Guess What This Is

Here's a picture of something -- can you guess what it is? (Don't scroll down until you guess.)

A dentist poured molding material down ant hills -- and here's what the inside of the hills look like -- interesting story from Boing! Boing! I've always wondered what the insides looked like. Goodness knows, we have enough anthills around here - even fire ants. I wonder if they are the same inside. Maybe making molds is one way to eliminate ants - ha!

What Will We Eat Next?

I was just grocery shopping with my husband, when I saw this package of meat -- alligator meat! I guess if they can eat us, we might as well return the favor.

My Political Viewpoints

In discussing politics with a friend, I realized that I am an illogic mix of Republican in many things, Libertarian in others and Democrat in other issues. Whew! I love the space program and tend to vote for whoever supports it best. I hate the cost of health insurance and want ways to get health care and medicines less expensive. I wish we had less laws and less government and trust our free enterprise system to sort out things instead of paying people not to grow things, regulate so much and have so many price supports and taxes. Sigh - I know my ideas are not all logical with each other and I can't have it all.

Happy Birthday

It is my birthday today. My sneaky sisters had my yard decorated with cows and a big sign proclaiming my age to the neighborhood. (I suppose this has something to do with my sister and I decorating another sister's yard with pink flamingos for her birthday.)

My husband took me out to eat. My cats nagged me until I gave them treats. It has been a funny and good day, though. I just wish we could live forever the way things are now. I love my life so far.

Create Your Own Virtual Cookbook

What a great idea -- whenever you see a recipe you like, you can bookmark it through del.icio.us and it will become an easy-to-read cookbook for others, too. Here's all about it at Simple Recipes.

I have enjoyed reading at deli.cio.us, but I had never created my own account there until now. (The link goes to an article that explains how to do it.) When I get enough recipes in my cookbook, I'll post it here.

Two Disappointments

Yesterday, I took our car into the local Saturn dealer for routine maintenance. I said that the "service engine soon" light was coming on once in a while, but as far as driving the car, we could not sense any problems. Alas, they wanted to charge $60 just to check to see what the problem might be. $60?!! I told them to forget it.

They then tried to scare me into getting it, saying dire problems could exist. I guess if my car explodes one day, I will regret it, but we are betting that the problem is more with the sensor itself (and they did not find anything during the routine maintenance).

Next, they said I need my tires rotated and balanced. I replied, "But I just had that done last time I was here (a few months ago)." The service guy said, sorry it was his mistake, he did not see that on my record. I came out of there feeling that I could never trust them again.

That place was the first disappointment. The second is with Time Magazine's May 15th issue about autistic children. (I have done volunteer work with with such children plus have been around autistic children all of my life.) PBS, the American Psychiatric Association and other groups have long debunked "facilitated communication" with autistic children. This is when someone holds the arm of the autistic child and helps them spell out words to communicate on a special board. The conclusions they made show that facilitators were always doing the communicating, not the child. (In some cases, the children were spelling out complex sentences when they never had the education or ability to even learn how to spell simple words. Common sense should show that something fishy is going on here.) It is sad when people believe in charlatans and sad when Time implies this could be real.

To quote Phil Plait here, "See www.randi.org/jr/080505potential.html#16 and www.randi.org/jr/200511/111105derek.html#i7. Also, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/transcripts/1202.html. This is hard evidence that the quacks – and TIME Magazine – cannot deny."

Bread Clay

This is fun. Maybe I should make a necklace. All I can make is balls and snowmen. I have no sculpting talent.

Make Fake Press Clippings

This comes from Bren at del.icio.us. Generate your own newspaper clipping stories. This was fun.