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It's not Friday, but these sheep didn't want to wait for Friday Farm Animal blogging. We happened upon them today in the Cotswolds when we stopped to consult the map. The dogs were herding them into a chute where they crossed over medication they needed for sore feet. (Those high heeled hooves are hell on the arches.) They didn't like it much. I thought I heard one ewe mutter "Wolf" as she glared at the dog.
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Monsieur Oui lost the election in France yesterday. Liberals in France didn't think the constitution went far enough to protect workers' rights, so they all voted "non" which makes conservatives here very happy. They think the constitution went too far, and now it's doubtful they'll have to bother proving their case to the British public.
This reminds me of the American liberals who voted against Mr. Kerry (and Mr. Gore before him) because he wasn't liberal enough. What they got instead was their worst nightmare, a conservative who refuses to compromise.
I'm not always in favor of compromise, but when you're trying to herd 25 nations into one EU corral, sometimes you have to bargain. A unified Europe is a good thing, even the French agreed, but in their search for Perfection, they lost Good.
From the How Petty Can You Get? files (aka Kevin Drum's comment section): The constitution mentions a maximum number of work hours per week, but does not specify how many. How bourgeois! Damn it to hell!
Conservative euroskeptics here say "merci" and pass the capitalism, please.
Note: France did not, despite Kevin Drum's concerns, vote non because they wanted a "breather" after "a decade of nonstop expansion and consolidation." What a ding dong.
Maybe he should move to France.
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Are you wearing a wristband to promote your favorite cause? Ever wonder where it was made? Now we know:
Link: Anti-poverty wristbands produced in sweatshops.
FASHIONABLE wristbands worn by pop stars, actors, top athletes and celebrities to publicise the Make Poverty History campaign are produced in appalling "slave labour" conditions, damning evidence has revealed.
Chinese factory workers producing the white rubber bracelets are forced to toil in conditions that violate Chinese law and the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) set up to establish international standards for working conditions.
For the record, I don't wear anything on my wrist that can't be anchored down. My wrist is thin and bracelets flop around, so needless to say, this fashion craze never appealed to me. Plus it sounded a little too much like the WWJD? idiocy of a few years ago.
What would Jesus do? Probably turn the wristbands into fishes and feed the poor.
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In 1942 the British Army occupied Tunisia. The Yorkshire Ranter has posted pages from the occupation manual instructing soldiers how to treat Moslems. Notice: nowhere in the guidelines does it say "flush the Koran down the toilet." Maybe some historian can tell us when that particular guideline was inserted.
Here's an excerpt:
If you come near a mosque, look away and keep moving.
Avoid shrines or tombs in the country.
Discuss something else; never religion or women with Moslems.
Keep silent when Moslems are praying, and don't stare at them.
Don't refer to the people as heathen; they are very religious.
Shake hands gently and avoid touching other parts of the body.
Remember that the Moslems are a very modest people and avoid any exposure of the body in their presence.
Be generous with your cigarettes.
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Republicans insisted on spending $70 million of your money investigating Whitewater during the Clinton presidency. After seven years, no indictments were returned against either President or Mrs. Clinton. That's right, no convictions resulted from the "investigation." What did Ken Starr net? A sleazy affair, taped conversations, a blue dress, and a book of poetry. He also nearly destroyed one family, and brought the nation's business to a standstill.
All that over a business deal gone bad.
Now there's real evidence that President Bush lied to the nation when he led us to war. Remember during the Whitewater scandal, when it came out that President Clinton lied about his affair with Monica Lewinsky? Lots of us said, "But it's not like he lied about our nation's security."
George Bush did. Repeatedly.
AfterDowningStreet.org is urging an investigation into the matter of the Downing Street memo, the document from Tony Blair's office that indicates the Bush administration had no intention of negotiating with Saddam Hussein. War was their goal, regardless of the lack of any incriminating evidence.
In support of AfterDowningStreet, Shakespeare's Sister is organizing the Big Brass Alliance to give further voice to the affair.
Join the Alliance. Support AfterDowningStreet. Post the info on your blog; send an email to your friends. Tell your friends and neighbors that Bush lied and people died. Tell the media. Tell the authorities. Tell Ken Starr.
Sign the letter from Rep. John Conyers to the White House concerning the memo. Sign the Petition urging Congress to take action in investigating the memo.
Because this time, it was the world that got screwed.
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I doubt the question of whether France will say Oui or Non to the EU constitution is discussed at even the wonkiest dinner parties in the U.S., but here in Britain it's the top question on everyone's mind. (At least since the Liverpudlians settled that other dispute on the football field in Turkey the other day.)
After all, Donald Rumsfeld thinks Old Europe has less impact on the emerging geo-political landscape than an escargot, and most Americans think of Europe as little more than a source for weird foreign films and those quaint British comedies.
I'll admit, the question of the EU's ratification hardly gets my Inner Wonk past first gear, but on the other hand, it is an election. Elections for me are like Westerns: there's always a good guy to root for, a showdown at dusk between Good and Evil.
Is the EU constitution the good guy, about to get stomped by the forces of Evil collectively voting "Non?" Hardly, but I'd still like to see the thing ratified, if for no other reason than a stronger Europe means more weight on this side of the trans-Atlantic scale, a balance to America and its current strategy of total world domination.
My limited knowledge of the EU and its proposed constitution comes from The Guardian and Nosemonkey, who's compiled a handy link dump. As he points out, the constitution is hardly earthshaking in its impact: it's mainly a reframing of previous treaties, a more formal structure for what already exists.
So why are the French likely to vote Non? According to The Guardian, the French think it's too Anglo Saxon, while the British think it's too French. In other words, the social justice traditions of France vs. the free trade longings of Britain. How a document can be all things to all people, or no things to neither side, is puzzling, and frankly beyond the scope of this blog (whose title is a rhetorical question, not an intention to expound further.)
So should Americans be paying attention, and if so, which side should my friends on the left root for tomorrow? Oui, Americans should put down their spatulas and tune in to BBC this weekend, but those on the left will find themselves a mite conflicted. In France, it's both the left and the right who oppose the constitution. Hold That Thought explains why the left may be wrong on this, and he convinced me, until I read this by Dead Men Left.
See what I mean? This is one of those issues that both sides pick apart and condemn, sort of like the filibuster compromise. To Americans, it will be seen as simply an up or down vote on Europe, but there's plenty of nuance CNN won't report. I'll dodge the nuance, and simply agree with The Guardian's Timothy Garten Ash:
Link: Votez oui, malgré tout.
In truth, the best is the enemy of the good. This treaty is far from being the best, but it's as good as we'll get. If we lose it, the rest of the world, from Beijing to Washington, will think we are clowns.
Exactly. My nuance-free opinion: a Non vote will be seen in Washington as a sign the EU is faltering, Old Europe gasping its last breath, giving the Empire little resistance as it trods toward Armageddon. So at the risk of encouraging bourgeois capitalism, I'm rooting for the guy named Oui tomorrow.
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It was hard to choose between the lambs and the cows this week. But the lambs got the nod, mainly because of this article:
Link: ABC News: Was Your Meat Smarter Than Your Pet?.
BERKSHIRE, England If you could talk to the animals, would they have anything to say? New research suggests they might.
Testing the IQ of a sheep may seem laughable. But at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, England, they know better. One sheep who got a reward every time she recognized a human face correctly on a video screen scored a perfect 50 out of 50.
"If it was a monkey, no one would have any problems, possibly even if it was a dog," said Keith Kendrick, a neurologist at Babraham. "They would say, 'Yeah, yeah, that's expected.' But a sheep, no one really believes."
The article goes on to mention pigs, who can move joysticks better than dogs, and cows, who do a happy dance when they solve a puzzle, and form lifelong friendships.
But the real question posed in the article is, is it wrong to eat meat? I answered this question long ago, when I became vegetarian, something I'd felt drawn to since I was a child. I think a lot of people are like I was, knowing it was wrong, but too lazy to take the time and effort it initially takes to be vegetarian—there's definitely a learning curve, but nowadays that learning curve is very short, with veg products in every grocery store.
These lambs were at Housesteads, on Hadrian's Wall. At one point, feeling a bit overwhelmed by the abundance of history, I pulled away from the crowd and watched the lambs. One newborn was a male, and I realized, one day he'd show up in a grocery store somewhere. This made me unbearably sad.
Most of the time, it's easy to ignore how our food arrives to us. While there are plenty of farms here, slaughterhouses aren't so plentiful. There's a disconnect between the carefree, and now we know, intelligent, animals in their bucolic settings and the sterile packages that line the aisles of Tesco.
When that disconnect is breached, let me know. I can help with the learning curve.
Next week I'll post new photos of the cows. The babies are getting bigger, and there's a bull in the pasture now. Love is in the air.
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...on what color to be, they go with both pink AND purple:
These are blooming wild in the common area next to my house. I waited weeks to see what color they'd be, with no idea it was a trick question.
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Next thing you know, vinyl records will make a reappearance:
Link: Extinct wildflower found in California
SAN FRANCISCO - A flower long thought to be extinct was rediscovered in a California state park more than six decades after it was last seen, scientists said Wednesday.
The pink wildflower Eriogonom truncatum, known as the Mount Diablo buckwheat, was found in a remote section of a Contra Costa County park about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of San Francisco. The plant resembles baby's breath used in floral arrangements.
Combined with the discovery of the formerly extinct ivory billed woodpecker in Arkansas, this makes one wonder if the dodo bird might not return to Mauritius one day.
Of course it would have to give up its job at the Times first.
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When life hands you cherries...make Cherry Chocolate Chip Blondies
My daughter brought a shoebox full of cherries from France yesterday, picked in my sister-in-law's garden. I started eating them straightaway, but then thought to save a few for food blogging. They are delicious au natural, but why not spread the love to some poor plain blondies, the neglected cousin to brownies?
The batter for these will be quite thick. Don't let that worry you, the end result is delicious (even in my eggless version). The combination of textures and tastes will convince you, blondes have more fun, especially when accompanied by cherries and chocolate.
I've still got more cherries, and lots more ideas, not all of which include chocolate. I might make a cherry cooler tomorrow, and salsa the next day...and put some between the layers of a chocolate cake the next, because chocolate really does belong on the menu almost as often as cherries. (Did you know cherries are one of the 10 highest ORAC scoring fruits? In other words, they're an excellent antioxidant.)
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While I was waiting for the Cherry Chocolate Chip Blondies to finish baking, I went ahead and resubscribed to all those RSS feeds I was bitching about earlier. Then we (Inner Geek and me) played around with some of the features in NetNewsWire. I discovered a stash of ready to install feeds, including a hundred or so blogs. I looked to see if mine was there...and what do you know, there it was!
Or so I thought. Turned out to be another blog called What Do I Know? but this guy knows a lot more than I do. His latest post provided a rather elegant solution to my syncing problem, which I referred to in the update below.
I promise I won't wish for his site's demise anymore, just so I can get the domain name I've been coveting ever since I came up with this lame-named blog. All my black magic arts will be put to better uses from here on out.
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Publishers should aptly be compared to jackals, not wolves, but this one doesn't seem to have the higher thinking skills of most mammals, so I'm not sure where to go for an analogy:
Link: Court upholds $22.5m for Holocaust author.
A state appeals court yesterday upheld a $22.5 million award to a Massachusetts woman who sued the publisher of her memoir about surviving the Holocaust with the help of a pack of wolves that gave her food and protection.
The author, Misha Defonseca, lost her home even after the book about her harrowing childhood in Europe during World War II became a best-seller overseas. Defonseca and a coauthor sued the publisher, Mount Ivy Press, and its founder, Jane Daniel, for breach of contract in 1998. They accused Daniel of keeping royalties that belonged to them and hiding the money in offshore accounts. A judge later ordered Mt. Ivy and Daniel to pay a total of $32.4 million to Defonseca and her ghostwriter...
...In ''Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," Defonseca said Nazis seized her parents when she was 7 years old, forcing her to wander the forests and villages of Europe alone for four years.
According to lawyers for the author, the publisher cancelled U.S. marketing arrangements, including a segment on Oprah, before the book's U.S. release, thus depriving the author of even more royalties. The good news is, the story has caught the interest of Disney.
Which story...the one about the altruistic wolves, or the Cruella De Ville remake about the publisher?
(Via the ever vigilant Booksquare.)
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My inner geek clambered out from under all the Chaos Theory books and insisted I get down with the decade and update to RSS feeds. It's a great way to keep up with the news, she told me, rather than relying on haphazardly landing on interesting stuff.
Sounded good to me, so I searched for an RSS feeder compatible with Mac, and found several. The first two didn't work for some reason, one just sat there and resisted all my attempts to prod it into action, the other didn't look very cute on my desktop.
Somewhere along the way I crashed the computer, and had to switch to my laptop--I guess my inner geek was so excited at the prospect of new software she got a little impatient.
I stumbled across NetNewsWire, which seemed pretty nifty, and within minutes I had figured out how to upload the feeds from my blogroll...IG (she likes acronyms) was in heaven, let me tell you! and then I decided to reboot the big computer I normally work on, load NNW on there and sync all those new feeds from the laptop.
No dice. (My inner geek likes cliches, too.) I kept fiddling with the settings, ventured into Server Land, shook the laptop a few times, even whispered some sweet nothings in its ear...but all I got was this message: Can’t synchronize because of an error uploading to your FTP server (connect() timed out!). (I love the exclamation mark; see what I mean about cute software?)
I fiddled and fiddled, determined to fix it rather than re-upload all those RSS feeds, simply because it was a tool and should bow to my will, no matter how cute it is. My network administrator was asleep in another time zone, or he'd have been alerted immediately. My inner geek by this time had grown bored and wanted to play with some new widgets she'd found, but I kept on, determined to succeed (or at least get a good blog post out of it).
Hours have passed, and I'm still getting the same message. By now I could have uploaded feeds from every blog and newswire in existence, but my inner mule has kicked in and won't let me. I think it has something to do with my settings, or possibly a wire I unplugged when I crashed—I'll see if the techies I sent a blistering email to respond. (If they would just write instructions that don't include words like "FTP servers" and "folder path"! Not all of us are geeks, or even have multiple personality disorder.)
IG reminds me that computers themselves are subject to Chaos Theory, which is sort of what I suspected all along. Next time she gets any bright ideas, though, I'll hit her with a sliderule and send her off to sort the computer wires.
UPDATE: Looks like this site could help me. See, I told you I had an inner geek...looks like she's set up a mirror website in some alternate universe! Jumping Jehosephat!
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The other day, with Kevin Drum-like looks on our faces, we wondered, "Where are all the women cab drivers?"*
It's true, the times I've taken a cab, in London, Chicago, San Francisco, and other spots, there's always a man behind the wheel. Even with private cars for hire (sort of like cabs you pay by the hour) none of our drivers have been women. (One was a former road rally driver from Kenya, and he also, interestingly, drove a truck from Mombasa to deliver Live Aid supplies for Bob Geldolf's relief effort.)
For those of us women smarting from reading this story, I'm sure all the female cabbie wannabes share our pain. (via Rox Populi)
Link: Media Often Ignore Women as Sources, New Study Finds.
In all media outlets, women are cited as sources far less often than men, according to a new Project for Excellence in Journalism study to be released Monday.
Cable news and the PBS NewsHour ranked lowest in terms of percentage of stories with at least one female source, at 19% and 17% respectively. Network TV came in at 27%, morning shows at 34%, news Web sites at 36%, and print newspapers at 41%.
Roxanne tells me there are plenty of women cabbies in Tokyo, I just haven't seen them, mainly because I haven't been there. From now on, if I'm writing a story about cab drivers, I'll search for a source among the estrogen-enhanced Marilu Henner-types.
In related news, John Tierney (who looks like a man, but must be a woman, since this column is titled What Women Want) tells us women aren't very competitive—they've even got proof.
Which leads to the idea that women, being less competitive, must be better drivers and therefore own the road.**
Just not the cabs in London.
*If you aren't familiar with Kevin Drum and his faux pas of several months ago, you can read about it here and here.
**If you think I'm not competitive, Mister Tierney, you haven't seen my bumper sticker that says "Hogging the left lane? Prepare to die."
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My roots are showing. Though I no longer live in New Mexico, it's hard to shake the chile off your boots, so I've created a new blogroll, Red or Green? which actually does have something to do with my blogroll theme, food. In New Mexico, this is the traditional greeting, a reference to the inevitable question your waiter asks when taking your order: red or green? (which refers to chile, of course).
I'm a red myself, which has nothing to do with my politics. (I resigned from the Communist Party years ago, when Gorby made a sharp right turn.) (I am so kidding, wingnuts! Although you'd think, from the abuse it takes on the spittle-filled Republogs, the Democratic Party has wrapped itself in the blood red Bolshevik mantle.)
I've also added a few new sites to my general, all-purpose Food for Thought blogroll: An Eye Opener, from an Iraq war survivor; Chandrasutra, who shares my love of language; and better late than never, Pam's House Blend, which I've been reading for weeks.
Now I'm hungry. Time to gear up for food blogging, since us women ain't good for nothing but lifestyle tips, anyway.
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The insurgents in Iraq must not have got the memo: nuclear war was averted.
Link: Car bombs, suicide attacks kill 49, scores hurt - Iraq's new chapter - MSNBC.com.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A string of car bombs and suicide attacks across Iraq killed at least 49 Iraqis and wounded more than 130 Monday, striking a Baghdad restaurant popular with police, a Shiite mosque and the home of a community leader near Mosul.
Can we have a compromise here too? They get their country back, we get our soldiers back. Simple.
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This Country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I cannot be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national Constitution amended. —Abraham Lincoln, Inaugural address, 1861
I've been reading a lot of history lately—can't help it in an island steeped with it—and I just got a weird deja vu prickle while reading about the plans for "nuclear options" in the U.S. Senate.
I'm reminded of Charles I's foolhardiness in the House of the People, which cost him his head.
Whatever happens tomorrow, it might very well mean the end of the greatest experiment in democracy the world has ever known.
Hyperbole? Maybe, but bear with me. The road to revolution is always pockmarked with these tiny events: a "tea party" in Boston, a murder in Sarajevo, the high price of bread in France...but underlying those minor events are deep discontents within the populace. In Germany, resentment over their treatment after what later became known as World War I fueled the rise of Adolph Hitler. In England, resentment over Charles I's refusal to bow to the will of Parliament led to a Civil War and the (temporary) end of the monarchy. Our own civil war arose because certain people disliked being given their moral marching orders.
In the words of Ronald Reagan, here we go again.
By ending the filibuster, the Republicans want to change the constitution, without going about it the proper way. If the spark for taking this action—the nomination of Priscilla Owen—succeeds, by crook or by hook, who—and with what army—says she's a legitimate member of the court? What happens when she makes a controversial ruling, as she no doubt will, and enough people say "Enough!" What happens when a woman dies from a back alley abortion? What happens when the first car bomb explodes? When the National Guard is called to quell an uprising? When peace activists are mowed down by tanks?
Who'll be the first to pour the tea in the harbor?
Don't read history, friends. It only makes the future more fearsome.
I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. —Patrick Henry, 1775
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I admit, I've been having a hard time keeping up the blogging pace lately, what with the road trips, the houseguests, and the natural lag after the elections.
Yesterday I outsourced a couple of posts, linking to others who aren't struck dumb (numb?) with fingers that refuse to come up with anything original, or even a half decent rant, despite plenty of rantable material.
But at least I haven't done this.
Yet.
(Stolen from Chandrasutra.)
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There's a new media crisis, and this time it has nothing to do with Newsweek.
When I got in my car this morning, expecting to hear the pleasant chatter of Radio 4's Today Programme, I heard some silly comedy show. Then I was informed that due to "industrial action" by some members of BBC unions, there would be disruptions in programming. (In our language, this means "they're on strike.")
Pre-taped drama and comedy will replace original content, while Today's John Humphrys takes a break. He'll probably go invade France, or tease a poodle, or whatever Welsh attack dogs do on holiday, while I'm forced to listen to The Archers non-stop. (After which I'll be ready to invade France.)
On TV, BBC's Breakfast looked even more like a time warp experiment than usual: In front of a single camera, a wide eyed newbie read the news (in a green tie and a pink shirt—are Trinny and Susannah on strike too?). Without the sleepy-eyed banter of Natasha Kaplinsky and Dermot Murnaghan, what's the point? Even the weather looked lifeless, despite rare predictions of sun.
The union plans to disrupt live coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show, which says all you need to know about their willingness to strike at the pollen-filled heart of the British public. I predict Jeremy Paxman will be back by the time my hellebore blooms.
So there goes my day. Maybe I'll stop by the pub and have a pint or three...but no, they've canceled Happy Hour, due to the national inclination toward binge drinking. (And you thought this a nation of tea sippers? PG Tips has lost out to Stella Artois, and no, those aren't football* teams.)
That leaves blogging, although the dog has a few suggestions, all involving the aforementioned sun, that I may check out. If I run into John Humphrys, I'll tell him Newsweek is hiring—they could use some of his spine.
*Football, in our language, is soccer, and it's played by the pampered young progeny of soccer moms, not large men for multi-million £ contracts.
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...I'll just link to Chicken Yoghurt: Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light.
And while I'm at it, go over and read Jeanne at Body and Soul: The death of Dilawar.
Then read Frank Rich in the NY Times.
But, as Sadly No! tells us, it's really the violent animal rights extremists we should fear. (Perhaps the FBI knows something about Chicken Yoghurt I don't?)
Or maybe the animal we should worry about is Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, who informs us of Newsweek's other mistake.
I haven't even gotten to the nuclear war raging in America yet, but I can't take any more outrage today. I'm off to enjoy what passes for Spring here. (If you're lucky, I'll have some Pigeon Blogging soon.)
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