As the review puts it, this is the litterbox they would use on the Death Star. I don’t know what my cats would think of it. My own thought is that this is a spectacular example of conspicuous consumption of a special geeky sort. And that brings me to this article, which is more of [...]
Archive for May, 2009
In between calculating grades…
Posted in Backstory, Gardening, My brain, tactless observations, tagged choosing to work, conspicuous consumption, display consumption, environmental consciousness, environmental resources, minimalism, processed foods, spent, things white people like on 21 May, 2009 | 1 Comment »
You have no standards
Posted in Gardening, Musing about Teaching, tagged grading, iris flower anatomy, maybe the bees will like it, plant deformities, thalidomide on 17 May, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Okay the visual here is really for the iris geeks — the iris I refer to as the “naughty” one, Thornbird*, is technically one of the “Space Age” irises, which have ornamental bits other irises don’t have. But one of the side effects, at least on the rhizome I got three years ago, is that [...]
Haiku on wry
Posted in Backstory on 15 May, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Go look at Salome’s pithy observation. [Hat tip, William]
Quip from the News Quiz
Posted in tactless observations, tagged Kermit the Frog, Sandi Toksvig, silliness, The news quiz on 14 May, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Sandi Toksvig on being kissed by Kermit the Frog: “Well, it’s really a man, with a puppet on his head –”
“So where did he really kiss you?” – Sue Perkins
The News Quiz, Series 68, Episode 3
Food safety, or ConAgra can’t guarantee safety of own products, or…
Posted in Food, tactless observations, tagged carelessness, CDC, ConAgra, food safety, industrial shortsightedness, responsibility, salmonella, salmonella poisoning on 14 May, 2009 | 6 Comments »
or, “This is why everyone needs to know how to make their own meals, damnit!”
It bugs the hell out of me that the people who are least likely to be able to afford the time to shop for ingredients are the ones most likely to be caught out by this scary news about ConAgra [they [...]
Disquieting warning
Posted in Backstory, tagged clothes moths, do-it-yourself pest control, hate moths, ounce of prevention, pheromone lures, pluh-pluhs on 13 May, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This is a house with a knitter who loves wool, so it’s vitally important to domestic happiness that we keep moths from setting up house with us. Thus, the pheromone-baited moth traps. The traps are lined with sticky stuff, and the lures themselves stick onto that. But first you have to get the lures out [...]
Garden updates
Posted in Gardening, My brain, tagged cats-eye, iris, my grandmother's garden, veronica on 11 May, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The semester is galumphing to a close, and the flowers are coming on strong:
Doesn’t this iris look as if it just staggered out of a bar? [I leave it to your imagination what kind of bar, but I will say that this iris's standards were a bit more perky after some light rain.]
And then we’ve [...]
Ready, steady, go
Posted in Uncategorized on 10 May, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Get this party started
Posted in Elsinore, Gardening, tagged annuals, azaleas, buds, established plantings, springtime flower displays, terraforming on 9 May, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
No, no, not this kind of party — the Thesis soiree was several weeks ago — although yes, that is Dr. Landman’s back, in case you’re wondering. And the catering at the Towers has vastly improved in the last quarter century or so.
No, I’m talking about gardens partying — the grand bash of mid-May, after [...]
Do not taunt happy fun professor
Posted in Festival of Bad Writing, Musing about Teaching, tactless observations, tagged flames, happy fun prof, maladaptive behavior, plagiarism on 8 May, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I tell my students not to use Wikipedia as a source text. They can read it all they like, but their citations and their examples must come from more established literature. So yes, plagiarizing great farking blocks of text from a wiki would also be a fast way to make me take out [...]
