Saturday, May 28, 2011

Why is the Weber Grilling Hotline staffed by so many women?

Ms. Olsen, who was widowed at 51 and has pictures of her grandchildren on her cubicle walls, does not rattle easily. “I’m good at what I do,” she said. “I don’t cry” — unlike some of her male callers — “though I have thrown a headset.”

Instructables: How to do almost anything

Instructables: How to do almost anything

Major sections in this open source, do-it-yourself site include:
Food, Living, Outside, Play, Technology, Workshop
The site includes lots of video and step-by-step instructions.

Four reasons why you need to take cold showers

Frederic P. says:
A friend of mine has no gray hair, and very good skin for her age. Why?

To calm stressed pooches, aromatherapy oils applied to their crates.

Dog trainer uses natural oils to calm stressed pooches.

Dog trainer Lynn Aitchison has been using her aromatherapy talents to help dogs at the Edinburgh Dog and Cat Home (EDCH) after training in the unusual field last year.

She believes the techniques used help the dogs at the home, who are often troubled, become less stressed and anxious.

Salish and Kootnai college students work to keep their native languages.

Salish and Kootnai students study their native languages to keep them from disappearing -- a tip of the hat to the ancestors and a favor to those living in the future

Monday, May 23, 2011

Irony by the sea - Bill McKibben nails it

WHEN I ACTUALLY saw the setting for December’s big climate conference, I wondered if perhaps the UN—bulwark of bureaucratic earnestness—had somehow acquired a sense of irony.

Hilarious! Or cruel?

Norman N. is an 81-year-old man whose son told him that to search for things on Google, you needed to type the search phrase into Twitter, Gizmodo reports.

Norman searches for everything from information on his rashes to soft-boiled grapes (I didn’t know there was such a thing), and perhaps my favorite is an old man’s version of Internet porn: “diane sawyer swimsuit pictures.”

I’m not sure whether or not this is real — old man Norman hasn’t given up since late April, and you’d have to assume that even our notoriously computer illiterate elders would give up after some stretch of getting nothing back.

Failing to care for the returning veterans who are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder

Are Expectations For VA Mental Health Care Achievable?
by mike_brewer on May. 22, 2011, under Veterans Benefits

Recently a federal appeals court scolded the Veterans Administration for failing to care for the returning veterans who are experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder at alarming rates that are not leveling, even with all the Outreach programs.

The U.S 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stated in a 2-1 ruling that the delays are so “egregious” that they “violate a veterans constitutional rights.”

I do not see it that way.

Got you with the dogs, but this is a very good long-form journalism site, primarily

Some Very Good Dog Stories. Yes, They Are!


What with a four-legged soldier helping to take out the World’s Most Wanted man, canines have been in the news quite a bit this past week. Which gives us an excuse to dive into the Byliner.com archives and surface some essential reading about man’s best friend:
Living in Dog Years, by Bill Vaughn
Dog Dancing, by Emily Yoffe
The Life of a Sportsman and the Lives of his Dogs, by Jim Harrison
Masters of the Hunt, P.J. O’Rourke
Mush, Mush, Mush, Dammit, Mush!, by Elizabeth Royte
Show Dog, by Susan Orlean
Catching Dogs, by Tom Junod

Monday, May 2, 2011

Learn to love what you eat with Foodia

Max Haines-Stiles didn’t start out trying to create the Facebook of food. Foodia actually grew out of a desire to help educate people about the health and sustainability benefits of good food.

The ultimate dog tease -- use sparingly, please.

Oh how you'll Laugh...