Grow your own Luffa sponges
For the third autumn in a row I am pleased to be harvesting my shower sponge for next year. Now I know that must sound like a strange statement but it’s true. Many people are surprised when they find out I grow my own Luffa sponges. “Don’t those come from the sea?”, is the standard question to which I respond that the Luffa is a vegetable you can grow in your very own garden.
This annual requires a long growing season of frost free weather. But for those of you in colder climates it is possible to start seedlings indoors and then transplant them outside allowing you to grow your own sponges. The vine can grow to great lengths producing beautiful yellow flowers all summer. Next spring I will be sure to remind you to start your sponges. Right now though I am focused on the harvest. I almost waited too late to get my Luffa started this spring so I was lucky to get a hand full of mature sponges. This one grew right outside my bedroom window.
I pick the fruit just after the first frost kills the vine. Next I peel off the outer skin.
Then comes the process of “milking” the sponge- squeezing it repeatedly from the middle towards the ends in an attempt to remove the fleshy substance inside. Plenty of seeds will come out as well.
I set aside some of the seeds from my best sponges for next year. If a sponge is discolored I soak it for 5 minutes in warm water with a little bleach. Add a length of hemp rope if you like to hang up your shower sponge. A large crop can yield quite a few Christmas gift sure to have your friends and family talking. Try growing your own Luffa sponge next year.
UPDATE: For those of you curious where to buy Luffa seeds, take a look at this online garden store!
UPDATE 2: Another note: Read the rest of this entry »
Different cultural values
Some feel that values are culturally dependent, and we really can’t judge the actions taken in other cultures. I disagree, since I believe that simple human rights are to be taken as a constant. Here’s an example of a cultural choice that is simply wrong:
The plight of India’s untouchables was highlighted again yesterday after a 15-year-old Dalit rape victim was burned alive for refusing to drop charges against her alleged upper-caste attacker.
Asha Katiya reportedly told police before she died of her burns at a hospital in Pipariya, in the state of Madhya Pradesh, that the man had threatened to kill her if she did not change her statement in court.
“I will burn you, set your house afire and cut your father into pieces,” Asha’s mother, Shashibai, quoted the 22-year-old man as warning them when she and her daughter were working in the fields near their home the day before the blaze.
Newspapers reported that late on the day of the blaze, the man rode past Asha’s home on a horse and that night “doused the victim with kerosene from an opening in the roof of a room where she was sleeping and threw a burning matchstick”.
The victim’s aunt claimed she saw the man running into the fields after the attack.
Unlike Asha’s impoverished Dalit family, the upper-caste Rajput family to whom the man belongs is said to own almost a hectare of land in the village.
Asha was raped in July and court proceedings had been started in the district capital of Hoshangabad, 90km from Pipariya. She was due to appear in court next month.
As Asha lay dying, the girl’s family were reportedly unable to get a vehicle to rush her to hospital for treatment.
“The family members alleged that though there are many vehicles in the upper-caste dominated village, no one came to their rescue and they had to call one from Sandia, 8km away,” one local newspaper reported.
The girl’s grandmother Narbadi was quoted as saying: “They thought if Asha dies, the rape case will have no meaning.”
According to yesterday’s reports, faced by the threats from the man, the Dalit family had resolved to flee the village and their home was firebombed only hours before they were scheduled to do so.
Police said the man named by Asha as her attacker had been arrested.
For want of a nail,…
The rhyme will have to reworked: a better nail has been developed:
In 1995 a Clemson University graduate student named Ed Sutt took off for a spur-of-the-moment trip to the Caribbean. But beaches and rum drinks weren’t on the agenda for this civil engineer. Hurricane Marilyn had just torn through St. Thomas, and Sutt was part of a team examining how and why 80 percent of the island’s homes and businesses had collapsed in the storm’s 95mph winds.
“The destruction was so complete in places that it was almost surreal,” Sutt recalls. “There were troops in the streets and military helicopters hovering overhead.” As Sutt moved through the wreckage of roofless and toppled-over houses, he was struck by the sense that much of the destruction could have been avoided. “In house after house,” he says, “I noticed that it wasn’t the wood that had failed—it was the nails that held the wood together.”
At the time, Sutt couldn’t have predicted that this realization would spark a journey through earthquakes, wind tunnels and head-to-head battles with giant wall-wrecking machines. Or that 11 years, dozens of hurricanes and thousands of prototypes later, he would be credited with reinventing the little spike of steel that holds together most of the world’s houses.
The Overlooked Importance of the Nail
Just saw the new James Bond
It was quite good: back to basics, and less fooling around. Well scripted, well acted. Texas Hold’em instead of chemin-de-fer, but that’s okay. Good cast. I like the new Bond quite a bit.
Guest post re: Global warming and NSTA
I don’t usually post pieces by others, but this request seemed worthwhile:
please post my piece…
Would the World’s Largest Science Teacher’s Organization Ignore Climate Change Education?
(Why did the NSTA say no to free “An Inconvenient Truth” DVDs?)
by John Borowski
The National Teachers Association (NSTA) has spurned 50,000 free DVDs of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and is squandering a golden opportunity to educate tens of millions of youth in the United States! Why? This 55,000- member organization of teachers and scientists could use Al Gore’s film to orchestrate the single most influential educational goal in human history: the awareness and subsequent solving of climate change. There is no denying the escalating list of climate change evidence: from the potential extinction of Polar bears and retreating glacial environments to the increase of global temperatures in unison with increased carbon dioxide levels.
Laurie David, a producer on the film An Inconvenient Truth, helped to broker a “sweet deal” for the NSTA. Sitting in an LA warehouse are 50,000 free DVDs just waiting to be given out to every member of the NSTA. No strings, no catches, just a clear and simple agenda: provide teachers with a spectacular and scientifically acclaimed production to engage millions of students nationwide. And the NSTA states, “No?”
Is the NSTA placing economic expediency over “true science education”, do they fear the alienation of funders such as Exxon and the fossil powerhouse the American Petroleum Institute? Laurie David, who is also the founder of StopGlobalWarming.org received an email refusal of the free teaching materials from the NSTA that is ominous and foreboding.
The NSTA wrote that acceptance of the DVDs would place an “unnecessary risk upon the (NSTA) capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” Also in the email, NSTA claimed that they didn’t want to offer “political” endorsement of the film and they saw “little, if any benefit to NSTA or its members” in accepting the free DVDs. No benefit to teachers? Science teachers across the country are under-funded, overworked and often grab on to free lessons and materials as a matter of “educational survival 101.” What I find despicable is that the NSTA if fully aware of that need and sadly, often aids and abets the “Fossil fuel cartels.” They often deny or mislead on climate change and provide teachers with everything from “coal coloring books” to misleading videos such as “Fuel-less-You Can’t Be Cool Without Fuel.” Simply stated, the NSTA’s refusal to distribute Al Gore’s film is an unmitigated disaster that will tarnish their reputation as “brokers” of credible science materials, while squandering a prolific moment in educational history: the chance to allow students to become energy pioneers.
I wrote in Commondreams.org about this dilemma and three special sentences comes to mind from a July 7th, 2005 piece in which I write an open letter to NSTA Executive Director about the distribution of corporate sponsored materials via the NSTA: In a recent NSTA annual report document, Exxon Mobil Foundation President Edward Ahnert explains its “partnership” with the NSTA clearly. “NSTA is such a natural partner for us. No other organization has the ability to reach thousands of teachers who share ExxonMobil’s commitment to improving science education.” The question that begs to be answered Mr. Wheeler is this: can you trust Exxon Mobil?
More on Pandora
Download Squad has an interesting post on Pandora, the free on-line music finder. I use Pandora quite often and like it a lot.
The Eldest writes, “This is why I like my Working Assets cellphone.”
She says:
They have a social conscience — and a sense of humor:
This past election, American voters sent a message loud and clear: end the war in Iraq. Now your Working Assets Wireless phone can make the same statement — every time you get a call.
Just go to the new Working Assets Wireless mobile content store and download the ringtone of Edwin Starr’s classic “War (What Is It Good For?)”.
The cost? Absolutely nothing, of course.
More evidence that raising minimum wage spurs job growth
The traditional GOP talking point is that raising the minimum wage will result in the loss of jobs. Like so many GOP talking points, it’s counter-factual.
Photo comic of a Thanksgiving dinner
Adam Roberts does it again. Good read.
It is a civil war in Iraq
Iraq is in the midst of a civil war, and the White House is desperate to deny that. They still hate reality. Dan Froomkin today:
After nearly four years of letting the Bush Administration set the terms of the national debate over Iraq, some major news organizations are finally calling the conflict there what it is: a civil war. The White House is howling in protest.
Here’s what Matt Lauer announced on NBC’s Today Show this morning: “As you know, for months now the White House has rejected claims that the situation in Iraq has deteriorated into civil war. And for the most part, news organizations, like NBC, have hesitated to characterize it as such. But, after careful consideration, NBC News has decided the change in terminology is warranted — that the situation in Iraq, with armed militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas, can now be characterized as civil war.” Here’s some video of Lauer discussing the decision with retired general Barry McCaffrey.
NBC’s First Read reports that the response was swift: “The White House is objecting this morning to descriptions of the Iraq conflict as a civil war. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said, ‘The violence is primarily centered around Baghdad and Baghdad security and the increased training of Iraqi Security Forces is at the top of the agenda when [Bush and Maliki] meet later this week.’”
NBC is not alone. Here’s Solomon Moore writing in the Saturday Los Angeles Times: “Iraq’s civil war worsened Friday as Shiite and Sunni Arabs engaged in retaliatory attacks after coordinated car bombings that killed more than 200 people in a Shiite neighborhood the day before.”
Newsweek editor and columnist Fareed Zakaria writes: “We’re in the middle of a civil war and are being shot at by both sides.
“There can be no more doubt that Iraq is in a civil war, in which leaders of both its main communities, Sunnis and Shiites, are fomenting violence. . . .
“To speak, as the White House deputy press secretary did last week, of ‘terrorists . . . targeting innocents in a brazen effort to topple a democratically elected government’ totally misses the reality of Iraq today. Who are the terrorists and who are the innocents?” Read the rest of this entry »
The American Conservative re-evaluates American conservatism
A former National Review editor surveys the wreckage of Conservatism. His article begins:
Until recently, it has been almost impossible for me to speak candidly about the conservative movement, for it was my strange fate to serve as director and later trustee of the movement’s flagship journal, National Review. Earlier this year, at William F. Buckley’s request, I resigned both positions. I can therefore now declare what perhaps has oft been thought but never, at least not often enough, expressed. Notwithstanding conservatives’ belief that they, in contrast to their partisan opponents, have thought deeply about the challenges facing the United States, it is they who have become unserious.
And another article in the same issue begins:
Many Republicans must feel like that legendary man at the bar on the Titanic. Watching the iceberg slide by outside a porthole, he remarked, “I asked for ice. But this is too much.” Republicans voted for a Republican and got George W. Bush, but his Republican Party is unrecognizable as the party we have known.
Erasing traffic waves
This sounds like a good experiment to try. And you’ll undoubtedly find many opportunities to try it.
Want to be happier?
A simple exercise might help:
As a motivational speaker and executive coach, Caroline Adams Miller knows a few things about using mental exercises to achieve goals. But last year, one exercise she was asked to try took her by surprise.
Every night, she was to think of three good things that happened that day and analyze why they occurred. That was supposed to increase her overall happiness.
“I thought it was too simple to be effective,” said Miller, 44, of Bethesda. Md. “I went to Harvard. I’m used to things being complicated.”
Miller was assigned the task as homework in a master’s degree program. But as a chronic worrier, she knew she could use the kind of boost the exercise was supposed to deliver.
She got it.
“The quality of my dreams has changed, I never have trouble falling asleep and I do feel happier,” she said.
Why the US loses small wars (e.g., Iraq)
We know why, but the military by and large ignores the lessons learned.
For the list-oriented among us
Check out Ta-da Lists. It’s free, you can email the list to yourself—and you can make it accessible to others. Via Lifehacker, this hint:
I needed a way for family members to check off items that they had purchased (or were planning to purchase), and I didn’t want to use one of the “vendor-specific” wish list functions (*cough cough* Amazon *cough*). Using Ta-da lists, I set up the kids’ wishlists in a few minutes, and emailed all the relatives to let them see and edit it.
Gina Trapani also calls our attention to MetaWishList and WishListr.
All good stuff.
Cute idea
Bank of America offers now a cute savings service: when you use your debit card, they round up the charge to the next whole dollar and put the change into your savings account. Won’t add much, but is painless. See it here.
Gift finder based on images (UK only, alas)
You go through a series of images, picking those most connected to the gift recipient, and then you are presented with some (hopefully) appropriate gifts.
Problems with Harman
Nancy Pelosi has endured a lot of criticism for not wanting to give the chair of the House Intel Committee to Jane Harman, but Glenn Greenwald actually examines why.
The New Republic’s Michael Crowley last night noticed something about Jane Harman that has evaded most Beltway commentators, including those who have suddenly developed such a bizarre and uncharacteristic interest in the issue of who will lead the House Intelligence Committee:
In the debate over which Democrat should lead the House Intelligence Committee, Alcee Hastings has endured a lot of well-deserved scrutiny lately. But it’s only fair to note that Jane Harman wasn’t exactly a lantern in the darkness in the runup to the Iraq war:
“There’s a strong intelligence case that Iraq has not destroyed its weapons of mass destruction and is building the capability to use them,” said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House intelligence committee. “There’s a growing al Qaeda presence in Iraq, and I think the case can be made that there is a growing affiliation” between Baghdad and terrorist groups.
Growing al Qaeda presence? I knew that Harman supported the war. I hadn’t realized quite how much bad intel she swallowed whole.
Harman has swallowed much more than just “bad intel” on Iraq. For instance, when it was revealed that the President was eavesdropping on Americans without warrants — i.e. , in violation of the law — Harman immediately became, far and away, the most prominent and vocal Democratic defender of the President’s law-breaking, enabling Time Magazine to say this on January 3, 2006 — just two weeks after the Times reported on the law-breaking, when impressions were still forming among Americans as to how grave of a scandal this was:
G.O.P. strategists argue that Democrats have little leeway to attack on the issue because it could make them look weak on national security and because some of their leaders were briefed about the National Security Agency (NSA) no-warrant surveillance before it became public knowledge.
Some key Democrats even defend it. Says California’s Jane Harman, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee: “I believe the program is essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.”
Continue reading. It’s very good. His conclusion: Read the rest of this entry »
