILF and NPA militia members) and the US was running prisons that did a similar retraining course in Iraq...
Of course, the problem is that if you don't clean up the neighborhood, the boys will rejoin the gang for lack of a better job, but that's another story completely...
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Ironman race is being run in Alaska...this one uses snowmobiles...
Discovery Asia has a program on the Iditarod race, that uses dogsleds...and they also run the series The Deadliest Catch...

The irony is that there are a lot of "blue collar" programs on Discovery and even Nat Geo...and of course "reality tv" has Storm stories..

So one BBC program showing prejudice in the US has to contend with reality shows, where ordinary folks get up and do their job and love their families...
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Muslim in America

There's a discussion at Pajamas media about prejudice in the US...including discussion of the elite Brit snobs at the BBC who paint a negative picture of the US.

But LINK1 and LINK2 at AlJezeerah has another point of view. Even CNN found tolerance...but if the person looked Muslim and acted suspiciously, they'd probably find a problem...

Is there prejudice in the US? Of course: try "driving while Hispanic(or black, or Indian).

but the dirty little secret is that most immigrant groups went through the same thing...and those who think it is only racial prejudice forget that the Irish, Polish, Eastern European Jews and now Hispanics are going through the same thing.

The difference is that if you work hard, and send your kids to college, they can do anything, whereas in the Philippines, or in Colombia, or in the UK, if you don't belong to the elite class, you have trouble breaking the "glass ceiling"...

Family news

The hot/dry season is here, complete with brownouts that mess up the computers...if I miss a day or two blogging, that will be the reason.

The first brownout was yesterday, and we were using the smaller back up generator, which doesn't support airconditioners...luckily it's not too hot yet.

But the modem is going on and off, as if it has a short...

Lolo is well; Chano's birthday party is this weekend, so I'll try to send photos.

Insomnia download of the day

Librivox has the audio book of the first 2000 Prime Numbers...
download and play the next time you can't sleep: It's better than counting sheep...

If you prefer the book, you can buy it for 79dollars at Amazon

or, if you prefer to read them yourself, Download 100,000 prime numbers book on your Kindle...for less than two dollars

Gift Item of the day

Chocolat, the Amigurumi baby bear and her heart cushion

right in time for for ST.Valentine's day

Headlines below the fold

My heart goes out to the Aussies who lost their homes and loved ones in the brushfires. (I lived in New Mexico the year that state had terrible fires, although our home was spared).

Blogger Tim Blair has updates.
The blame is going to the obvious ( such as not clearing out the highly flammable under brush because the greenies don't like it), to the criminal (criminals started the fires) to the "climate change" meme...and then there is the paranoid types: could it be terrorism theory.

actually, when New Mexico burnt, we were even forbidden to smoke out of doors, that's how easy it was to start a fire....and the fire that burnt down Los Alamos was started by foresters trying to burn off the underbrush to lower the larger fire danger...

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How much is 15.6 billion dollars?

So, far starters, Dilnot suggests dividing any broad-based program by 300 million to understand the individual impact. Dividing again by 52 would be the impact of any widespread program per person per week for a year.

And $15.6 billion? It represents $1 per week for each American for a year.

RickMoran has a list of all the pork in the project HERE.

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Zimbabwe has finally suspended taxing imported food...

Talk about economic cluelessness: who puts import duty on donated food when the people are starving?

Answer: Politicians who are getting rich from stealing government money...

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There are rumors that the huge "Stimulus package" will contain money for Filipino World War II veterans like Lolo.
Lolo only gets a small Filipino pension as a veteran (along with his state pensions and SS from the US), so getting more money makes me happy, but what exactly it has to do with saving the American economy I haven't the slightest idea...

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Speaking of the Philippines in World War II: Lileks has a nostalgia series on Philippine money during the war...this old newspaper clip puts it into perspective:

musical interlude for today

from Col Updraft

Monday morning wisdom of the day

If you look like your passport photo, you're too ill to travel.
-Will Kommen

I once shook hands with Pat Boone and my whole right side sobered up.
-Dean Martin

I'm not going to vacuum 'til Sears makes one you can ride on.
-Roseanne Barr

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for 30 years she served us nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
-Calvin Trillin

My grandmother was a very tough woman. She buried three husbands and two of them were just napping.
-Rita Rudner

My husband wanted one of those big-screen TV's for his birthday. So I just moved his chair closer to the one we have already.
-Wendy Liebman

I hate housework! You make the beds, you do the dishes - and six months later you have to start all over again.
-Joan Rivers

My grandmother is over eighty and still doesn't need glasses. Drinks right out of the bottle.
-Henny Youngman

Inside me there's a thin person struggling to get out, but I can usually sedate him with four or five cupcakes.
-Bob Thaves

He that falls in live with himself will have no rivals.
-Ben Franklin

I haven't spoken to my wife in years. I didn't want to interrupt her.
-Rodney Dangerfield

My doctor is wonderful. Once, when I couldn't afford an operation, he touched up the x-rays.
-Joey Bishop

your email of the day from TiaMaria

Air baloon festival at Clark

Where do old US bases go when the US goes home?

They turn into enterprise centers with businesses, resorts, airfields, and places to hold balloon festivals...The scheduled date is set for February 12 to 15 th of 2009.

helloKitty Sushi

Sushi!

bonappetit blog has sushi etiquette...



4. Bite once. Sashimi, nigiri sushi, and maki rolls should be consumed in one bite if possible. Having said that, the size of slices of fish and rolls in Japan tends to be much smaller than the super-sized stuff we get in the States. Let's just say that if you can't eat your sushi or roll in two bites, you probably shouldn't be eating it at all.

...................

and if you want to make your own sushi, go to I Make Sushi to find out how...

and no, we don't make sushi here...we only eat it at the local Teriyakiboy or other Japanese restaurants...

Design idea of the day

from Ikea hacker.

Think their furniture looks like made over crates?

Well, just decorate them with your old tablecloths or bedsheets...

actually, fifty years ago my mother covered our plastered basement walls with cloth...it was cheaper than buying wallboard and painting the irrregular surface, and to make it nicer, the cloth was on sale...

Music interlude of the day

Turn up speakers and try not to cry...

my adopted sons loved Pinochio, who is also adopted and became a true son...

When you wish upon a star

ClumbsyCookieBlog has instructions how to make a star shaped cake.

The trick? Cut a cake into six pieces and only use five of them to make the star....

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And for "cute" cakes , check out Morgana Tartas con magia..

and make your cakes and cake eaters smile...

Another day, another Tax cheat

Another Obama appointee has trouble in figuring out their income tax, leading to this cartoon...
Uh, maybe it's time to simplify the tax code?
(To non Americans: usually professionals use well paid accountants to figure out their taxes, but ordinary folks go to the clerks at H&R Block company to figure out how to fill out the very complicated forms).

The latest Health Food

PLUMS....just as good as blueberries, but cheaper.

And for the rest of the year, try Prunes...

Vegetarian Bacon

some people are vegetarian or don't eat pork for religious reasons. One can of course buy soy bacon at the store if you live in a big city. But what about the rest of us?

BaconCoUK suggests:
Marinate the tofu in tamari (Japanese soy sauce) for a few hours and then fry it in liquid smoke. You can add pepper and onions if you wish, but you definitely do need to add salt to give the tofu the bacon flavour. Fry the tofu just as you would bacon, by turning it over to fry both sides. The texture is quite good – crispy on the outside and soft and chewy on the inside.

Wikihow has a similar recipe, using Tempeh (a type of Tofu)

Patron saints take two

There is a patron saint for everything.

For example, the patron saint of the Internet is St. Isidore of Seville, who wrote the first encyclopedia. A lot of knowledge that would have been lost during the dark ages if his book wasn't written and copied all over the place.

But who is the patron saint of bloggers?

The KurtJester suggests St. Jerome:

best known for two things: His biblical scholarship, and his bad temper:

Perhaps because of his wide exposures to many people and travels, he developed a pugnacious and cantankerous disposition at times. His keen intellect could be contentious when his vision of truth differed from others...." [Source]

Yup. That sounds like a lot of bloggers I know...

Catholic trivia

There seems to be a "Bacon" meme going around the internet (see previous posts).

But now Instapundit points out there is a patron saint of Bacon...St. Anthony.

But which St. Anthony? There is a slew of them...

The most popular one in the US is St Anthony of Padua, who is invoked to find lost keys and other things.

("St Anthony come around,
something is lost and cannot be found")

But after a bit of googling, it turns out that the Anthony the patron saint of Pork is St. Athony of Egypt, the original hermit:

His relationship with pigs and patronage of swineherds is a little complicated. Skin diseases were sometimes treated with applications of pork fat, which reduced inflammation and itching. As Anthony’s intervention aided in the same conditions, he was shown in art accompanied by a pig. People who saw the art work, but did not have it explained, thought there was a direct connection between Anthony and pigs - and people who worked with swine took him as their patron.

He is also the patron of gravediggers...because he buried St. Paul the Hermit with his own hands.

Bad art: It's not just ridiculing Christians anymore

The UKTimes discusses an exhibition of "contemporary art" from the Muslim world.

Of course, what they mean is ugly, profane and politicized art that fits the taste of the elite.

TinWoman comments the art is "refreshing" but notes much of it is vile.

The real problem with the art is that it is politicized and ugly.

But that is a "lesson" the artist learned from western elites, who prefer celbrating "oppression" by showing cavorting naked men or crucifixes in urine than the real secret of the world:

"...Far above the Ephel Duath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was a light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. ..

Headlines below the fold

Question of the day: SFGate notes:

Does anyone important in Washington pay taxes? Or is that civic duty - like jury duty or serving in the military - now something that only the "little people" in America, those without deep pockets and connections, do?

is it that Washington is corrupt, or is it that the tax code is too difficult? Or both?
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Uh oh: Dilbert got fired....

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Statistic for the day:
China has laid off 20 million "migrant" workers...

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Four more humans test positive for past of infection with Ebola Reston...
The good news: None got sick
The bad news: this means pig to human transmission...

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Is Teleportation possible?
Actually it sounds more like the ansible, the instantaneous communication devices in Ursula LeGuin's novels...

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Ralph Peters says, tongue in cheek, we don't need psychologists to understand the Taliban: We need to read Starship Troopers...
Ah yes, but what about reading Ender's Game too?

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The good news: Iran puts first telecommunications satellite into orbit.

The bad news? It means that their rockets can hit Europe...
enc
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And the totalitarian Eugenicists are back...notice the photos are all of brown people? Coicidence?

One common subplot in SciFi is the hero is the illegal child...see Ender's game...
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Landing on Hudson now an online game

CNET says that there is a new online game (free):

Hero of the Hudson.

(headsup Col Updraft)

Podcast of the week

StrategyPage has a podcast via iTunes...
they also have mp3 downloads

Making sweetynicy with murderous dictators

President Obama has "toned down" criticism of Robert Mugabe...

so much for standing firm on human rights issues.

Ten top bacon gifts for Valentine's day

YesButNoButYes blog has the ten top bacon gifts for Valentine's day:

Everything from Bacon coffee to
bacon flavoured toothPicks...

But if you want Bacon flavoured beer you'll just have to go to Oktoberfest.

Tokyo volcano

Mt Asama is in the headlines here in Asia...it's near enough to Tokyo to cover them with ash, although they are not in danger. Video at link above...

I just checked the Narita flight status, and they aren't delayed, so the ash must not be affecting that area.

Musical interlude for today

Presentazione al Tempio(Andrea Mantegna) - Simeon's Canticle (Hangad ,Philippines)

stuff you can use

Friedbeef tech has a list of screensavers you can use LINK

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We see all sorts of warning services over the internet. but PMSBuddy will warn you to tread softly because it's that time of the month (HeadsupFreakonomics)

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Change we can believe in...Obama fills justice department with lawyers who are known for their hatred of p2p downloaders...

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a 60 year light bulb?

a new LED light
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clean nuclear power with a fission/fusion reactor? LINK

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Music interlude of the day

Six degrees of Kevin Bacon (of course)
Turn up speakers and try not to dance!

Jellybeans!

Bacon Flavoured Jelly Beans!


(via Instapundit)
and while you're at it, don't forget to buy:

Bacon Flavored Mints (1) $1.89

Bacon Gumballs in Tin $3.49

Bacon flavored Mints (2) $0.95

Bacon Wallet (8) $9.99

or Bacon Air Freshner

your MR.Bacon vs Mr Tofu action figures