Love SitR!! "I'm worth more than Calvin Coolidge, put together!"
Mmmm, garlic mashed potatoes... Dad was asking me what I can have for Xmas dinner--he's having roast beef and mashed potatoes. I was going to have him haul out his blender so I can chop up a few ounces of beef and gravy and supplement it with a bite or two of the potatoes, but that might not work, so I'm thinking about bringing down some egg salad instead. We'll see where I'm at by that date.
Tonight's dinner was just some Dannon's light and fit Key Lime yogurt, which is the right texture, but six ounces instead of four, my portion size. I ended up eating it all, and felt achy again. So, when I have the other yogurt tomorrow, I'm going to take two ounces out of the container right away and toss it down the sink.
Oh, Liese's prezzie is reminding me of why I did this surgery in the first place, so I can finally get back to doing things like taking baths (I really can't get into and out of a bath). I haven't taken a bath in probably 25 years. When I head out to Mom's for our Maine vacation at the end of the summer, I'll see if I remember to try out her jacuzzi tub.
Here's a video of interest to all Buffistas who trudged through the Verdun of setting up the Board's rules.
Brendan Greeley of The Economist relates how "Anonymous" of Operation Payback organized its reprisal attacks against Visa/Mastercard/Paypal in defense of Wikileaks.
The whole thing is intriguing but especially at the end he talks about how decision making occurs within the group. You can bet my ears perked up when I heard, "Basically a quorum of whoever is around at the time..."
Bullshit consensus!
In other important Panda News, Tim Dowling of Guardian UK pens the most entertaining review of a nature show I've read all decade:
To me, pandas always look like people dressed up as pandas, doing not very good panda impressions. They forget to crawl like pandas, and suddenly get up and walk off on two legs. Or they sit, like a fat man with bad posture, looking bored and waiting for someone to come and help them out of their panda suit.
Humans like to anthropomorphise animals, of course, but certain animals – among them pandas, penguins and owls – seem to meet us halfway. It doesn't stop us driving them to the edge of extinction, but it gets them a place in the front of the queue when the conservation money is handed out.
There are only about 2,000 giant pandas left in the wild. China is spending vast amounts of money on captive breeding to restore numbers, but in this project the panda is not prepared to meet us halfway. Watching Natural World: Panda Makers (BBC1), one quickly got an idea of how little help pandas are when it comes to panda breeding. It's not that they don't like sex, said David Attenborough – that's a myth, apparently – it's just that captivity puts them in the wrong mood. And a few generations down the line, the male pandas have forgotten how to do it. I'm not squeamish about pandas having sex, but I did find it excruciating to watch the lumbering, modestly endowed Pin Pin's inept performance.
The difficulties don't end there. Females are only in heat for 72 hours. You can't tell if they're pregnant or not, so you just have to wait until the birth, which can take anything between 11 weeks and 11 months. The good news is they have twins about half the time; the bad news is they always abandon one. And a newborn panda is by no means the finished article. It looks like a skinned squirrel, and weighs about 100g.
With endless patience, however – plus artificial insemination, constant testing and a neat trick where they swap the twins up to 10 times a day to get the mother to feed both – the Chengdu research base of giant panda breeding has created a captive population of about 300, which it means to reintroduce into the wild. Visitors come to watch the pandas dance, roll about and eat bamboo shoots. The young ones are especially cute, and they don't seem to mind being carried about like soft toys.
Some experts believe this project is the most colossal waste of conservation money ever, but it's hard to think like that while you're watching pandas at play, just as it's hard not to think that any minute they're all going to stop, pull their panda-heads off and light fags.
I read his blog post about that today, and I thought it was interesting but he doesn't seem to know about some of Anonymous' other associations... (::cough:: 4chan ::cough::)
I want that Gotham City poster, but I'm trying to decide if I want a print or a framed print. Framed prints are significantly more expensive, but then I wouldn't have to frame it myself.
If only he made a Vorbarr Sultana or "Come to Lovely Sergyar" poster. But I'm not a comics geek or a SW geek nowadays: most of them don't really do it for me, although I do think they're lovely.
I decided I'd frame it myself. I don't like making those choices with something I can't touch, which means I'll totally overspend when I do it here.
Kathy, I am so excited for you. Your list of things you want to do, that you'll be able to do in the future, is so wonderful. It's going to be so awesome when you can do them and tell us all about it.
