tingilinde

assistive technologies

The current generation of touch screens are turn out to be useful in assisting some folks with problems ..  a nice piece in the NY Times ..  watch the video.

happy halloween

from the always wonderful APOD

california tshirt

Prop 23 in California has national implications -- basically voting "yes" on it shuts down many climate change efforts.  The smokescreen is this is a jobs issue and the funding supporting it comes from right wing groups and conventional fossil fuel energy companies.

A friend in California saw this tshirt on avery pretty woman yesterday.

 

Kissing a Climate Change Denier 

is Like

Licking an Ashtray

 

voting against science and the earth

via the LA Times

another upshot of this is that we will fall farther behind China and the EU in many important new technologies...  But at least the big current polluters will be pleased with the disruption.

chomsky on the current state of affairs - tea baggers and beyond

I listened to Christopher Lydon's Noam Chomsky interview during the rowing session today ...  great stuff if you have an hour.

recommended salad

The amounts are approximate, but should work.  This is really simple and is wonderful if you use good ingredients.  It may even be semi-healthy.  

 

quinoa, sweet potato and red pepper salad

 

bring two cups of water and one cup of  quinoa and a bit of salt to a boil, cut the heat to a simmer and cook until done -- about ten to fifteen minutes.  set aside in a big bowl

dice a large sweet potato into half inch cubes and boil until cooked in salted water - about fifteen minutes

 

 

add the sweet potatoes - not terribly pretty yet

 

chop a red pepper into half inch-ish pieces

dice a quarter cup of scallions - or a red onion

chop a handful of pecans or walnuts

finely chop about a quarter cup of parsley

 

 

mix (or is it toss?) with the sweet potato and quinoa

 

 

now for the good part ..  mix in (these are really approximate but are a good starting place)

a quarter cup of excellent olive oil

an eighth cup of a good dark balsamic vinegar

an eighth cup of a good white balsamic vinegar (use more of the vinegars if you like and play with the ratio of dark to white)

 

 

 beginning to look good!!

 

salt and pepper to taste.  use good sea salt like Maldon and freshly ground pepper

 

Really good!  I won't show the customary fancy photo on a plate as it went directly to the cheap plates and we made short work of it.

The next few months are going to see a lot of quinoa experimentation.  Now if I had better knife skills ...

 

Recommendations of what to serve it with?

 

 

 

a day I didn't think I'd see

Apple is larger than Microsoft in revenue ...  not profit (yet)

generating some business

NPR investigates the connection between the Arizona immigration law and a private for-profit prison.

snip

Last year, two men showed up in Benson, Ariz., a small desert town 60 miles from the Mexico border, offering a deal.

Glenn Nichols, the Benson city manager, remembers the pitch.

"The gentleman that's the main thrust of this thing has a huge turquoise ring on his finger," Nichols said. "He's a great big huge guy and I equated him to a car salesman."

What he was selling was a prison for women and children who were illegal immigrants.

"They talk [about] how positive this was going to be for the community," Nichols said, "the amount of money that we would realize from each prisoner on a daily rate."

But Nichols wasn't buying. He asked them how would they possibly keep a prison full for years — decades even — with illegal immigrants?

"They talked like they didn't have any doubt they could fill it," Nichols said.

That's because prison companies like this one had a plan — a new business model to lock up illegal immigrants. And the plan became Arizona's immigration law.

...

 

don't air condition your attic

Why a power attic ventilator might be a bad idea

ok fruit experts ...

what is this?  Is it delicious and is it safe to eat?  If you know post a reply on a friend's blog and possibly save a life:-)  (perhaps a lychee?)