turtles can talk

Big jam jars should be broad and squat.  Jam jars should never be taller than the blade of a butter knife.

Why can't the world figure these things out for itself?  Why do I have to tell it everything?

Now and then, I respond to an acquaintance's forwarded e-mail rumor with a link to the appropriate snopes page.  I don't think I've made many converts to the cause of truth, though.

It is so easy to fact-check a rumor these days.  Why in the world doesn't that seem to matter?

Actually, there is frankly no need to bother with snopes.  If it uses ALL CAPS in the subject line and urges you to forward it to everyone you know, I promise that it is false.

Wired's article about self-driving cars has me completely psyched.  I want one! 

Actually, I want one for everybody!  They go into the improved safety, but don't mention one thing I think could be a big benefit: the roads could become public again.  Right now, bicyclists, walkers, runners, horseback riders, scooter riders, and so forth generally avoid roads out of the well-founded fear of being killed by a car.  In effect, car drivers have taken the roads away from everyone else by making and carrying out death threats.  But that danger will diminish once enough cars are robotic.

Maybe even more important: fear of traffic is one of the prime reasons parents rein in their kids from ranging free.

So come, robotic overlords!  Come, so we can play outside again!

The Valkyrie just ordered a shipment of carbon fiber to do some electronics fabrication research with.  Only after the package was underway by FedEx did she notice that the supplier is here in semirural Ohio... in our zip code.  Walking distance from our house, actually.

It's a close runner-up for the most bizzare coincidence of our life.

(Of course, FedEx has taken the package to their distribution center, about 25 miles away.)

For my fortieth birthday, I went to Macy's.  I found a beautiful pair of pumps there.  They were $299.

So I circled the globe, gathering funds and distributing supplies.  I stared down hard-eyed guerrillas to shepherd aid convoys to their destinations.  I invented brilliant appropriate-technology solutions and helped local cooperatives manufacture them.  I microfinanced.  I tapped native horticultural knowledge to test and spread pest-resistant crop varieties.  I inoculated and I educated.  I drilled wells and passed out mosquito nets.  I reforested and reclaimed.  I was tireless; I was a machine.  At last, world hunger and extreme poverty were eliminated.

Finally, it was a world where I could pay that much for shoes.  I made it back to Macy's just before closing.

"Oh, I'm sorry", said the saleslady.  "We don't carry wide sizes."

The Opportunity rover ( opportunitygrrl ), designed for a 90-day mission, is still on the job after seven years. Without an oil change or a tire rotation.

To my mind, the best justification for a manned Mars mission is to go service spiritrover and get her running again.  We can't just abandon her there!  After all she's done!

Go ahead, say that I anthropomorphize robots too much.  I blame R2D2 coming along during my formative years.

The Valkyrie is (among her many talents) an aspiring writer.

Being an aspiring writer is like being a mother to many children. Every one of whom gets splattered by a truck the first time they leave the house for the first day of school.

*sigh*

Letter sent to my congressmen (yes, all men):
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I ask you to support the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles committee on deficit reduction.

I don't know what's in their report. I don't care. I'm sure that parts of it will offend me. I don't care. The deficit will not be dealt with until we accept that we will all be annoyed by the process, that we will all have to give up things our ideologies say are precious.

Please, PLEASE don't respond that you appreciate the work of the commission "but". There is no "but". "But" means "I choose debt". If we choose to value our individual and party political priorities over this serious chance to attack our debt, then we choose a future of deepening debt and the gradual end of the America we know. Future generations in a failed nation will not appreciate our partisan purity.

Thank you very much.

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I really want a grassroots Simpson-Bowles campaign. Not a generic deficit-reduction campaign, because everybody thinks they believe in deficit reduction but ends up opposing every specific plan (unless it matches their own ideology so perfectly that it will never, never be accepted). I want people who specifically acknowledge that we want deficit reduction even though we hate the specifics. There will never be a specific plan we don't hate. Let's adopt the damn thing so we can still have a nation to argue in fifty years from now.

The Cool Tools blog an amazing source of Christmas gift ideas. That for the adults, plus a good non-chain toy store for the kids, and everybody thinks you're a gifting goddess.

Problem, though: they're so eclectic that it's hard to buy them locally, and I feel bad about leaving all the local businesses out of my Christmas shopping. But half of them are too weird to be stocked in the appropriate local store, and the other half you can't even imagine what kind of store would stock them.

Hmm.

How the hell is a rape survivor supposed to face flying now? Promising myself that I would keep control over who does and doesn't touch me sexually was a keystone of my recovery.

A month ago, the underwear bomber was a pathetic loser. Now, he's the most successful terrorist ever, sexually assaulting an entire nation by proxy.

Links (provided by verdanthe):

To write your Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, please visit: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

To write your U.S. Senator, please visit:
http://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

ACLU petition:
https://secure.aclu.org/site/Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=2673