Anybody heard about this?

Win a visit to London to read Tales from Beedle the Bard

Want to get your (gloved) hands on J.K. Rowling's The Tales of Beedle the Bard? Amazon.com wants to send you and a friend to London, England to spend a weekend with the rare and delightful book of fairy tales (security guards included, of course), handwritten and illustrated by J.K. Rowling herself. Open to muggles ages 13 and older in 24 countries, the Beedle the Bard Ballad Writing Contest challenges you to creatively answer one of the following three questions in 100 words or less:

• What songs do wizards use to celebrate birthdays?
• What sports do wizards play besides Quidditch?
• What have you learned from the Harry Potter series that you use in everyday life?

English-language submissions will be accepted through 11:59 p.m. PDT April 22, 2008. An Amazon.com committee will select 10 semi-finalist submissions (based on creativity and writing style) from each of two age categories: 13-17 and 18-and-over. Amazon.com customers will determine the two finalists and Grand Prize winner by voting for their favorites. The Grand Prize includes round-trip airfare, two nights lodging at a London hotel, as well as an expense allowance. Plus, each of the finalists from the two age groups will receive an Amazon Gift Certificate in the amount of $1,000.

If you want to enter the contest, you're running out of time!

An article about nationalist sentiment in China

And how many Chinese are urging boycotts of Western companies because of the normal non-Chinese stance on Tibet.

It has a video.

They ask one Chinese woman why, exactly, people in the West are protesting the next Olympics, and do you know what she says? She says that we're just jealous. We wouldn't protest or boycott or anything if we weren't jealous of China's success.

Boy, does that sound familiar. Y'know, I didn't really think the "they're just being mean because they're jealous" argument was very compelling when my own country used it after 9/11 - why the fuck would it convince me on anything China says?

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There is a related article about "China's Loyal Youth" here.

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Actually, if you want to read something truly interesting, go read the comments to this NYTimes blog. The entry itself is so-so, but the comments are fascinating.

Two articles (and a link) about the environment, etc.

One quick one about how cutting down on your meat consumption does a lot more good than simply buying local foods.

And another one about the future of oil - not much new here, but it's all very frightening, of course.

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Which brings me to my link. It's been a while since I've talked about the need for solar ovens in some parts of the world, but hear me out here. Cooking fires are a direct cause of deforestation - which leads to global warming. They're also a direct cause of pollution which, given the number of cooking fires worldwide, leads to global warming. Cooking fires cause injuries to the people who use them - both fast ones like burns and long-time ones like damaged lungs. Going and getting fuel takes up so much of people's days, or their income, or both. Solar ovens can do so much good, really. There's another place to donate here, run by a Jewish organization. (Oh, and happy Passover, all.)

Just think about it.

An article/post about skyr

Which is apparently yogurt made from buttermilk. Not buttermilk, the cultured stuff you buy at the store which you can mock up with milk and vinegar; but buttermilk, the stuff that's left over after you make butter.

Which raises an interesting question in my mind. See, the nieces can't have dairy. They can, it seems, have goat milk. I've been experimenting with goat yogurt (they liked) and plain goat milk (they didn't like so much), and smoothies (mmmmm), and now I'm wondering... can I make butter from homogenized milk if I have no access to either unhomogenized goat milk or goat cream?

Incidentally, talking about the kids....

My mother, a while back, inundated the nieces with stickers. She had a whole box of foam "princess" stickers. They're very... uh... princessy. And foamy. And stickery and sticky as well.

You can imagine what they thought of this gift, and what I thought of this gift. (I always tell people, reaching for presents for children they don't know, that one can never go wrong with craft supplies. If you *like* the parents, get crayons and paper and smocks, and if you *don't* like the parents get markers, and paint, and lots of stickers. People laugh, but I really mean it! The kids, of course, will be happy either way - but nobody in the world can miss the oh-so-subtle declaration of war inherent in an unopened box of stickers.)

So the stickers have been shuttled around a lot, and the niecelings never really have had a chance to play with them, because, duh - stickers.

They got into the stickers on Friday. And I saw them with their little sticker earrings, and it took a while for the thought to sink in that if they have sticker earrings, it follows that they must have stickers.

I took away the stickers, and then began the arduous process of determining where the stickers had come from, and why.

Not so arduous - Ana's the only one who could have gotten them from where they were. Unfortunately, Ana's also the one bright enough to blame it on her sister. It wasn't until I had both of them reach up to where the stickers had been that she conceded the point. Then she attempted to tell me that she'd lied to protect her little sister - "because when you give her a time-out, I'll come save her from time-out!" (Even though, of course, she knows that that doesn't work.)

With that settled, I thanked Ana for being honest, pointed out that she would not, therefore, get a time-out for lying... and sent her to sit down for stealing the stickers in the first place!

Turns out, in our second talk, that she'd taken the stickers to "put them on the walls in Mommy's room so when Mommy comes home she'll be happy and say "Oh, there's stickers on my room, they're pretty!" and she'll be happy!"

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I keep reminding myself that she means well, but sometimes it's hard.