The third annual owl wall

Yesterday, my collection of kitschy owl memorabilia was arranged upon its third kitchen wall. This is becoming a ritual in my life: Move into a new place, put up the owls, and I'm at home.

This time, I'm living alone and I have the walls all to my self. So the owls decided they wanted to stretch out a bit. The original owl (from the late, great, Springs landmark "The Theater of Mankind") is the wise centerpiece of the largest kitchen wall, looking skeptically (or coyly?) to the right.


The counter wall is lined with the all-natural material owl tableau, and the cluster of three owl shaped hot plates.



The rusty Las Vegas stained glass owl looks out the kitchen window.


And thanks to Sara Rubin, who subconsciously knew my life would not be complete without owl salt and pepper shakers.



That said, please do not give me more owl stuff. While I adore the owl wall year after year, the contemporary owl market has become oversaturated. You cannot turn a corner in a clothing store, a toy store, or even on the internet, without ramming your face into the large eyes of an owl. And the stuff is not as cool as hot plates.

I want to be him

Or maybe I just want to hop in a wicker basket and float my cares away.

via the Smithsonian Institute's Flickr stream.

Scooping the New York Times

Today's Science Times featured an article called, "Plants found to show preferences for relatives."

Last August, I did a radio show titled, "Plants appear to recognize own kin."

From the Times:

“I’m just amazed at what we’ve found,” said Susan A. Dudley, an evolutionary plant ecologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who carried out the study with a graduate student, Amanda L. File.

“Plants,” Dr. Dudley said, “have a secret social life.”

From my show:

Susan Dudley: Mostly we think about plants as passive, just the victims of their environment and just growing in response to the physical environment. But they actually actively sense and respond to the environment, including what is specifically the presence of other plants, and I think that’s a really neat thing.

Why so long to break this exciting plant story, NYT?

Hummer bites the dust?

I screamed with delight this morning when I heard that G.M. may discontinue the Hummer. Finally! G.M. is closing down four truck and S.U.V. factories in favor of smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, just as we near the $4 a gallon gas mark. I guess this is the turning point where economics meets the environment. People are making actual lifestyle changes based on fuel economy. More and more I hear people say they don't want to drive somewhere unnecessary because of gas. My co-worker is buying a motorcycle to commute to work. A friend of a friend is moving closer to the city. This is all good news. I just wish that we had an infrastructure to support the alternative fuel vehicles people would buy, and the affordable, higher-density living choices people want to make.



So for a hopeful farewell to the Hummer, here's a haiku from a website dedicated to giving the finger to the H2.

Haiku by Tim

Hulking black Hummer
Purchased in rank atonement
small peckered driver

Damn

This is the best beer bread ever. Make it now, if you know what's good for you. Because this - this is good for you.

It would also be good for a potluck, and I've been invited to about a zillion of them in the past few weeks. I do not exaggerate. In fact, I'm going to one tonight (and making some focaccia). And during a long-planned potluck last Thursday, the Garden Posse decided to stop maintaining a garden, and focus on potlucks. Basically, a garden is lots of hard work, and after a year of that, we'd rather just eat. Also, community organization is a huge drag. We're having a Malcolm X birthday/full moon potluck celebration next Monday and inviting Austin's radicals, plus a bunch of random people off Craigslist (my job). Come! We'll talk about anarchy. And in today's political climate, who's not up for that?

Rejected science questions

We're doing this series called, "Ask the Scientists," in which we solicit science questions from children around the world. Right now we're in the process of going through the lists and looking for the questions that you can ask a scientist without laughing. That should be the subtitle - "Ask the Scientists: With a straight face, please."

These are not those questions.

Fern, in Lao PDR, wants to know:

Could we create a living pom pom – moving breathing talking naturally?
Is it possible to create a functioning cross between a wombat and a caterpillar?

Her classmate, Osvaldo, wonders:

How do plasma TVs work?
Why do plasma TV still work after water is poured on it?

Sounds like Osvaldo did some science on his own.

World's Largest Dog Museum

In an antiques market north of Waco, Texas. I'm skeptical of the "World's Largest" claim, but personally, I have never seen so many dog collectibles in one place. My favorites were the celebratory poodles.

The neighborhood

I've lived in my house in Austin for nearly a year now. Which means it's time to start looking for a new place - since I moved out of the parent nest, I've moved every year. As I grow older, I keep hoping this intensively time-consuming tradition will end, but to no avail. I've decided that I need to spread my wings and fly, sans roommate, to a one bedroom apartment.

My current place is a lovely little house, which has been divided into two apartments. I live in the front, with a friend from college who agreed to live in the overheated loft, sight unseen. The street is very residential, and inhabited by UT law and architecture students, and Bruce Sterling, the very well known science fiction writer.
He has this huge, sprawling, out of place yellow and stone house that has utterly ignored the idea of landscaping. Something refreshing - yet confusing - for a rich person's house. Some sci-fi fanzine guys I ran into at a zine fest told me Sterling left his family in Austin to marry a Philippine woman and live in Hawaii or something, but I see him reclining on his hammock on his laptop and teaching his daughter to ride her bike on the weekends. I've checked the book jackets many times. I swear it's him. I think sometimes about going over and asking to borrow an egg or something, but then I recall that I don't associate with the neighbors across the street.

For to the left of Sterling's house is big sprawling Victorian house that has intimidated me since the day I moved in. It's lived in by a young hipster family, and a rotating cast of aging hipster friends. And a friend who stops by with her Hummer to water the lawn. (Of course, I want to pee on it and chide her for her consumption. Which reminds me of the time I looked outside and saw a Hummer speeding by my house, with a man hanging on the outside, yelling at the driver, "You're selfish! You don't care what anyone thinks!" I hoped he was just a random man, who goes around jumping and yelling on all Hummers, but he was probably a friend pointing out what the Hummer is compensating for.)

Anyhow, I'm intimidated by the house across the street because the house and the peoplelook like they stepped out of an issue of Ready-Made. I receive Ready-Made at home, having subscribed at the cost of $5 a year at the MAKE festival last fall, and never in even my wildest, most handy dreams would I do any of the projects in the magazine. On the cover of the last issue, the headline read, "Make this space age bench! Not as impossible as you think!" Inside, the main instruction was, "Call your local welder." Lesson learned: I should be friends with local craftspeople, and it's a point well taken. But really? No one can make this. So when I see one of the house people spending full weeks laying their own brick wall, plumb line, cement mixer, and all, I wonder what their deal is. Do they work? How do they own this house? And then I see a flyer for an art party at their address. I decide I'm going to work up my courage to go, with the aid of my more confidently artsy boyfriend. But he falls sick and I decide to cook him dinner instead. An easy out. When I come back, it looks like the party wasn't terribly well attended, but it was well lighted - round white paper globes are hanging tastefully from trees. And there's an antique car with balloons on the side windows, which hasn't moved since then. And there's a cellist playing on the porch. I sit on my steps and listen, and watch a skinny man in a three piece suit and hat stand silhouetted in the doorway, glowing in his own hipness. And then I go inside to my roommate getting high on the couch.

I actually do talk to the neighbors on my side of the street. The neighbor to my left - living in the same 1 bedroom + loft arrangement as me - has begun hosting a series of parties. It's called "Mondays with Miah." That means on Mondays, there's a keg of high-quality beer ("I refuse to drink shitty beer," he says) and good food only steps away from my porch. Last night it took until 10 pm for a giant vat of pad thai to be ready to be eaten. This is after I had been gnawing on Marshall for about an hour and a half. I've threatened to eat him so many times that he's begun to call my bluff. "I don't think you could do it," he said. "You would get grossed out at the first sight of blood." He'll see who's crying wolf - when I eat him.

In which I am insulted from the back of a Hummer limousine

So the other day I was riding my bike out from the parking garage under my office. Usually I pedal into the far left turning lane, but on this particular day, a giant white Hummer limousine was crowded into my spot.

Let me say this: I don't like to think of myself as an environmental extremist, but I think extreme thoughts about what I'd like to do to Hummers. I would like to tag them with bumper stickers that say "CO2," or pee on them. I'm not kidding. I have thought very hard over the past few months about how I would accomplish these actions while avoiding repercussions. So far, I haven't had the balls to go through with either idea. I fall back on either giving dirty looks or pretending like I'm vomiting when I see one of these gas-guzzling, egotistical monstrosities on the road. Needless to say, I think Hummer limos are the pimp-my-ride of the Devil.

So there I am on my eco-friendly mode of transportation, headed straight for the Hummer, no turning back. The back windows of the limo are open, and the people inside are sticking their heads out, waving and yelling at every car that goes by, kids clearly psyched that someone paid for them to be in a Hummer limo at 5:30 on a Friday. When I approach, they yell out at me, and what do I do? I give them the nastiest look I have ever given a Hummer vehicle. It's a combination of disapproval and strong disgust, with some serious eyebrow furrowing action. And they see it.

"OH YEAH?!" they yell. "WELL, YOU'RE STUPID! WE DON'T LIKE YOU!"

I turn into the center lane, where I'm in front of the Hummer, and it takes me some time to comprehend what was said because the insult came out high-pitched and hysterical. Like the shouter had just gone through puberty. The light for the turning lane goes green first, and as the Hummer passes me, I hear,

"AND YOU'RE UGLY, TOO!"

And then, as they turn onto the main road, a girl's voice out the other window:

"THEY DIDN'T MEAN IT!"

Awesome, I think to myself, and pedal on.

Garden time

One of the best things about Austin is that you can grow your own food all year round. Since last July I've been a founding member of a beautiful communal garden on the east side of town, abutting the river. The garden has been through a few transitions - the idealistic dream of my friend Megan, a part of the plan for a sustainable community center, the focus of a group called "Urban Evolution." Then finally we realized that the property owners were too drunk to negotiate a proper land agreement with, and we decided that it was best just to deal with the garden as long as it could last. And we adopted my original name suggestion, "The Garden Posse." And by "posse" I mean me and two other people. We're really... fearsome. We have hoes.



In trying to run a communal garden, there's trials, and tribulations, and frustrations, and plenty of conversations with drunk people during the middle of the day. And I always end up far more tired than I think I ought to be after working in the garden for a couple of hours. But it's worth it when you pull more food out of the ground than you think it's possible to eat or share.



This past weekend we did a major harvest: Broccoli, kale, cabbage, mustard, carrots. The carrots were my favorite. They pretty much sat around for a couple of months, quietly growing and avoiding the Great Deer Decimation of January. Then, pulling them our of the ground: It was a miracle. These perfect, sweet, orange babies hiding just under the ground. I wanted to cuddle them. They were tiny because we didn't thin them out, but live and learn, I guess.



This carrot snail grew into a shell.



This is the dual carrot. Not pictured: The tri-carrot, picked by Megan.



I thought I would have enough carrots to eat nothing but carrot-centric dishes for at least a week, but not so. They were so tiny, all of them lost their lives to this carrot soup last night. Quite good, though.



Next up is the mighty cabbage. I'm planning on making cabbage soup tonight. Because, yeah, I like soup. Even though it's about 80 degrees outside today and seasonal foods include sno-cones. Yesterday I went swimming in 68 degree water, and let me tell you, it was refreshing. Just add that to the list of good things about Austin.

Study shows nature not appreciated as much as YouTube

From a press release via the University of Illinois - Chicago:

"Pergams and Patricia Zaradic, a fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program, Delaware Valley in Bryn Mawr, Pa., had previously reported a steady decline in per capita visits to U.S. national parks since the late 1980s -- which correlated very strongly with a rise in playing video games, surfing the Internet and watching movies. The researchers call this recent shift to sedentary, electronic diversions "videophilia." And they don't see it as healthy progress."

I'm all for studies that point out the flaws of our nature-isolated culture. But this study is really very dumb.

My first objection: What are biologists doing, making up a term for a human condition? "Videophilia" seems a thinly veiled scientific mask for saying, "You people watch YouTube too much."

My second objection: It's pretty obvious that sitting around and watching YouTube all day is not as healthy as mountain climbing, gardening, or even walking aimlessly around a field somewhere.

The third objection: They use arbitrary data to tell us so. According to the press release, "The biologists examined figures on backpacking, fishing, hiking, hunting, visits to national and state parks and forests. They found comparable reliable statistics from Japan and, to a lesser extent, Spain. They found that during the decade from 1981 to 1991, per-capita nature recreation declined at rates from 1 percent to 1.3 percent per year, depending on the activity studied. The typical drop in nature use since then has been 18-25 percent."

So what does this tell us? What we've known for the past twenty years - not only are human activities ruining nature, we're also using it less. In the way of justification, the authors say, "We don't see how future generations, with less exploration of nature, will be as interested in conservation as past generations."

WTF? Nothing looks good for getting people interested in anything proactive anymore. Join the interdisciplinary choir, kids.

[Full disclosure: My own nature recreation has dropped 75 - 80% since moving to Texas. The reason? Well, I'm still working on my data sets and compute models, but the conclusion I'm aiming for is that I live in Texas.]

A blog is somewhat narcissistic

Tell me: Am I self-centered? Last week, everyone on the NYT website really enjoyed emailing this story about "Generation Me." It said, that years of our baby boomer parents telling us that we are special snowflakes who can be whoever we want to be if we just believe in ourselves, have spoiled us for the workplace where older employees get all pissy about our cocksure attitudes and desire to be rewarded for our awesomeness.

First of all, whatever. Second of all, these kind of articles are bullshit. It's based on the idea that if enough people bitch and moan about a certain population, it becomes news to point fingers. People write books about it. People do stupid studies about it, asking "Do today's young people really think they are so extraordinary?"

What kind of question is that? That's not scientific. Nor is it scientific to open a press release with a quote from Jimmy Carter:

“I’ve been a professor at Emory University for the past twenty years and I interrelate with a wide range of students...I don’t detect that this generation is any more committed to personal gain to the exclusion of benevolent causes than others have been in the past.”

Thanks, Jimmy, for interrelating to me.

These scientists were unable to find support to the claim that high school seniors were any more narcissistic than students the past three decades. "...It appears, at least for now, that the youth of American have won a reprieve from being scolded as more aloof and self-involved than previous generations," the press release summarizes.

There are enough assholes in every age group, and there are also enough good, kind people. The thing that annoys me about my generation is that we don't have a proper name. We keep getting labeled in reaction to other generational names. Generation Y and The Echo Boomers sound like crappy bands. Or we get called Generation Me, which is insulting. Because I don't think our parents were wrong to tell us that we're special snowflakes, or that it's good to have high self esteem. I watched "Free To Be You and Me" ten times and it was great. People are different, and people complain about other people. Let's stop the vicious cycle and not write any more articles or books or fund studies about it, okay?

Of course, that will never happen. Because people lap up stories about themselves with a spoon.

Anyhow. In other travels across the internet, I found this chronicle of a motorcycle trip through Chernobyl. The author describes the town as a frozen Soviet history.



It's like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - except with radiation instead of insanity. Having been only two years old when the disaster occurred, and now that people are promoting nuclear reactors as a solution to our energy problems again, it's pretty incredible to think it will between 300 and 900 years before the radiation disappears from the area. Nice place to visit, though.

"I oscillate between hope and despair"

Those were the words of the international energy policy expert I spoke to this morning, when I asked if he was hopeful about sustainable development and a solution to global warming.

Most scientists I speak to, when they respond to my now-standard "hope" question, force out something about reluctant optimism. But energy policy people are more realistic. They're mired in the bureaucracy, whether they like it or not. They know how it works within the system - where all their research and recommendations end up and are ignored. A couple of weeks ago, I talked to a guy at Yale who studied energy supply systems in Africa. He said, "It's hard to be optimistic about the whole process. It's a little bit depressing."

Energy sends me into a tizzy. Energy is the root of all the issues I've reported on which I find myself caring too much about to be objective: Ethanol, drilling for oil in the ice-free Arctic, energy poverty and energy development.

So when I realized what today's energy guy was saying (he had a bit of an accent, so it took a second) I was stunned, and affirmed, at the same time.

And then I saw this: "E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules"

Essentially, California was setting more rigorous emission standards, and the recently-signed energy bill allowed the Bush administration to say, "No. Stop what you're doing. We're going to make you pollute just as much as the rest of us. And hey, climate? Fuck you."

Reading this, I was flung deep onto the side of despair. Hope oscillated on its own a long way from where I ended up. I put my head down on my desk for a while, and then wrote a comment on Andrew Revkin's blog. That helped me calm down.

But, why? why why why why why why why.

(Is "why" a word of hope or despair?)

Don't ask the optimist, he's probably dumb

Or unhealthy - so says one of those useless studies. Apparently, optimism means you think of things in long-term progress, not attaining specific goals. And that means you're more likely to justify short-term failures. Or something. The whole thing doesn't make much sense.

“For example, when [a] workout is framed as progress toward the goal of being healthy, going to the gym elicits the perception of partial goal attainment and suggests that it is justified to enjoy a tasty but fatty cake,” the researchers explain. “In contrast, when [a] workout is framed as commitment to the goal of being healthy, going to the gym signals being healthy is important and thus suggests that one should refrain from the tasty but fatty cake to ensure the final goal can be attained.”

Unfortunately, this study will probably picked up and deciphered by the media in time for New Year's Resolutions. I was talking about resolutions with my co-worker today. Last year, he resolved to do yoga every day. He didn't. I said that I prefer to keep my resolutions internal - like changing a behavior - to keep concrete feelings of failure or success out of it. Who can tell if I'm being nicer to people this year than I was last year? Or if I put slightly more energy and creativity into my work? All it takes for me to feel like a success story is a shift in how I view my own reality.

Meanwhile, hand me that tasty but fatty cake.

A heartbreaking work of staggering dancing

This breaks my heart and then warms the shattered pieces.

In the past few days...

- I made vampire cupcakes for a pumpkin carving party. They had little fang marks in them and bled cherry filling when you bit into them. Delicious and cute and grotesque is my favorite combination of adjectives to describe anything, so overall successful. Also a tad geeky, because I found the recipe on BoingBoing. Photos forthcoming.


- My bike was stolen. I had bought it from my cousin, and it had been a faithful friend on the streets of Austin. We rode with hundreds on a Harvest moon bike ride, we watched others fall off their own bikes while remaining reliably upright, we discovered the non-guilty pleasures of human-powered transportation. It was a beautiful partnership, and we were inseparable. When I got on the bus for the first time without my bike (I usually take my bike on the bus to work and ride it home), my friendly bus driver stared at me slack jawed. I told him it had been stolen. He told me, "You just don't look the same without your bike."

Fortunately, I picked up a barely used women's Schwinn road bike yesterday - courtesy of Craigslist. And it was cheap. I believe in the Black Angel of Bike Theft and the Benevolent God of Craigslist.

- I went to Maker Faire. It was wonderful and amazing.



The Lifesized Mousetrap!



Dirty car art!



My friend Megan, who is kind of looking like a pirate here, kills herself with a sword.

Highlights of the Faire included cycle-powered carnival rides, meeting the inventor of TV-B-Gone, and nice creative people all around.

- I've been working as always. Today I discovered a very cool MIT geek, who I hope to interview about his new robot suit. He also does tons of other cool artist shit, of which I am completely jealous.

We have Steven Pinker, Harvard psychologist, on our show this week. He's talking about swearing. I watched his interview on the Colbert Report. Colbert mentions how Pinker moved from MIT to Harvard, and says, "That's like leaving the nerds' table to go sit at the rich nerds' table." I will vote for anyone who will say that to a scientist's face, in a presidential election. No questions asked.

Image and text

Czech Book Covers of the 1920's and 30's

Words from Cold War Era propaganda films, via Mondo Capo at the Austin Film Festival Saturday night:

"Rape? I've tried it once or twice."

As an innocent young preppie takes his first experimental toke:
"He sacrifices his dignity and puts his future on the chopping block."

For a similar message, check out "Keep Off the Grass" on YouTube.

This is how they like their cake

I saw Low for the third time on Wednesday. The first two times were kind of accidental. At the first, I wondered why I wasn't alone at home, doing drugs while lying on a trippy carpet. At the second, it occurred to me that a symptom of suicidal depression might be listening to Low, and my friends might want to know that.

Then I started listening to Low. Surprisingly, I did not feel any suicidal tendencies. I listened more, and still, nothing. My general well-being and chipper personality remained intact. And then I watched this music video. Which you should do. Right now.



I think... I think I might love it.

The show was great, though they usually chat more. Alan Sparhawk's humor is a scorched-desert kind of dry. There is video documentation of this.

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to grow up as the children of Low. I think this video might be inspired by a reading of Matilda, by Roald Dahl. With an emphasis on Bruce.

Her nose was always buried in a book

Reading

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell - Susanna Clark
A big, thick novel about magic! Like Harry Potter for adults.

How to Cook Everything - Mark Bittman
I'm fully engrossed in the chapters on breads and grains. Success in pumpkin and apple breads, and discovered the pleasure of saying "quinoa." Not-so-successful was a disastrous quick bread I refer to as "molasses and whole wheat death cake."


How to Make a Forest Garden - Patrick Whitefield
Not that I'm going to, right now. But someday.

Read


The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Beautiful.

After this - Alice McDermott
Slow and suburban but well-written.

No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
I hear this is coming out soon as a ridiculously violent movie I probably will not see. I closed my eyes through parts of the book.

Amsterdam - Ian McEwan*
One of my favorite authors, but the twist ending was so incredibly unlikely and forced that I can't believe this won the Booker Prize. Read Atonement, The Cement Garden, Between the Sheets - virtually anything else. On Chesil Beach is very high on my to-be-read list.

In Persuasion Nation - George Saunders
A varied collection of short stories. Some were classic Saunders, some were less Saunders-esque, and made no use of the trademarked Saunders conversational question mark. The title story involves a sympathetic polar bear with an ax in his head, and a God-like corner of a green snack wrapper. I encourage you to read it.

Take the Cannoli - Sarah Vowell
I have mixed feelings when I hear Sarah Vowell's voice in my head as I read her essays. Something about it annoys me. I have mixed feelings about Sarah Vowell, sometimes.

*I'm reading my way through the Mc section of the library.

The case of the missing pounds

I was getting ready to leave work today when my co-worker suddenly asked, "Have you lost weight?"

It was an unusual question. I suspected he wasn't asking because he wanted to compliment me. I was wearing a black sack of a dress that's two sizes too big, and my co-worker has mentioned before that he doesn't want to say anything that might be construed as sexual harrassment. That made me feel awkward.

So I was curious as to where this was coming from. I asked, "Within what time frame?"

"Within the past week."

I said I hadn't noticed.

He said that he'd suddenly lost 6 pounds over the last week, and he wondered if it was something that was happening to other people, like something in the air or the way that women who live together kind of menstrate ("cycle?" I suggested) together.

I said I didn't think so, but we've been going through a doughnut phase in the office, and I suggested that they may be secret weight loss doughnuts.

We explored his exercise patterns further, and it turns out he had been biking two hours a day since his truck had been in the shop. He hadn't considered the increase in biking as exercise, or a reason why he might have lost weight.

There is a study (most of my stories start with this phrase now) that says that if your friends are overweight, it's likely that you'll be overweight too. I can't find that study now, but I think it would be really cool if it worked the opposite way. If your friends are skinny or losing weight their weight loss will translate to you through some kind of osmosis or diffusion. I can see the next weight loss craze: No need to exercise, or diet, or take supplements or eat heinous amounts of red meat! Just stand awkwardly close to a thin person for most of the day. The best technique is to "accidentally" handcuff yourself to that person. Then wait for the weight to even out like the scales of Justice.