You’ve heard the phrase “the crotch of a tree.” Some people want to cover it up.

This post on Quiddity provides a couple of links to other sites about clothing for trees, including the Knit-Knot Tree project to create knitted items for trees, to cover them up completely.

I once had a desire to create cloth birds to hang in trees, just to see if anyone would notice. I think the desire passed, but it could come back. I still like the idea of fake birds in trees.

That’s the description of people living in this area, according to WhosYourCity.com. The large band of extroverts skirts over this region.

There was a report out a couple of months ago about striped icebergs. I saw it listed in Snopes where someone has suspected it was a joke. Not so. The London Times carried a report saying that it might be beautiful, but it’s created from dirt, animal excrement and fragments of dead bodies.

Keith Makinson, of the British Antarctic Survey, said that icebergs that seemed to show stripes were quite common in southern waters, but it was the first time that he had seen brown stripes. They are believed to be created when ice crystals form under the water and, in a process described as “inverted snow”, rise to stick to the bottom of the ice shelf. As the ice crystals form a new layer at the bottom of the ice shelf, which later fragments to float away as icebergs, tiny particles of organic matter are trapped.

A Mother’s Day special from Opus.

Eighty percent of Australians live within 80 miles of the sea; 50 percent of the country’s houses sit less than 8 miles from a beach.

That quote is from Architectural Record magazine and leads into a story about house design. So if it’s the beach that you must have, move down under.

No, it’s more than just a good photo. This is spectacular. It shows the ash plume of Chaitén volcano along with an electrical storm.

Economist Adam Posen spoke in Weekend Edition about the current economic state of the country. With Americans’ purchasing power going down, prices going up and the government continuing to spend money it doesn’t have, Posen says the country is in a situation similar to the early 1980s when people were wondering if we could ever climb out of bad economic times.

Yes, he says, but it will take:

It’s going to take a change in behavior and some effort, Posen said. Now we’re at the state of someone realizing they’ve been overeating a lot of junk food and not working out.

I feel like such a sucker for reporting this, as though it must the excellent work of The Onion’s jokers, but here it is anyway, from the Guardian’s Baghdad reporter:

Picture, if you will, a tree-lined plaza in Baghdad’s International Village, flanked by fashion boutiques, swanky cafes, and shiny glass office towers. Nearby a golf course nestles agreeably, where a chip over the water to the final green is but a prelude to cocktails in the club house and a soothing massage in a luxury hotel, which would not look out of place in Sydney harbour. Then, as twilight falls, a pre-prandial stroll, perhaps, amid the cool of the Tigris Riverfront Park, where the peace is broken only by the soulful cries of egrets fishing.

Improbable though it all may seem, this is how some imaginative types in the US military are envisaging the future of Baghdad’s Green Zone, the much-pummelled redoubt of the Iraqi capital where a bunker shot has until now had very different connotations.

A $5bn (£2.5bn) tourism and development scheme for the Green Zone being hatched by the Pentagon and an international investment consortium would give the heavily fortified area on the banks of the Tigris a “dream” makeover that will become a magnet for Iraqis, tourists, business people and investors. About half of the area is now occupied by coalition forces, the US state department or private foreign companies.

The article ends with a statement by a native:

For many Baghdad residents, the Green Zone has been a no-go area for years, first under Saddam and now under the occupation. “What do I care?” shrugged one, Ahmed Hussein. “I don’t have electricity, I don’t have fresh water and I don’t have a job.”

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and low-tech don’t go together in mind (other than the Car Talk boys), but here’s an instructor who wants students to imagine low-tech inventions to assist third-world nations:

Unlike most of MIT, Smith’s workshop is far from cutting-edge. There are no next-gen computers, no vials of polysyllabic chemicals, no fancy equipment. The space is decidedly low-tech – and that’s the point. D-Lab students pinpoint practical problems in the developing countries and then brainstorm and build solutions. Because the people they are trying to help are below the poverty line, the class’s inventions must be simple, effective, and most important, inexpensive.

“What people need is usually completely different from what we imagine sitting here in America,” says Jodie Wu, a mechanical engineering junior, whose group went on a school-sponsored trip to Tanzania over winter break. The idea for her current project – a mobile, pedal-powered corn sheller – came from a conversation with a Tanzanian bike mechanic.

This is really good stuff.

More disturbing news about those who claim to “support our troops:

More than 43,000 U.S. troops listed as medically unfit for combat in the weeks before their scheduled deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2003 were sent anyway, Pentagon records show.

This reliance on troops found medically “non-deployable” is another sign of stress placed on a military that has sent 1.6 million servicemembers to the war zones, soldier advocacy groups say.

There are plenty of Ron Paul fans out there and they aren’t giving up. He’s still pulling in the votes at primary elections. Here’s the latest news from his fans:

At last, some cheering news for downhearted fans of Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican now certain to fail, by some distance, to secure his party’s presidential nomination. This month has seen the first meeting of the shareholders in a fledgling community development planned in rural Texas, to be comprised exclusively of Paul’s supporters. It is to be called Paulville.

The gated settlement will house freedom-loving folk, living unbound by the shackles of planning regulations. Its founders hope that when complete, it will inspire further Paulvilles around America and, in their own words, “literally change the world, one community at a time”.

Here’s a collection of excellent photos from National Geographic.

This belongs in the wish-I’d-thought-of-that department. Ralphie Boy comes up with odd stuff and this is a good one. People with Photoshop skills and too much time on their hands. I’ve spent a lot of time doing this very thing. You should see Keith and Lorene Whitehouse’s annual Christmas card in the proofing stage. Many a year the two have switched heads.

There are many more ManBabies to be viewed at, where else but ManBabies.com.

…visit this unique bakery. Here’s the tale of its evolution and here’s a taste of how it’s run:

When Bergen and his partners first started discussing the concept of the City Café Bakery, Bergen was more interested in how things would be done at the business, as opposed to exactly what would be made. For that reason, things are run a little differently at the bakery. Case in point: City Café doesn’t have Interac or accept credit cards. Neither will you see a cash register in the bakery. Instead, customers add up how much they owe themselves and drop their money into a fare box from an old bus.

Read the rest of this entry »

A New York Times article says farmers are cutting back on corn somewhat in favor of soybeans:

Strong worldwide food demand, and the accompanying higher prices, are beginning to influence American farmers.

A government report released Monday indicated that farmers intended to make significant cuts in corn acreage in favor of soybeans. That could help ease shortages of cooking oil, which have hit poor countries hard.

The shift also signaled at least a temporary decline in the appeal in farm country of the renewable fuels boom, much of which is based on corn. High corn prices and low ethanol prices have turned ethanol production into a difficult business.