Yes, the title has changed but the cast of characters remains the same…

Let’s see, since Part 2 in this series we’ve debated and settled the burning technical question of whether or not our decision to include seafood in our otherwise vegetarian diet entitled us to wear the mantle of “vegetarian.” You’ll recall that some in the vegetarian community were pretty sensitive about who used the title and, upon learning that we were eating fish, promptly informed us that we didn’t qualify. It was much the same response we’d received from the vegan community who told us we didn’t fit the required profile for membership because we hadn’t shunned leather shoes and car seats, and weren’t wearing hemp clothing.

But thanks to a more forgiving arm of vegetarianism, we accepted the distinction of “pescevegetarians” - otherwise vegetarians that, like us, eat fish and other seafood. And before you point out that the word isn’t in the dictionary, remember that our conversion was aimed at adopting a more healthy diet, not making a political, spiritual or ecological statement. A “title”, at least for us, serves merely to facilitate discussion and simplify ordering in restaurants.

So here we are, nearly two months into our epicurean adventure into pescevegetarianism (impressive non-word, isn’t it?) and an update seems in order. Are we still on program? Yes, pretty much so. Do we miss cheese, dairy, meat? Not terribly. Are we still contributing to methane in the atmosphere? Sometimes, and we haven’t quite nailed down which foods, or combinations of foods, cause us to, uh, contribute. But it’s infrequent, so we’re taking that as a sign our bodies are adjusting.

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The YFZ Ranch story, originally centered on child abuse, has reopened a Pandora’s box of confusion and misinformation about the legal and moral issues surrounding polygyny, polyandry and polygamy.

In the strict legal sense, polygamy is illegal in the United States. Yet enforcement has become touchy because of challenges based on Constitutional equal protection.

When the courts said it was alright for two consenting adults to live together (as if married) under a “contract” other than one of marriage, they opened the door, some argue, for a man and multiple women to also live together under a slightly different “contract”. And following that line of reasoning, a woman would likewise be able to take multiple “husbands” under a “contract”. The fine point in this argument is that, as long as the participants don’t call their arrangement “marriage” and don’t apply for a marriage license (or call themselves husband and wife), they shouldn’t be prosecuted for polygamy.

The YFG Ranch story has rekindled the debate. I doubt we’ll ever accept polygamy in the U.S. — it doesn’t fit well with our culture and history — but unless we take some legal position against “what” is being done and stop dancing around what it’s “called,” cults like this one will continue to spring up under the guises of religion and equal protection.

My brother, Ken, sent this oldie, but it’s definitely worth another turn, especially now…

John, the farmer, was in the fertilized egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called “pullets”, and ten roosters whose job it was to fertilize the eggs.

The farmer kept meticulous records and any rooster that didn’t perform went into the soup pot and was replaced. That took an awful lot of his time, so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so John could tell from a distance which roosters were working. He could sit on the porch and fill out efficiency reports simply by listening to the bells.

The farmer’s favorite rooster was old Butch and a very fine specimen he was, too. But on this particular morning, John noticed old Butch’s bell hadn’t rung at all! John went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.

But to Farmer John’s amazement, old Butch had his bell in his beak so it couldn’t ring! He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one. John was so proud of old Butch, he entered him in the Renfrew County Fair where the old rooster became an overnight sensation among the judges. As a result, the judges not only awarded him the “No Bell Piece Prize” but the “Pulletsurprise” as well!

Clearly old Butch was a politician in the making. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on the planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention!

The story offers some valuable advise: Vote carefully this year. The bells are not always audible.

Remember the WiFi pact brewed up between AT&T and Starbucks earlier this year? Well, the two have announced that the rollout has begun at company-operated Starbucks locations and the nationwide effort will continue throughout 2008.

Effective May 1st, qualifying AT&T high-speed internet / WiFi customers — that’s those who subscribe to one of the three higher-speed residential broadband packages, a small business broadband package or a U-verse offering with high-speed internet — will have free WiFi access at over 7,000 coffeehouses across the US. Coupled with AT&T’s January announcement offering broadband subscribers free WiFi at all their WiFi locations nationwide, it’s looking like a pretty good year for AT&T broadband subscribers!

With 1360 participants, Belgium broke the official Mentos Fountain World Record on April 23th…

“Ahhhh… Was it good for you?”

“Shut up!”

I got these from Jamie at Perr Bear. I didn’t fact check them, so don’t shoot the messenger if any don’t work…

• Peel a banana from the bottom and you won’t have to pick off the little “stringy things”. That’s how primates do it. And take your bananas apart when you get home from the store. If you leave them connected at the stem, they ripen faster.

• Store opened chunks of cheese in aluminum foil. It will stay fresh much longer and won’t mold!

• Peppers with three bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating. Peppers with four bumps on the bottom are firmer and better for cooking.

• Add a teaspoon of water when cooking ground beef in the skillet. It will help pull the grease away from the meat.

• For richer scrambled eggs or omelets, add a couple spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese, or heavy cream before beating.

• For a cool brownie treat, make brownies as directed, then melt Andes mints in a double boiler and pour over warm brownies. Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.

• Add garlic immediately to a recipe for a light flavor and at the end of the recipe for a stronger garlic flavor.

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Thanks Chloe!

Some of us are deskbound or lead otherwise sedentary lives. Regular exercise gets left at the gate when we’re scheduling our week, month, quarter. There are priorities, things that must be completed on time. Urgent things. So we don’t get enough exercise and our physical wellbeing suffers, right? “Secretary spread” some call it. (Shame on them!) Details, a Steelcase Company, offers a possible solution:

“The Walkstation is the fully integrated combination of an electric height-adjustable worksurface with an exclusively engineered, low speed commercial grade treadmill. And it’s the first product in the entirely new FitWork™ category of products from Details designed to bring healthy habits to sedentary workers while they are actually working.”

Seems a novel idea, doesn’t it? But I wonder how productive it would be in the workplace. I know from personal experience, for example, how difficult it is to run, or even walk at a pace sufficient for a descent cardiovascular workout, while reading. I can’t imagine doing it while performing routine office tasks like keying or taking notes while talking on the phone. Unless, of course, the pace is so slow, as the literature suggests, that you don’t even breathe heavily. In which case, what’s the point?

Well, it turns out there is one. Experts say any amount of exercise is better than none at all. And Sean McCance, a co-director of orthopedic spine surgery at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, points out that sitting still all day is bad for your spine. “When you remain in one position for too long,” says McCance, “your muscles get stiff, putting pressure on the discs of the spine.” By getting up and moving around every 30-45 minutes or so, your back gets to change position, your blood flow increases, and fluid flows back into the area to rehydrate the discs that cushion the spine.

So, if a Walkstation would fit in your cubicle — and your boss will allow it — check it out. It could be just what the doctor ordered.

Pulpbard is an open project on wikispaces I know at least a couple of you won’t be able to resist. Of course, if you haven’t seen the film classic Pulp Fiction, none of what follows will make any sense to you…

“Welcome to the Pulp Shakespeare Project, devoted to the reconstruction of William Shakespeare’s play A Slurry Tale, which curiously resembles Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction. There is no way to stop this from happening, so this wiki exists to ensure that it is done well, or as well as it can be.”

Forsooth, two memorable scenes originating, as near as I can tell, on Kevin Pease’s LiveJournal, written as the Bard himself might have written them (were he the screenwriter which, of course, he wasn’t, but I’m just sayin’…):

ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter JULES and VINCENT, murderers.

Vincent:  And know’st thou what the French name cottage pie?
Julius:     Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
Vincent:  But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
                 Are strange to ours, with their own history:
                 Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
Julius:     What say they then, pray?
Vincent:  Hachis Parmentier.
Julius:     Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
Vincent:  Cream is but cream, only they say la crème.
Julius:     What do they name black pudding?
Vincent:  I know not;
                 I visited no inn where’t could be bought.

ACT 1 SCENE 8.2. Your pardon; did I break thy concentration?

We’ve all seen Quicktime panoramas made by “stitching” still images. But this video offers a very different and unique experience.

Called “Spherical Storytelling,” the 360° video panorama “drives” you down New York’s infamous 42nd Street providing a “sun roof” view! Click the play button and, as the video loads, scroll with the mouse to watch in any direction within the video. Amazing!

Via Immersive Media. Requires Adobe Flash® and a broadband connection to view.

In November 2006, 21-year-old Ana Carolina Reston, a top Brazilian model, died as a result of anorexia. At the time of her death she weighed just 88 pounds! So last year Spain banned ultra-thin models from catwalks. Good! Everyone else in the fashion industry needs to follow suit.

The French are at least trying. French fashion industry leaders and media companies have said they’re behind a plan by France’s minister of health calling for the promotion of healthier body types. Earlier this month, together with French politicians, they signed a non-binding “charter of good conduct” aimed at promoting healthier body images. Non-binding? Are you kidding me?

Now French lawmakers are saying enough is enough — fashion models are just too thin — and they’re taking a stance against impossibly thin models. According to the Associated Press, the French parliament’s lower house has approved a bill that would make it illegal for anyone — including fashion magazines, advertisers and Web sites — to publicly incite extreme thinness.

The bill is the latest effort to address concerns surrounding the fashion industry’s use of ultra-thin models. Although it’s not clear how the fashion industry would be affected by the rule, its author says she believes the legislation would force changes in how fashion houses depict women by giving judges the power to imprison and fine offenders up to $47,000 $70,000 if found guilty of “inciting others to deprive themselves of food” to an “excessive” degree.

Sounds good in theory, but I hope French lawmakers are prepared to “flesh out” their definitions of “inciting” and “excessive”… More

No matter how high local gas prices climb, there will always be some place where they’re higher. For example, here’s a shot taken last week in San Francisco, and you can bet it’s higher this week…

There now. Feel better?

Got this from Felix…

Today is Earth Day, the April 22nd one, not to be confused with the Equinox Earth Day in March or the Earth Hour, also in March, or any of the various World Days (World Day for Water, World Day for Cultural Diversity, World Jump Day, et al). Each year, the April 22 Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.

Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, “Bridge over Troubled Water,” Apollo 13, the Beatles’ last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, and the meltdown of fuel rods in the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina — an incident not acknowledged for 18 years. At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans, industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press, and air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. “Environment” was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news.

But Earth Day 1970 turned that all around, thrusting the environment onto the national agenda. On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment.

Earth Day 1990 mobilized 200 million people in 141 countries and lifted the status of environmental issues onto the world stage, giving a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helping pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Earth Day 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. Using the Internet to help link 5,000 environmental groups in a record 184 countries, it sent the message loud and clear that citizens around the world wanted quick and decisive action on clean energy. And Earth Day 2007 was one of the largest Earth Days to date, with an estimated billion people participating in the activities world wide.

Today, Earth Day Network reaches over 17,000 organizations in 174 countries, while the domestic program engages 5,000 groups and over 25,000 educators coordinating millions of community development and environmental protection activities throughout the year. Notable is that Earth Day is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities with more than a half billion people participating in Earth Day Network campaigns every year.

Who cares? Well, we all should. We can argue whether the pendulum has swung too far or not yet far enough, but we all agree that environmental issues command an important place on the world agenda and that we all share responsibility for the proper care and feeding of Mother Earth.

By the way, what ever happened to Captain Planet and the Planeteers? Did environmental extremists (or Turner) render them irrelevant? Anyone?

An old friend of mine sent me this Calvin comic and reminded me, well, of me back in our high school “Honors English” days too many years ago to even think about. Yes, that was me, all right - long, complex sentences, exaggerated vocabulary, confusing twists and odd angles - yet my writing style, if you can call it that, impressed my teachers, winning me frequent accolades and a dependable stream of “A”s in written communication.

But my aspiring novelist bubble was about to burst. Fast forward to my first college English class. Focusing on literature and writing, it carried steep prerequisites. I foolishly thought it would be four easy credits given my stellar academic credentials, especially with two years of high school debate team experience tossed in for good measure. So I wasn’t worried when our first assignment, intended to ensure that enrollees possessed the necessary skills to succeed in the class, was to write a short essay on a favorite novel.

I decided on a comparison of Melvile’s Moby Dick and Conrad’s Billy Budd, contrasting the authors’ writing styles. I’d read and discussed both in high school and believed I was sufficiently well versed to dazzle my professor. So confident was I in my writing skills that I hastily cranked out five double spaced pages late Tuesday night for my Wednesday morning class.

The essays were returned Friday morning as the professor began her verbal assessment. All were interesting, she told us, some even quite good. I was certain mine had impressed. Continuing, she explained her cryptic notations at the top of each paper. A “check” mark indicated you were in the right class and she looked forward to helping improve your writing skills. An “X”, however, meant the class would likely prove too challenging and you should immediately transfer to a lower English. The latter group, about a quarter of the class, quietly gathered their materials and left the classroom as the professor returned to her desk. I sat in stunned silence. There was no mark on my paper.

Had she forgotten to mark it? Had she even read it? Finally, I mustered the courage to raise my hand and asked what the lack of any notation meant. “Ah, Mr. Arrington,” she replied with a blank expression I later learned to recognize as a smile. “That’s to let you know it’s harder to bullshit a college English professor than a high school teacher!”

There it was. I’d been put on notice, outed, called out. My days of skating through writing assignments had come to an abrupt conclusion. For the remainder of the semester she challenged, blue penciled and embarrassed me into producing some of my best written work. I was glad when the semester ended, but I’ll remain forever grateful to her for showing me a better way to weave the written word.

I should mention something else my high school friend, Alex, noted in his email after reading my blog: “I see you haven’t changed.”

I know, Alex. Thanks for remembering.