2008nov26. Cardhouse consigliere Tom B raised an exception with the New Yorker excerpt concerning plagiarism in college applications. The original article is nowhere to be found, but an article referencing the study seems to indicate that, at the very least, students from Cambridge and Oxford were only a part of the larger sample, whereas the New Yorker article pins “five per cent of applicants to Oxford and Cambridge” to the wall with online-based plagiarism. Wrong. Tom pointed out other bits of hand-waving in the excerpt, but as he writes, “This is the kind of digging that the journalists should be doing surely – that’s to a large extent the point of them.”
2008nov26. While in New Orleans for a wedding I ran into Mr. Okra:
Which reminded me a lot of similar vegetable trucks roaming the streets of my youth. To check out Mr. Okra in action, please view this video from Morning 40 Federation. If you are very eagle-eyed, you will notice that the bar one of the band members is thrown out of is this bar, BJ’s, where the next-day party was held and Morning 40 Federation played. It all comes together. Mr. Okra paintings. More info.
2008nov25. New Yorker: Awesome mote of stupidity in gathering of over-parenting book reviews:
In 2007, officials revealed that five per cent of applicants to Oxford and Cambridge had embellished their application forms with material taken off the Web. Explaining why they wanted to study chemistry, two hundred and thirty-four applicants cited word for word the same example, “burning a hole in my pajamas at age eight,” as a formative experience.
2008nov24. Deuce of Clubs: Things To Keep In Mind During The Coming Administration’s FDR-like “Opportunity".
2008nov18. It has come to my attention that at some point, I published totally fabricated excerpts for the 2008 publication The Fruit Hunters [2] by Adam Leith Gollner. This is my favorite book of the year, easily. What follows are actual excerpts from the actual book. Here is an introductory photo essay that has a link to this poster of the exotic fruits of Hawaii (available here).
A plaque identifies the tree as a sapucaia. In season, the cupcakes grow packed with a half dozen seeds shaped like orange segments. At ripeness, these burst through the base, scattering on the ground. Impatient young monkeys sometimes punch into an unripe muffin and wrap their fingers around a fistful of nuts. Because their cognitive faculties are not developed enough to understand that extracting their paws requires letting go of the nuts, they end up dragging their sapucaia handcuffs around for miles. [pg 2]
Within the tens of thousands of edible plant species, there are hundreds of thousands of varieties – and new ones are continually evolving. Magic beans, sundrops, cannonballs, delicious monsters, zombi apples, gingerbread plums, swan egg pears, Oaxacan trees of little skulls, Congo goobers, slow-match fruits, candle fruits, bastard cherries, bignays, belimbings, bilimbis and biribas. [ ... ] There are thousands upon thousands of fruits that we never imagined – and that few of us will ever taste, unless we embark on fruit-hunting expeditions. [pg 6]
Nowadays, fruits have become part of the daily grind. We have unlimited access: they’re sold year-round, they’re cheap, and they shrivel into moldy lumps on our countertops. Eating one is practically a chore. Many people dislike fruits. Perhaps that’s because, on average, fruits are eaten two to three weeks after being picked. [ ... ] Many of the fruits we eat were developed to ship well and spend ten days under the withering glow of fluorescent supermarket lights. The result is Stepford Fruits: gorgeous replicants that look perfect, feel like silicone implants and taste like tennis balls, mothballs, or mealy, juiceless cotton wads. [pg 14]
A pineapple is an inflorescence that fuses many berry-like fruitlets into a thorn-tipped aberration. [pg 23]
One of the most extreme examples of a hitchhiker fruit is the Sumatran bird-catching tree. Its fruits are covered with tiny barbed hooks and a sticky gum that glues itself to birds’ feathers. Certain birds carry the fruit to other islands; less fortunate ones get their wings jammed by it, and they end up dying at the tree base, becoming fertilizer. [pg 26]
Jaitt says he knows some people in Honolulu who’ve been serving peanut butter fruit with blackberry-jam fruit and breadfruit. Kids apparently go crazy for these all-fruit PBJ sandwiches. [pg 44]
Corn is believed to have evolved from a minuscule grain called teosinte, slightly bigger than an earwig. It took thousands of years of human selection for teosinte to become the size of a human finger, then thousands more years to become the thick cobs we slather with butter today. [pg 48]
Bubble gum used to come from chicle, the latex of the sapodilla tree, also know for its sweet chico fruits. [ ... ] Today, gum is made with a plastic oil derivative called PVA (polyvinyl acetate). [pg 52; mmmmm]
At the end of WWII, the British government allocated one banana to every child. Evelyn Waugh’s three children were giddy with excitement on the great day their bananas arrived. As Auberon Waugh recalls in Will This Do? their joy was short-lived: the bananas “were put on my father’s plate, and before the anguished eyes of his children, he poured on cream, which was almost unprocurable, and sugar, which was heavily rationed, and ate all three ... He was permanently marked down in my estimation from that moment on, in a way which no amount of sexual transgression would have achieved.” [pg 53]
Fruits could replace many toxic cleaning products (most of which contain artificial scents like “fresh citrus”). [ ... ] My Parisian friends do their laundry using soap nuts, the dried fruit of the Chinese soapberry tree (Sapindus mukorrosi). These berries contain saponin, a natural steroid that turns frothy and bubbly in water. I tried it; my laundry came out clean and smelling great. [pg 58]
Although most of Miami’s fruit hunters following importing protocols, some skirt regulations. For that reason, government officials at the USDA have started conducting armed raids on rare fruit growers, bursting into their backyards with attack dogs. [ ... ] “They came in here like the goddamn Gestapo,” he says angrily. “It was like they were gonna save us from terrorism. Six agents burst in and started rifling through everything trying to find illegal seeds. They orchestrated it like it was a big drug raid. It scared the shit outta my wife, not to mention my customers. They photographed stuff, and confiscated seeds. They thought I had smuggled ‘noxious weeds’ in from Asia. They were after an illegal seed that was one-sixteenth of an inch long. My palm seeds were an inch long. They didn’t know a noxious weed from a palm seed. They wouldn’t know a noxious weed if it grew in their butt. I got a five-million-dollar business here; you think I’m gonna grow an illegal plant and screw it up? They took three of my palms – palms not known in cultivation – and they killed them. They all died.” [pg 67]
“Up to the end of the middle ages, grafting was considered a secret by the initiated and a miracle by the public,” wrote Frederic Janson. Some believed that, for a graft to hold, it was necessary for a man and woman to make love in the moonlight. At the moment of climax, the woman was to secure the graft between the tree and its new limb. [pg 69]
At one point, he says, incredulously, Clift was offered a job working with fruits in Costa Rica. He decided to drive down from Florida. In Guatemala, his suitcases were stolen. In El Salvador he was sleeping by the road when someone robbed the clothes off his back. He continued to drive in the nude. Abandoning the car in Nicaragua, he proceeded to walk the rest of the way to Costa Rica, living on jungle fruits and trekking naked through forests for weeks. [ ... ] at another point, Clift had been hired by a wealthy Thai family to create the world’s biggest tropical fruit garden. He was forbidden from sending seeds to other fruit enthusiasts, but was caught in the act. His hands were to be chopped off as punishment. Luckily, he managed to escape, fleeing Thailand. [pg 71]
As Thomas Jefferson said, “The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture.” This rationale was how Jefferson justified smuggling rice out of Italy (risking execution) and hemp seeds out of China. [pg 84]
As Richard Campbell puts it: “You fly into the closest airport, drive through town, peer into backyards, and find the guys who know where the best stuff is. Then you say, ‘Hi, I’m from America, I’m crazy and I want to look at your mameys.” [pg 85]
Armed with a name, I immediately uncover some online images. Not only is the lady fruit real, but it is easily the sexiest fruit in the plant kingdom. Its risqué shell is a life-sized simulacrum of the female reproductive region, including hips, an exposed midriff, two thighs and a pudendal cleft – complete with a tuft of alarmingly lifelike hair on the mons pubis. From the back, it bears a striking resemblance to a woman’s derriere. [pg 109]
Another farmer I spoke to referred to industrial peaches as “plastic Kraft dinner fruit created by dead brains.” [pg 196]
Apples can spend close to a year sitting in oxygen- and carbon-dixoide-controlled cold-storage facilities. [pg 205]
Ackee, the national fruit of Jamaica, is tricky: when underripe, it contains hypoglycin, a violent purgative that can make you vomit until you die. [pg 249]
How can you not want to try these awesome fruits described within the book like so: “maple syrup pudding,” “cherry cola,” “lemon meringue pie,” “snowy, sweet, cotton-candylike,” “vanilla cream,” “lemonade-infused cotton candy,” “chocolate pudding,” “raspberry jam,” “strawberry milkshakes,” “Froot Loops,” “coconut flesh, only sexier,” “vanilla ice cream,” “pear cream custard,” etc.
Organizations etc mentioned in the book: North American Fruit Exporters (see their supply source page), Rare Fruit Council International, California Rare Fruit Growers, Fruit Gardener Magazine, Fruit Lover’s Nursery, Figs 4 Fun, Hawaii Fruit, Durian Palace (temporarily (?) down), NYT Bill Whitman obituary, Uncommon Fruits and Vegetables, Five Decades with Tropical Fruit, The Duchess of Malfi’s Apricots, and Other Literary Fruits, The Anatomy of Dessert, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand Epitaph for a Peach, Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden.
Follow-up essay: Going to Bananaland. Interviews.
2008nov14. OCLC ... on the move!. Another one of these types of things? They never learn. Go Open Library Environment weooooo! Woof.
2008nov13. Toxic Anger 2: Getting Angrier.
2008nov12. Book excerpts: Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology.
2008nov11. A brief programming interruption here – QI, the BBC comedy panel game television program scheduled to resume programming in early 2009, will have a special charity-support episode aired on BBC Two November 14th. We now return you to Reality Show Asses: The Microfame-Obsessed Smear Your Screen Suckfest ’08, brought to you by Prell.
2008nov11. Michael Lewis: The End. Wow. Lewis finds smart needles in the stupid tranche haystack and for dessert, has dinner with his former CEO. Wiki: Liar’s Poker. To make your reading time even more surreal, hit his mansion piece in which he rents a mansion, price unseen.
2008nov07. Something something Friday, something something free.
Jason Hackenwerth, balloon twisting
sculptor.
Favorite: Image
9
The Constitution-free
Zone
encompasses two-thirds of the population.
NYT: Super-local
chocolate
Meiji Jingu at night.
Game: Gotta make some more goddamned factory
balls
Correspondence: An overdue account.
Look at the other things as well. It is mostly good, and I am not saying it
is entirely good because I haven’t seen it all yet, not because there is bad.
Item: Vogelzang Barrel Stove
Kit.
What to do with all of your leftover toxic waste barrels? Make them into
barrel stoves!
BBC pictograph
news.
Wow. What? What? Also, background: unicycle.
Pix: wool
tree
Zero Punctuation: Saint’s Row
2.
Quiz: Hundred most common words. I kept
typing “bananas” over and over and over. It is #101.
Interview with Chico
Bicalho.
Toys.
More.
More
(main).
Weblog.
Wired article.
Video: Cat attacks cardboard package
sleeves.
WSJ: In-depth, shocking report on Pillsbury’s new “I guess click your feet
and that is like supposed to remind you of our processed factory rolls”
campaign hailed as innovative ‘injection
advertorial’
... the cratering economy will make whores of all of us. Who wants me? $50
an hour. I am your worst desires. No freaks.
Factory balls. Factory rolls.
2008nov05. Change. I am sure that among the many, many changes America is in store for, one of the most sorely needed after looking at red and blue colored states is instant runoff voting. So I’ll be waiting for that, ‘cause this time the choice was between a guy who voted for the bailout and a guy who voted for the bailout; a guy who wanted to kill people in other lands for another 100 years and a guy who was fine with telecoms passing American’s phone/email conversations along to the NSA. Instant runoff is about as likely as getting rid of the electoral process, which is to say, not at all. Why, it reminds me of an article a friend wrote so many years ago, about how the two-party system takes care of its own and will never change. Join my party, The Nonist Interdiction Uprising, in which government hacks and cigar-puffing big business suits will be stripped down, slathered with Extra Virgin Olive Oil, and be made to fight each other in gladiator battles in the parking lots of ruined big box retailers. At night? Laser Floyd: The Wall.
2008nov05. WSJ: The Treatment of Bush Has Been a Disgrace.
[ ... ] Americans should give their all to thank our president. They should empty out their IRAs, they should leave their homes, they should give up health care, they should pay to bomb/unbomb Iraq. Thank YOU, Mr. President! We have hurt the fweelings of our president! Who will buy our president a bwig teddy bear? A fluffy one with a big red bow. I mean fuggin’ BIG! You know, big enough that it would take like four adults to move the bear around in a comical, haphazard fashion. There, there, Mr. Bush. ¶ You know who else had low approval ratings? Truman. And look, now he’s the seventh most popular president in HISTORY! Bush will receive similar treatment from future historians, probably around the second term of president XP938721 ([DRP – Disemboweling Robot Party] 4012-4020).
Wow. I wonder when Murdoch’s greasy hand will start smearing the editorials ... I wonder if that will ever happen [FX: makes stupid face while miming a penis repeatedly penetrating a vagina or other handy orifice using a total of three fingers].
2008nov04. The National: Lonely Together
If cookies are set before subjects who have been told that no one else in the experiment wants to work with them, they eat twice as many as those who have been told that everyone else in the experiment wants to work with them
“No one likes you. Even the cookies don’t like you. Now what? NOW WHAT?” When you pull out a little bit, it makes for an even bleaker image. A human lies to another human to see how sad it can make it feel (the experimenters call it the erosion of will power ... come ON). Then the lying human makes little check mark motions on a clipboard and gets funding for another year. The lying human goes home and eats some cookies and looks out the window.
2008nov01. This was the first year in many I was able to give treats to the kiddies, so I stocked up and when that doorbell rang, I was on the scene chucking cans brimming with Duncan Hines® Creamy Home-Style Classic Chocolate Premium Frosting into awaiting sacks. “Pace yourself,” I advised the children while watching suddenly much-heavier goodie bags rip from their tiny hands. So rich. So moist. So very Duncan Hines®. When I wanted to change things up, I gave away bottles of Karo® Lite/Light/Dark Corn Syrup (Lite has 33% less calories, Light is lighter in color, I don’t know what Dark’s deal is – maybe it’s more mysterious?) wrapped in orange and black bows. “Chug-a-lug, my halloweenie friends!” Karo®. Pour out the possibilities.
2008oct31. OCTOPUS WATCH: Otto is awesome
2008oct31. RIP Studs. Excerpts from Hard Times.
2008oct30. Cockeyed: Halloween candy codes. These are great, perfect presentation. I was just wondering the other day how Werther’s came to be so closely associated with the elderly, the horribly, horribly old. Was there a commercial or two that I missed “back in” “the day”? Well, I’ve thought enough about that, so on to the Next Thinking Topic! [sfx: grunting noises]
2008oct28. Hold your noses, folks, we’re going in: Sky Mall.
THE ANIMATRONIC SINGING AND TALKING ELVIS. This is the animatronic Elvis, a singing and talking robotic bust adorned with The King’s trademark leather jacket, sideburns, and pompadour, recalling the musical icon’s performance during the highest-rated television event of 1968 – Elvis Presley’s Comeback Special. [ ... ] Integrated infrared sensors in his jacket detect ambient motion, prompting Elvis to say “bring it on back now” or another famous Elvis remark as you walk by, and the device has 37 monologues recorded from interviews that play at the touch of a button. On the bright side, one day in the semi-distant future the last person in this product’s target demographic will die. $199.95
FEEL THE ENERGY AS YOU DISCOVER THE SECRET POWER OF INTENT. Imagine the ENERGY you’ll feel surrounded with over 200 positive words in 15 different languages in our new Intentional™ Hoody! This is not your ordinary hoody! Why? Fact: Research shows that written words on containers of water can influence the water’s structure for better or worse depending on the nature or intent of the word. Fact: The human body is over 70% water. What if positive words were printed on the inside of your clothing? Introducing Intentional™ a new concept in clothing by Creo Mundi. Most everyone will miss hilariously fraudulent products like this when the economy craters. $79.00
PETS WHO NEED A LITTLE HELP GETTING UP ONTO FURNITURE WILL APPRECIATE THE FOLD-AWAY PUPSTEPPLUS™. It’ll be easier for older pets, pets with joint problems, or even just tired pets, to get up on their favorite couch, chair or bed for a well-deserved snooze. $39.99
THE PET RAMP AND STAIRCASE. Unlike lesser pet staircases that are difficult to climb for arthritic or older pets, this one converts into a ramp, providing pets with access to sofas or beds without exerting much strain on joints and muscles. $199.95
PETVATOR WILL LIFT YOUR PET IN COMFORT. Fuck those other two animal ramps, this nanotech carbon-fiber pet elevator will help your elderly pet reach the top of your bed where it will shower you with licky slobbery kisses. Did it just eat its own shit? Who knows. At least your MILLION GERM ELIMINATING TRAVEL TOOTHBRUSH SANITIZER will keep your toothbrush relatively free of germs. 59 Elvis interview monologues included; plays randomly during ascent/descent. $1995.99
2008oct25. Announcement, Southwest Airlines, McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas. Paraphrased.
“Your attention please, we have a message for Wilbur [Lastname]. Your girlfriend called, she says her car broke down and she can’t pick you up. She indicated you should take the twenty-three dollars you have and take a taxi toward Garyville as far as it can get you, and then to call her on her cellphone.”
Announcement, Southwest Airlines, McCarran International Airport, Las Vegas. Paraphrased. Five days later.
“Your attention please, we have a message for Wilbur [Lastname]. Your brother called, his car isn’t starting and he said you should take a cab to aunty’s house in Hayward.”
2008oct23. Greenspan 2008: “Dude, it totally weren’t me who let the cow out of the barn, causing our Current Special Economic Period.” Greenspan 1966: “Take a look at those shitholes who done let the cow out of the barn what caused the Great Depression.” Please Greenie, just shut up, go home, and watch “Wheel of Fortune” forever while obsessively licking your gums or making low humming noises, your pick.
I was flying over the Southwest on Southwest as I am wont to do on a daily basis, and in the next seat over was an elderly Baton Rouge woman with a semi-beehive. I told her about the multiple beverage trick (you can ask for an orange juice, an apple juice, a water (it’s in cans, not from the icky hold), and more, all in one go, if you’d like, on Southwest, for now; maybe JetBlue still). Then she pulled out a Time Magazine and on the cover was Obama, McCain, FDR, and Lincoln. We went through the list of offenses – I pointed out Bush likes to compare himself to Lincoln which is appropriate given his spying on Americans/suspension of Habeus Corpus, she pointed out FDR’s internment of Japanese Americans. We didn’t have to cover Obama/McCain after she said “you’re just like me, you don’t trust any of them.” We didn’t have to worry about the multiple snack trick because the flight attendant held the tray right in your face and pretty much said go nuts. I read me some Lorna Doone even though it’s built by scientists in an underground chemical lab.
2008oct12. Friday. Or Sunday. It could be either, really.
Goosing Up Commodity Prices.
Elyse Sewell: Ice skating crutches for kids.
Loss of civil liberties since 9/11 [via doc]
Leeches: Your Humble Tempest Prognosticator.
bird
Nik-L-Nip ended production? NOOOOOO
HOLD THE GUN UP TO THE T.V. SHOOT THE DUCK.
Everyone loves Shipley’s Do-Nuts!
Lowfat Diet & Sunscreen: A Recipe for Disaster.
Light cycle escapes its own reality, man.
Carisman. When is official Carisman® vinyl action figure? CARISMAN
Solar power a century ago: The Beautiful Possibility.
Cake Wrecks: Meta Cake Wrecks. Why does laughing sometimes sound like crying?
Howard Zinn interview Al Jazeera: US in need of rebellion. Oh god, they’re coming to get me ... [furiously chomps apple pie while playing baseball and saluting flag with crumb-speckled hands]*
Adam Savage of Mythbusters discusses building a dodo sculpture, replicating the Maltese Falcon, and talks about the show.
Damage control: high-fructose corn syrup ad. “You know, HFCS comprises 72% of the average American’s body weight. Let’s make it 80%.”
Very Small Array: The Slow Death of the Instrumental.
Zero Punctuation: Spore
* This reminds me of an old “upcoming” video game release trailer for a game called “Indy Dungeon Baseball” which was part of a game triptych prepending our magnum opus, Pizza Guy Detective 2000 or something like that. Which was never finished. Anyway, the trailer was going to have a single image – A baseball player with a bloody mace, standing in front of a Corvette parked on home plate. And then there was the audio. The audio was the important part, it put you right there on the 50-yard-line of a game which was at times baseball, at other times dungeon exploration, and at other other times a fast-paced Indy racing game, and really, all three at the same time, improbably. Which is why ... audio. In next Friday’s footnote, I’ll tell you all about how fun it is to film real live bees for a similar fakeroo video game. BEES
2008oct05. The Deuce of Clubs Book Club celebrates National Atheist Week:
Why I Became An Atheist – John W. Loftus
The End of Faith – Sam Harris
Godless – Dan Barker
Secret Origins of the Bible – Tim Callahan
The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth – Valerie Tarico
And somehow I missed the CrimeThInc entry.
2008oct02. How Can Anyone Think Voting Matters? [via doc]
[D]uring the mid-1980s, [vice presidential candidate] Biden was the chief senate architect of the federal anti-drug laws that re-established mandatory minimum sanctions for various drug possession crimes, and established the racially based 100-to-1 sentencing disparity for crimes involving the possession of crack versus powder cocaine. Many academics have credited Biden’s law as one of the primary reasons why America now possesses the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, and why approximately one out of every nine young African-American males are now in prison.
“I’m saying it doesn’t matter who wins since the winners are simply proxies for the game within the game.” I like that. “Game within the game.” Oh wait, shhhhSHHHH, here comes Rove’s analysis of today’s debate! Squeeeeee
What ever happened to microwave cookbooks?
Off the cuff of my jacket, I would guess that the real question is why did microwave cookery exist in the first place. We all know what the microwave is used for in the kitchen – to quickly warm foods that can practically be heated in their own container without tasting like ass and for grape races. It is not a place to prepare a turkey or roast, or even shrimp fried rice. It is a shortcut that is not always the best course of action. But what did the manufacturers of microwaves think the microwave was going to be used for? That’s right, they thought it was going to be a total oven replacement system. I would imagine that manufacturers first came out with their own cookbooks and then independent authors piled on afterward. Eventually, some collective irrational beliefs dissipate (“Government helps more than it harms” ... no wait, that one is still hanging around); the cookbook fade-out I would attribute to the growth of its ubiquitous nature in the household. Perhaps you bought a microwave when they first come out, and then, under the spell of misguided optimism, you also bought a microwave cookbook. Because it was a New Thing. But instead, pretend you are buying a microwave in 1996. Come on, you’re not entertaining foreign dignitaries, you just want to nuke some goddamned Pepperoni-like Substance™ Hot Pockets® and toxically delicious diacetyl-slathered popcorn ... your microwave cookbook can stuff it. PS: As a microwave user of many years, I recommend you avoid purchasing a microwave with a dial timer (ie, non-digital) ... it’s like buying a car with a manual transmission that only has 3rd through 5th. Yes, mysteriously, these are still manufactured (someone’s going to have to tell me why “commercial” microwaves cost ~4x more).
2008oct01. Woof Wellness Water, fortified water for dogs. Explores the same basic space as the now-defunct ThirstyDog!/ThirstyCat! dog/cat fortified water product, and that other dog water that I can’t remember the name of and may have also failed. This is a good product that will be good for dogs because all bottled water is good and bottled water for your pets is even better. Damn I love America, we’re all “You know what? We flush our waste down with potable water, we make little stubby bottles of water for kids, and we pump vitamins into water then we sell that to our pets. We shelve that fucking dog water product, and I could drink out of the toilet if I wanted to.” WE CAN DO ANYTHING WE ARE GODS
2008sep27. Excerpts from The Fruit Hunters (2008) by Adam Leith Gollner.
As with most expeditions, fund-raising was a problem at first. When we finally explained that our intent was to only hunt the largest species of fruit and return several samples to our benefactors, the money came easily. The money men thought they were dealing with your ordinary, run-of-the-mill fruit hunters. No. No my friend. We were the fruit hunter’s fruit-hunters. I wanted to call the book that but they wouldn’t let me. [pg 23]
The semi-ferocious rat-tailed papaya has a particular habit of nesting near slow-moving, narrow rivers. Some say the noise of a nicely-paced source of water soothes the fruit, makes it more docile. Whatever the case, it made for easy pickings. We bagged seven that evening, and a great feast was prepared. [pg 34]
What is the cry of the mango? What about it moves man? It is probably because it sounds very much like Slim Whitman. [pg 56]
Even while dealing with the mosquito-infested swamps we constantly had to slog through, the porters maintained good marching order and helped keep morale high. There was even a song one of them sang about us, it went something like “the fruit hunters, oh the fruit hunters, hunting ... hunting ... ” and there was something about a pear frothing at the mouth after that and us ambushing it. It was a really good song. [pg 73]
“HELP ME JAKE! IT’S GOT ME BLOODY LEG!!!” No one moved an inch. Not Norcrombe, not the porters, and certainly not I. When an orange that size is devouring someone, there’s nothing that can be done ... you just pray it doesn’t turn on you. I can still hear the flesh being ripped from the bone at night. I mean, when it’s night for me. It didn’t happen at night. The ripping. [pg 103]
2008sep24. Excerpts from Cradle to Cradle (2002) by William McDonough and Michael Braungart.
We were asked to focus on creating an aesthetically unique fabric that was also environmentally intelligent. [ ... ] The team decided to design a fabric that would be safe enough to eat; it would not harm people who breathed it in, and it would not harm natural systems after its disposal. In fact, as a biological nutrient, it would nourish nature. The fabric went into production. The factory director later told us that when regulators came on their rounds and tested the effluent (the water coming out of the factory) they thought their instruments were broken. They could not identify any pollutants, not even elements they knew were in the water when it came into the factory. [ ... ] When a factory’s effluent is cleaner than its influent, it might well prefer to use its effluent as influent. [pg 107]
Henry Ford practiced an early form of upcycling when he had Model A trucks shipped in crates that became the vehicle’s floorboards when it reached its destination. [pg 110]
In a startling use of solar power, hundreds of one [ant] colony’s workers may cluster on the forest floor to soak up sunlight before carrying its warmth in their very bodies back down to the nest. [pg 121]
Wind towers have been used for thousands of years in hot climates to capture airflows and draw them through dwellings. In Pakistan, chimneys topped with “wind scoops” literally scoop wind and channel it down the chimney, where there might be a small pool of water for cooling the wind as it moves downward and into the house. Iranian wind towers consist of a ventilated structure that constantly drips water; air comes in, flows down the chimney with its dripping sides, and enters the house, cooled. At Fatepur Sikri in India, porous sandstone screens, sometimes intricately carved, were saturated with water to cool air passing through. In the Loess Plains of China, people dig their homes in the ground to secure shelter from wind and sun. ¶ But with modern industrialization and its products, such as large sheets of window glass, and the widespread adoption of fossil fuels for cheap and easy heating and cooling, such local ingenuity has faded from industrialized areas, and even in rural regions it is in decline. Oddly enough, professional architects seem to get by without understanding the basic principles that inspired ancient building and architecture orientations. When Bill gives a talk to architects, he asks who knows how to find true south – not magnetic or “map” south but true solar south – and gets few or no hands (and, stranger still, no requests to learn how). [pg 130]
As we have pointed out, soap as it is currently manufactured is designed to work the same way in every imaginable location and ecosystem. Faced with the questionable effects of such a design, eco-efficiency advocates might tell a manufacturer to “be less bad” by shipping concentrates instead of liquid soap, or by reducing or recycling packaging. But why try to optimize the wrong system? Why this packaging in the first place? Why these ingredients? Why a liquid? Why one-size-fits-all? [pg 142; this subject was already covered in the ground-breaking 1985 environmental documentary filum, The Sure Thing].
twink twink
little star
haw I wandr
wuch you
are up
uv buv
the wry
so hiy
like a dimin
in the shy
tinkl tinkl
little star
haw i wondr
wach you
are
2008: jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov
