What Do I Know?

WDIK Location Quiz #6

Can you identify this location?

It's time for another WDIK Location Quiz!

Pipe down, people! Try to contain your excitement. This may be the last one for a while, as I try to knuckle down and get some real work done. No more traipsing around England with assorted daughters and guests. (Ireland, though, is another matter. Stay tuned.)

Okay, here's a hint: There has always been much craziness going on here, and that was before that huge tank landed in front.

Another hint: If you think I am trying to drive you to Bedlam with these hints, you are right.

Positively my last hint: Faithful readers will have kept up with my travels among humanity's fringes.

Wednesday Food Blogging: Roasted Corn Salsa

Salsa, made with roasted corn, a rare delicacy here in England.

Imagine my surprise to find corn once again in the supermarket produce section, unshucked and only 30p an ear.

"Quel surprise," I murmured in French, as I always do while examining produce at Tesco. "Ohh la la," I added, just because I like to say that. I imagined the Roasted Corn Salsa I could make with fresh corn, and I quickly switched to Spanish. "Holy Toledo! El cheapo corn, here at the height of summer! Waitrose can kiss my guacamole!"

Faithful readers will remember my frustration with our other local superstore, Waitrose, and their unsportsmanlike pricing of fresh corn. Nearly £2 for 2 already shucked ears of corn. At today's exchange rate, that's almost $4 for about a cup of corn kernels.

The French have a word for this: it's snort.

But on to the recipe, which originally contained the dreaded fresh tomatoes. Shudder. I add chopped red peppers instead, apres roasting. Adjust the heat to your taste; some jalapenos can be hot—yes, even here amongst the tastebud-challenged English. Serve with tortilla chips to appreciative guests.

Here's how to do it:

The Wind Beneath My Wings (Is A Crap Song)

It's back to school week at my house, for my youngest daughter at least. Yesterday was the first day of her last year. Her senior year.

My baby. A senior.

Gosh, it seems like only yesterday she was going off to kindergarten...my little fledgling in a pink dress (all she would wear were dresses that year). I remember her last day of kindergarten. After the bus pulled away I looked up at the bird nest in the porch lamp I'd been keping an eye on. The baby birds had started to fly that very morning. [Does anyone else hear Bette Midler singing, or is that just me?]

Okay, I'm getting pretty sappy here. I made cookies for her first day, as usual, but I needed them more than she did.

In other school news:

Next month I start a new class, on the Tudors. And I signed up for an online class, about researching history for fiction. I've never been interested in writing historical fiction—I tell people my imagination doesn't work in past tense, but lately I've been thinking I should take advantage of the opportunities for research that are literally in my back yard. Well, not literally, but I only have to walk a few blocks to be in an Iron Age hillfort. Or a few more to be at the home of John Milton. And a few more will take me to the home of Ozzy Osbourne, another famous historical figure.

Of course maybe now would be a good time to finish that rock star romance I started writing ages ago...the same year she started preschool, in fact.

Excuse me. I need to go have a good cry.

"Unavailable"

Hmmm...this is interesting. I clicked on an article at the NY Times' website and I got this:

This Article Is Unavailable

On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial.

The article I wanted to read was titled "Details Emerge in British Terror Case". Something tells me there won't be any details available through the usual British sources either.

Dang. Outsmarted by the NY Times. Can anyone back in the States tell me what the article says?

UPDATE: Thank you, dear readers. All I can say is "Wow." I can see why this was banned in Britain. Shocking stuff.

Don't Let Your Town Become Another Verulamium

The dog makes another important archaeological discovery.

Yesterday we went to Verulamium, an ancient Roman city that was sacked by Queen Boudicca. Verulamium was a crown jewel of the Roman empire in Britain. You may know it today as St. Albans, a crown jewel in the Starbucks empire.

We took the dog to the park there, and she ran ahead as usual. She was the first to discover the remains of the Roman city wall. She was hoping they'd left some bones, but no such luck.

She asked me what happened to the Roman empire. I told her they were brought down by hubris. She asked if she should be vaccinated against that, but I told her it only seems to affect humans.

And Ain't I Sacred Too?

Tim Russert was interviewing Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, on Meet The Press. He accused him of  belittling New York's tragedy, by referring to the WTC site as a "hole in the ground" during a 60 Minutes interview. It seems Nagin had been asked why New Orleans hadn't been rebuilt one year later, and he asked why five years later there was still a "hole in the ground" in New York.

Unfortunately, he backed down, apologizing to the people of New York, when Russert accused him of not treating the WTC location as a "sacred place".

Well, excuse the hell out of me: Is not New Orleans a sacred place?

Were those stockbrokers who died on 9/11 somehow more deserving of honor after their deaths than those who died in New Orleans? Of course not.

Imagine if half of Philadelphia had been under water a year ago. Does anyone think half its residents would still be living in temporary homes a year later? Of course not.

The whole country mourned when New York and Washington were attacked on September 11. I hung on to my puppy and weeped, watching the news coverage of people searching for loved ones. I clutched my own loved ones tighter at night, mindful of how precious—and fleeting—life was. I swallowed back tears when I heard the names of the dead read aloud, solemnly, each in turn, before a quiet nation.

I did the same when, from 5000 miles away, I watched a hurricane named Katrina devastate a city I'd known and loved. I cried when I read of how people had organized themselves, with young children and old people to be evacuated first, while the able-bodied swept their area free of debris, hoping they'd be seen as "deserving" of rescue. Tears sprang to my eyes when I read of how people stranded on their rooftops waved away helicopters, saying they didn't have money for a ticket.

No one's talking about how big a memorial to build in New Orleans, what sort of monument the dead deserve. No one's declared the Lower Ninth Ward a "sacred place" despite the fact hundreds died there, the victims of a horrible wind, and the horrible neglect of their government.

Ray Nagin didn't say what he should have on Meet The Press. He didn't tell Tim Russert that those dead in New Orleans were just as worthy as those who died on 9/11, worthy of our respect, and our sacred vow to do better next time for all our citizens, white or black, rich or poor.

And yet Tim Russert still questioned whether race or class had anything to do with the response to Katrina, when his own instinct is to refer to the 9/11 site as "sacred" while at the same time expecting the people of New Orleans to rebuild their city on little more than hope, knowing the new levees are not much better than the old.

What does a city have to do to earn the label "sacred" these days?

What Do Dogs Know?

Today we started out on a walk, first stopping to let the dog eat the ripe blackberries, as she loves to do these days. Then she insisted we stop and say hello to a gardener, by lowering herself to the ground and straining toward him on the leash. Normally she ignores the people we come across, but somehow she knows when someone wants to pet her. She was right; the man gave her a good rub, telling me he had lots of dogs at home.

Many people assume, never having let their dogs off lead before, that their vivacious dogs will behave the same way toward strangers they meet in the park as they do when a stranger comes to their home. My dog positively swoons with joy whenever anyone comes to the house, she's so glad to see new humans.

But when she's off lead, she generally ignores humans who cross her path. Once in a while, though, she'll make subtle eye contact, then pause for the hand that's invariably proffered. It's as if she knows that person is a special breed, one of us humans who are invigorated by touching a dog.

How do they know this? It must be instinctual—dogs depend on humans for their survival, after all.

It's like knowing which berries are ripe and which are not.

What I can't figure out, though, is how she knew today, when we were stopped at the corner to wait for a car, that when the car slowed down and signaled to turn that it was okay to start across the street, before I'd even made a move, not one I could detect, anyway.

Surely the ability to read a car's language is not inborn in a dog? I suppose people who trust their seeing eye dogs to know when to cross the street wouldn't be surprised at how quickly a dog learns when it's okay to step off the curb. Their life depends on it, after all.

Speaking of, you might enjoy reading The Seeing Eye Report, a first hand account of how Jared and his dog Kerry learned to work together. (Via Philobiblion)

Friday Cow Blogging

Mrs. Bovington-Pasturby has a rather posh accent, unlike her Norfolk cousin Sally Broad.

There was exciting news this week for those of us who study the behaviour of cows, or bovinologists as we refer to ourselves.

Turns out cows have regional accents, which they pick up from the humans they interact with. A cow from Norfolk has a Norfolk moo, while cows from Somerset have a Somerset moo and Yorkshire cows are completely unintelligible.

So I suspect the cows I interact with all moo in baby talk, since that's how I talk to them. The babies especially love it. They gather at the fence just to listen to me talk. "That's a cute widdle baby cow, yes it is," I say, hoping the neighbors aren't listening. Now I can tell them I'm conducting important bovine-linguistics research.

In other cow-linguistics news, programmers have developed a cow computer language, with instructions based on variations of the word "moo". So now cows everywhere, regardless of their accent, can program a computer. (Sadly, there's still the problem of the nerdy image, which prevents some cows from going into the profession.)

WDIK Location Quiz #5

Can you identify this location?

Hint: The errors were very funny there.

Another hint: It's so easy you shouldn't need another hint. But if you do: there is a spherical connection. (See hint number one.)

Food, and Other Fun Distractions

Every time we go on a walk, the dog stops by the side of the road and eats the ripe blackberries. She quickly sniffs them first, to determine which are the ripe ones, then she pulls them off the vines with her teeth. She must know that recent research indicates berries boost brain power.

Did you know the USDA has an image gallery? Check out ladybugs on a fava bean leaf.

Due to a poor basil crop this year, pesto may become hard to find, the Italians warn us. I remember having a bumper crop of basil when I lived in Wisconsin. I filled my kitchen with it, literally. The house smelled like a pizza parlor.

Wondering what to eat? How about yellow veggies?

Fascinating insight into how fibre works inside your intestines. (I can't wait to share this with my family at the dinner table!)

A cancer patient changes his diet: "Within a few days of my diagnosis, I started making radical changes in my diet. That's not as difficult as it sounds. In fact, it has been a rather fun distraction, and it feels like the single most self-empowering thing I have accomplished in this entire journey." (He's right; it's not as difficult as it sounds.)

Wednesday Food Blogging: Strawberry Right-side Up Cake

Actually, you can call it whatever you like.

It's still strawberry season here in England, and I've had them just about every way there is, short of fried. I'd seen a recipe for a vegan Pineapple Upside Down Cake, and wondered, why not do the same with strawberries?

The problem was, the strawberries floated to the top during baking, and it turned into more of a Strawberry Right-side Up Cake. In fact, it looked a lot like a Strawberry Buckle.

I decided to drizzle some chocolate syrup on it, and then it turned into a delicious, exotic pastry, its humble roots entirely forgotten.

Next time I might try it with a chocolate cake. Because you can never have too much chocolate.

Here's how you do it:

Humanity Has Always Sucked

On Sunday night we watched Munich, a violent film filled with needless death. On Monday night we watched Control Room, filled with violent images of needless deaths.

Yesterday I asked my daughter what she wanted to do, since school starts next week and I thought she might want to do something fun. She replied that she wanted to visit a concentration camp. (Not an unusual request. When she was nine she read all those Jewish-girl-in-peril books that third graders love. She's had Jewish angst ever since. Plus it doesn't help, as my rabbi friend pointed out, that we set her up by giving her a Hebrew name.)

But I told her Germany was too far for a day trip, so we went to the Imperial War Museum instead, where they have an excellent exhibit on the Holocaust, complete with a model of Auschwitz. And lots and lots of violent images of needless deaths.

I have come to the conclusion humanity sucks.

Don't Kill This Electric Car!

Ever since I read The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery this summer, I've been even more interested in environmental issues, especially possible solutions to global warming. I've been reading lots of interesting articles on the web, educating myself as I go along. My husband now understands when I ask about mega joules I'm not hinting for a gift. Well, if he really wants to...maybe a solar water heater.

I also must admit I've got another dirty little secret: I love fast cars. Always have. So when I read today about the Tesla roadster, my blood sluiced around. Zero to 60 in four seconds! $2.50 for 250 miles! Efficiency of 1.14 km/MJ! You can have your green, and race it too.

Well, not yet, at $87k (more for the optional solar panels), but I suspect in the future their relative cost will come down. In fact, after reading the white paper about electric cars, I'm pretty sure electric cars will be the car of the not-so-distant future. And not only that, but our garages will be equipped with solar panels for charging them with clean solar energy. (If you drive less than 350 miles a week, you could easily be a net producer of energy!)

Now if only they could make a station wagon. The dog loves fast cars too.

Some more links:
Andrew Tobias wrote about it yesterday.
That white paper I mentioned. (Read the part on Performance to realize why the Tesla can be quick and efficient.)
Tesla Motors' website (I like their slogan: Burn rubber, not gasoline.)
Tesla's blog (Interestingly, the Roadster is assembled in England, but not sold here. Steering wheel issues, I hear.)
Tesla FAQs  (Including, Can I trade in my Porsche?)
Tesla porn (I like mine wearing black.)

England and Pakistan: "Dangerous Brinkmanship"

The situation between England and Pakistan has "spun out of control," says The Independent. A peace deal was negotiated, the article claims, but "then events descended further into farce." Examining the situation deeper, their reporter James Lawton asked whether the collapse is not "simply another pitiable example of a wider death throe."

A scan of British papers reveals similar and equally shocking coverage of events:

"Pakistan sit-in sparks crisis," screams the Telegraph. "It is true that Pakistan were engaging in dangerous brinkmanship yesterday," claims their reporter. A convenient timeline of the crisis is included in their article.

"A DAY embracing confusion and anarchy" begins The Times, going on to quote one of the Pakistani officials involved: "There should have been sensitivity and deliberation."

The Guardian provides more depth in its coverage of yesterday's crisis, claiming relations had "reached breaking-point after a series of incidents over the past few months."

The latest incident was sparked by Pakistan's refusal to come onto the field after tea, their feelings hurt by accusations of cheating.

Who would have thought a game of cricket would result in an international crisis?

Look! Over There! Terrorists! Shopkeepers!

I was wondering today if rents in my part of southern England would go down, since I presume more Americans will be reluctant to move here what with the fact Britain is now known for terror rather than tea. (Many ex-pats live in Buckinghamshire and have their rents paid by their employers, which contributes to keeping rents higher than elsewhere in England.) The average cost of a detached house in the UK is £300,000, twice that in some parts of Buckinghamshire. And with petrol costing a pound per litre, most new arrivals to this country are in sticker shock.

And that's before they even try to eat at The Fat Duck.

In today's Times there's the headline "Tourists tell Britain: you're a rip-off." (via ExPat Musings) Finally, someone at the Times recognizes my pet peeve. Most everything here costs far more than it does in the States, especially lodging and meals. For example, you won't find a B&B charging less than £30 per person per night—that's around $120 for a rather shabby (by American standards) room for two people. (That's for the further reaches of England; London costs more.) Lunch—a modest vegetarian lunch—often ends up costing me £20. And transport is ridiculously expensive, as the article states, not to mention inconvenient in many cases: To get to Oxford by train, about 40 miles from here, would take one hour and forty-five minutes (not including time to get to and from the stations), and cost around £25 for a return ticket.

Did I mention Britain privatized its rail service some years ago? The result is higher costs than the rest of Europe and less convenience.

The article speculates that one reason prices in Blighty (as Brits affectionately refer to their country) are so inflated may be that Brits are reluctant to complain about high prices and poor service, due to their national character trait of carrying on in the face of adversity. (Sometimes confused with stiffening their upper lip.) I suspect this is true, as I've never heard complaints from the locals about the high cost of a haircut, for instance. (My hairdresser just raised her rates to £42 for a cut and style. She's no longer my hairdresser.) Of course part of the reason is that they don't bother converting prices to dollars, as I automatically do. A pound is just a pound to the British, not $1.91 at closing time Friday.

I'm no economist, but something has to be done, short of worldwide financial panic. Fortunately, there's a panic of another nature to exploit. My plan is to spread the word: Britain is not a safe place to live, or to visit.

Unless they lower their terror status prices.

Friday Cow Blogging

Mama cow shows the younger generation where to find the best blackberries. She finds the ones that grow on my back fence particularly tasty.

The cows are not the only ones who enjoy them.

Judge Rules Against Lobotomies for Republicans

Remember that old bumper sticker that said "Lobotomies for Republicans. It's the law."? I used to have one until my husband took it off our car during a roadtrip to the South. He was afraid we'd be arrested, irony notwithstanding.

Anyway, the bumper sticker made fun of Republicans' seeming reverence for the law above all else, as in law abiding, non-drug using, speed limit following, etc. etc., citizens.

Well, now that the courts have seen fit to interpret the law in a way Republicans (some Republicans) don't like, suddenly "the law" isn't to be revered after all. The courts are merely meddlesome, not binding.

Especially if the judge sitting in the court was appointed by or in any way has connections to Democrats.

"Lobotomies for Republicans" indeed. Seems they've lost part of their brains, the part that realizes that their own cherished adherence to the law has been partisanized. The result is a blind clamor for lawbreaking, a deafness to the notion that the constitution is not a partisan document.

"It's the law" just doesn't have the same ring to it after it's been parsed: Support the Republican president, even when he breaks the law. (Even when his very election involved breaking the law that guarantees certain citizens the right to vote.)

Insist that Democratic judges are not to be obeyed only at your own peril: that dog won't hunt for long, as they paraphrase in Texas.

Can lobotomies be undone? Because a mind is indeed a terrible thing to waste.

WDIK Location Quiz #4

Can you guess where this location is?

Hint: I am not the first to photograph this place. It was first photographed in 1835.

Another hint: Photographic wizardry is not the only kind of wizardry that went on here.

UPDATE: We have a winner!

More photos below.

World Leaders Finally Tell the Truth: Bush is "Crap"

So much for British reserve. In a private meeting with Labour MPs, the Deputy PM, John Prescott, who's minding the store while Tony's away on holiday, said what he really thinks: the Bush administration has been "crap" when it comes to peace in the Middle East.

According to one MP who was there:

"He was talking in the context of the 'road map' in the Middle East. He said he only gave support to the war on Iraq because they were promised the road map. But he said the Bush administration had been crap on that. We all laughed and he said to an official, 'Don't minute that'." Mr Cohen added: "We also had a laugh when he said old Bush is just a cowboy with his Stetson on. But then he said, 'I can hardly talk about that can I?'

Of course you can, John. Don't be shy.

This is exactly what we need, more world leaders telling the truth about the Bush administration.

Oh, look, they are: China's ambassador to the UN in Geneva told the U.S. to "shut up" their nagging about China's increased spending on their military. They played his remarks on the radio today; he was quite worked up. So much for Chinese reserve.

Wednesday Food Blogging: Tofu and Broccoli with Peanut Sauce

A plateful of cancer fighting ingredients, designed with deliciousness in mind.

You probably wouldn't want to be a guest at my dinner table. I tend to monopolize the conversation, constantly citing little tidbits about how healthy each bite of food you're eating is.

"Did you know a new study says broccoli has the same beneficial ingredient as in woad, the blue stuff they painted on their faces in Braveheart?" Crunch crunch.

"And did you know tofu is full of cancer fighting ingredients too?" Crunch. Swallow.

"Peanuts contain the same amount of beneficial ingredients as strawberries." Crunch. Crunch. "Plus, I've read that modern peanut farming methods have significantly reduced the risk of aflatoxin poisoning." Swallow.

I am actually quite obnoxious in person.

You too can annoy your loved ones with pedantic dinner conversation, while serving a healthy (and yummy) plate of Broccoli and Tofu with Peanut Sauce. It's easy, and though your kids will not love you especially much for it, they will thank you later. Much later. (But don't talk with your mouth full.)

Here's how: