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Remember when barn artist Scott Hagan was in Morenci for the library’s Barn Again festival? Sure you do, you pass his work every time you’re heading into town on Weston Road, right across from Ken Richardson’s house. Scott has a new YouTube video of his work. It’s a good one.

This collection of half-bearded men and women remind me of my half-bearded era. Actually, I think I had two of them. First, in college, just for fun for day and a half. Split personality, I called it.

Then, a much better job when I lived in Oregon. I decided to shave before I returned home (a gift for my mother) and did half a face at a time.

Hurty Elbow (the link above) has a nice collection of photos that he collected from the web.

He made reference to some half-beard research by Pete Hickey. I think you should check this one out. Does a beard really keep you warmer?

From a Guardian report in the UK:

Health and safety bosses ban women from throwing their knickers at Tom Jones impersonator Simon Abbotts on BBC1 show The One and Only, reports the Sun.

We reported recently in the print edition of the Observer about problems with the touch-screen voting machines used in most Ohio counties. They’ve been problematic from the start. The optical scan machines, such as those used in Michigan, are generally considered more secure.

And then along comes an advisory from Diebold (Premier) to Florida election workers:

Diebold (which now calls itself Premier Election Systems) quietly released a “Product Advisory Notice” last Friday to the state of Florida, concerning an explained malfunction in the paper-based optical-scan voting machine used across the state. While reports of problems on those systems, and others, began surfacing throughout the day today across the Sunshine State.

The Diebold advisory warns that “No Error Message is Displayed when Ballot Fails to Feed Completely Through AccuVote-OS.”

Some say President Bush broke the law four times this week. He says he’s just doing his constitutional duty:

President Bush this week declared that he has the power to bypass four laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds to establish permanent US military bases in Iraq, that Congress passed as part of a new defense bill.

Bush made the assertion in a signing statement that he issued late Monday after signing the National Defense Authorization Act for 2008. In the signing statement, Bush asserted that four sections of the bill unconstitutionally infringe on his powers, and so the executive branch is not bound to obey them.

One section Bush targeted created a statute that forbids spending taxpayer money “to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq” or “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Don’t forget that we’re always told that we will leave whenever they want us to. That could complicate our right to control their oil resources.

Lots exciting news from a neighbor farther in.

Some of the 1,213 photos taken by NASA’s Messenger probe and unveiled Wednesday help support the case that ancient volcanoes dot Mercury and that it is shrinking as it gets older, forming wrinkle-like ridges. But other images are surprising and puzzling.

NASA’s collection of photos is here.

The Guardian reported a few weeks ago about how Europe is looking at the northern Africa desert and seeing solar:

Europe is considering plans to spend more than £5bn on a string of giant solar power stations along the Mediterranean desert shores of northern Africa and the Middle East.

More than a hundred of the generators, each fitted with thousands of huge mirrors, would generate electricity to be transmitted by undersea cable to Europe and then distributed across the continent to European Union member nations, including Britain.

Billions of watts of power could be generated this way, enough to provide Europe with a sixth of its electricity needs and to allow it to make significant cuts in its carbon emissions. At the same time, the stations would be used as desalination plants to provide desert countries with desperately needed supplies of fresh water.

Blog for Rural America talks about who they’re calling “the youngest grocer in America.”

Enter 17 year old and Truman High School student Nick Graham. It took Nick less than three months to purchase and reopen the shuttered grocery store in his home town. With enthusiasm, a vision for the future, a sense of purpose and a modest loan form a local economic development corporation Nick Graham became the new owner of the store before he even graduated from the local high school.

Are there still phone booths in America? There must be, but it seems to be open air in most places. In Britain, they have names for their booths. The K2, the K6,the KX200, etc. There’s an effort underway to save the old K2 model shown here.

Go here for a discussion of the dilemma:

The KX100? You can take it or leave it. The KX200? Wouldn’t shelter a passing badger. But the K2 - now you’re talking. Most Britons associate a phone box with the crown-topped, red-painted K2 with its heavy door. The 1924 design, like that of the Routemaster, has embedded itself so firmly in the British imagination that the thought of abandoning it seems heretical.

Most people clean out their gardens after the harvest. Or after the weeds have claimed victory. I always press for leaving something behind. I got my way this year because we just didn’t make time for clearing it out. I love the way the leftovers look in snow and in frost, and I got a desperation photo Monday morning for the front page.

Also in this week’s print edition:

Of course there’s much more.

Zimmer’s wacky word of the week:

nullo [NULL-oh] someone who has undergone an elective amputation for the purposes of body modification, usually of a toe, but sometimes of a hand or limb.

This group of comedy writers is annoyed that President Bush failed to address the human-animal hybrid controversy in this year’s State of the Union address. What’s the matter - does he no longer care about a human being cloned with a pig?

Rudy Giuliani isn’t the only one campaigning in Florida about his bid for the presidency. There’s also a contingent of NVC firefighters and relatives of dead firefighters calling him a liar and saying he’s trying to make success out of failure.

If you’re still behind the times on this one, see the Guardian’s feature here.

When walking home for lunch a few minutes ago, I spotted a hawk sitting in a tree over the middle of Cawley Road. It must be a very hungry hawk. It never moved, other than craning its neck around to watch me watch it.

Gristmill reports from Eco-Farm conference on bee colony collapse. This is the opinion of Randy Oliver:

Loss of forage. Oliver said that widespread use of herbicides has been devastating for bees. He credited Roundup Ready corn and soy — Monsanto’s flagship seed products that now cover a massive swath of the country — with wiping out a huge source of bee food. “Corn pollen isn’t very nutritious for bees,” he said. “But the weeds that used to grow between the rows was.” He also mentioned vast monocrops in general — like California’s almond groves. “Those trees desperately need bees for pollination two months out of the year,” he said. “The rest of the year, it’s scorched earth — no forage for bees.”

The rise of tracheal mites.

The rise of vorroa mites, which appeared in the U.S. in the early 1990s. This problem intensified when industrial growers turned to highly toxic miticides to treat the problem — compromising the immune systems of their own bees and creating pesticide-resistant “supermites.”

Nosema ceranae, a bee parasite that’s caused die-offs in other parts of the world. “That’s what I think has triggered the latest die-off,” he said.