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November 4, 2005

New garden blogs; Zen games; Dick ('Connections') Gordon returning to NPR -- in N.C.

More updates to the Garden Blogs list:

Worms of Endearment author Amy Stewart writes to say that her blog's url has changed, and she's started two more blogs:

Humboldt Hens has traced the lives of my chickens from their earliest days just out of the egg to now. I also write about other backyard chicken-related issues. http://humboldthens.blogspot.com/
And last but not least... a general gardening blog about what's going on in my garden and what's on my mind, garden-wise is here: Dirt by Amy Stewart. Recently there was a debate among some of us garden bloggers about plants we love and plants we hate; I posted my top choices in both categories last week.
All coming from Eureka, California...

At Heavy Petal, Andrea Bellamy writes about "adventures (garden day trips and tours), great plant picks, neat garden tools from an urban, organic perspective. I'm a freelance garden writer based in Vancouver, BC, Canada (Zone 9)."
Andrea is touting an indoor composter now, since her housemate nixed worms indoors.
Novice Gardens: From Western Australia, Stuart Robinson writes, " My wife and I live in Busselton, a coastal town 250kms south of Perth and have been landscaping our house for the past 2 years. My blog is a window into what we have done, are doing and plan to do with our garden in the future."

Zen games, beautiful puzzles at Vector Park. The one at right, Levers, is all about balance. Every now and then an object falls in the water; some of the objects look like coathangers, and all have hooks. You may move the objects from hook to hook, and there's a bucket that can be emptied if it gets too heavy.

One of the objects is a birdhouse, with birds who land on your objects, redistributing the weight arbitrarily. All is fleeting.

I kept this on a background tab one day, checking in every now and then to see what new had arrived.

Park is another lovely one, reminiscent of the Hapland puzzles.

A more traditional jump and run game for kids: Vampire Boy.

Lots more to be found at Jay is Games.

Worth noting:

Former WBUR Connections host Dick Gordon lands in N.C.: I enjoyed Dick Gordon's interviews with authors as I drove into work. I'm glad to hear he's found new airwaves,at North Carolina public radio station WUNC-FM, to do a nationally syndicated show. The Boston Phoenix reports,

The new one-hour talk/interview show, which is yet to be named, will air weekdays, most likely in the early afternoon. Hosted by Gordon, the show will not be a rebirth of The Connection, which was produced by WBUR Boston (it aired on North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon) before being cancelled this summer, nor will it be a traditional call-in show. Listeners will hear less from the pundits and more from the real experts: individuals impacted by the news, whose stories add context and deepen our understanding of national and international issues and trends. In addition to focusing on events of the day, this show will also address arts, culture, ethics, and other issues that impact Americans.

"We call this 'public' radio, but we don't often hear from the public in a form outside the call-in show, which doesn't give people the time to really share their points of view," Gordon noted. "For this show, we plan to reach out to the public by building a program on the stories of people whose lives are directly affected by the news."

William F. Buckley:

An autobiographical illustration. When in 1951 I was inducted into the CIA as a deep cover agent, the procedures for disguising my affiliation and my work were unsmilingly comprehensive. It was three months before I was formally permitted to inform my wife what the real reason was for going to Mexico City to live. If, a year later, I had been apprehended, dosed with sodium pentothal, and forced to give out the names of everyone I knew in the CIA, I could have come up with exactly one name, that of my immediate boss (E. Howard Hunt, as it happened). In the passage of time one can indulge in idle talk on spook life. In 1980 I found myself seated next to the former president of Mexico at a ski-area restaurant. What, he asked amiably, had I done when I lived in Mexico? "I tried to undermine your regime, Mr. President." He thought this amusing, and that is all that it was, under the aspect of the heavens.

We have noticed that Valerie Plame Wilson has lived in Washington since 1997. Where she was before that is not disclosed by research facilities at my disposal. But even if she was safe in Washington when the identity of her employer was given out, it does not mean that her outing was without consequence. We do not know what dealings she might have been engaging in which are now interrupted or even made impossible. We do not know whether the countries in which she worked before 1997 could accost her, if she were to visit any of them, confronting her with signed papers that gave untruthful reasons for her previous stay — that she was there only as tourist, or working for a fictitious U.S. company. In my case, it was 15 years after reentry into the secular world before my secret career in Mexico was blown, harming no one except perhaps some who might have been put off by my deception.

Man v. machine: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writes about "How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion" a new book by Carnegie Mellon robotics graduate Daniel H. Wilson:

From the get-go, Wilson's 178-page book is clearly for the humor section; the graphics give it away with pictures of old school video-game robots zapping humans with lasers. It's riddled with B-movie language about "the nefarious robot mind" and survival tips that are closer to "The Onion" than a science book. (A tip for telling whether a new acquaintance is a real person or a humanoid robot: "Does your friend smell like a brand-new soccer ball?")

Some of the tips are real.

A robot trying to find you will use thermal imaging based on the roughly 91-degree temperature of human skin, so smearing yourself in cool mud will confuse them. If being chased by an unmanned robot vehicle, flee to a rustic, unmapped area with lots of obstacles. If your robot "smart" house -- one wired with video surveillance and computer gear -- tries to trap you, chop your way out with an ax and don't take your cell phone, because the house will track you with it.

Posted by Sheila Lennon  at 6:02 PM | Permalink