linky links: anthropology edition wk26

I did kind of alot of Anth research this past week, and here's all the most interesting stuff I turned up:

The Open Anthropology CoOp.

The first human fossil dredged out of the North Sea. I was just saying to my fiend the other day, how I never could understand why no one was looking underwater in places they thought ancient camp sites might be-- sea level was much lower then, everyone agrees, but they thought ancient peoples would stay only up where we live now? So I'm super-glad that someone looked and found something, and maybe other people will do the same in places other than, say, Egypt and Greece.

The Archaeology Channel. Video clips from all across the field.

Organized mammoth barbecue pits have been found. I lvoe learning about how ancient people ate.

A list of universities offering Linguistic Anth degrees. It's on the list of degrees to get, after writing, then comes LibSci / Archiving, then I want to do anthropology, either Linguistics or Nutritional.

Ancient beads and behavioral modernity. I love the idea that it happened slowly. I love that we can tell that fact now.

National Archives up on YouTube. An awesome resource for historical anthropology.

Ancient flutes. It pushes back the use of music, and that means maybe people were people further back then we thought-- or maybe scientists were unfairly harsh about what defines modernity-- or maybe we're less special then we thought.

Prehistoric cannibalism: The article says they were eating kids and treating them like food animals. It says they were probably enemies. It doesn't say anything about what this means philosophically-- did they see these other people as something else, as animals, the way whites once viewed their slaves? Did they eat their own, too, or only outsiders? What did it mean? Or did people just taste good?

Apparently, the things used to identify mummy gender aren't infallible. The article says they misinterpreted the gender; I want to know if this was an egyptian transvestite, a man living and dying as a woman, and if that's normal, part of a religious sect, a choice or a secret or what.

Apparently, most cave artists-- at least the ones leaving hand stencils-- were women, if teh hand-shapes can be trusted. I don't know if I trust the measurement hypothesis, as they're basing it on modern hands and there's no concurrent male hands to compare them to if these are all female, but I love the idea. If they are ritual sites, it lends credence to the idea that women were the spiritual leaders, and I know of a few feminist scholars who will be super-thrilled.

Earliest known human family: Genetic testing verifys that they're all related, and their placement may help scientists decode other graves, as well as adding another layer to the metaphysics of prehistoric burrial.

Speaking of, facedown burrial seems to be a universal way to shame people in death.

A group of scientists are claiming that orangutans have a closer link to humans based on physical traits than chimps do. But they don't have genetic evidence to back this up, and it sounds like they're actually trying to refute DNA analysis, which is kind of backward and old-fashioned. Stricly bone analysis is flawed and has been replaced.

linky links: green edition wk26

Make your own Deoderant: All natural! No aluminum! They say that the link between Alzheimer's and aluminum is not proven, but they also admit that Alz patients do have alot of aluminum in their brains, and I know that lymphnodes are the sorts of places where things can sink into your body, so as soon as I'm out of what I have, I'm all over this recipe.

Solid Perfume: I love the idea that I could smell like anything I wanted. I think I'm going to search out a really good rose-scent and dose myself in rosegarden florals. And then I'll find weird things to try out.

Control fleas naturally: Not as easy as bombing the place, but less likely to destroy your whole family.

The Garbage Enzyme from before.

BPAL has some new Gaiman scents: I love Black Phoenix Alchemy Labs. They're all natural, stunningly scented, only moderately expensive, and they feed directly into the Steampunk and Victoriana parts of my personality. Plus, they make special edition scents every time Neil Gaiman published a new book. I'd be so honored if they did that for my books.

More on the oceans in generating the EMF for the planet: I collect natural disasters, but this one could get really scary.

A fairly easy way to make your own rainbarrel: This is on my list of things to do. Florida gets so much rain and has such an abused watertable. There's no reason why I can't gather the rain to water my plants... as soon as I can get such a big barrel.

A quick little discussion of edible landscaping: I am all for this idea. Always have been. Plants are alot of trouble, and if I can't eat them afterward, why am I bothering? Plus, there's so many former food plants that are used in landscaping anyway-- and so many food plants that aren't available anywhere if you don't grow them yourself.

Ancient People fished sustainably: Okay, if people with only the most basic understanding of science could get this idea, why can't we? Really, man.

Yay linkies!

Here's Why We Should Be Concerned About The Earth

Here's the thing: even if we are just in an interglacial warming period, shouldn't we be doing the best that we can to mitigate our human impact thereon? I mean, it's a delicate system that hasn't had long enough to adapt to our outsized effect on it, and if we just blythely assume that there's nothing we can do about warming, and extrapolate that into the idea that it's not our fault, we run the risk of cannonballing what's maybe a natural trend, turning the curve way up, and making our planet into Venus and killing us all off. Sure, the world will still be here, and maybe the massive heatdeath will balance out millions of years later, but nothing even remotely like our world will remain, and it will be our fault.

Here's where I stand on the issue: if there's anything we can do to avoid that, we should do it. Regardless of whether it's a losing battle, whether we caused it or we're just victims of it, whether we're really got a chance or not, we should do it. If we do nothing, it's like standing by while someone gets raped or killed, but if we DO something, even if we all die anyway, at least we tried, at least we did everything we could, at least we learned and fought and acted and improved our chances and won a few generations and DID SOMETHING. It's what humans do: we act. We change what we can. We do everything we can to increase our evolutionary chances of survival. We behave in a humane manner. And even if we can't save the Earth, maybe we can find a way to terraform other planets, or to build bubble-colonies on the moon, unerwater, on the land that's gone, but will be safe inside, and maybe we won't all die off, leaving the universe alone. If we really are the only life in the whole universe, it's our responsibility to keep it going, to colonize new worlds, to breed and create new species, to adapt and spread and green up everything. This one planet is too precarious, too easily damaged-- like all those single-valley ecosystems scientists keep finding by destroying them.

Living green isn't just a choice: it's the only choice. There needs to be something for our decendants-- for everyone and everything's descendents. We're the only life there is. We have no right to let it die, and even less right to go and kill it off ourselves.

Green Experiment: Update 1

Here's this month's Green Experiemnt: Garbage Enzyme. The info on it claims it can be used to keep piles clean, to digest compost faster, to purify lakes and ponds, to clean the air like Febreeze or Lysol, to generate ozone, to disinfect surfaces, to stop toxins in cosmetics and soaps from getting into your skin, as a fertilizer for plants of all sorts... and on and on. And it's easy to make: 1 part sugar, preferably molasses or dark brown sugar, three parts foodscraps (plant-based, like you'd put in the compost), and ten parts water. Seal up in a jar or bottle, put in a dark place, and ferment for three months, venting the gasses every few days for the first month or so. In the end, you've got a liquid with a blob of bacteria like the kind that makes vinegar or kombu, only the anaerobic kind, floating in it, and it shouldn't smell bad anymore. So I'm going to test this. I'm going to mix some up today and put it under the porch and see how it goes. If it can function through a Florida summer and gives me a nice fetlizer alone come fall, I'll consider it worthwhile; if it does better than that, I'm totally going to make a batch every month and use it for everything.

This is update 1. In a week or two, I'll update again, and so on until the end of three months, when we'll see if anything has come of it. If not, we'll trash it and find something else to clean the planet with.

linky links

This week's link list is getting a little out of hand, so we're going to post it now, and then add to it later.

Science

Someone has invented a swine flu vaccine. Excellent news. Now maybe people will stop flipping out over something that's not even as virulent as the normal flu, and has killed way fewer people. Assuming we can get the vaccine made in large enough quantities, of course.

There are now 13 people up on the ISS. Some might get superstitious about that, but I always found 13 to be a good number, and the perfect size for a class or a group. More than that, and you have to break it down into smaller groups to get things done, but at this size, they can be a unified force. And then we can go to Mars.

New ways to database mean meaning can be gathered from the web in realtime. I don't know waht all of this is about, but I picture Ozymandias standing in front of his dozens of tv screens, learning about the world by watching all channels at once. And anything that captures a zeitgeist is alright by me.

Boat-mounted lazers are in the works. How totally cool is that? Well, maybe not if you're on the reciving end, but still. Lay-zars!

An in-browser Jurrasic Fight Club game to promote the show. And to support my current dinosaur obsession.

More lazers! These cook food like in an oven. The future will be made of lazers.

There's a new element! It needs a name before I start making my periodic table quilt, though, because I'll be pissed if I sew it up and then they change it.

Machu Picchu might be a recreation of a creation myth. Instead of the king's holy city, as previously thought, though there was never much in the way of living-detritus to show that people lived there. I think it's a neat idea, but there's really not a reason that people couldn't live there AND it was a holy site. I mean, there's people who live in the Vatican. This may have been mentioned in the article, and if it was, I agree. Anthropologists always want it to be one way and one way only, but there's no reason why things can't have multiple or shifting meanings, and there's no reason why people couldn't have done things in multiple ways.

Double stars have been found with planetary disks. The article isn't really clear about this, but it seems like it's saying one disk for two stars, and that, I think, would make for a very interesting sky for those planets.

New carbon nanotube memory chips. They hold exponentially more in a much smaller space, and they should last for a million years. Awesome. Now lets make it a usable advance in computer science!

Things that look like crop circles from the air help people find missing parts of the Stonehenge complex of sites! Seems the ruins interfere with plant groth, leaving rings and lines where they are, so that they're super-clear from planes. So cool. Aerial archaeology!

Science fiction

Primeval is cancelled! It's been going fine, so of course the announcement that it's cut comes right after I discover it. ::sigh::

A little info on Torchwood S04. Which is good to hear.

Japan builds a life-size Gundam to protect them. How come we can't embrase our scifi like this? But then this guy one ups them by building a real mecha suit in his own garage.

One of the older SciFi series is getting to be a movie! John Carter of Mars, by the dude who directs the Pixar loves, and it sounds like they're keeping it in-time-period, meaning John Carter will be a Civil War vet from 1911. (I keep thinking of it as John Connor of Mars, but that would be a totally different movie...)

Doctor Who after Outpost Gallifrey.

A greener world

Norway deploys a floating wind turbine off the coast. Wonderful! There's nothing to block the wind out on the ocean, and that means there'll be more power available! And if someone can harness a wind turbine to a tidal harness, just think of all the power we could get!

Someone's invented an open-source car. It has a 20 year lease, the cost of gass for the lifetime of the car is included in the price, and all the specs and details are non-proprietary so that people who know what they're doing can modify, upgrade, debug and inprove the design and disseminate the improvements faster than the designers can alone. This is awesome.

Six ways poop of various kinds can be alternative energy. Gross, but pretty interesting.

Alternative living

An all-wood modern home.

Food

French Vanilla Organic Honey Vegan Icecream: Usually, vegan attempts to replace dairy just annoy me-- if you're going to stop eating animal products, just stop eating animal products; the replacement is cheating, like giving up smoking by switching to herbal cigarettes, and not really dealing with the problem-- but this actually sounds really good in it's own right.

There are apparently secret restaurants in Paris. I think it's awesome that there's so much food culture that sixteen-seat restaurants that only seat once can survive and become famous. How awesome would that be?

People are declaring food indipendence. Awesomesauce. There's a petition and a challenge to the 50 first families to go local and sustainable and see who can do it best. If Michelle Obama is any sort of rolemodel to these people, and she should be, then I think they should do it.

Why is IPA called Indian? It's pretty neat. I love food history.

And anti-over-eating food additive. It's supposed to help your brain know that you're full better, and is tasteless. It looks great on it's own site, but that doesn't really mean anything, except that maybe it's better at looking realistic and scientific. I might get some, though, when I have money...

Michael Pollan has a blog on the NY Times.

Apricot tartlets. They look amazing.

Blueberries in a wine reduction. I think this would be awesome as a topping on a really fancy icecream, or as part of a trifle or something. And it should be loaded with antioxidants, so it'll healthify dessert! Plus, I think the idea would work well with lots of different berries, making it something extremely versatile to have around.

Salted Butter Caramel Icecream. All the more reason to get my own icecream maker.

Fun things

More info on Natal. Which is looking cooler all the time. It brings us that much closer to the scifi world I want to live in.

Six gross ways animals inprove health. No kidding on the gross part, but it all sounds very promising.

A DIY LCD card.

A solar-powered portable office. It all fits inside a vintage steamer trunk and is super-cool. We've already establushed how much I love the idea of fully mobile societies.

A dress where you can design your own color pattern. Works by letting markers bleed into the fabric, so you've got to time it and plan a little, but it's fully customizable each time you wear it.

A knife designed so you can't stab people. Is this really necessary?

How to make tetris dirty.

A Mary Poppins dance mix that is actually really freaking cool, and a little spooky.

Art:

Jen Corace. Pretty little vintage-clothed people on all sorts of useful things.

Nick Dewar. A Scottish illustrator that has really neat and weird little designs.

About sixty working cats patrol a Russian art gallery to preserve the art from rats. This is a great, low-tech way to save art, and it serves as an incentive to take care of cats, to find good homes, and offers a little pride in the culture.

Crafts

Knit in Public Days.

Birch-log tables. 85$ for a designer piece, and I get to saw things with a saw?? I'm there!

Home-made shampoo. With variations for what ails ya. I haven't tried them yet, but if it's SLS-free, and if it works as well, I'm so there.

Fandom

Twilight only gets worse from here. I read the first book and that was really enough for me, but this article is hilarious, and the crazy fans at the comments are just too much.

If Twilight were 10x shorter and 100x more honest.

Ten ways to start a geek-fight. My fav is second to last: "Joss Whedon is a hack."

Magnum meets Star Wars. Very strange, but remarkably consistent.

Last week, Betty White played beer pong with Jimmy Fallon. I love Betty White. She's my favorite feisty old lady,and I want to be just like her when I'm 87.

Bones is still on Thurs, Sept 17 @8. Other return dates are mentioned, too.

Gardening

Build your own vermicomposter. I'm so tempted to try this. Worms enrich soil and break down compost in much less time than the much smaller bacteria do. And it's cool.

Literacy

How to write like Twilight. All the rules you should not follow to write a decent book.

Disasters

There might be a supervolcano under Mt St Helens. We all know how I love to know all the ways I might be killed off by a planet, and this one seems close to my heart; MSH blew about a week before I was born, and that's waht all the news was about as I came into the world. This is like a smaller version of Yellowstone, but it might also just be a sandy aquifer. I think they need to test this.

A new theory says that maye our magnetic field comes from moving ocean currents, not from moving magma in a spinning core. I do love me a new theory, but if this one turns out to be true, then global warming is more terrifying than it already was, like so: the plant heats up --> the ice caps melt, water down the ocean with fresh water and changing the densities --> the currents stop flowing --> the em field drops --> everything on the surface is fried by solar and galactic radiation. Bad news, man. We need to invenst in building fallout shelters under water, in case we can't stop it before it comes to this. Or, at least, hope that the theory doesn't lead to this conclusion.

Weird News

A 14 year old was hit by a spacerock. Which, though it probably sucks to be his hand, is really pretty neat. You've got more chance of winning the lottery more than once than you have of being clipped by a meterorite.

Someone invented a limp remote. Very strange.

Cities Still Don't Get It:

The story of the South Central Farm. It was once the biggest urban farm in the US, run almost entirely by volunteers and people who needed the food, and now it's been cold to be a warehouse. There's a documentary about it. Why can't cities see that they're supposed to take care of their people, not starve them?

More reasons to love Sweden

The Pirate Party! It's about copyright law and such, but still.

If listing things keeps me sane...

... which it totally does, then I'm going to list things here.

Things I'm Greatful For:

-- My lovely friends who are supporting me as I wallow in joblessness.

-- The garden that will hopefully help ease the need for food soon.

-- My Ninjakitty who is never more than three feet away from me when I'm working or sleeping.

-- Orange-scented body lotion.

-- Rose-scented perfume.

-- The fact that there has got to be someone out there who's perfect for me, statistically speaking.

-- The internet, in all it's silly, mostly useless glory.

-- The fact that the upshot of the Recession is alot of free and almost-free food.

linky links

A week's worth of gathered links, this time, organized by topic for easy browsing!

Science:

A planet the same size as it's sun was found, and scientists are wondering if that's normal-- maybe we're not even in a normal solar system, as well as not being in the center of that galaxy, the universe, or anything else.

A new kind of cloud has been discovered, the first identified since the 50s. I love that something so obvious can have new things... though it's a little creepy if it's new because we're changing things (that wasn't mentioned at all, which is why it makes me nervous; maybe I'm just being paranoid).

Some unknown process is cleaning the air in China more than it should, and not producing the usual byproducts. They're looking for a silver-bullet reason, but I think it's more likely to be a combination of things-- the usual process is going on, and then something else is eating up the ozone that's produced. Pollution defeating itself? There's probably another side-effect.

The electric rocket that wants to win the Lunar X-Prize. Better yet, to do it cheaply, because it hardly has any fuel. It'll take a few months to get there, but that means corrections are easier, the trip is easier, and really, our culture needs to work on patience anyway.

The Romanians are building a baloon that will lift a rocket high enough to launch. This'll be so steampunk awesome if it works. Apparently, we were studying such an idea at the beginning of space exploration and decided it was too unstable an idea; let's see how they handle it, shall we?

Next shuttle launch,  7:17 a.m. launch time Saturday, June 13. These were supposed to be the last few, but I guess the mission has been extended again. I think the Next Gen ship isn't ready yet; the X-Prizes are still going, but time is running out before Richard Branson just does it himself, so NASA better hop to.

A new study shows how, paradoxically, war can lead to altruism in human development. It seems really obvious in the article, and I'm a little miffed that I didn't think of it before the scientists did; I dort of like to be the six year old in the room who sees what the people who have devoted their lives to it don't.

Science Fiction:

Short Circuit joins the remake parade.

StarGate Universe TV bit. Looks... like Battlestar Galactica. I'm fine with BSG, I really like it, but I don't think SciFi needs to lop off all the shows it already has to make then into nu-BSG when they were working just fine the way they were. But on the other hand, Atlantis was fresher and cleaner than SG1 when it started, and maybe SGU will be the same; plus, I adore Robert Carlyle and Ming Na, and I'm hoping none of the big names are killed off in the pilot ep. Because that's been done twice.

A new Blade-Runner-inspired webseries soon. There's owndership and copyright issues about the story itself, so it won't be a direct prequil, but it's in the same world, and I think that's pretty cool. I know at least one person who'll be thrilled.

A Greener World:

The Transportation head in New York recently closed down parts of the most crowded roads in the City to reclaim them for foot-traffic, and it's amazing. It's ballsy. It's something other big cities should do.

Grist has an article about what to do with seeds instead of composting them... which would have been nice to have found before my compost got full of volunteers...

Food foreign policy. Eating is getting so political.

New rules of shared ownership for cars and such. Which I think is a gret idea. We don't all need individual cars in cities-- and it already works in Paris.

Entire towns are transitioning to sustainability! Here's another: St Albans. I love it. It shows the sort of responsibility and ownership of actions a town is supposed to have, as well as building a better community, setting a good example, and proving that the future really does matter. My town is freakishly short-sighted, and I wish it would take a page from these books. Maybe I'll start writing letters.

The Transition Movement is necessitating a shift in the ideals and political structures of the towns in question. Which is desperately needed.

Alternative Living:

A hydraulic, expandable mobile home built out of a small mac truck in Japan. It's like a camper / winnebago below, but the upper part, the part that expands, is like a traditional japanese loft room, complete with tatami and everuthing. It's beautiful.

A fold-out mobile home! It crunches up and fits all together, then it unfolds into a big circle home with everything you need! It's like a pop-up book you can live in. Sad that it's just a concept still.

Two more modern takes on prefab homes here and here. I love that the prefab thing is so popular-- so much of the damage done by housing can be stopped, and we can be mobile, which lowers the ecological impact even more! I imagine seasonal, migratory cities...

An entirely-self-sufficient pod home, 300 sq ft, solar and wind-powered, and able to blend into it's surroundings. And it's space-age looking.

Rooftop homes! A beautiful idea: a little pod-home that can be placed up on top of other structures that aren't using their rooves anyway. And better yet, since it's portable, it has that nomadic beauty-seeking streak that I love.

Fold-out cargo-box homes. These are great ideas for using up old cargo shipping boxes, but since they fold out and not, say, up or something, they aren't as good for saving space as they could be. When I think of cargo-box homes, I think of those massive warehouses full of boxes, all converted into amazing miniature cities to help with overpopulation. These do have the movability that I love, though you'd need a big mac truck to move them.

Food:

A wikipedia entry on what seeds are edible, including several that I didn't think of.

The revival of artisan home canning-- and the return of real flavor. I love the artisan food movement (though it shouldn't have come to the point where it was necessary, but whatever). I love that people care more about what they eat and are rediscovering that real food once had real flavor and can again.

Ways to eat cheaper and healthier at once!

Home-made marshmallows! Well, really awesome-sounding home-made modern marshies. i still need to look up how to make old-school marshmallows out of the actual marshmallow plant. I heard the Egyptians made them with honey. That could be awesome. But I'll try these first.

Grilled desserts and outdoor breakfasts! Great idea for summer, especially here where the heat gets oppressive soon after breakfast and might make it hard to care about grilling when it's lunch or dinner.

Mocktails for when you want a mix, but not booze. I need to get myself some elderflower cordial. Or find an elder.

A food-by-decades timeline with menus, lists, even recipes! Not many pictures, though.

Early summer pasta: orrechiette with kale and sausage. Fab. I love how kale goes with fatty cured meats.

Picnic menus, care of the Kitchn. We need to find somewhere relatively bug-free and have a few picnics this summer. Maybe the Moors by the Fort?

A study of the season's Other Veggies-- the things that are odd and unusual and still in season from winter.

A whole longs list of things to make with the crazy-abundant strawberries we have out now.

Fun Things:

If you go to Wolfram Alpha and type in the question 'are you skynet', it has an answer the programmers programmed in.

This article is about how this guy looks like a video game character, but I just like the video-- I lived there for almost four years, and I have no idea what he's saying. It's a glorious exploration of language, and it's weird how rap has taken over all forms of spoken word...

A blog that's just gorgeous pictures of urban and industrial decay. I always thought there's something beautiful about these monuments to man's power going back to the earth.

Types of Goths.

Really great stackable patio furniture that becomes art when it's stacked. I never understood why something had to be functional and not beautiful (scandinavia and japan and italy and france never got that memo, so why did we?), and these are both! As the world gets more crowded, things need to be more beautiful, or it's just going to be a horrible ugly mess stuffed with unhappy people.

A 28$ firepit for a back yard.

Fandom:

Alan Tudyk interviewed about his recent work on Dollhouse and upcoming work on V. He's so adorable.

Gardening:

How to grow an avocado from seed. but it says the fruits of seed-grown 'cados aren't usually good, which makes me sad. I wonder if they're throwbacks to whatever avocadoes were like before they were farmed? Because that might be kind of awesome-- primordial avocadoes...

Growing native berries at home. Whoo! I've got blueberries on the back porch; when I have stable income again, I'm going to start adding to that and build myself a berry patch that will hopefully feed me... though it would have been nice to be fed now, when I'm so poor... NOTE TO SELF: time to start planting things again.

Mother Earth News has a nifty cross-website plant and seed finder search engine. Again, when I have more money, I'm all over that.

Uncommon fruits for the garden. I have a book about this, but it's not a very new book, and it's nice to see other people taking notice on a wider forum. I'm going to have such an amazing garden one day.

Literacy:

Book "ATMs" to print on demand. This is awesome. Flood the world with books, save on space and save on publishing costs, while still getting literacy out to millions who wouldn't find these small-print and rare and old books otherwise. Since Borders has sold out and no longer provides these things...

Feminism:

A study says that women aren't advancing in science as quickly as they're gaining degrees. The article draws the conclusion that this is because they're women in a man's world, but isn't that kind of an old arguement? There's no charts on how quickly men are gaining degrees vs getting science jobs, and there's always been fewer jobs that people to fill them, PLUS, we've been going through eight-odd years of a scientific braindrain, where all the good jobs are moving to other countries and taking the scientists with them. 

I hate when women undo feminism. It's one thing to live your own life as if it's never changed from the 50s, but it's quite another thing to write an article in a men's magazine, saying you're telling them what women are actually thinking, and proceeding to paint all women with the same neurotic and outdated brush. I call shenanigans, and I call bullshit, and I severely disapprove.

Linky links

Dinosaur tracks in Wyoming and outside Glasgow seem to be identical.

Lost musical instrument recreated through Science-- that huge trumpet thing that's famous in Medieaval tapestries. Apparently, it's unweildy, hard to play, but haunting and entirely unreproducible by other istruments.

Scientists test ways to identify water from space. Which is awesome.

Huge Loch-Ness-type monster found in the Jurassic Shore of Lyme Regis in England. And it's been chewed on. The world is so weird. 

Family who names their kids Adolph Hitler and Aryan Nation can't undertand why their kids were taken from them by Child Services? If they're not skinheads, why would they name thier kids like that?

The Siberian ice circles are blamed on methane upwllings. This makes the circles less interesting / mysterious, but makes the lake scarier-- someone needs to find a safe way to mine the methane to use as power so that it can't explode and kill 85% of all life on earth like it has before.

Still no UFOs in nasa footage. I think if there is some, we're not seeing them-- and I think the rabid UFO-seachers should look for context: this all has context that makes it obvious what it is, and they're latching onto the one piece that's weird-looking without that context and calling it UFOs. Fail.

US governement accidentally released highly classified Nuke info in a newsletter addressing security leaks? WTF mate? It'd be funny if it weren't so scary.

Gourmet white teas from Tea Forte.

Rich is starting a new Doctor Who comic! And it looks like it's a Forever Knight and DW crossover!

Bryan Singer is interested in returning to X-Men, and I think that's a great idea. Especially if it can get everything back on track after X3.

Barbarella gets a new remake too?

Lemon Mint Granitas served in their own lemon shells!

Boozy wine-marinated grapes that are also a cocktail!

This will make you want to have a pond in your yard.

Oh, io9, why do you tempt me so with stories about how Firefly could be made to come back in a reasonable and fulfilling way?

The io9 June Guide to Scifi, in convenient calendar form.

I NEED a tricorder, guys, I NEED it.

Climate change is sexist-- in that there's more poor women than poor men, and the poor are unduly affected.

Windows 7 launches in October-- lets hope it's better than Vista. I'd like to upgrade immediately, but, you know, there's tons of more needful things I need to pay for, like rent, and there's bound to be months of debugging, and I need more memory in my compy first.

The astounding world of the future!

Controller free gaming! X-Box 360 Project Natal.

Painted manhole covers. I wish we had a culture where beauty and utitlty were not mutually exclusive.

Next time, I'm oorganizing by topic for eease of remembering where the hell I put things.

linky list

Okay, so I'm not good at resolutions, but I'm determined to use this blog for things pertaining to my improvement of my life, and I consider random knowledge an improvement, so here's today's fun new links:

Medicine Chest: a public record of traditional medicine.

Rockabye Baby turns Queen into Lullabyes.

Remeber Jaime Oliver? Now he's taking on how Americans eat!

Mark Kurlansky has compiled a book on how Americans ate before the Interstates and the Fast Food Revolution called Food of a Younger Land.

A whole (very detailed) article about the history of Star Trek reboots. Including a really great Guide to Reboots at the end.

What do kids eat in school lunches in outher countries? Stuff way better, tastier and healthier than we're feeding our kids, apparently.

I'm not entirely sure what this means, but it sounds fun: "Does the Emperor not foreseeing that Darth Vader would kill him mean that all Jedi have lost this force ability and that midichlorians leave the body after death and have evolved as they drifted with innumerable species by finding an athletic host who would benefit from incredible power?"