talzhemir1

Poem: I Want to See Star Wars Again

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:42:02 GMT

I want to see Star Wars again.
Not on DVD (sparkly and soul-less as the prequel)
But in a real god-damn theatre.

It should smell faintly of smashed Raisinets,
And fanboys who slept outside on the cement all night.

Give me popcorn loaded with salt and butter
Because hardening of the arteries doesn't exist yet.
(Just as well that I can hardly eat two handfuls).

I want THX as R2-D2 trundles the canyon
And TIE fighters flying right at my face
(But NOT in 3D).

I want to cheer
For Luke and Leia and Han
Because they each carry a piece
Of ourselves, at our best.

I want to see Star Wars again.

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:45:40 GMT

Wearing green in early spring is an ancient custom. People hoped it would prevent a late frost (which would kill precious seedlings) and call gentle rains, which made the fields fertile. The custom of coloring eggs green and wearing green clothes to celebrate spring goes all the way back to at least 1000 B.C., in ancient Egypt.

Today, people wear green on St. Patrick's Day just for fun.

The custom of wearing green isn't just Irish, it goes back to the Celtic Empire and the association of green with the copper and bronze. It goes from Poland in the east (where they dye eggs green for prosperity) to Spain and Portugal in the west (where some people today dye leather green for luck). Check out this map and see if your ancestors might have been part of the Celtic Empire.
http://wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/past/pre_norman_history/iron_age.html

That's a very large chunk of Europe.

Still don't think your ancestors wore green for Spring? Consider that you've got two genetic parents. They each had two genetic parents, giving you four ancestors at that generation. That goes to 8, 16, 32, 64, and so on. At two to the 18th power (or, 18 generations ago), that's 262,144. Now consider that the entire human population around 400 B.C. (when the Celtic Empire was in its heyday) was only around 100,000 people.

It's kind of obvious that you probably had quite a few ancestors living in the Celtic Empire. Modern genetic testing backs that up. ( http://www.dnatribes.com/?gclid=CJHQ3_-xkJICFQEfFQodJ1G4-A ) Today, somebody without Celtic ancestry is extremely rare-- like, one person in a couple hundred thousand.

"Irish" culture is "world" culture. Chances are extremely good, it is your heritage, too.

-----

Common Wood Sorrel
The heart-shaped leaves of the "lucky" four-leafed clover design depicts Common Wood Sorrel, a member of the oxalis family with pink flowers. This plant is sour to the taste and slightly toxic because of high amounts of oxalic acid.

-----

The Shamrock
(from the Irish word seamarog)
When this three-leafed clover became an emblem of rebellion in the 19th century, Queen Victoria outlawed it. "Wearing of the green" was made punishable by death by hanging! Thus, the shamrock is also a symbol of freedom.

For some, the three leaves symbollize the Christian Trinity. For others, a clover with three little moon markings stand for the pagan Triple Goddess.

The true shamrock, however, is thought by many to be the common White Clover, Trifolium repens. It has circular leaves with little white markings. Not only is it good fodder for animals, but it also makes the lawn and fields more fertile. It's a member of the nitrogen-fixing pea family, a cousin to the soybean (which also has three leaves).

Clover flowers can be made into tea and the leaves, when cooked for five minutes can be eaten as high-protein nutritious greens. The true shamrock is well-loved because it's an early source of food after the snow begins to melt. After a winter of no fresh fruits or vegetables, fresh clover was a great delicacy.

Fairy horses (the Irish phooka, Manx glastyn, Scottish kelpie, and so on) sometimes had green manes. Wearing green was thought to attract the more helpful fairies. In Celtic lore, fairies themselves wore green.

-----

The Australian Connection

Wearing of the green was brought to Australia by some of the hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants. Some were volunteers, travelers in search of a better life. Some were thieves. A significant number of them were "undesirables" who were deported from Britain for the crime of wearing green.

In Ireland, the children's custom of "a pinch" for not wearing green was originally a pinch for wearing orange. Orange was the color associated with the British and the Anglican faith.

-----

Want to print out some shamrocks for you and yours?
http://www.thegenieslamp.com/furcadia_shamrock.pdf

The Goatherd and the Three Doves

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 11:55:30 GMT

This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/77778.html

There was a boy who was moving his flock of sheep eastwards. One day, at dawn, he saw three doves take flight ahead of him, in the distance. He decided to ask the village soothsayers separately what this meant.

The first said, "Doves are symbols of the soul. The spirits of your ancestors are watching over you. It is a good omen; you will be safe."

The second said, "The number three is auspicious. It is a good omen; you will soon be very lucky."

The third said, "East is the direction of constancy. It is a good omen; do not change what you are doing."

The next day, early in the morning, the boy continued on to the next pasture. A pack of wolves appeared, circling closer and closer. The boy tried to fend them off but they devoured him.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Consensus does not create truth.

POEM: About My Goat

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:27:06 GMT

About My Goat

For the most part-- let it be known-
I've got a goat that can't be got:
A placid beast that hems and chaws.
And views the world with great soft eyes.

It eats the thorn or the bitter flower.
This goat gulps angry bees,
Has done so, many times over.

And so,
Most of what grows in my mental yard
Is lush green grass or sweet soft clover.

There are those things, however,
That stick in the craw.
They can't be swallowed,
And should not be left to grow.

Yeah,
It takes a hell of a lot...

But there comes a time,
When even my goat is got.

And then
(please don't be shocked)
But my little goat
Is chewing up cans
And spitting out shot.

--Talzhemir

NONFICTION: Personal Responsibility and Bible-Based Morality

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:00:41 GMT

This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/77226.html

(This was originally posted in response to a friend who had made a post about how their friend had a difficult choice to make, and was apparently doing nothing, except to "leave it up to God". The first part of my post, which I've left out, mentions depression, which makes being decisive harder. Upon further learning they were taking a religious approach, I was disheartened.)

-----

On the subject of faith in higher powers... If your friend really thinks there are higher powers, then they have license to blame absolutely EVERYTHING on those higher powers.

You can't say we were created by an omniscient being... and then say what we do isn't that being's fault. An inescapable corollary of believing the world is run by spooks that see the future is the loss of any meaningful concept of free will.

Consider the Bible story of Adam and Eve. According to this, humans lived in luxury and repose. The god of the Bible originally put everybody in a big garden, free from all responsibility.

That already implies pretty strongly, "It's morally okay to not worry, and do nothing. Our deity intended for us to be carefree and lazy, and not have to make hard choices."

The first humans, this story goes on, are ejected because they make a choice. They pick a fruit and eat it.

As a result, they get to know cold, starvation, pain, and death-- things that they clearly do not understand. It's not a choice they can possibly comprehend, because, up until that point, those things didn't even exist in their world.

It's a fairytale consequence-- pick the rose and lose your daughter; see the fair folk and sleep to awaken to find all you loved are dead.

...Look at a burning city and turn into a pillar of salt.
...Call an old man "Baldy" and get mauled to death by a couple of bears.
...Promise your god a burnt offering and it ends up your daughter.

The Bible is chock-full of freaky fairytale consequences imposed by its god.

Imagine offering Koko the gorilla a piece of fruit she's never seen before. If she eats it, we ship her to Africa, to an unfamiliar region where she now has to forage for herself and risk being shot by poachers...

Next, we rationalize, it's okay to do this, because it wasn't OUR choice, it was Koko's and nobody forced her to eat that fruit. This is a sick "blame the victim" perspective.

Try extracting a rational perspective on how you can be the actual author of your life through your own choices, from THAT.

Next, consider the Bible story of the Great Flood. This god drowns millions, and then, we are supposed to feel better because of their promise to never, ever do that again, embodied in the rainbow.

I have to wonder if he wasn't snickering and thinking, "I can just use a glacier or a volcano next time. Hmm, how about an earthquake."

It's a nasty anecdote any way you slice it. This god could have sent angels to... like... waterboard everybody who was being bad. But no, he had to drown them all.

The true message is, "The universe is run by a being who would rather genocide whole cities, including millions of innocent babies, than handle informing and disciplining us one on one."

Hard to extract a message of personal responsibility for your own well-being when babies are drowned because of things their parents did.

It also implies that when bad things happen, there are moral reasons for it. That's a really unhealthy superstition.

Next, consider the story of Job. According to the tale, Job, an innocent and upstanding fellow in every way was allowed to experience horrible things. His wife and children were murdered. He was subjected to a plague. It was all part of a bizarre contest in which an 'evil' entity was allowed to torture a human.

By this reasoning, if you have a hamster and you let your cat play with it, you get out of being responsible by saying, "It wasn't me! Kitty did it!"

Apparently everything is made just fine because the god gives Job a NEW wife and NEW children.

"Sorry about that, Job. Oh, and it wasn't me, it was Satan."

I don't think this morally excuses the god and I don't think people who believe in gods hold them nearly accountable enough for the bad things in the world.

When somebody turns to religion for guidance in their life, I may worry a little, because, with role models like that, traditional religions doesn't strike me as a good source of perspective on 'personal responsibility'.

If this offends somebody reading it... Well, I'm sorry for the emotional discomfort I caused by writing it. I didn't write it to make you personally unhappy, or to get my jollies, though.

Whether you felt good reading it, or not, just doesn't change whether or not the Bible is seriously lacking in actual moral guidance.

I just can't pretend every basis for morality is equally valid.

NONFICTION: Haiti and the Illegality of Abortion

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 08:47:03 GMT

This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/77013.html

Many people are pro-choice on the basis of ownership of one's own body. I believe in a woman's right to self-determination but that isn't the greatest basis of my pro-choice stance. It is not the best rational argument in favor of keeping abortion legal. I'm pro-choice because the cost of making abortion illegal is extremely bad at a societal level.

Why was Haiti a disaster area even before the earthquake? A MAJOR part of this ugly puzzle is that they made abortion illegal. How did banning abortion contribute to a messed-up government? About 7% of pregnancies in Haiti end in abortions. That money goes to organized crime. It goes to paying for thugs to collect money, it goes to vehicles to transport those thugs, and, it goes to buying weapons. This, in turn, powers the Haitian drug trade.

It isn't just the money. It's the manipulation and blackmail that this type of law enables.

Organized crime was the main provider of abortions as well as booze during the Prohibition Era in the U.S. Back then, anytime somebody got an abortion, the criminals had a "Dirty Secret" on them. It handed massive control over women's lives to The Mob. Nobody would hire a girl who'd had an abortion- because it now carried the added stigma of "lawbreaker" in addition to "morally loose" and "anti-religion".

It's a different kind of stigma: unlike the others, "lawbreaker" rubs off on the employer.

The effect on men was also great. Back then, if it was found out that a politician's wife or girlfriend had an abortion, they were ruined.

That's what happened in America during the Depression, and it's still what happens today in nations where abortion is illegal (or legal-but-EXTREMELY-restricted). Today, organized crime bosses toss massive amounts of money into trying to make abortion illegal. (They also plan and fund anti-porn initiatives.)

I'm sad to be the bearer of grim tidings. There's no slippery slope here. Making surgical abortion illegal hands control of many lives over to criminals.

(a reply to Pwkka)

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 08:27:10 GMT

This is:

hello, Pwkka!

PWKKA wrote:
>>"I'm far more on the pro-life spectrum than you, I surmise..."

No, probably not-- because there's no such spectrum. I'm both pro-choice and pro-life-- and that combination says nothing about my level of commitment to either, or why I want them. If the proposed spectrum begins with 'pro-life' and ends with 'pro-choice', then it's already screwed, because I'm deeply on both ends. ;)

Could there be a spectrum of support for fetus's rights from "least commitment" to "most commitment"? Even that's too much to ask. We can't make a single list of actions going from "least extreme" to "most extreme". There are several different and important ways in which an act could be extreme, and, depending largely on one's motives in opposing abortion, where one falls on the different ranges tends to be very different from another individual's.

Consider the following standards, not necessarily in terms of abortion, but, let's just say, saving seals in Canada.

Does "extreme" mean, it would violate existing laws? That scale could start with, being willing to hang a flyer on a local mailboxes (despite a federal prohibition against using it as advertising space, even for a non-profit purpose). It would include donating billions to support a candidate who agreed with that view, even though the legal campaign contribution was much smaller.

Or does "extreme" mean "willingness to impact others", independent of legality? Would you log in to YouTube to support a particular video even though you don't normally like doing that? Would you refuse to hire somebody because you knew the money would be used to kill his firstborn child, or pay his way to Canada to work at the seals-to-dogfood factory? Would you lead a boycott that costs hundreds of people their livelihood? Does your level of commitment go up to sinking a ship or bombing a clinic?

Maybe "extreme" means, how radically it would impact your daily life? Would you give up watching your favorite TV show for it? Would you move your family and take a low-paying job to support this cause? Would you quit your job; would you go on a hunger strike?

Most people don't have a realistic sense of their actual level of commitment. They imagine they are deeply committed yet
a) would not hang a flyer
b) would not log into YouTube
c) wouldn't even give up watching their favorite TV-show.

-----

I'm pro-life for precisely the same reason I am anti-hunger: enlightened and ethical self-interest, and a philosophical commitment to the future of humanity. Some might say that's just "cold logic" but-- these HAVE to be intellectual choices. We're just not capable of real emotions towards beings so distant from us.

It's logic but it's not 'cold' at all; it's very warm. It is abstract affection for a whole lot of people you don't personally know, and won't ever even see.

We need more of this kind of thinking. It's healthy empathy for strangers-- the unborn, the far-away-- and the people so far in the future that you won't ever meet them.

It is exactly what drives us to plant the avocado seeds that won't bear fruit in our own lifetime, and to begin clean-up of lakes and rivers that will take at least 140 years.

The potential of perfectly good minds and bodies shouldn't be wasted. That day-old embryo may become the heart surgeon I need 30 years from now. That starving child may someday be THE poet who lifts our spirits and brings world peace.

You don't have to be religious to realize that there's value to having MORE human beings.

I strongly oppose surgical abortion-- but my method of opposing it is to make it as unnecessary as possible, using ethical means. The greatest damage to the abortion industry comes from using mundane contraceptives. Every man who dons a condom is opposing abortion. I'm very against withholding accurate knowledge of preventative birth control, or making it hard to get, or expensive.

We have all the technology to make a safe injection for both men and women, to prevent pregnancy for six months. We're not trying NEARLY hard enough to improve contraception.

CHILDBIRTH (a censored poem)

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 01:53:12 GMT

This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/76412.html

I was very surprised that a short story I was posting on "TheAmandaProject.com" in serial form was recently taken down from the site for being "too controversial". My story was about the theft of dogs from yards, and what becomes of those former pets.

Personally, I would have considered a story about, say, "teen pregnancy" to be "too controversial" for a young adults site. I understand that dialog on the subject can get heated and nasty, and that hurts the tone of what is essentially meant to be an entertainment venue.

Interestingly, a post made by one of the other writers was entitled "ABORTION" was left up for weeks. It was a lengthy anti-abortion speech about how a girl will never get to know her baby. It talks about how God wants the baby to be born. She ended her post defensively, saying, "I apologize if this offends some readers but I wanted to post a conflicting view..."

It was outright proselytizing, on a subject with some VERY gross visuals... So, I posted this in response:

==========

I hope that seeing a "conflicting view" isn't judged offensive here. Here's a poem on the same subject, but through a very different modern culture's eyes.

---

CHILDBIRTH

She dreams of the time
When her people were the lords of Bengla
Silk-clad; the owners of many Gaur-cattle
Running water in their marble homes.

She wakes to no such luxury
On the side of a road with no curb
Dust-clad; the owner of one tattered dress
She eats a piece of bread, and grass stems.

Her belly is round
With a souvenir
Of some suit-clad stranger's
Affection for two hours.

This will be her third child.
Each babe she bears
Is the holy gift Of Sita, of Shasti
And most-blessed Bhavani.

Does she even know
The town where she lives
Has eight times too many people
For surrounding lands to feed?

Does it matter to her
That this little one
Will, most likely, not live
Past the age of five months?

Yes, she knows.
She knows, she knows, she knows.
But she does it anyways,
For it is the will of the Gods.

By age 50, she will be far too old
To sell her body to strangers
To beg at the rail station
Or even just to walk.

If a son or daughter makes good, they may
Support her. Someday. Each little one
Is a living lottery ticket sent to her by Kali
The Conqueror of Time, The Goddess of Fertility, Death and Regeneration

Even if they are only ever beggars,
The more children she has, the more the burden of her care
Shall be spread between them.
When they die, she weeps, feels sorrow, like any other mom.

But she knows that every child goes on to its next incarnation.
It's a FEELING she has inside, thus she KNOWS this to be true.
Praised be the wisdom of the Gods.
Perfect is all they have wrought.

-----

They took the Abortion poem down five minutes later, as well as mine.

I'm not proselytizing. In my poem, I am not saying, "Abortion is GREAT!" I'm also not saying, "You ought to worship Kali!" My character's life situation is not 'beautiful', it is 'poignant'.

FUCK. If you're still human, then the real girl and her life and her babies' lives are too gut-wrenching to even look at her for more than a second.

So we don't.

This is a poem to consider this person through "soft" eyes-- so we can stand to look at her awful situation.

I've just presented another part of the complicated picture of why abortion is considered acceptable by many people, AND, why so many incredibly poor people refuse birth control, and what this refusal of birth control perpetuates.

People can't make an informed moral decision about whether to allow abortion or not, without this particular perspective.

Abortion can be the grotesque dismemberment of a fetus. It can also be a pill purchased for $7 that does what menstruation does to a fertilized embryo naturally fairly often. That's valuable information.

That informing isn't taking place, because of a gross fear of controversy. The fear has spilled out beyond the removal of what is clearly controversial. My story about dog-theft, called "The Bunchers" was removed, not because it was "controversial" but because it *might* become controversial.

And that's really sad. Young adults are being kept sheltered by the censorship of controversy. Censorship of this kind makes mental cripples of us all.

That said, I'm going to publish my story "The Bunchers".

VEAGLE FEATHERS

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:43:31 GMT

(This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/76057.html)

I love feathers! I always have. One kind of feather, however, is off-limits to me, and that is, the plumage of the wild raptors. In the U.S. and Canada, it's a federal offense for anybody not registered as "an Indian" with the government to own them.

I don't happen to believe they have mystical powers, so why would a non-Indian even want hawk or eagle feathers? Well, for one thing, I use large secondaries as fletching on atlatl darts. Now, it just so happens that printouts covered in ordinary clear packing tape make excellent fletching. However, raptor feathers are SO rare that I can't even find some to scan. So, this project began as a way to simulate vanes on stone-age spears.

I call these things Veagle feathers, because they're vegan eagle feathers. They're the feather equivalent of an artificial flower. Instead of down, I use cotton ball fluff, glued between the layers, at the base. A few layers of Elmer's white glue down the center makes a pretty convincing translucent quill, too.

Red-tailed Hawk
http://tinyurl.com/redtailhawk

Young Golden Eagle
http://tinyurl.com/goldenveagle

Semi-Mature Golden Eagle
http://tinyurl.com/mgoldveagle

Young Bald Eagle
http://tinyurl.com/baldveagle

Striped Dreamfeather
http://tinyurl.com/dreamfeather

Incorporate the finished feathers into wall decorations. Sandwich a pencil to simulate a quill pen. Attach some yarn and beads for a Talking Feather. Where do they take your imagination? Please post your results!

This file is a scanned actual turkey feather. It's great for ornamenting someone's hair. You could also make eight or so, to make a feather fan.
http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs51/f/2009/260/b/1/Feather_by_Talzhemir1.pdf

When my printer ran out of yellow ink, it came out pink!

==========

The following is not a detailed tutorial, this is just the highlights of how the Veagle feathers were created.

1. 3DS MAX

The most obscure part of this process was creating a feather texture using 3DS Max. I drew a curved line. I Lofted a small oval along the path, producing a little sliver. Each of the blue dots is a "vertex" and each "barb" (filament) is composed of about 200 of them. I press Shift and Move this, which is shorthand for cloning. Pretty soon I have a strip made of lots of identical filaments.

After adding in light sources, I render this as a .BMP. The barbs are somewhat oversized compared to nearly all real feathers. I could easily render a finer set of diagonal lines, but, this is good enough for our purposes right now.

2. ILLUSTRATOR

Although I use a version of Illustrator that is "stand-alone", most of its functions are now also incorporated into Adobe's "CS" (which stands for Creative Suite).

There are two select arrows in Illustrator, the left "whole object" select, and the right "splines/points level" select. They do different things.

Perhaps THE most powerful feature of Illustrator is the Pencil Tool and Illustrator's ability to "interpolate". While something is selected using the splines/points Select button, Illustrator tries to interpret subsequent uses of the Pencil Tool as edits you want made. I basically draw *near* the Selected item.

Ever had trouble drawing a heart? The Pencil Tool lets you re-do parts of the outline so you can perfect it. Here, I've drawn some blue blobs for bars across the feather. Then I've Selected it and used the Pencil Tool to give it some more detailing.

Using the Pencil Tool, I make an outline of the feather. Then I make a rectangle using the Draw Shapes Tool. I use the "big" (Whole Object) select both of them at once. I right-click the screen and choose Make Compound Path. Now I have an Object that has a hole in it, exactly like a stencil.

Feathers are a symphony of genes for colors that turn on and off. While the cells are growing on the quill, they also have odd little wars, switching pigments in neighboring cells on and off.

There is a misconception that all digital art is colored by a process analogous to airbrushing and stencils, only with pixels. While that's ONE way to do things, it's often also the least convincing. Digital airbrushing can be somewhat effective but there are still things about the process that tend to create unconvincing art, especially in the hands of a novice.

Airbrushing is attractive because it's so butt easy. Alot of you aren't going to want to hear this, but, it's true, and, don't shoot the messenger. Airbrushing is a cheap crutch, and, I'm sorry, but, it looks LAME. The brush strokes tend to lack narrowing or widening where appropriate, which flattens out the shading or puts flat wide stripes on it. It screams, rather glaringly, "This was layers, stencils, and the airbrush function."

--It's LAZY and, worse yet, it LOOKS lazy. The laziness isn't in spending too little time coloring. On the contrary, the airbrusher often spends far more time than someone using the better methods. The laziness is in not getting off one's rear and actually learning new tools.

It's important for the modern graphics artist to be aware of other methods, for example, Illustrator's Gradient Mesh, and object-oriented virtual painting with widening and tapering strokes like Fractal Design Painter utilizes. It's rather like the difference between using markers for everything and going to real watercolors and a real brush.

To simulate the general coloring of a feather, for example the complex colors of a redtailed hawk, I use the Gradient Mesh feature. First, I make a shape, any shape. Could be a rectangle, an oval, an arbitrary closed curve. With the Gradient Mesh tool, I click on the shape. It puts in some horizontal and vertical splines. If I click again on the spline, it will add more splines coming out from the first spline.

In Gradient Mesh, each point acts a bit like a spot on some wet paper where you touch with a wet paintbrush and the color "spreads". Each point has "handles", tiny lines tipped with dots which can be moved and stretched to make the color go further or stay closer. In this picture I have turned one point purple, just to show you what that looks like.

I've used Gradient Mesh to lay down some broad swathes of color. Normally, Gradient Mesh is used for things like realistic apples, the skin of a nude, a large face, and so on. Still, you could go your whole life as a graphics artist and never ever use Gradient Mesh.

Last but not least, Illustrator lets me drag pictures with cut-and-paste, or just drag them from a web page. Then I use the Eyedropper function. Whatever is Selected will change to that color. Here my color source is a real photo of a couple of macaw feathers.

(A note on feather pigments: Bird feathers don't actually have blue pigment in them. When photographed or scanned, blues can be highly variable because they are produced by a prismatic effect. Kingfisher feathers on Asian jewelry are just as brilliantly blue as they were thousands of years ago. That also means that instead of deep blue, the macaw seems to be turquoise.)

3. PAINT SHOP PRO
The .PSD (Photo Shop format) layered file is loaded into PSP.

Select, Feather Selection, Delete.
The bars are still too regular. I use the Lasso capture to cut a hole in the layer with stripes. By holding down +, I can add to what's captured. Pretty soon I have a few dozen holes. I Modify Selection, adding "Feather" of 6 pixels. I delete the captured areas.

Motion Blur.
Motion blur is a directional blur. It leaves one blurry edge and one smeared edge. I can have it follow the direction of the barbs. On a real feather, they most often follow the direction of the quill.

Merge Layers.
Just like what it sounds like, but before I merge, I set the rendered texture layer to only 7 or 8 percent opacity. I decided the layer with the bars was too dark, so I darkened it. The layer with the colors was too dull so I upped its Saturation a little. Then, the layers were all merged into one bitmap.

The feather picture can now be incorporated into an Illustrator file for printing out as a .PDF.

PIZZA CRUST FOR A FULL MOON

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 23:39:51 GMT

(This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/75994.html and http://tinyurl.com/madcrust )

Here in the northern hemisphere, now that the heat wave has broken, we're heading into chillier nights. Running the oven serves the double purpose of preparing dinner or a snack, and warming the apartment for the evening.

I'm about to impart to you my method of making pizza crust which I've never shared with anyone. So, trim your talons and wash your paws. It's time to start some dough!

1. SCIENCE!

The biggest secret of extra-good pizza dough is to simply make it the night before. First, that gives the flour all night to soak up the water. That way, when it's baked, the water won't all dry out.

Second, this is what's called a "delayed fermentation" dough. When wetted yeast is slowly chilled, it goes into a frenzy of activity in preparation for cold. When it's warmed again, it goes into a second frenzy in which it processes mostly wheat protein instead of sugars. That leaves the dough more flavorful and sweet.

2. I WAS WORKING IN THE LAB LATE ONE NIGHT

The recipe calls for 1/4 cup ice. Find out how many of your refrigerator's ice cubes make up a quarter cup. With the typical ice cube from a tray, it takes two, but if they came from an ice maker, there is a lot of variation.

If your measuring cups are flexible plastic, there IS another way. Fill the 1/4 cup with water and freeze it.

The first step in mixing the dough is this:

Use a mug to hold
1 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup ice
6 drops table-strength vinegar or cider vinegar

I should stress, water that was kept in the refrigerator is NOT cold enough. This recipe NEEDS ice to work right.

The vinegar is crucial. (Don't worry; you can't taste it in the final product.) You can also use lemon juice instead IF it is real lemon juice. Do not use "Real Lemon" type products; they contain "sulfite" preservatives which annoy the yeast.

3. WHEN MY EYES BEHELD AN EERIE SIGHT

Open
1 packet "rapid rise" yeast
Carefully add
1 teaspoon of room-temperature water
(Do NOT add warm water, do NOT add sugar.)

"I admire its purity, a survivor; unclouded by conscience,
remorse or delusions of morality." - Ash, in Alien (1986)

In a big bowl combine:
5 cups flour
1/2 cup powdered milk
2 teaspoons salt
5 teaspoons sugar

It's important that you stir the dry ingredients up thoroughly. (This recipe may well be the only good reason powdered milk should be allowed to exist. It makes the crust more tender.)

Add in the yeast and half of the ice water and stir FAST. Keep mixing; use all your strength.

I strongly recommend having someone to help you, by holding the bowl, as you use both hands on the spoon. Add all the rest of the water in little bits, but fairly fast.

Bakers call this freshly-mixed stuff a "sponge".

4. HE DID THE MASH!

Have a couple of paper towels handy...

If you are very experienced you can do this with one hand but otherwise, use both. Plunge both hands into the freezy-cold sponge. Claw your fingers through it; it'll make your grip stronger. Use your fingers to scoop it away from the side of the bowl.

Pull the sponge up a bit (or punch it), and fold it in half on itself. Turn the bowl a quarter turn. Keep folding and turning. At some point the wheat proteins called gluten will have formed long chains so that it has more snap to it.

At some point you will notice it doesn't stick to your fingers and palms nearly as bad. When that happens, it isn't "sponge" anymore, it's true "dough".

Smush your hands into the dough a couple times so that most of it is in the bowl and not you. Use the spoon to scrape it from between your fingers, the backs of your hands, etc. Work quickly so the dough doesn't warm up. (If it still looks all lumpy, that's okay.)

With the help of the paper towel, turn on the water, wash your hands.

5. SUSPENDED ANIMATION

Take two "1 quart" zippered plastic freezer bags. Into each one, pour
1/2 teaspoon canola oil

Close the bags, get the oil all over the inside. Open the bags again. This is another point where it's handy if an assistant, hunchbacked or otherwise, is helping; have them hold the bag for you.

Using the oil on the measuring spoon, coat your hands very lightly on all sides. Separate the dough into two halves. Pat quickly into a ball and put each ball into a plastic bag.

Put the bags into the refrigerator. (If things freeze on your top shelf, be sure to put the dough on the bottom shelf.)

Childs: You're gonna have to sleep sometime, MacReady.
MacReady: I'm a real light sleeper, Childs.
--The Thing, 1982

Now, you don't have to bake this the very next day. For me, it comes out best if it's been in the fridge 16 hours. After the first overnight, you have two more days in which to use it.

6. DAWN OF THE BREAD

Take the dough out of the fridge 2.5 hours before you are going to cook it. (So, if you want dinner by 6pm, take out the dough at 3:30. Like, when you get home from school.)

Just put it out on the counter. Set a timer for 2 hours.

7. THE BREAD SHALL RISE AGAIN!

Wipe the baking pans or trays with a thin layer of canola oil (NOT butter and NOT olive oil). Or, spray them with no-stick coating.

Sprinkle flour on a counter, just a light dusting. Plop a dough ball onto this. Use your outspread hands to flatten this to a shape about two inches wider than your pan.

In this phase, the dough has what's called "memory": When stretched, it goes back to its original shape. To get it to be a particular shape, therefore, you have to stretch it bigger than the intended shape.

Dust a little flour on your hands. Pat-pat this on the top of the crust. (If you're using cornmeal to keep the pizza crust from sticking, instead of patting on flour, you sprinkle it on top at this point.

NOW TURN IT OVER. Roll it up. Lift the bundle onto your pan and unroll it.

You can also make breadsticks out of this dough. Pull off golf-ball sized pieces and roll them into pieces as long as a pencil.

Turn the empty oven on and let it preheat at 450 degrees.

Set the timer to 15 minutes.

8. BURIAL AT CHEESE

If you're going all-out and making pizza, this is the stage at which you'd add the toppings.

Gently apply the sauce, place the toppings, sprinkle on the cheese. Because the dough is still rising, sauce and toppings should not be refrigerator-cold.

9. POWER OVER CAKES

When the timer goes off, pop the crusts into the oven.

Set the timer but this time only for 10 minutes. Cook until the crust is golden brown. (Some ovens may need a few more minutes.)

"O ye gods, give me power over cakes..."
--Egyptian Book of the Dead

And now it's ready! At last. Muahahahahahaa!

This recipe copyright Talzhemir 2009

ANCIENT GREEK ROAST PORK

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 09:45:19 GMT

(this is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/75701.html)

The ancient Greeks were always going out on boar hunts. Presumably they ate a lot of roast boar afterwards. When I was little, being a fan of the Iliad and the Odyssey by age 10, my mom and I tried to make it. The results weren't very appealing to my classmates. I think a few of the ingredients we used weren't authentic. Notably, we put in 1/2 cup 'vinegar' and it was plain white vinegar, possibly pickling strength. It came out very sour!

Instead of that, I hazard a guess that the original ingredient was a wine or balsamic vinegar, perhaps of 'table' strength. Now, having had a lifetime to rethink it, I think the recipe should have been something like this:

a ROAST BOAR fit for Heracles himself

3 lbs pork shoulder, cut into bacon-size pieces

Marinade the meat in:
1/2 teaspoon Black Pepper
1 clove garlic (technically, should be 1 big Elephant Garlic)
3 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
(Or, substitute red wine vinegar plus 1/2 teaspoon honey)
3-4 crushed Mint leaves (fresh if possible)
1/2 teaspoon Oregano
1/4 teaspoon Rosemary (JUST a pinch!)
1 teaspoon salt
juice of 1/2 a lemon (slice and toss in the lemon peel too)
1/2 cup water

Cook the pork on a BBQ grill. Use tongs so you can dip the pieces
often in the sauce.

After the meat is roasted, put the saucepan on the stove and
bring it to a boil. Let it simmer for a minute, then let it
cool.

Before serving, sprinkle the meat with 1/2 cup crushed pine nuts

Serve with rice, pita bread, a baby spinach salad with feta cheese
and Tzadziki sauce (yogurt/cucumber dressing), and a bright red
drink such as Hibiscus Raspberry iced tea, or Cranberry juice.

For dessert, how about Baklava?

NONFICTION: Some Notes On Making Vinegar

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:59:30 GMT

(This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/75364.html )

WHERE VINEGAR COMES FROM
(or "Go ask your Mother")

I'd LOVE to tell you how most ordinary vinegar is made by taking fruit juice or starchy grain, fermenting it to something alcoholic, and then letting it go sour....But, I can't. Because that's not actually how most vinegar is made.

MOST vinegar begins as crude oil, and when gasoline and other petrochemicals are made, methanol, a very poisonous kind of alcohol, is also produced. It's then put through a complex process that combines it with another poison, carbon monoxide. Then it's distilled and what comes out the tap at the very end is the pure essence of vinegar: the stinky, stinging, yet edible substance known as acetic acid.

A small amount of vinegar comes from either fruit juice or starchy fermented things (such as beer). It's concocted by people in artisanal vineyards, small factories, orchards, homesteads, and kitchens all over the world. The impurities lend different aromas but also grant body and cling to the flavor. Natural vinegars can have rich lasting taste and the acetic acid is just a small part of it.

JUICE-BASED VINEGARS

You can buy a culture online or at a food artisan shop. Or, you can buy a "gourmet" product at the grocery store, and start from an existing vinegar. If you do that, you need to read the label very carefully. You're looking for "unpasteurized", or at least, one that doesn't say "pasteurized". Starting from a sample of unpasteurized "living" vinegar is the most reliable way to get good results.

No matter which you choose, it'll still take a while to adapt to your living conditions, such as the temperature of your home. It also has to adapt to what you choose to make vinegar. If you make vinegar out of a certain brand of apple juice, then that's what the bacteria and yeast must adapt to living in.

It's easy to make your own vinegar culture, just start small and start slow. Begin with a fruit juice and add a tiny pinch of baking yeast. As the yeast multiply, they'll also convert sugar to ethanol. Mix gently for at least five minutes. Cover it with a clean piece of cloth and a rubber band. Let it sit for three days, stirring very gently twice a day.

On the fourth day, add one teaspoon of unpasteurized cider vinegar from a health food store. These guys will converted to acetic acid by the bacteria Acetobacter aceti.

You can make vinegar out of lots of different things. Orange juice isn't recommended; it breaks down into many odd flavors. Pure sugar water doesn't have the other nutrients that the yeast need to thrive.

After a while-- this may take days, but it can take a week-- a sort of scum layer will form on top of the juice. This is called the "mat" or "mother". To keep the vinegar "vat" going, you pour off about half of the jar's contents. You remove 3/4 of the mat and throw it away (or give it to someone else to make vinegar of that type). Leaving some of the mat in, you replenish with something new.

Think of your vinegar culture as a fish-tank. You do need to occasionally feed your new pets. You also don't want to over-feed it.

Typically, it takes 20 days from the time you add new "food" to the time it's vinegar. Some strains are slow, at 30 days. Some are hyperactive and transform the juice in less than 20.

If mold appears, you'll have to throw the mixture away. Sterilize the container and tools in the sink with boiled water. If any peculiar nonvinegar odors develop, you also have to throw away and start again. While wine is changing into vinegar, it should smell like wine...and then like vinegar.

WINE VINEGARS

Wine vinegar is made from, of course, wine. Take a pint of red wine and add four teaspoons of unpasteurized wine vinegar from a health food store. Cover it with a clean cloth and a rubber band.

Unused wine from a bottle can be used to make vinegar if it doesn't have too much sulfite (added as a preservative). Today, however, MOST commercial wine is sulfited.

MALT VINEGAR

This favorite topping for fried potatoes can be made just by putting the vinegar "mother" into a pitcher of malt liquor.

PASTEURIZING

People have been making and consuming vinegar just out of the jar or crock or barrel for about twenty thousand years. That's a pretty safe thing to do because the living culture is a kind of meta-organism unto itself, and it tends to kill off anything besides itself. However, if you're paranoid about what might be living in there that you don't want, you can heat-sterilize (pasteurize) your harvested vinegar.

Put it in a small pot on the stove, and boil it for at least 4 minutes. Then store it in a bottle. This can alter the flavor and texture. For better or for worse, only you can say.

BALSAMIC VINEGAR

We often picture something that looks and feels like water when we think of vinegar. Balsamic vinegar is very different. It doesn't actually taste that vinegar-y. It's tart, sweet, and, the longer it ages, the higher quality it is, the more flavor and the more sweet. If it hasn't been aged twelve years, it doesn't even qualify as traditional balsamic vinegar.

Balsamic vinegar must be innoculated with Zygosaccharomyces bailii, a yeast that turns sugars directly into acetic acid (no ethanol step in between). By the way, if, for religious reasons, you don't partake of anything that has alcohol in it, or even used to have alcohol in it, you might look into finding true Balsamic vinegar.

One of the ingredients in Balsamic Vinegar is lactic acid, a valuable nutrient. Specific bacteria break the malic acid found in grape juice into lactic acid, and this happens relatively slowly (it's called "malo-lactic fermentation"). Lactic acid is tart but not as burning as malic or acetic acid.

You really have to look at ingredients carefully when you're shopping for this product. If its first ingredient is "wine vinegar"-- it is NOT Balsamic vinegar. It's just Balsamic-vinegar FLAVORED wine vinegar. Real Balsamic vinegar is drizzled over ice-cream. Real Balsamic vinegar is eaten, just one single spoonful, as a sort of liquid desert treat.

If it wasn't cut with wine vinegar, the methanol content of Balsamic vinegar is low. This is one more reason the two aren't quite the same thing. (I wish that the law would require only those vinegars made without wine to qualify for labelling as "Balsamic".)

METHANOL: BEWARE ITS MAKING AND ITS MALADIES

Methanol is also known as "wood alcohol" and "methylated spirits". For years, it was produced from wood. During the 1920's and the bootlegging days of Prohibition, there were cases of methanol poisoning that resulted in people going permanently blind. The stills tended to be hidden and left alone, leading to improper aeration. When the distilling process took place, the temperature was also incorrect, leading to concentration of methanol. (In the U.S., distilling alcohol is illegal, so the actual level of danger of private stills is somewhat exaggerated in the public imagination.)

Methanol is toxic. Drinking 10 milliliters is enough to make somebody permanently blind. That's about 2 teaspoons. Drinking 1-2 ml/kg of your body weight is fatal. Death by drinking methanol alone is very unusual because, for a typical adult, that would be about 10 teaspoons of the pure substance.

In very quantities, methanol is naturally produced during the course of making wine. It's generally produced from the breakdown of pectin. Pectin is what makes fruits firm. (It's what we put in fruit juice to turn it into jelly for sandwiches.)

Many traditional wine-making processes call for letting the grapes get a wee bit fuzzy and slimy. That's partly because natural molds burrowing into the fruit produce pectinase. It goes around disassembling the pulp, which releases the juice better.

Instead of relying on whatever happens to grow on my fruit, I'll add pure pectinase, the refined enzyme. It's sold as a flavorless white powder (usually cut with malto-dextrin). It's not that expensive.

You'd think that pectinase might reduce the methanol content in wine. Unfortunately, no-- it does just the opposite. Wines produced with pectinase have slightly more methanol (Revilla and González-San José, 1998).

Your body can process very small amount of methanol. Large amounts of ethanol (the normal alcohol in liquors) cause a hangover, including a possible headache, the next day. Methanol is even harder for the liver to break down, so it leads to a worse hangover.

Aspartame (a.k.a. Nutrasweet and other trade names) breaks down in the body. You should be aware that 10% of this artificial sweetener turns into methanol in your intestines, and gets absorbed into your blood stream. That's probably why many people complain that aspartame gives them a headache.

While most of this will be excreted, it stresses the liver to do so, and a portion of methanol breaks down into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde bonds to body tissue; it doesn't go away, it builds up. It also causes genetic damage. This combination of harm to the body tissues *and* harm to DNA leads to cancer. Formaldehyde is a potent carcinogen.

Many different bacteria produce methanol, and they do it with an anaerobic (no oxygen) process. These bacteria are often "obligate anaerobes", meaning, oxygen is deadly to them. Many wine-making instructions will tell you to leave the fermenting batch alone. However, if starting with a pectin-rich fruit juice or pulp, one way a home vintner can reduce the amount of methanol is to stir the wine frequently.

VINEGAR INFUSIONS

If all this fuss isn't to your tastes, but you do like vinegar-based concoctions, and still would like to make some hand-crafted artisanal condiments for your friends at yuletide, an alternative is "infusions". Essentially, these are flavored vinegars.

The general method is to mix something with vinegar, then cook it on the stovetop. A portion of the vinegar is lost in evaporation (but not much), and a lot of the water goes out. As long as they have sufficiently high vinegar content, they can be kept out on the kitchen counter in a corked bottle.

If you don't have a method to test how much acid it contains, DO put your creations through a pasteurization phase (boil for at least 4 minutes!) and then store it in the refrigerator.

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Pineapple-Vinegar

NONFICTION: Turning Cotton Balls Into String

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:44:35 GMT

(This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/75216.html)
This article was originally written for the World Atlatl Association's forums. Someone was making an Aztec atlatl, and I noticed from the photos that some rather unusual string was used: it was spun in the S-direction, and then plied in the S-direction. So I wanted to give instructions so that string with the properties peculiar to S/S method could be made.

Making Inexpensive Spindles (in half an hour or less!)

In case you want to try making your own cotton string, this is how I make
"student grade" wooden drop spindles really fast, for cheap. I usually make a set of three: two to make strands, and a third to ply them together.

1. Get one pack of 8 wooden wheels and a wooden dowel.
wheels: $3...........2"X3/4" with 3/8" hole
dowel: $1............36" with 3/8" diameter
http://fc02.deviantart.com/fs46/f/2009/213/8/d/Wooden_Whorls_by_Talzhemir1.jpg

* There are LOTS of ways to make a cheap spindle. Recycled butter tub lids carefully cut-out cardboard circles glued together are two more inexpensive ways. Several people have even told me they learned on a spindle made from a sharpened pencil and a little potato!

2. Score the dowel deeply by rolling it underneath a knifeblade at the 12" intervals. Snap it swiftly into three sections.

3. Jam a wheel onto each dowel. Use carpenters' glue if you must.
If the dowel is thick, quickly file or whittle it down. Use a wrench and
a hammer, or whatever tools you must, so that one end of the dowel
protrudes 1" past the wheel. This is now the bottom.

4. Carve the bottom into a hemisphere.

5. Carve a groove 1/2" from the other end. (This is probably the
only somewhat important measurement in the whole process.)
This is the top, of course.

6. Holding a knife at a diagonal, carve the rest above this into a
rounded point. Or use a big file. No need to agonize over the
symmetry. A few small natural bumps and edges will make it
easier to handle than if it were pool-cue smooth.

7. Singe the ends using a candle or gas stove flame on low. Blow
out any flames, making sure there are no embers left. This will
toughen the wood up at those points.

8. Use a small file to get rid of the charcoal and rasp it into shape further.

9. Wipe off any remaining soot with a napkin. There, they're done.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

WHAT TO SPIN:

For your first spinning experience, I recommend wool. It's actually not hard to get-- they sell wool perfectly carded into "roving" and ready to spin at most craft stores. They just don't call it that, they call it something like, "Mandela Wool". Here's 15 yards of the stuff for $17. Sheesh, that's a lot.
http://www.joann.com/joan...3270&PRODID=prd11424

PREPARING COTTON BALLS FOR SPINNING!

Cotton balls from the drugstore can easily be spun. The cotton used to keep pills dry is even better.

The best I've found is the cotton in "Organic Essentials" brand cotton balls. I think it is a long-staple Upland cotton, also known as "Mexican
Cotton", cultivated by the Aztecs and the Maya (the Inca had an even longer, stronger cotton now bred into the New Mexico cultivar "Pima", and also known as "Egyptian" cotton-- when it is grown in Egypt.)

To spin cotton balls, take two of them and unroll them
into strips. Put one strip on top of the other. Carefully stretch
the strips together. Break the new strip in half and put one
half on top of the other, and stretch them together carefully, again.

This creates a "sliver".

TIP: When spinning cottonballs made into a sliver, one trick is to "spin from the fold". Fold the sliver in half. Pinch and tug just a little bit of cotton at the corner of the fold to start the strand.

To continue a length of string, tuck several inches inside the folded part. Pinch and tug the corner together with the existing strand. In other words, take the last few inches of string that you made, and fold the cotton sliver over it like a matchbook cover.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How to spin (08/02/09 12:44 PM)

Without using a spindle, stretch some cotton and twist it.
Tug a bit more, twist a bit more. Make a 10" length of
string. Cotton string is weak until the first time you wet
it, so lick the string, then tie the ends together in a loop.
Congratulations, you've just made a 'leader'. Attach this
to a spindle with a lark's head knot:

This is how I hold a supported spindle on a desktop:

Most of the videos on YouTube put in too many complications.
I picked this one because it's relatively simple. The spindle is
bottom-weight with no hook, and supported, and she's specifically
spinning cotton.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qB_QroahZ2c

Remember to relax, and tell yourself, no matter what you come up
with, there'll be a use for it eventually. You'll get better at it VERY
fast.

* My basic instructions are here; they can be printed out on one page.
http://www.thegenieslamp.com/crafts/spinning3.pdf

Be sure to look around on the internet for more instructions; different
versions "click" for different people. If mine is confusing, someone
else's might work better for you. Also, the combination of several might
help answer questions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ojo de Dios

An Ojo de Dios is a nice use for your first efforts. All you need is a couple of twigs and some string. And, hey, you just made some string.

These gimmicks actually serve a useful purpose. They keep your string neat while you pour hot water on it, and they help the string dry faster.

Now I just have to raid the tacklebox for a swivel, and I can hang this in the wind.

Cotton "eyes": two strands lightly doused in hot water to strengthen them before they're plied:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Funny string!

I plied the two strands together while slightly damp, and wound them onto
a pair of recycled chopsticks this way so they will dry. 8 cotton balls
(4 on each Ojo) were spun into two strands, then plied together to made
4 yards.

Z-twist strands and Z-twist ply is subtly rough/sticky/creaky to the
touch, like a really cheap paper napkin. Rubbing it has something
subtly in common with scratching a chalkboard. EWWW!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And, here it is, in use, on my atlatl:

The 4 yards have been used to tie down the ends of the
leather loops.

The cotton, applied while the string was slightly damp, has now
compressed tightly. There's no play; the leather is held rigid.

----------

Based on this, I would guess the shell-loop Aztec atlatl used
four 3-yard pieces of 2-ply S/S string, so, 12 yards in all.

----------

Shrinking

Shrinking is a chemical effect from a combination of heat and water.
The proteins jack-knife, and it's permanent. Most raw fibers (wool,
linen, and cotton included) shrink a lot. (The pressure from the change
is pretty powerful; I bet once in a long while some jade or shell atlatl
loop would shatter in a heartbreaking way at this stage.)

Synthetic fibers such as polyester and nylon don't shrink. "Mercerized"
or "pre-shrunk" cotton products only shrink a little.

Twist

* Twist is a property similar to "clockwise/counter-clockwise".
The two kinds are S and Z. They're named because the diagonal
parts of the letters resemble the diagonals in the twist. If you
turn a sample upside-down, or flip it over, it will still have
the same twist.

We were talking about the twist that was used to make each single
(a strand or ply of the cord) and the twist that was used to hold
several plies together. (There's a third place fiber has twist, and that's
the fiber/hair/staple level.)

Turning the drop-spindle with a finger-snapping motion of the right
hand from the top makes S-twist. The Navajo method, letting a
rather long spindle rest diagonally along the outside of the right thigh,
and move forwards, also yields a Z-twist. Another way to get
Z-twist is to use your left hand for the top-spinning motion. Turning
the spindle by spinning it from the bottom with the right hand also
makes Z-twist.

Z-twist is normally used in Central America "because it is the
magical direction". Cotton and alpaca (and hemp later too) all have
Z-twist staples, so starting with Z-twist makes the cord hold
together a lot better.

Strands are usually plied in the opposite direction they are spun
so that the individual fibers follow the direction of the cord. It makes
the final product alot more silky. Also, the act of plying S-twist
strands with Z-twist removes some of the S-twist, which pleasantly
softens the feel of the yarn.

S/S and Z/Z cords have sharper diagonal angles and more bulgy bumps.
S/Z and Z/S are thinner, with the diagonals closer to the direction of the
cord, and the bumps alot more streamlined. If the cord breaks, S/S
and Z/Z strands may tend to stick out, while S/Z and Z/S tend to point the
direction of the cord.

----------

Come to think of it, there IS one place I've seen Z/Z or S/S cording, and that's
some brands of cotton butchers' twine. It has to maintain a knot well.
After trussed meat has been cooked, it gets knobbly-looking... and it's
made of unshrunken cotton because it's supposed to tighten up on the
meat some... and it's made with extra-long-staple so that you don't get
fuzz in the food.

NONFICTION: Berbere (Ethiopian Spice Mix) + Misr Wot

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:15:04 GMT

(This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/74970.html )

MANDA'S BERBERE (Ethiopian Spice Mix)

NOTE: the order and groupings matter.

Grind up together and set aside:
1 tsp green cardamom pods
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg
2 tsp fenugreek seed
1 tsp celery seed

Grind up together and set aside separately:
7 cloves
2 drops white vinegar
1 tsp long pepper ("Indonesian" pepper, Piper longum, looks JUST like birch pods...!)
3 tsps ground turmeric (the fresher the better; makes a big difference)

Grind up together. Heat in a skillet on low, and lightly brown. Do not burn.
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp dark carraway (ajowan, ajwain)

Turn off heat but leave pan on stove. Quickly add in the first two spice mixtures.

Then add in:
no less than 3 tsps salt (it's a preservative)
1 tsp dried ginger
4 Tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 cup sweet paprika (Durban is best.)

Blend well, store quickly.

*** NO cayenne pepper!!! This is a Piper longum dish. ***
*** NO allspice- unless you're out of nutmeg and using it to substitute***

================================================

Berbere is the basis for a lot of dishes, including Misr Wot. Ye Misr = "the Egyptians" and Wot = "stew". (If you remember the Beach Boys song Miserlou-- that means "Egyptian Girl".)

To make Misr Wot:

Rinse 1 cup of red lentils, let them sit. (You do need red lentils; they're smaller and will cook faster, and have a milder flavor. They're also called Pink and Egyptian lentils. They'll turn yellow when cooked.)

Remove the seeds and chop half a tomato (or one cute Roma).
Chop up 1 medium yellow onion.
Mince 2 cloves garlic.

In a saucepan, melt 2 Tbsp butter (Vegan version: olive oil). Lightly brown the butter and onions. Add in the garlic, gently stir it about for half a minute. (Done correctly, this should make everybody within 20 feet drool.)

Add 1 Tablespoon of Berbere, the lentils, 1/8 teaspoon of MSG, and 4 cups of water. (That's roughly 2 quarts in all, so a 3 quart saucepan is a good size.)

Simmer on low for 50 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn off the heat. Add 1 *more* Tablespoon of Berbere, and mix well.

Misr Wot is traditionally served with Injera bread, which is rather like a sourdough pancake. If you are eating Injera, the tart lactic acid (which is healthy fuel for your mitochondria!) is an important part of the flavor.

Alternately, you can eat it with pita bread or rice, in which case you should add 1 teaspoon of vinegar when you add that second spoonful of Berbere.

----------

Special thanks to Woinee Mariam of "A Taste of Ethiopia" Restaurant for technical assistance. *Her* Misr Wot is BETTER!

NONFICTION: ART: "What is 'style'?"

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 03:51:54 GMT

(This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/74584.html )

A 'style' is a combination of features or exaggerations that work well together. It's an optimum that humans may find appealing at both an instinctive and cultural level.

Typically, in the development of a style there are one or two key changes which lead to secondary changes that go well with the earlier ones.

We're able to watch styles develop, and track the changes. Sometimes they are gradual, incremental, done bit by bit.

For instance, in the early development of the manga style, the eyes were enlarged. At first, mouths and noses were made larger and more prominent. Noses were very long and nearly touch the mouth.
http://www.madman.com.au/wallpapers/herlock_1280.jpg

The style evolves as a product of many people working with similar imagery. In Japan and Korea, everybody reads comics, and thousands of artists followed the general look. Over time, the artists made the noses smaller and smaller. By 1980, noses were tiny little carats. < < <
http://www.hellslife.com/sailormoon.jpg

Sometimes the changes are conscious, and deliberate. Generally they come from spotting a feature that is likeable, and deliberately incorporating it more.

Studio CLAMP, the group of artists who created Sailor Moon and other popular series later created Card Captor Sakura. While the big eyes are cute, they have a tendency to make a face look crowded, even without the vertical line of the nose. To compensate, CLAMP gives their most recent characters extremely wideset eyes (they nearly touch the outer edges of the face). The overall facial shape for the younger characters is a squarish form pentagon, to accomodate this wideset look. (And, notice the nose has become even tinier.)
http://www.an-sky.com/images/Card-Captor-Sakura.jpg

Do these optimums really "work"? Yes. Here's an example of a Chobits manga cover (Chobits is also by CLAMP), and a knock-off. Arguably, this isn't plagiarism, because, in the imitation, the artist has undone CLAMP's signature look. The eyes are large but not set so far apart; the face is the older style 'heart'.
http://comipress.com/files/images/articles/2007/07/plagiarism/clamp/clamp2.jpg

While both pictures have something going for them, viewers will tend to sense that the face on the right is an uncomfortable in-between, while the one on the left, although it's wildly unrealistic, hits that comfortable optimum.

Just about every artist goes through a phase where they take a style and cleverly think to improve it by "toning it down". They think it's too unrealistic. Styles don't react well to this kind of treatment because what you usually get, then, is the Uncanny Valley effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

----------

Because they are optimums, styles can spontaneously reappear. Here's Charlie Brown when he FIRST appeared:
http://www.wmucomic.com/peanutsstrip.gif

Over time, the artist, Charles Schulz, gave Charlie Brown a larger and larger nose. The eyes crept close to be right on either side of it (and some characters have little lines to either side of those dot eyes).
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Peanuts_gang.png

THIS optimum is a license worth billions of dollars even today. They are likenesses over which many a court battle has been fought. Charlie Brown has a face that, according to a study around 1980, 90% of Earth's 6 billion people could recognize by name.
http://www.etc3dot.com/images/Lucy_and_Charlie_Brown.jpg

But, while the details are uniquely "Peanuts", the proportions are an optimum that the world has seen many times before:
http://media-2.web.britannica.com/eb-media/03/3603-004-7BFCB24F.jpg
http://www.belize.com/images/archaeology/belize-maya-sun-god-jade-head.jpg

-----

To some extent, a style is also what people have become used to seeing.

In Central America, the cradleboarding fad went on for millenia. Pieces of wood were tied to the heads of infants to give them a flat forehead and a long pointy skull.
http://ahotcupofjoe.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/pakal.jpg

This style brought about changes to how people wanted noses to look. They wore golden nose-bridge ornaments to enhance a single line from forehead to tip of nose.
http://www.precolumbianwood.com/images/aztec.18.jpg

You can clearly see the look that the people of Bonampak found beautiful from their extensive murals:
http://markamusic.com/Maps/BonampakMural.gif

Meso-American people also hung a bead or ball of wax over a child's nose to make them cross-eyed. They thought that was especially attractive, too.

These things look strange to us simply because we didn't grow up with them. If you had grown up in Burma, amongst the Padaung, would you find brass neck tubing and a long neck more attractive?
http://news.softpedia.com/images/news2/The-Giraffe-Women-of-the-Neck-Rings-2.jpg

Many of the Padaung women are horrified by how American and European women love to wear painful and unnatural footgear, and think this looks frighteningly deformed:
http://www.steadyhealth.com/articles/user_files/11361/Image/high_Heel_Shoes.jpg

Sometimes a style is so well-optimized we don't even realize it exists. Take ballet, for example.

The dancer doesn't just extend her foot, she balances on the very point.
http://www.freewebs.com/dance2thetop/pointe%20shoe.jpg

Doing this by itself makes the neck way look too short. So the dancer elongates and flattens their spine, especially the cervical (neck) vertebrae, and pulls their shoulders downwards.
http://www.treehugger.com/bill-mckibben-rebecca-kelly-ballet-dancer-adirondack.jpg

This, in turn, gives the dancer long gorilla arms, so, instead of letting them flop around, the arms are held outwards and curved.
http://www.ljb.org.uk/images/ballet3.jpg

We know from art that the ballet style wasn't always like this:
http://images.easyart.com/i/prints/rw/en_easyart/lg/5/7/Ballet-Dancers-Edgar-Degas-5798.jpg

nor was the dainty build of the typical dancer the ideal feminine shape at the time:
http://images.easyart.com/i/prints/rw/en_easyart/lg/2/5/Ballet-Dancer-Edgar-Degas-25238.jpg

Often, art is taking something difficult and highly unnatural, and making it look effortless and natural. Like, for instance, a dainty girl with the corpse of a tortured nearly-naked full-grown man in her lap.
http://stldesignworld.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/michelangelo27s_pieta_5450_cropncleaned1.jpg

-----

Most styles are variants and hybrids. If you're doing your own take on an existing thing, that's still your own style. But, if you're worried it isn't strongly "your own" style, maybe you're being too hard on yourself.

I believe that, in some ways, creating a unique style is akin to designing a vehicle that uses something else besides wheels and seats, or founding your own ethnicity of cooking.

It can be done; it's difficult; only one person in a couple billion will ever do it; and when they do, there's no guarantee others will like it. People like the existing styles partly because of culture/fashion, but also because of some deep-seated instincts.

In other words, whether other people like a new style is a crap shoot.

Who liked the look of Dave the Barbarian?
http://images.tvrage.com/shows/4/3249.jpg

The Flintstones?
http://www.ainacarruth.com/files/page0_blog_entry81_1.jpg

Betty Boop?
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/portfolio.goamy/files/hello-betty-boop-web.jpg

Alphonse Mucha?
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3198/2476512754_98e7de11f7_o.jpg

Invader Zim?
http://content9.flixster.com/poll/16/38/163899_ori.gif

The Simpsons?
http://weblogs.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/blog/the-simpsons.jpg

Mike Mignola?
http://www.starstore.com/acatalog/Hellboy-comic-figures-l.jpg

P. Craig Russell?
http://frpeneaud.free.fr/artists/Russell/ImagesRussell/Curse%20siegfried.jpg

Alexander Calder?
http://www.egodesign.ca/_files/articles/blocks/818_centre_pompidou_alexander_calder_usa.jpg

Just remember that style doesn't come overnight. The stunning optimizations of "Lion King" (1994)
http://www.puzzleheaven.co.uk/kids150/28075lion%20king.jpg
is the sum total of art by hundreds of individual cartoonists, and work that goes back thirty years.
It draws heavily on Disney's "Jungle Book" (1967)
http://animationarchive.net/Feature%20Films/The%20Jungle%20Book/Model%20Sheets/ShereKhan01.gif
and a little-known piece of manga called "Kimba the White Lion" (about 1950-1965). Lion King was a shameless theft of Osamu Tezuka's work.

http://www.geckoandfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/the_lion_king_simba_kimba03.jpg

http://www.geckoandfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/the_lion_king_simba_kimba07.jpg

http://www.hemmy.net/images/movies/kimba01.jpg

With extremely few exceptions, most of what you think of as a particular artist's style is an amalgamation of predecessors you were born years to late to even know about.

If you're a beginner, I suggest you start by copying the styles you like best because then you're more likely to draw more. If you're an experienced artist who gave up copying, I suggest you copy even more from artists you enjoy.

NEVER be afraid that copying will prevent you from being artistic and developing your own style. Creativity doesn't get held back like that. The only thing that prevents skill and style from developing is, not doing much art at all.

How many pictures have you actually drawn? Five hundred? Two thousand?

As Chuck Jones's teacher put it, inside each of us are ten thousand crappy drawings. The trick to being good at it is to get those ten thousand out first, and then the great stuff will come.

What does it matter if three hundred of your ten thousand are tracings of Marvel characters?

Try copying this picture of Spiderman, and think about what I've said about 'optimizations', and you will probably learn something about what 'style' is.

http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/amspider-man-brock.gif

It helps to be familiar with what is being depicted so you know what is an exaggeration and what is factual. For example, Spiderman's physique is based on the anatomy of the incomparable ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev.
http://www.russianlife.com/archive/bar73.JPG

Don't just observe a certain bodypart is drawn a certain way. Ask yourself WHY is it like that-- what does it balance, and what does it complement?

Then consider what will happen if you incorporate *only* that feature without its "companions".

You'll probably be able to form your own style better if you have a clearer understanding of *why* you like the ways a particular artist does things.

--Talzhemir

======================================
"Krishna Rides Geruda" Iron-on T-shirt design, 1996
http://www.thegenieslamp.com/Fur/hawk9.gif

Let's stop HR 2749, the Gestapo Food Act

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:16:51 GMT

(This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/74419.html )

HOW TO STOP HR 2749:

#1: Please tell others, and ask them to spread the word VERY FAST. This bill was introduced in June, and received its number in July, instead of winter, as is normal. We have to work VERY FAST to stop it.

#2: Take action, sign the petition. This site will ALSO send your email to both of your senators and your representative in the House, based on where you live.
http://www.ftcldf.org/petitions/pnum993.php

#3: Post a protest flyer at a coffee houses with open forum bulletin boards, near you.

#4: Go to your local farmers' market and ask if they know about HR 2749. Tell them you support what they do and you're opposing HR 2749!

----------

WHO AM I, THAT THIS MATTERS SO MUCH TO ME?

Hi, I'm a volunteer at my local farmers' market. I have a table where I present topics of interest to my fellow money-savers.

The last one was how to use pickling lime to make the cucumbers crisp, and how to make non-canned cucumbers in the fridge with re-used jars. Next week it'll be how to make your own mozzarella cheese in half an hour using milk just about to turn sour.

Local markets offer stunning bargains. Some markets let gardeners sell the extra goodies without a table fee.

Instead of just letting them rot, a family brought in apples from a backyard tree & went home with $40. Last week, one guy brought in bags of bay leaves. Grocery store: $4. At the market: Fifty cents, and they taste ten times better FRESH.

The growers take deep pride in their work, and they want EVERYONE to have the good health and enjoyment that their products have already brought them. Prices at many farmers' markets are creeping down, slowly but surely, despite the travails of the economy!

Across America, farmers' markets need your protection.

----------

WHY STOP HR 2749

If you're one of the fortunate readers who has a local market that's done right by you, I'd like to ask you to help support them by opposing HR 2749. This bill will shut down all but the most EXPENSIVE farmers' markets.

Who authored this bill? One major contributor is Monsanto. (Google Monsanto vs Schmeiser for their ethical track record.)

In addition to needlessly interfering with local commerce, HR 2749 allows the FDA to quarantine ANY vehicle ever used to transport food (i.e., your family car).

It empowers the FDA to perform warrantless searches of the business records of small farmers and local food producers (i.e., me, if I sold you my extra cucumbers), without any evidence whatsoever of any kind of violation.

HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation for individuals.

HR 2749 does address real problems-- but with crazy and wrong solutions.We DON'T need martial law to stop some guy transporting lemon trees from Florida to North Carolina despite the quarantine.

-----

WHAT EXACTLY DOES HR 2749 DO...?

Is it really THAT bad or is this just a knee-jerk reaction to new regulation?

- HR 2749 will require the mandatory imposition of annual registration fees in the amount of $500 upon any "facility" that holds, processes, or manufactures food. Even though "farms" are exempt, the bill's definition of "farm" is so scarcely defined that folks selling cheeses, breads, and other products from their farms or at the farmers market would be required to pay this fee, potentially driving many small producers and start-ups out of business, especially during tough times.

Every food producer must now pay a $500 annual fee. It's a stealth tax on farmers. Okay, so if that was taken out, THEN would it be a good bill?

No.

- HR 2749 will give FDA the power to directly regulate the methods by which crops are raised and harvested, essentially handing complete and total control of every farming operation to the federal government.

- HR 2749 will give FDA the power to halt the movement of all food in a particular geographic area in the event of a food contamination scare or outbreak. The provision directly includes "prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or of any vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food within the geographic area", effectively shutting down any and all local food sources, farmers markets, or cooperatives within that area, even if their products have no connection to the actual contamination source.

- HR 2749 will give limitless power to FDA to conduct random searches of the business records of small farmers and local food providers without a warrant or even the slightest hint of evidence that there has been any sort of violation. It essentially allows clear passage by the federal government into the private records of its choice with no requirement of probable cause or legitimate reason for doing so.

- HR 2749 will appoint the Secretary of Health and Human Services as the taskmaster in establishing a food tracing system that will require an extensive, convoluted system of tracking each item and ingredient from origin to distribution. Because the bill fails to outline the logistical procedures for how this complex task will be accomplished and how it will be paid for, it once again hands an unprecedented amount of power over to the federal government to control and tax as it sees fit in order to accomplish whatever arbitrary requirements it wishes to inflict upon our farmers and food producers.

- HR 2749 imposes grievous criminal and civil penalties, including fines of up to $100,000 for each violation, per individual, and up to 10 years in prison.

So, with any part you examine, HR 2749 is WAY out of line. Thank you for your time and attention.

NONFICTION: An observation on debunking

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 05:41:05 GMT

Debunking, unfortunately, is unsightly. If you're accurate, the likely general impression is that you're just somebody who wants to piss in somebody else's cheerios.

How can this be avoided, how can this be changed? Maybe by encouraging only a limited number of assertions to be made at one time?

That way, the debunker(s) don't come off looking like a shitstorm of self-righteousness when they post enumerated lists of how the original poster is wrong.

POEM: Never Again

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:22:14 GMT

This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/73787.html

NEVER AGAIN

Before I was born, the world did not miss me.
After I die, the world will return to that same state.

Yet, the saddest words I know
they open me up
like a slit waterskin.
Those words are 'Never again.'

The pain is real.
In my throat, in my gut.
I lay here, raw and deflated.
What should not happen, has happened.
The sun has gone out.
All that tries to fill me.
Only runs out the hole again.

Then, when I'm dry,
having no tears left,
Another word comes: 'Always.'

To mend is to pierce with the needle
again and again
Leaving me still empty but whole.

The new word reigns, and it is 'Always':

I will always remember,
I will always cherish.
I will always find a way.
And I will always know
That you loved me.
Always.

SILLINESS: The Dragon That Came to Bag End

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:12:39 GMT

This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/73567.html

Once upon a time in Middle Earth, there lived a small blue dragon. Its name was Krau and it only came up to a human's knee. In the scaled-down region of the Shire, however, even a small dragon can be a large problem.

Krau spotted some halfling washer-women as they were hanging up the wash. He came over to help dry it with his breath. Instead, he set it all on fire and the ladies scampered off in a panic.

Next, he found some little boys trying to climb a tree. He picked up the smallest one and put him on the highest branch, as it clearly had the most apples. The little one screamed in terror. The other lads threw rotten apples at him and he had to leave.

The diminutive dragon discovered the halfling men coming out of the bathhouse wearing towels. He flew in low and tried to help dry them off. Instead, his puffs of fire singed them bald one by one! They ran about bellowing in alarm. Thinking something was coming to destroy them all, Krau swooped about with loud trumpeting cries too.

Mayor Samwise gathered the terrorized villagers together and calmed them down. Soon they had a clear consensus: "Fetch Mr. Frodo!" They all went knocking on Frodo's round door and explained.

Frodo decided to act right away. He put on his beautiful Elven ringmail shirt and he picked up the family heirloom sword 'Sting', and out he went to confront the dragon. He found Krau helping himself to some cheese stacked in the middle of the marketplace.

Frodo said, in a very old language, "You! You can not stay here. The village is no place for a dragon!"

Naturally, Krau was very upset and he roared in dismay, but Mr. Frodo was very firm. Krau spread his wings and he flew away, never to be seen again in that land.

At least, thought Frodo, there was no bloodshed. The people were very happy that peace and order was restored. They went to Rosie's tavern and celebrated.

The little boys said, "Weren't you afraid he would carry you off?" The washer-women said, "Weren't you afraid he'd set your clothes afire?" The bathhouse gentlemen said, "Weren't you afraid he would set your head on fire?"

Frodo had to admit that he had considered the first two outcomes, but the third never worried him.

His friend Sam asked curiously, "Why's that?"

Frodo replied, "Everybody knows: Old hobbits die haired."

Lifting Stem Cell Ban Brings a Better Life

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 05:30:29 GMT

this is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/73381.html

------
"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A top congressional Republican on Sunday criticized President Barack Obama's expected decision to reverse the Bush administration's limits on embryonic stem-cell research, calling it a distraction from the country's economic slump..."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/08/obama.stem.cells/index.html
------

Dearest Friends,

We are, in the world of agriculture, poised on the edge of a kind of revolution, but not really one that we have asked for. Farmers over 65 outnumber those under 35, 3 to 1. Within a decade, roughly half of our most experienced and most successful farmers, are expected to be dead.

34% of all agricultural assets are held by individuals over the age of 65, and roughly 4/5ths are male. The average life expectancy for men is 74. 4 years in college may yield a degree in life sciences but it's no substitute for 50+ years of experience.

An estimated 85% of the "young farmers" didn't grow up on a farm. They did not milk the cows with Grandpa when they were four; they did not water a row of watermelons and eggplants with Aunt June. In their childhood, corn came from a can, in a place where a rooster crowing at dawn is illegal. Most of them never dreamt that they would pursue a 'country' lifestyle until they were well past college age. Many of them went to college for literature, or drama, or plastics manufacturing, or silicon wafers, but not plants and animals. They have risked their economic safety for, perhaps, something they could not really understand at the time.

Many senior farmers did not pass their know-how on to their descendants. Through no fault on anybody's part, much of what the senior farmers have learned is going to be lost. Those who were farm-raised and chose to follow in their parents' footsteps, despite poverty in many cases, are to be commended and valued.

Arguably, not everything people believe is valuable, but much of it is. What seniors know is not necessarily in a book. It is not (yet) on Wikipedia, and you can not (yet) Google for it.

Some of it is folk-wisdom, like dipping sweet-potato vine cuttings in powdered cinnamon before rooting them. Some of it is from farming journals read over the years. A lot of it is word-of-mouth, shared in communities along with heritage cultivars. Many farmers have yet to hear that once, drought-resistant Amaranth was popped into sweet Alegria in Mexico, or that a traditional Hawaiian "canoe plant" sweet potato could perhaps bring us nutritional and economic relief.

Valuable food-growing knowledge is going to be lost at a time when food is needed for growing population worldwide.

Some of it is the social connections they have made, many of them across international boundaries, friendships decades old. A trucker who brings melons to Indiana; a Mexican tomato farmer who shared seeds with someone's grandmother. When the senior farmers have passed on, they will also leave holes in the social fabric that will never repair itself.

So, what the hell does this have to do with stem cells...?

In stem cells lie the very treatments that will grant them longevity. Maybe not 20 years, maybe not even 10, maybe just 5. That will be worth a lot. 5 years to pass on just a little more of what they know, as the ranks of the "young farmers" grow and mature.

And, of course, not just that, but a chance for one more grandkid to be born, a chance for a few more hugs and kisses from their husband or wife. Maybe a few more chances to see the star-shaped purple and gold flowers against dark leaves in a potato field (if they are not tired of them, of course).

These are the folks who fed you and me, all our lives.

They, of all people, deserve better health care.

To call stem cell research a "distraction" is both cold-blooded and short-sighted.

The ban on stem cell research was an over-reaction to something ill-understood. It's logical that, as more information can be shared between the generations, the economic benefit is inevitable. Diseases are costing us millions of dollars in care, but they are also costing us irreplaceable human knowledge and wisdom. As diabetes, obesity, kidney failure, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and many more are alleviated or cured, wonderful human gains will also come.

Can we do that?

You bet your 'uala!

NONFICTION: The Domestication of the Sunflower

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 17:47:33 GMT

This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/73212.html

I'd often wondered what would possess somebody to domesticate sunflowers in the first place. The wild seeds are very small, with tough inedible hulls. They don't have a lot of oil.

The roots, stems and leaves aren't edible. The yellow flowers are nice but they're plentiful in the wild.

The oldest evidence of cultivation is from Mexico, possibly as early as 2600 BCE, when somebody cached their precious sunflower seeds in a cave. This strain had bigger seeds than in the wild, but not as big as the modern varieties. Later archaeological finds get bigger and bigger, showing a progression in-sequence. Sunflower domestication appears to be relatively recent. Compare that to corn, in the same region, which goes back at least 10,000 years.

So why bother with sunflowers when you've got corn? What do sunflowers have that corn doesn't?

Lysine is one possible answer. Most grains don't have a lot of this nutrient, which makes up part of the "complete protein" needs of humans. Corn is notoriously lysine-poor.

Then again, so are sunflower seeds once they've been cooked...

Aha! that's a clue.

How can you eat sunflower seeds without cooking them?

How could those first wild sunflower seeds be shelled and eaten, even though they were so pitifully small?

As sprouts, that's how.

When they're soaked in water, sunflower hulls pop open. Then, when rinsed off with water, the shells of wild sunflower seeds float and are easily separated. All that's needed is a bowl and some fresh, clean water.

Many of our edible crops began as sprouted grains and seeds. There's lots of evidence that corn, rice, and barley domestication began this way. (Traditionally, these are the gifts of the Hopi Corn Maidens, Inari of Japan, and Demeter of Greece).

Eventually, the sprouted versions may fall off the menu. The enhanced-size seed crops remain in a form that's very different from their wild cousins. It leads to an illusion that a perfect food crop was magically created, just for us.

Well, perfect if you happen to like lightly toasted sunflower seeds with sea salt. Maybe with a little garlic.

:D

NONFICTION: The Conscious Redefining of the Word 'Atheist'

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:30:42 GMT

This is:

I recently posted the following under the discussion page for the Wikipedia entry for 'atheist'.

=================================

'...there has been a push in certain philosophical circles...'

The push for acceptance of the "non-disbelief" definition of "atheist" is coming from the major groups of atheists, for example, American Atheists, which clearly defines atheist as both non-believers and disbelievers together.

http://atheists.org/atheism/About_Atheism

"Philosophical circles" implies it's just some academic discussion groups over in some isolated corners, and that it's just an external definition.

Nonbelievers are frequently handed a "straw man" argument that they are espousing a view that cannot be proven. Having decided that the word "atheist" is not inherently negative, many atheists prefer to claim it, in conscious imitation of the way homosexuals chose to embrace the word "gay", and choose to give it a modern redefintion. Atheist no longer has to imply 'disbeliever' in much the same way 'gay' no longer has to imply 'pederast' or 'sissy'.

'...though its mainstream usage has been limited...'

True. For example, President Obama chose to use the word "nonbeliever" instead in his inaugural address.

...But, one main reason mainstream usage has been limited is because dictionaries STILL won't clearly add the nonbeliever definition. For examplel, Websters still defines atheism as either 'disbelief' or the loaded word 'doctrine', which again incorrectly denotes a positive belief.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism

Some nonbelievers pessimistically don't think this redefining is possible. They do not want to be identified as atheists because it carries negative connotations for many people-- including themselves. They sometimes jokingly call it "The A Word".

Nevertheless, there's good reason to think that the self-defining of atheism will prevail. Atheist organizations instruct members how to gracefully and politely shoot down the above-mentioned straw man. Opposing the disbeliever definition serves the dual purpose of challenging the bigotry and bringing together both the nonbeliever and the disbeliever under one unifying title.

In other words, it's a third definition in addition to atheist-as-disbeliever and atheist-as-nonbeliever.

~~~~Talzhemir

NONFICTION: The Conscious Redefining of the Word 'Atheist'

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:27:46 GMT

This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/72652.html

I recently posted the following under the discussion page for the Wikipedia entry for 'atheist'.

=================================

'...there has been a push in certain philosophical circles...'

The push for acceptance of the "non-disbelief" definition of "atheist" is coming from the major groups of atheists, for example, American Atheists, which clearly defines atheist as both non-believers and disbelievers together.

http://atheists.org/atheism/About_Atheism

"Philosophical circles" implies it's just some academic discussion groups over in some isolated corners, and that it's just an external definition.

Nonbelievers are frequently handed a "straw man" argument that they are espousing a view that cannot be proven. Having decided that the word "atheist" is not inherently negative, many atheists prefer to claim it, in conscious imitation of the way homosexuals chose to embrace the word "gay", and choose to give it a modern redefintion. Atheist no longer has to imply 'disbeliever' in much the same way 'gay' no longer has to imply 'pederast' or 'sissy'.

'...though its mainstream usage has been limited...'

True. For example, President Obama chose to use the word "nonbeliever" instead in his inaugural address.

...But, one main reason mainstream usage has been limited is because dictionaries STILL won't clearly add the nonbeliever definition. For examplel, Websters still defines atheism as either 'disbelief' or the loaded word 'doctrine', which again incorrectly denotes a positive belief.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism

Some nonbelievers pessimistically don't think this redefining is possible. They do not want to be identified as atheists because it carries negative connotations for many people-- including themselves. They sometimes jokingly call it "The A Word".

Nevertheless, there's good reason to think that the self-defining of atheism will prevail. Atheist organizations instruct members how to gracefully and politely shoot down the above-mentioned straw man. Opposing the disbeliever definition serves the dual purpose of challenging the bigotry and bringing together both the nonbeliever and the disbeliever under one unifying title.

In other words, it's a third definition in addition to atheist-as-disbeliever and atheist-as-nonbeliever.

~~~~Talzhemir

NONFICTION: Triple S Gumbo

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:16:21 GMT

This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/72343.html

SAUSAGE, SEAFOOD & SOYMEAT GUMBO

Cooking time: 1/2 hour (20 minutes if you have a helper!)
Serves 7, but you gotta have a little dessert too.

1/4 cup olive oil
1 cup diced celery (chop up a whole lot and freeze the rest in baggies!)
1 cup chopped onion (1 smaller-than-fist-sized yellow onion)
1 clove garlic, chopped fine (use less if you're not a garlic fan!)

2 TBSP real butter

1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp No-Salt (important!)

2 plump Roma tomatoes (chop up small)
1/4 of a whole green pepper, chop up small)
(or substitute one 10 oz. can Red Gold brand Petite Diced
Tomatoes With Green Chilies)

1/2 lb. some kind of cooked salty sausage, chopped up into little bits.
Use what you've got. A "Cajun-style" sausage would be the first choice.
Kielbasa, Bratwurst, even hotdogs work! Jimmy Dean brand has a
touch of rosemary that adds a nice flavor.
1/3 bag Vegefarm Vegetarian Meat (chicken-colored, but beef-colored works too)

8 big shrimp, shelled and de-veined (or, 1 cup itty bitty cleaned shrimps)
1/2 lb. Krab ("Sea Legs" or Kamaboko Krab)

1/2 teaspoon dried leaf thyme
1 Tablespoon Tabasco Sauce (Or, if you prefer "wimpy", 1 TBSP ketchup)
4 cups chicken broth (or 4 cups water + 2 packets chicken ramen flavoring)
2 bay leaves (if you've got 'em!)

4 cups hot cooked rice (brown or white)

1. Put the Vegefarm Vegetarian Meat in water.

2. In heavy 4-quart saucepan, heat oil on medium. Add celery, onion, and garlic. Let them get brown edges. Remove the saucepan from the heat, let it cool as you do the next step.

3. Mix up the dry ingredients (the first five) in a bowl.

4. Transfer the oil/celery/onions to a bowl for now.

5. Now that the pan is clear again, melt the butter in it on medium heat. Add the flour mix gradually, stirring constantly. Let the flour get bubbly and very light brown (this is called a "roux"). There is an important change to the scent; browned butter smells very yummy!

6. Add in the tomatoes and peppers. Stir it up gently! The sizzle adds a soundtrack to the culinary effects. Reduce heat, cook about 5 minutes or until pepper bits are softened.

7. Add sausage and Vegemeat in next. Simmer for about 5 minutes.

8. Switch to low heat. Add thyme, Tabasco, chicken broth, and bay leaves. Cook for 10 more minutes.

9. Put scoops of rice in big bowls. Pour gumbo over it.

Bon apetit!

FICTION: "The Way of Things", a Drakorian tale

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:26:09 GMT

This is: http://talzhemir1.livejournal.com/71939.html

Throughout this Furcadian world known as the Dragonlands, there are the Furres, who walk upon two legs, and there are the birds and reptiles, which are hunted or farmed for food. It is said that the Primes of Light created the Furres, before they parted company with the Dark Primes.

If fur-bearing creatures running upon four legs are seen, they are normally assumed to be the products of vilest magic. They are always hunted, for that is their curse. However, there is one place they are not always hated and feared, and that is, in the primitive provinces of Drakoria, far to the west.

-----

It was 'The Winter Tears Froze On the Face.' Everyone in the tribe was a grassblade's thickness away from starving. They lived in danger of attack by Raukor, Eetrox, Leotaur, and more. Here, as even small furrelings know, it is the furre's lot in life to be food for many other creatures. That is the way of things.

Wrapped in clothes made of woven feathers, the wolf-lady Sah-may-may of the Aka Kota was hunting alone. Her name meant "Very Serious", and she liked to be the best at anything she could do. She was only thirteen, but she was already one of the best with spear-thrower. There, up ahead, walked a snow-kiwi, so she stealthily raised the long dart-spear to above her shoulder.

Was she beautiful? Maybe. Her brown hair was never brushed. She hid her face with leaves tied to woven netting to make it harder for prey to see her. Her boyfriend Teh-gla-ri liked to say, "Night makes all women beautiful," but even he had never seen her face.

The snow-kiwi began scratching at the snow with its feet, a sign that it smelled food underneath. Sah-may-may cast the flexible spear; it flew with the proper wobbling movement. The tip struck the kiwi like a stormbird diving into water; it was dead before it could make a sound.

Sah-may-may ran, the sinew nets on oval frames strapped to her feet keeping her above the snow. When she reached the kiwi, she lifted it by a leg and, with a small chip of sharpened stone, she ritually offered its blood to Suffrith, Sharpener of the Senses. Then Sah-may-may cut it open and pulled back her hunting veil to eat the steaming liver, the hunter's due. Oh, so soft and delicious!

It was without warning that blue snakes erupted from the ground to grab the Aka Kota huntress. Sah-may-may gave an enraged scream and beat at them with her free hand, not ready to let go of the precious bird carcass yet.

The icy ground broke open and a slender panther-furre appeared, her white fangs bared as she laughed. Her arms were crossed before her bare bosom. The panther woman wore no clothes or ornaments, yet she appeared not the least bit cold.

Sah-may-may gasped to see this strange being had no fur on her lean body. All Aka Kota are wolves; they know of other kinds of Furre but almost never meet them, so Sah-may-may did not know a feline when she saw one.

Countless pale scars criss-crossed that dark blue skin. Then the wolf furre realized that the things circling her body were some of this monster's many tails. One was around her waist; one was around her shoulders; one bound her ankles tightly together. Sah-may-may fell over with a thump on the blood-spattered snow.

The wolf-furre resumed furiously trying to cut through the tails with her hand-length flint knife. She could not mar the smooth hide. The blue panther-lady hooted and cackled merrily, a toss of her head sending a ripple through her long frosty-blue hair.

Then, in the Aka Kota's own language, the blue-skinned one said, "Stop! Stop! Or I will hurt myself laughing so hard!" Sah-may-may ignored her and kept sawing with the little knife.

So, the tails tightened until Sah-may-may found she could not expand her lungs. In fear and pain, Sah-may-may was finally forced to drop her knife. The world was growing darker when the tails relaxed- but only a small amount. The tails claimed Sah-may-may's possessions as spoils-of-war. The tall she-cat wiped a tear of hilarity from a yellow eye without pupil, and said, "Much better. So. What is your name?"

The tribal wolf-furre remembered her warrior's lineage, and spoke the proper ritual boast, "It is Sah-may-may's knife that will cut your throat." She glared back, not expecting this alien who knew her language to give her own name, as would be proper even between deadly enemies.

To Sah-may-may's surprise, her captor said, "It is Lokira's claws that will make snowshoe strings of your guts." Then the furless demon said sweetly, "...but not today. No, today, I have a different game to play with you. Do you pledge on your honor not to run away? Or must I crush the air out of you and leave your bones for the Raukors to pick?"

The war stories told by the elders spoke of this choice. She could die a warrior, or she could live as a slave. Sah-may-may had always told herself, it would be best to die. To be a slave would be a deep disgrace to the Aka Kota. How could she live with herself if she surrendered? Would it not be better to perish, and for her soul to go on to Suffrith's paradise?

Then Sah-may-may realized that she had never really accepted the old tales as true. She sacrificed blood in the ancient hunting ritual to Suffrith, of course-- everybody did. But, she did not, in her heart, believe.

She looked down. She was still gripping the dead bird by the neck. In her mind, she saw the faces of her hungry kinfolk, for whom this snow-kiwi would mean two more weeks of life. After that, they might still all die of hunger, but until then, every moment was precious. The true surrender was in choosing death; only in life was there any hope.

Sah-may-may decided she desperately wanted to live. She gulped, and forced herself to speak. Her voice was raspy, not at all normal, as she said, "I give my word."

Without another sound, Lokira released the she-wolf. Sah-may-may was aware the snowy ground was sucking precious warmth from her body, so she stood.

The blue panther pointed at the space behind Sah-may-may. When the Aka Kota huntress turned, there, on the ground, was a huge fluffy bird-pelt with a round bare patch at its center. This display of strange magic filled the Aka Kota with deep dread; she did not understand it.

Sah-may-may could see there were dicing bones and the square design for playing N'Jom, a traditional wagering game. Without a word, they each took a seat.

"So. I see you know this game." the she-panther said casually. "I wager four things. Your knife. Your spear-thrower with dart. Your freedom... and a boon that one such as I can grant. You do not know my name but I am Suffrith's sister."

The revered name sent a prickle up Sah-may-may's nape. Suffrith was supposed to be a great power of the universe but Sah-may-may had never heard of Lokira. Before she could stop herself, Sah-may-may demanded, "How do I know this is true?"

"Did I not conjure this great bird skin from nothing?" said Lokira.

Sah-may-may said, without a smile, "That only proves you can perform magic."

The freakish blue panther with the many lashing tails threw her head back to roar with laughter again. "Oh, daughter of the Aka Kota, you are unusually hard to impress! Never mind who I am. It is not important. For the fourth stake, I offer to use my conjuring skills to grant you a wish."

The wolf huntress considered, then nodded. She said, "I wager only three things. My veil of leaves and net. This snow-kiwi. My shirt of woven feathers."

With a nod, Lokira laid possessions in a line across from Sah-may-may's, a small handful of beads standing for Sah-may-may's freedom. They took the bones between their paws and tossed them, counting the circular marks and moving counters on the N'Jom grid.

Along the way there were choices to be made. N'Jom was a game of skill as well as luck. Sah-may-may had never taken any pleasure in gambling games, but she had enjoyed the thinking part of it. She played shrewdly, cautiously.

Sah-may-may's pebble reached the first wide line. Lokira smiled and pushed the stone knife towards Sah-may-may, signifying that it had been won back. They played onwards. Several throws later, Lokira was smiling a little less, and she pushed the spear-thrower back towards Sah-may-may as well.

Seeing that the unkempt huntress was so far ahead, Lokira began to play with more abandon. She moved her pebble along the risky path that promised a high return. She told Sah-may-may, "You have already won twice, so, I know you have used up your luck."

The huntress saw the blue panther was becoming more desperate. She was tempted to try the same strategy herself. She worried that her caution might cost her the game. She resisted, though, and kept to the slow track.

Eventually, it came down to a single throw of the bones for each. Lokira crowed triumphantly, "There!" as she scored enough points to make it difficult for Sah-may-may to win. The wolf felt her heart thudding harder and harder, as if at the back of her throat.

As Sah-may-may cast the bones for the final throw, her paws trembled, for the third stake was her freedom. The bones all showed pairs of dots, and Sah-may-may called out the traditional name for the configuration, "Flock-of-crows!" She was free!

"No!" Lokira exclaimed and she punched the thick feather rug in dismay.

The Aka Kota huntress scooped the beads up and put them into her neck-pouch. "I give you to the count of four-hundred. After that, if I see you, I will kill you!" She trusted in her own skills; she knew that not much could survive her spear-thrower and dart.

The blue-skinned panther's tails twisted and untwisted in agitation. She said, "Wait, let us play one more round." Sah-may-may had already fit the dimpled end of the long spear to the matching peg on the thrower. Lokira said, "All of your things, against my boon!" Then she waved both of her hands, and said, "See."

This time, when Sah-may-may turned, there were eight low tables made of planks, each covered with wooden troughs piled high with food. There were heaps of hot grain mixed with fat and salt, little fried cakes made from sweet crushed acorns, bowls of fruit (fresh despite the season), smoked fish, mounds of spiced and juicy beb-krah meat. Sah-may-may's eyes went wide. With this, her people need not go hungry...

The Aka Kota huntress turned, and walked back to the thick feather-fur. She put her goods down on one side, and picked up the bones.

The blue panther lady picked up a sweet orange root from the banquet, and placed it opposite Sah-may-may's possessions.

They played one more game, rolling and passing the N'Jom bones back and forth between them. Again, Lokira moved her pebble along the chancy path, but Sah-may-may held to her slower way. The bones gave Lokira a poor score. The wolf's pebble moved steadily on the grid towards the winning line. Finally, it was so far ahead that there was no way for Lokira to catch up.

"Impossible!" the blue panther railed, throwing the offending N'Jom bones far into the sky. "To win four times in a row is impossible!"

The Aka Kota huntress shook her head, "no, just rare." She picked up the delicious-smelling roasted root.

With salvaged dignity, Lokira stood herself back up, but all her serpentine tails writhed independently, and one of her white upper fangs was bared. She said, in a grumbling manner, "Name your boon, Serious One. An unconquerable weapon? Beauty such that all malefurres fall down at your feet in wonder?"

The huntress replied, "My people must never want for food ever again." Even if the sorceress could not grant such a thing, she was still honor-bound to fulfill it to the best of her ability, and Sah-may-may did not doubt that she would try.

The blue panther lady made a dismissive gesture towards Sah-may-may, and said easily, "...Done." Once again, she crossed her arms before her chest.

The wolf huntress nodded and triumphantly brought the roasted root to her jaws and bit into it. For some reason, this was the most amazingly delicious thing she had ever tasted. Whatever she was, this panther-witch was a fine cook. As she took a second bite, it seemed to be growing larger and larger. She glanced over at Lokira, who had lost her previous irritation and was now smiling slyly at her.

Sah-may-may felt her clothing swallow her up as the ground dropped away below her. She struggled out of the woven feather shirt, no longer a wolf furre, and, indeed, no longer even a furre.

Her hands had turned to clumsy paws. She was crouching on four limbs instead of two. All the sounds around her were too keen and her ears felt enormous atop her head. Whereas before, the array of food had smelled wonderful, now it was burnt and disgusting, especially the meat. Worst of all, Sah-may-may found it hard to think. Everything was confusing, frightening. She hopped from the heap of clothing, and began to run...

-----

This new form, called Ferian Rabben, was swift. Effortlessly it bounced over the snow with its long hind legs. It was a creature that none of the Aka Kota wolf-people had seen before. It had fur, like a person, yet, like a bird or serpent, it was not intelligent.
Being desperately hungry, they brought it down with a spear. To their delight, it was yummy, and nourishing. Realizing it was a gift from the Mighty Ones such as Lokira, they made a practice of burying the skin and bones with honor.

Strangely, they never saw more than one. One moon after they ate it, another one just like it would always appear. As even small furrelings know, there is no need to understand.

It is just the way of things.

=====================================================================

Rules for N'Jom can be found here: http://www.thegenieslamp.com/furcle/