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A thought experiment:

Imagine a composting toilet that is user friendly, economical, & aesthetically pleasing.

Found following through the previous post’s primary sources.

Tags:   greenliness · toiletNo Comments.

An interesting post by a woman claiming to have once established the first, and so far only, Jewish CSA contains this rumination on Jewish urbanism:

My point is, rather, that the pressure of Jewish culture pushes us strongly towards dense concentrations of other Jews - not just dense in a suburban sense, but because most observant Jews don’t drive at all, walkably Jewish neighborhoods. In many ways, this is good - observant Jews eschew commerce once a week, they do not drive on the Sabbath, they tend to congregate in tight knit commities[sic], usually walkable…

Against the counterpoint:

The other force pushing Jews towards urbanization is historical - Jews have lost their land in every place they lived in for thousands of years. As a minority, diaspora population, Jews have always been vulnerable and anti-semitism always prevalent - taking Jewish land was something of a hobby of most governments through most of Christian history, in large part because it was hugely profitable. Jews would settle on a farm, improve the land, and then, when the next round of scapegoating came about - and it always did - the powers that be would displace Jews and take over their land and wealth. For thousands of years, Jews were taught, over and over and over again that land in the diaspora was tenuous, that other forms of wealth, the kinds you can take with you in hard times in the forms of coinage or metals, were far more valuable and secure than land.

Not being observant of much beyond my toes, I don’t take the first point to explain altogether much. Certainly Jews could have “gone Amish” if it were so determining. Although, moving en masse to a desert nation and reclaiming a ritual language is something like “gone Amish”ing on the large scale.

The second point, why build a house of cards in a hurricane?, strikes me as more acceptable. You can’t smuggle acreage out of Germany the same as you can Albert Einstein’s ideas.

Another game to play reading this post is the “How many times can she use some formulation of the word Jew/Jewish in any given sentence/context”? Answer: a whole bunch of a lot.

Found via John Schwenkler by JL Wall.

Tags:   farming · food · Judiasm · localism1 Comment

At about 8am on Thursday, Parizaad Khan finally escaped from the Taj. She was herded onto a bus at the lobby door by heavily armed commandos. As it sped away, terrorists opened fire on the fleeing bus.

Jai Baba.

Terrorist attacks in Bombay: hour by hour so far - Times Online.

Tags:   terrorismNo Comments.

Subtext: “Go to hell, Mitt Romney. No, not the one you believe in. The one I believe in.”

– From Dave Weigel’s commentary on Mike Huckabee’s book on intra-Republican infighting on toast.

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SF Gate had a link in their top story rotator with the title “Bond Review”. I figured some massive review of State, Municipal, etc… bonds would undoubtedly be newsworthy enough for top billing, so I clicked:

I’ll probably go see it.

Tags:   james bond · Movies · newsNo Comments.

>rent a car bulgariaa!

Around here, there’s a whole lot of honking, screaming and the occasional firework.

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Marshawn Lynch is maybe not the prettiest of football players, but he sure has the most demon-looking headshot on his Yahoo! player profile page.

Tags:   Berkeley · demonology · marshawn lynchNo Comments.

Some dude named Ed Whelan offers this fantastically inane idea on the National Review’s website:

Barack Obama may actually believe, as he stated yesterday, that Roe v. Wade “was rightly decided.” But it may be very lucky for him, as the son born of that woman, that it hadn’t been decided a dozen or so years earlier.

Yes, Whelan is claiming Obama is lucky not to have been aborted.

Remember, these are the Republican “intellectuals”.

Tags:   abortion · republicanismNo Comments.

Sometimes the world gets a tiny stranger by such small degrees as to be unnoticeable. Othertimes, the strange arrives in station blaring the Albanian national anthem. This PLOS One article on “worm grunting” is the latter:

For generations many families in and around Florida's Apalachicola National Forest have supported themselves by collecting the large endemic earthworms Diplocardia mississippiensis. This is accomplished by vibrating a wooden stake driven into the soil, a practice called “worm grunting”. In response to the vibrations, worms emerge to the surface where thousands can be gathered in a few hours. Why do these earthworms suddenly exit their burrows in response to vibrations, exposing themselves to predation?

The paper specifically mentions a “worm gruntin’” festival in, presumably, sunny Wakulla County, Florida.

This video’s actually pretty cool:

Tags:   Science · the south · wormsNo Comments.

Ross Douthat must think there is some award for most damningly ironic counterfactual:

Whereas in a world in which George W. Bush hadn’t invaded Iraq, or a world in which large stockpiles of WMDs had been found after he did invade, or a world in which the occupation of Iraq hadn’t been mismanaged into a bloody botch for three long years, I suspect…

If only Republicans weren’t in power there wouldn’t be so much resentment against the the things Republicans do when in power.

Tags:   counterfactuals · Politics · republicanismNo Comments.