RelentlesslyOptimistic

Gadget Check: Bird-watchers' delight

I've seen something similar on a laptop that capture the ultrasonic calls of bats and identified them, but this is smaller and far cheaper. I don't want one, mind you, I just think it's cool.

When the Song Sounds Familiar, but You Can't Place the Singer - New York Times.

The Song Sleuth is about the size of a large pair of binoculars, but lighter, at just over a pound with batteries. This device picks up bird songs with a directional microphone array, compares them with digitized songs from the birds of your region in the continental United States and lists the most likely singers on a small display.

Software with the device covers the 60 most common birds in the user's region, with modules for 13 other regions in the country that are downloadable for $25 each, all based on bird song recordings from the Macaulay Library of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Photoblog: the5thdentist

I love photoblogs; I have 28 feeds in my photos category. the5thdentist has been posting some incredible pictures lately. This gorgeous photo evokes an abstract impressionistic painting. Visit the site to see the full size.

Urban Farming: "Now I want to move in and go all Green Acres and shit"

What could be better than beautiful old buildings and urban farms? Heidi pointed to a KC blogger I hadn't yet discovered. Joe, of Kansas City Soil, is fantasizing about buying (with lottery proceeds) the entire 800 block of Troost, with a couple of great buildings and room for a farm. I was enchanted, since my wife and I have long fantasized about exactly the same thing on different blocks (we haven't won the lottery yet, either).

I pointed them to Katherine and Daniel's Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture. Katherine started Full Circle Farms, and now she and Daniel are working together to create an urban farm and educational center. It's a pretty cool dream, and a new organization with lots of possibilities. They are holding an Urban Farm Tour on July 17th - who knew that there were enough urban farms to have a tour?

Now if only someone would win the lottery and fund this! If you are reading this and have a few million you'd like to donate, please let me know.

A vegetarian socialist with great personal charm

National Poetry Month has passed, but I couldn't resist when I saw this at alembic. Which Major Romantic Poet are you?

You are Percy Bysshe Shelley!  Famous for your
dreamy abstraction and your quirky verse,
you're the model "sensitive poet."  A
vegetarian socialist with great personal charm
and a definite way with the love poem, you
remain an idol for female readers.  There are
dozens of cute anecdotes about you, and I love
you.

Forbes reports that US acknowledges torture at Guantanamo; in Iraq, Afghanistan

The liberal backstabbing Forbes.com reports that the US acknowledges torture at Guantanamo; in Iraq, Afghanistan
 

GENEVA (AFX) - Washington has, for the first time, acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.

The acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity.
...
UN sources said this is the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities.

 

Kansas City's very own worm farm

The Star reports this morning on Kansas City's successful vermicomposting business: Windswept Worm Farm. The owners, Doug and Becky Halphin, operate the business out of a 10,000 square foot cave, where they produce worm compost and bait worms.

Dogblogging: Fun at their dog's expense

Via FlickrBlog, this lovely photo. The Jacksons appear to be having fun with their poor puppy's trauma.


   
   

"The gayest thing ever is watching the Oscars at the baths...on ACID."

Joe and his date couldn't find parking for the Oscar party, so they went to a bathhouse  in their tuxes and invited their near-agoraphobic friend. Hilarity ensues, with wonderful writing. Some excerpts:

• "Oh my GOD, look where they have the soda!"
• "Why in the world were you imitating Edith Bunker at a sex party?"
• "You sort of took something? What did you sort of take?"
• There was another patron, standing behind him, impatiently waiting for Ken to decide. Just as I walked up, the other customer said "Do you
  need help with the machine?" Ken whirled around and hissed "I'm resting!"

Can we include preventing desecration of the Koran in there too? Just sayin'

Majikthise: Some legislators would elevate their perverse fetishes to Constitutional status:

U.S. House Approves Constitutional Amendment to Protect Flag
June 22 (Bloomberg) -- The House of Representatives approved, for the fifth time, a constitutional amendment to ban the desecration of the U.S. flag, setting the stage for a close vote in the Senate, which has previously rejected the measure.

Photo from the BBC

Update: In the comments a reader points out that the amendment was sponsored by Randy "I want to pass the measure before I go to jail"Cunningham.

More indications of the coming war in Iran

Agitprop notices that a crashed U2 spyplane that was purportedly spying on Afghanistan was more likely to have been collecting information about Iran, and includes links to several other stories that add to evidence of US intent to attack Iran.

Why would the United States need to perform high altitude reconnaissance in Afghanistan? I thought the United States was rebuilding the country and had it secured. It's not like the remnants of the Taliban possess sophisticated anti-aircraft guns which could pose harm to low-flying U.S. fighter jets. So what would we need a U-2 for other than covert surveillance and intelligence gathering?
Look at which country lies smack between Afghanistan and The UAE.

Other sites note that the press relase from the military claimed that the U2 crashed in "southwest Asia."

 

Cobalt Skink: long ago now

I added Cobalt Skink to my sidebar the first time I read one of Nina's essays, back in April. I've checked back occasionally to see if my reader just wasn't picking up the new posts. At long last she has a new essay, long ago now.

I turned to look at my garden beginning to take shape just in time to notice the moon, large but not full against a late-afternoon blue sky. The Atlanta moonlight lily was facing it, as if it had beamed the moon into the sky or maybe it was that the lily was gathering moonlight for the approaching night.

Thinking and Paper

A thread at "Ask Edward Tufte" led to this quote from a review by Malcolm Gladwell of "The Myth of the Paperless Office" originally published in the New Yorker :

"The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks, because they haven't yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head. Kidd writes that many of the people she talked to use the papers on their desks as contextual cues to "recover a complex set of threads without difficulty and delay"

Anyone who knows me understands why I like that. Still, I often describe my work as "surfing the chaos," so the complexity and uncertainty certainly fit with the quote. I wonder (hopefully) if my problem with traditional organizing models haven't worked for me because they were heirarchical rather than spatial? I'll have to think about that one, and see if I can find or devise a more spatially-based organizing system. Anyone have suggestions?

Downing Street Memo Statistics

I took the stats that PSoTD has been keeping from Technorati and Google on Downing Street Memo coverage and put them in a graph. Beautiful, although the media's still running pretty far behind. The new stat for today: 225 mentions of Bush and impeachment in the same story. I found that post through After Party, from whom I stole the idea for the  "War Supporters click here" link on the sidebar.

"We regret your mistake"

Tom Toles on the Downing Street Memo

Operation Yellow Elephant is enlisting volunteers

Mike Tidmus created this terrific ad. Also note the new Operation Yellow Elephant blog tag in the sidebar. Get your own at Goose the Blog 2.0. Other activities: Karl Olsen has donated a convention booth to military recruiters at the Young Republicans National Convention on July 7th. Keep up on the latest activities at Jesus' General.