I apologize for the lack of updates recently. Sometimes life just gets in the way of blogging. I also wanted to warn my readers that I will be on vacation all next week and then a few days, so I’m afraid updates will continue to be thin for a while. Hang in there. I’ll be back.

I’m still very short of time as I write this, but I wanted to at least post this week’s TITMT. I’ll edit this post with my answer once I have more time.

What is your favorite taste, smell, touch/texture/sensation, thing to see/sight and sound?

And of course, what TITMT would be complete without the flip side?

What is your least favorite taste, smell, touch/texture/sensation, thing to see/sight and sound?

I would like to add that I’m more interested in answers that you haven’t given before. For instance, when thinking of your favorite taste, it’s too easy to simply reiterate your answer to the ‘favorite food’ question. Instead, give me a class of tastes, like ’salty’, or something even more creative. Since I haven’t posted a ‘least favorite’ question before, feel free to answer that any way you choose. Enjoy!

Thanks, as always, to Janet for continuing her TITMT series.

Bunnies4Buddha is often in the middle of two or more books. One of which can always be found on the right sidebar. We try to place the book that she will finish next there. Unfortunately, we can never be sure. In this case, she needed a break from non-fiction and picked up a fiction book: The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd.

As we do for all the books we read from now on, she wrote a review of the book. I thought her review was excellent and wanted to make sure that my readers were made aware of it. She has a dedicated book review page were you can find this, and all of her reviews.

Incidentally, after a full month of completing it, I finally have a review of The End of Faith by Sam Harris up on my review page. It’s note as good as B4B’s, but I hope you find interesting.

Janet’s has posted a TITMT that was submitted by nat, another regular participant. This week’s question involves one of my favorite species: Canis lupus familiaris. These friendly animals are still officially the same species as wild wolves, but we love them so much that we gave them their own sub-species designation. But enough trivia, Janet, Nat, and I all want to know:

If you were a dog, what breed would you be?

I’m posting this question a bit late in part because I wasn’t sure how to answer this one. B4B and I own two dogs, a gray hound and a rotweiler mix, but their personalities are nothing like mine. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that no breed can really match my personality. Through selective breeding, we have made dogs extroverts. They wear their emotions on their, er… tails and are extremely affectionate… unless abused. So I guess I’d have to be a mildly abused dog

B4B suggest the Shar-Pei. Some aspects fit, the big head, independent nature, unfriendliness towards cats, and stubbornness. But they are much more energetic than I and I don’t know if I could describe myself as loyal and brave. This is the better than any fit I can think of, so I’ll go with that.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of my The Issues According to a Candidate’s Website posts. I only got about half way through John Edward’s issues before he dropped out of the race. Okay, and I got burned out writing about these issues. But now there is only one candidate left in the running (who has any chance at all) that I have not yet covered: John McCain.

I never intended to write about McCain when I started this project since, at the time, his candidacy was all but declared dead. But as of yesterday’s primary in Wisconsin, McCain is the de facto Republican nominee. He has 15 issues currently listed on his site. I will divide them up between three posts of five issues each. So here are the first five issues that matter to him and what his stances are on them according to the issues page on his website.

Economic Stimulus Plan: As the publics short attention span causes them to shift focus from the War in Iraq, so does the emphasis made by the candidates. Based on any rational criteria, the political economic stimulus package is not the most important issue facing America this election cycle. Yet, here it is, on the top of McCain’s list.

Instead of actually talking about the bill, he uses this issue as a platform to discuss a portion of his economic plan. The first thing he mentions is cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. I’d be all for that, if that rate applied to corporate income before deductions and after rebates and incentives. In fact, everything on that page is about saving businesses money. It seems McCain’s top priority for his planned administration is cutting taxes for the wealthiest institutions in the world while the middle class slowly slips into poverty. At some point, I’m going to have to write a post about what I consider the fundamental folly of supply-side economics (more appropriately known as ‘trickle-down’ economics).

Read the rest of this entry »

I noticed that Scott and Snurp had done this. I didn’t want to be left out. If you’d like, you can take the test as well. Send me the link to your results and I’ll publish them in the comments.

You can also see results from other tests I’ve taken here.

In this week’s TITMT, Janet wants a lists of favorites. She has a number of categories picked out and asked bloggers who repost her question to add their own. So here they are with the ones I added in bold:

Given the theme of this week’s holiday, I want to know what your favorite things are in life. The list of ideas is as follows…

Favorite Food
Favorite Movie
Favorite Drink
Favorite Bands/Songs
Favorite Memory
Favorite TV Show
Favorite Books
Favorite Thinker/Philosopher

A number of these are easy for me to answer, others would take rather lengthy answers to answer completely. I’ll take them one at a time.

Favorite Food
Aaaah, one of my favorite aspects of being alive: eating. I love all sorts of food and my favorites have changed throughout my life. The list of my childhood favorites include pancakes, (regular) cake, and various fast food items: pretty boring stuff. Sweet and greasy were the only flavors I really knew. Then in my late teens, I discovered real flavors. For the first, I was trying foods with ingredients like onions, green peppers, garlic, and spices. My tastes have been ever expanding since. I never had take-out Chinese until I was in college, sushi until grad school. The latter is my current favorite. The best sushi I’ve had yet is a roll called ‘Hot Lava’ at place in Uptown Charlotte called Fujo Bistro. Mmmmm, now I’m going to have to go there this weekend.

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Reuters is carrying an interesting story. Apparently, the British government paid a ‘psychic’ to rid a state home of a ‘poltergeist’. My knee-jerk reaction is outrage that the government of an ‘enlightened’ country would waste funds on charlatans but reading more about the story uncovered an interesting moral dilemma.

The poor family living in there were going to leave the house and never return unless the government did something about the ‘haunting’. This would leave the family homeless. So two things to note here. First, the government didn’t believe in the existence of the ghost, the family did. Second, procuring alternative housing for the family would cost more than the fraud ‘psychic’. So here’s the dilemma: Should the government let the family’s own superstition drive them from their subsidized housing and make it available to more rational, but still needy tenants or did the government do the right thing? I’m interested in your thoughts.

In the past, I have read that corn-based ethanol may have a net carbon-neutral effect at best. This was because the fossil fuel based fertilizers used to grown most all corn in the US offset any gains. Now, Scientific American has published an article about two new studies that show a major piece of the carbon equation has been neglected in previous research on biofuels. These show that the widespread use of all biofuels would definitely increase net carbon emissions.

It is true that when burned, biofuels represent a carbon-emissions savings over fossil fuels. So how is it that they increase overall carbon emissions? It is through plant-displacement. When an area is cleared to make way for growing biofuels, the plants that were being used are no longer sucking up and storing their share of carbon. In fact, they begin releasing their stored carbon as they decay.

This plant-displacement effect is amplified by free market forces. For the first time, space to grow fuel is competing with space to grow food. The upshot of this is that biofuels will increase food prices, especially soy bean prices. With high soy prices, people in places like Brazil start cutting down carbon-rich rain forest and planting lucrative soy. An acre of soy stores much less carbon than an acre of rain forest. As that rain forest foliage is burnt or left to decay, all their carbon is released into the atmosphere.

There are ways to make biofuels work, but none of them are economically efficient and thus won’t be pursued without government intervention. Combine this with the fact that “if we convert every corn kernel grown today in the U.S. to ethanol we offset just 12 percent of our gasoline use,” and one can see that biofuels are not a way out of the global warming problem.

On this day in 1809, two great men were born. One is Abraham Lincoln, who’s birthday we Americans are celebrating on Monday, and Charles Darwin. Today, the world celebrates Darwin Day. As the linked webpage’s subtitle says, Darwin Day is “an international recognition of science and humanity.” So take a minute today to stop and appreciate what humans are capable of when they use the scientific method.

EDIT: Though  today Lincoln’s birthday, Presidents Day is in honor of Washington’s birthday (Feb 22nd). Oops!

Greetings,
Here is this week’s TITMT. Sid is sick so I am posting it for him. I can’t do any of that fancy stuff like pictures, links or the white-rectangle-thingy without his help so I am using the primitive cut-and-paste method. Enjoy!

P.S. Janet is asking this question since she is planning her own wedding. I added part 1A.

1. If you’re married, what was your wedding song?
1A. Why did you chose that song?
2. If you’re not married, what song would you wish was your wedding song?
3. Do you have any suggestions for someone like me? (don’t be offended if I gag at a choice or two. Like I said, I am very selective about the musical company I keep. I just want to see what y’all come up with.)