How to Tell if You've Become Jaded...

AFP/Getty Images/File/Spencer Platt

How to tell if the media hype about the economy has left you jaded.

You didn't bat an eye when you read that the GOOD NEWS is there were 466,000 new unemployment claims last week.

Good news raises hopes recovery won't fizzle Associated Press – November 25, 2009

http://iletmybabydothat.blogspot.com/

How to Tell if You've Become Jaded...

Meredith Resnick, a tutor at Bright Kids NYC, with Simone.
How to tell if our education system has left you jaded.

You didn't bat an eye when you read that some New Yorkers are spending $1,000 for lessons to improve their 3-year-old's chance for admission to kindergarten.

New York Times, Saturday, November 21, 2009

How to Tell if You've Become Jaded...

Fritz Henderson, the chief executive of General Motors

New York Times:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/business/17auto.html?_r=1&hp

How to tell if the news of the economy has left you jaded.

You didn't bat an eye when General Motors announced today that the good news was it lost only $1.15 billion last quarter.

November is the Month for Thanksgiving

A Harvest Festival

The image in my blog header (the image changes frequently) is of a painting entitled The First Thanksgiving by Jean Louis Gerome Ferris.

Thanksgiving.
Our autumn harvest festival is celebrated here in the United States on the fourth Thursday in November. In Canada it falls on the second Monday in October.

Try to include, in your Thanksgiving menu, as many items as you can that have a direct link to the farm. I don’t expect many, including myself, will kill our turkey but we can pass up much of the over-processed “stuff” in boxes, cans, or plastic containers.

A ceremony at the annual Prometheia festival of the Greek polytheistic group Supreme Council of Ethnikoi Hellenes, June 2006

The Yankees - World Series Champs

The Yankees are celebrating their 27th World Series championship with their win tonight.

Hideki Matsui drove in 6 of the 7 Yankee runs tonight and is named the World Series MVP.

The Daily Meme

Link to TDM The Daily Meme

This week’s questions.

1. Name one bad habit you have in the kitchen.

• I leave a big MESS for Susan to clean up.

2. Do you have a tv in the kitchen?

• NO! (I'd rather watch french fries warming in the microwave)

3. What’s one food you can’t stand cold?

• Beer - it shouldn't be colder than 65 degrees F
  (I forget what food group it's in...)

4. What’s your favorite juice?

• Cranberry - It rulz!

Books I'm Reading II - Millennium Trilogy

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
& The Girl Who Played with Fire

The Millennium Trilogy is a series of three novels by Stieg Larsson



Stieg Larsson (1954-2004)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest, were published posthumously in 2005, 2006 and 2007 respectively. I’ve finished reading the first two novels and eagerly await the Kindle version of the third.

The title girl is Lisbeth Salander. She’s described in Wikipedia as “an asocial punk who has been victimized by authorities throughout her whole life.” But that description is superficial. She is much more complicated than that. In Dragon Tattoo she reveals her skills as world-class computer hacker and tireless detective with a photographic memory as she and journalist Mikael Blomkvist solve a 40 year old murder mystery. Lisbeth may be asocial but she has a strict moral compass that has few limits on retribution.

At the end of Dragon Tattoo, Mikael and Lisbeth have a falling out but you just know they will have to work it out somehow.

In Played with Fire, as Mikael investigates sex trafficking in Sweden, another murder throws Salander and Blomkvist together again.

Stieg Larsson web site

Millennium Trilogy on Wikipedia

Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander
in the Swedish movie Män som hatar kvinnor

Food Crop Fertilizer Features (Gulp!) Human Urine - ABC News

Food Crop Fertilizer Features (Gulp!) Human Urine - ABC News

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Wonder what the Ash is for?

Food Crop Fertilizer Features (Gulp!) Human Urine

It's the ultimate in recycling. Take some wood ashes from the fireplace, add a little of your own urine and spread it around your tomato plants. You may get a blockbuster crop.

Scientists in Finland have found that wood ash and human urine perform just as well as more expensive mineral fertilizers, at least for some crops, such as tomato plants.

Scientists in Finland have found that wood ash and human urine perform just as well as more expensive mineral fertilizers, at least for some crops, while doing less damage to the environment. The combination is rich in nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium. The researchers raised a healthy crop of tomatoes in a carefully controlled series of laboratory experiments.


Other research has shown that human urine is an effective substitute for synthetic fertilizers, at least for cucumbers, corn, cabbage, wheat and tomatoes. Ash has also been shown to be useful in agriculture.


But the Fins say they are the first ones to combine urine with wood ash, and plants treated with that substitute performed four times as well as unfertilized plants and left the soil less acidic. The scientists insist it's safe and doesn't pose "any microbial or chemical risks."

Story on ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/DyeHard/food-crop-fertilizer-features-gulp-human-urine/story?id=8517396