For quite some time now, I've been trying to find a site where I could enter all my media, and maybe produce a list that I could easily transfer to my website. Mediachest is all that, plus there's an organized borrowing system, so you can invite your friends and they can borrow your movies (or CDs, or books, or games).

While it's billed as another social networking site, a key difference is that I wouldn't make all my online friends part of my network here--it would just be local people to whom I've already loaned. But they do have a trust rating system set up, so I could include other locals if I wanted to. Sounds like a great way to make new friends.

I'm excited, and I'm trotting out to get a barcode reader so I can enter my collections more quickly.

What a wonderful idea! Flowers from Portland are on the way.

I know I haven't written a lot about this here, but I wanted all our friends to know that the green card interview went very well, and Bill should have his card as soon as the security check is done. This was our last worrisome hurdle, and we're very happy and relieved.

My compliments and thanks to the BCIS staff in Portland. They have been, well, fantastic. They give bureaucrats a good name.

Imagine living in a city about the size of Portland, and every ten days, a young woman is murdered. Every ten days. For ten years.

It seems only celebrity involvement could bring attention to the murdered in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. 370 women have been murdered over the last ten years--averaging one murder every ten days. Jane Fonda, Sally Field, and others are protesting the lack of investigation into these crimes, shining the international spotlight on a corrupt police force.

"I am rich, I am famous, I am white, I have a daughter, I have a granddaughter, and I know if they were murdered or disappeared, the authorities would work very work very hard to find out who killed them or who kidnapped them," Jane Fonda told a news conference in Ciudad Juarez.

For Valentine's Day, we took a trip to the Oregon Zoo, where we saw snuggling polar bears. I can't think of much more romantic than that. On the way home, we treated ourselves to a box of Godiva truffles. Mmmm.

Happy Valentine's Day to all the people I love. An especially happy day to the newlyweds.

I'm already deeply enjoying McWhorter's Authentically Black, one essay in. As a Guilty White Liberal (GWL), McWhorter elegantly and convincingly challenges my assumptions. Mind you, I take him with a grain as I'm woefully under-informed.

Here's a question that occurs to me after reading his first essay, The New Black Double Consicousness.

In it, he argues that while privately blacks are strong, and have a "private orientation toward personal empowerment", when whites arrive on the scene the discourse changes to one of victimhood. The prevailing thought, he posits, is that white people must be "kept on the hook" and made to feel guilty lest they turn back the clock on civil rights. He believes that blacks, instead of being ready to move upward when legal doors were opened, are insisting that racism be eradicated completely before helping themselves.

He admonishes that this is self-defeating; that residual racism is a minor obstacle (though not a pleasant one) compared to decades past, and that white people are hardly intent on repealing laws of equality.

Finally, he says that because of this "public face", put forth by black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, that whites have the wrong idea about blacks--that most blacks are not poor, and accomplishments are many.

Most of this rings true enough. I invite my GWL friends to find a biography of Beyonce and see if it doesn't challenge their assumptions. But here's my problem. After all this, after admitting that white people are likely to see blacks as helpless because blacks have (even if unconsciously) given them only this to see, he excoriates the Left for programs like expanded welfare and affirmative action. Okay, so let me get this straight, Mr. McWhorter: you admit that the message blacks send to whites is "help me, because you owe me", then you get pissed off when we respond to that very message?

What McWhorter seems to prefer is the disdain of the Right, because it's "for your (blacks') own good". I think I understand the problem. If there's one thing Nancy Reagan made clear, it's that all the good psychics are on the Right. We don't have the mind readers, and are left with the inadequate solution of listening to what we hear. I suppose Democratic leadership should read McWhorter's books (well, that's true enough) and take his word over the word of the majority of blacks.

I say get us some good psychics, and we're there. Until then, it seems disingenuous to rail against a group for actually listening.

Hutch, meet world.

I was going to go on about minimalism, furniture, and growing up, but it turned out to not be very interesting. Let me just say that it's from Zhejiang, it's about 120 years old, and the cats are suspicious of it.

Just finished reading Michael Shermer's The Science of Good and Evil. A few chapters in, I was excited about Shermer's ideas and his clear expression. His explanation of the evolution of morality is a fascinating one that makes a lot of sense. While the concepts didn't necessarily originate with Shermer, he makes them accessible.

While he doesn't play as fast and loose with the facts as I originally thought while reading (I'd remembered a debunking of the "peaceful bonobo" story, but now can't find it), I would recommend keeping one eye open to his biases. For example, when discussing the ratio between proliferation of pornography and rape in the US v. Japan, he cites a low incidence of Japanese rape without considering vast cultural differences and a general atmosphere of misogyny. Be aware that he leans a bit, but is generally fair.

For the concepts, I highly recommend Shermer to anyone, but particularly to folks who are tired of the theist argument that morality must proceed from religion.

I was taking a quick look at my Thought archives. Most of them are unremarkable, but there are a few favorites:

March 6, 2002: I have jellybeans in my pocket.

March 9, 2002: Why am I watching dawn through a webcam??

March 12, 2002: Robert sez: "Never let a stripper cut your hair."

August 7, 2002: "An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them."--Nicholas Meyer, Director

March 22, 2003:

March 31, 2003: The fact that you will never make the world perfect is not a convincing argument against trying to make it better. -- Greg Yoder

April 15, 2003:

April 19, 2003:

September 22, 2003: Rules exist because people are shits.

December 5, 2003: "The architectural profession gave the public 50 years of modern architecture and the public’s response has been 10 years of the greatest wave of historical preservation in the history of man." -- George E Hartman

She is sitting at the front of the bus, clutching a clear plastic bag. The bag is filled with neatly crocheted squares, in baby colors. On the front of the bag I can make out the word PATIENT. It must be some clever comment on yarn arts, I think.

As she leaves the bus, I see the other word is BELONGINGS. After a moment, I realize the bag is from a hospital. Still, crocheted squares are what I would consider a patient belonging.

Other patient belongings:

• Slippers
  
• An old dog
  
• A chipped teacup
  
• A wooden ruler
  
• Houseplants

• Cars
  
• Wristwatches
  
• Electric can openers
  
• Kleenex

A few years ago, I received an email from a friend, asking me to forward it along in an attempt to get it to its target--a stranger to me--and to fill out a questionnaire for a worldwide study. I was fascinated, and duly forwarded the email to a friend in Australia. Here are the results at last. Turns out it's really 5-7 degrees of separation (okay okay, saying six is close enough, and successful trials depended disproportionately upon business connections.

Australia plans the world's tallest tower. But it is neither for radio waves nor sheer ego, it is for energy:

At 1,000 metres, the EnviroMission supertower will be crammed with turbines and used as a clean, renewable energy provider. It has already received approval from all levels of government, and construction plans have been finalized. As if erasing Toronto's defining monument from the record books isn't enough, the company plans to build four more towers over the next few years.

England's Bloomfield House plans a sustainable future:

Breakfast was perfect. The full English, heart-attack-on-a-plate that usually is the preserve of greasy cafés had been reinvented as the epitome of perfect elegance, complete with full china and silver service. All food comes from local farms whenever possible and is organic. Hotel supplies, from artwork and pottery to furniture, also come from local craftsmen.

Most of Bloomfield House's eco-friendly features aren't, frankly, very sexy, or even obvious. The hotel plans to make the property "carbon neutral" - whereby carbon emissions are offset by tree planting or other green schemes, and the hotel car runs on filtered, used vegetable oil.

They have grand plans to create a chain of eco-friendly hotels. I hope it catches on--I'd like a little less guilt with my hotel stays.

Ever wonder what those triangles on the bottom of plastic containers mean? You know, the recycling triangle with the little numbers and letters? It's called the SPI (Society of the Plastics Industry) Resin Identification Code, and it's used to tell recyclers what kind of plastic is in the container.

Most plastic containers are made out of six different resins--thus there are seven codes, six for the common resins and one for Other. Here's a very useful chart showing symbols and properties.

If you have a hard time remembering those, try these instead*:

This is Pete, the cute crime-solving plastic with the curly lid. He is most often used in combination with Link and Julie.

HDPE stands for High Density Physical Education. This plastic floats in water, to assist those of us who don't.

This is the plastic the aliens used to make their human masks.

As you may have guessed, LDPE stands for Low Density Physical Education. This plastic flies through the air, to assist those of us who don't.

PP is an especially sterile plastic, used for storing urine samples**.

PS is the plastic you forget to mention until you've mentioned all the other plastics.

Other, as in Them. Avoid at all costs.

* I'm full of crap, of course.

** C'mon, you know I had to.

Oh, and by the way:

For some time now, I've been keeping a blog--just for Bill and me--to keep track of restaurants we visited and what we liked. I finally decided to expand its mission to include recipes and other food musings, and get it a domain of its own.

I've imported old food entries from here, with the original dates.

It still has the default MT template for now, and is really still just a place for my own restaurant and recipe notes, but the domain name was too cute not to share. And the thanks for that go to Lia and the delectable Jarvis.

I confess it freely: I am an onion wimp. Tears, pain, and whining have been my cooking companions. Because I love these pungent bulbs and use them daily, I've developed a number of strategies to keep me in the kitchen long enough to get the job done. While a large batch of onions must still be done with multiple breaks (or just giving up and asking my husband to do it), I can now reliably get through one strong onion with little discomfort.

1. Light a candle (or curse the darkness) I don't know why it works. My husband says it has to do with air circulation. I speculate the answer is related in some way to lighting farts. Air or wind, it works. It's also a good idea to turn on the exhaust fan if it's close to where you're working, and/or open a window if possible. Next, learn to work quickly by using an easy technique...

2. Cut the ends off the onion. I did see some advice about cutting the root ends off last. Thinking how to cut things that way makes my brain hurt, so I don't do it. I blame my geometry teacher.

3. Cut the onion in half, end to end.

4. Peel the onion under running water. This not only makes it easier to peel, but it keeps you safe from fumes while you're fiddling with it.

5. Cut one half at a time, across the grain. This is how I prefer to cut onions for most of my dishes but here's a bonus tip: if you want to chop an onion, make a few slices from left to right then cut across the grain.

6. Put the slices in a bowl, and cover it with a slightly damp paper towel. This quarantines the tear-making fumes of the first half, while you finish slicing the rest of the onion.

7. Rinse everything. Rinse the knife, rinse the board, rinse your hands and praise the lord. Or something. 8. Cut the other half, then rinse everything again.

Now you get to cook! If you didn't turn on the exhaust fan, for goodness sake do so now. Don't worry, your home will still fill with the wonderful scent of cooking aromatics. What to do with your painlessly-sliced onion? I highly recommend a small batch of delicious Onion Confit from The Daily Bread.