conuly

Until they start squeaking, and then they're the cutest thing you've ever seen! Thank you, Siderea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBkWhkAZ9ds

Two Cooks and a Cabbage

First you get to see two young girls competently using an open fire to boil half a cabbage each (I should forward this one to Free Range Kids!), and then you get a good piece of advice: Never boil green vegetables in large quantities of water. Truer words were never spoken! As observed, when you do so you only end with tasteless muck and all the vitamins leached away. That goes doubly for brassicas like cabbage and kale. We love kale, but I find nearly every recipe calls for far too much water, even when the writer clearly was trying to aim low! You should have barely enough to cover the bottom of the pot when the pot is full to the brim with kale. Steam it, stir fry it, bake it, eat it raw, but never boil your greens.

(Pokeweed may be the exception to this, but given how much cooking is required to make that safely edible, is it really worth it? I wouldn't know, because I simply assume it is not.)

For decades, the Judge Rotenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts has been torturing and abusing people with disabilities in the name of treatment. Residents are subject to electric shocks, food deprivation, prolonged restraint and seclusion, and forced witness of these same tactics used against other residents.

This video of Andre McCollins, then-eighteen, who has behavioral and mental health issues, has been sealed by the courts for the last eight years. Yesterday, it played in open court during his trial against the Judge Rotenberg Center.

I haven't watched the video in question. I've heard enough about the JRC that I felt that I didn't need to do so. I would like to keep my food down today. So I'm just going to assume it is triggering and move from there.

N. Korea agrees to suspend uranium enrichment, nuclear tests

Bonobos advertise their same-sex couplings. Apparently.

Filthy Surgical Instruments: The Hidden Threat In America’s Operating Rooms (I have no idea how accurate this one is.)

Little Free Libraries are taking root on lawns

That is SO cool, btw. I want one of my very own! And maybe a few to donate around....

I also have two videos:

One on how Episode 1 could've been made, well, good.

And here's an animation on evolution that's really very nifty.

Fun and Play Are Key to Survival for Bears, Dogs, Humans, Birds and Maybe Even Ants

New Playgrounds Are Safe—and That's Why Nobody Uses The

I've said it before and I'll say it again: playgrounds are designed differently than they were when we were young, and some of that is safety but a lot of it is a totally different idea of how the space should be used. Everybody always mentions "No more seesaws!" as their big bugaboo, but I'm not convinced that seesaws are less common simply for safety reasons. Rather, I suspect they're less common because they take up a lot of space, can really only be used in one or two ways (which don't as easily lend themselves to imaginative play as some newer concepts do, although kids always find a way), and can only be used by a very few children at a time. Safety is probably part of it, but I doubt it's all of it. (Of course, that doesn't mean that boring, uninspiring but "safe" playgrounds using older concepts of isolated structures don't exist. Of course they do. But there were boring playgrounds 50 years ago as well. And the children walked uphill in the snow both ways to play there, in the boring playgrounds, and they liked them anyway, right?)

And finally, a nice long clip about an outdoor "kindergarten" (in the more European sense of "preschool through age 5" rather than in the more American sense of "five year olds' class") in Norway. Many of the comments are in reply to some inane woman who is just terrified at seeing a knife in a 5 year old's hand or watching a small child light a match with guidance and a grown-up right there supervising.

"What could have happened!" Well, I suppose the match could have dropped into the child's clothing and he'd've had to stop drop and roll, as we tell them in America. But nothing did happen, and it's far better to teach a child how to light a fire safely than to risk that they'll get into the matches one day and NOT light a fire safely. "It's so scary seeing a five year old holding a knife!" It's so scary seeing a five year old who is unable to cut her own food at lunchtime. Hell, Ana went to open a can of tuna the other day and, as she didn't immediately see the can opener, hacked at it with a very dull kitchen knife (thank god, because when I heard this I panicked that she'd ruined one of my newly-bought ceramic ones!) until it was open. No, I'm not joking. It was a little frightening to see the can carnage after the fact. (She's very self-sufficient. Of course, she could've saved a lot of effort by simply asking where we'd put the can opener....)

(Also, yes, I know that for most cutting needs sharp knives are much safer than dull ones. I sometimes see people online saying they let their small children cut things "with butter knives". Please don't do this. If your child is old enough to cut anything harder than play-dough, give them a real knife. They're less likely to cut themselves, and if they DO cut themselves they'll do a lot less damage. Trust me. As a clumsy person, I know!

One on a dog who jumped between his owner* and her abusive boyfriend. They both got tossed out a window. The women's shelter didn't accept pets, but when she said she couldn't go without her dog, they not only made an exception but decided to add a whole new wing for pet owners, on the grounds that many women stay in abusive relationships rather than leave their beloved pets with their abuser.

*I've noticed, when buying cat food and watching the occasional TV episode live, that more and more companies are referring to people as "pet parents". If it helps them sell their product, more power to them, but I, for one, refuse. I think it just sounds silly, and the alliteration doesn't help in this case. Are people really that averse to saying they own a cat or dog or ferret or hamster or fish?

Here's an article about the tiniest frog - nay, the tiniest vertebrate - yet discovered. I'm sure it's a good article, but I didn't read it. I was too busy cooing over the picture of the frog perched on a dime, with ample room to spare.

And here's an article with a video of a sledding crow. In the comments are links to more videos of corvids playing around.

One of the comments just bugs me. The guy says that obviously the crow was trying to get food, and obviously, since crows are crows, it's not sledding, and obviously anybody saying it IS doing such a thing is anthropomorphizing with no good reason.

Now, it's possible that the crow is trying to get food. It's also possible that the crow started out trying to get food, and then through serendipity realized that this was a lot of fun. Whee! I don't know, I'm not a crow and I'm certainly not this crow.

No, what bugs me is not the accusation that we're foolishly putting a human perspective on animal's actions, but the assumption that since anthropomorphizing can lead to stunningly wrong conclusions, this means that animals are unlikely to have the same motivations as humans once you move past the basics.

Clearly, saying "Well, if I did that for this reason, it's likely that this random cat/crow/cricket is doing a similar thing for the same reason" is flawed and illogical reasoning, but can "If I did that, it would be for fun, but this is a cat/crow/cricket and obviously it must have another, less human reason for its actions" truly be any better? I don't know why crows do what they do. All I know about them is that they are clever animals and can mimic speech. But it's not that far-fetched to believe that once in a while they might do things for the same reasons we do, is it? (Which isn't to say that the crow was necessarily doing this for fun. I really don't know much about crows and am not about to hazard a guess as to this one's motivations here. But I doubt these guys know either. Yes, that includes Mr. "I've kept pet crows". A pet crow, near as I can tell, is like a human raised by wolves. They may still be clever and friendly, they may be able to survive, but I wouldn't look to them as a guideline for normal behavior.)

that Arthur just had a show on Asperger's!

George meets a rabbit with Asperger's, and after a few rather pathetic comments about "the piece of the puzzle" the show goes on.

( Read more... )

There's also a "Word From Us Kids" that was edited from that episode, despite it being otherwise complete. You can see that clip at the end of the video here.

Bike trailers, child safety and the media's fear agenda

The title pretty much sums it up.

Here's another one. You'll love this... for a given quality of the word "love", that is. Apparently, Houston has a backlog of sexual assault kits that have never been tested. The city now wants money to deal with them. Great, right? Yeah! Except the police department wants that money not to run through the kits and test them, but to study why they have a backlog.

Oh, and I've heard about this Japanese show about sending small children out on their very first solo errands, but I've never seen a clip of it. This is even slightly subtitled! Of course, the comments suck, but that's to be expected. Is it just me or is there a middle ground somewhere between sending two year olds off to do the grocery shopping and not allowing twelve year olds to stay home alone for half an hour?

I had no idea antcolonies could be so... large! (Or so small, as seen in the end.) This is an excerpt of a longer video.

And fully 1000% more awesome than the next guy... especially when the next guy is a hateful illiterate ass.