Links for 2007-07-20 & 21[del.icio.us]

joybucket: Peek-a-Boo Bunting Tutorial
found via Craftzine, a tutorial for a baby quilt that attaches to a stroller so the baby can't kick it off. Excellent idea!

Mandela turns 89 and launches 'a robust force for good' | Guardian Unlimited
Nelson Mandela marked his 89th birthday today with the launch of a group of world-renowned leaders who plan to use several Nobel peace prizes and "almost 1,000 years of collective experience" to tackle global crises that governments are unable or unwilling to confront."
Using their collective experience, their moral courage and their ability to rise above nation, race and creed, they can make our planet a more peaceful and equitable place to live," said the former South African president.

perfect pikelets ~ My Way or the Highway » Wear it. Eat it. Deny you are responsible.
Mmmm, pikelets.

By request. on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
A great knitted top (cardigan/jacket) seen at flickr. I think this would make a great garment for a nursing mother -- may need to make myself one!

Your Gamete, Myself - Egg Donation - Reproduction - In Vitro Fertilization - Infertility - Women - Peggy Orenstein - New York Times
An interesting look at the implications of egg donation.

Magazine Box Tutorial - a photoset on Flickr
found via Craft

Snicket Socks - MagKnits, your friendly online knitting magazine
"These socks were inspired by the dress Violet Baudelaire (Emily Browning) wears in the movie Lemony Snicket – A Series of Unfortunate Events. I wanted to translate the net-like sleeves into knitting.

BBC NEWS | From Our Own Correspondent | Losing the taste for China's delicacies

BBC NEWS | Health | Healthy weight link to longevity
"Keeping a healthy weight may help people live longer by limiting brain exposure to insulin, say US scientists."

Celtic Braid Socks: Tuulian omia juttuja:
Another sock pattern, this one with a nice celtic looking cable pattern

Black Dog Designs
A collection of knitting patterns from the blogger of the blog Black Dog Knits
. Quite a few I would like to try sometime, probably going to stick with the socks for now (and there are several sock patterns that caught my fancy there.

Shetland Lace Rib Sock Pattern: Stitches of Violet
And, yes, another knitting pattern for socks!

Links for 2007-07-16 [del.icio.us]

• Suburban CEO - Think outside the cubicle.
  linked to in this post at ParentDish
  Apparently "[t]his site is for every woman who wants to stay at home with her children but has had to reluctantly admit that she often feels frazzled, overwhelmed and not totally fulfilled. This site will help you identify the five missing pieces from modern life as an at-home mom and become CEO of your own life." That sounds interesting to me (although I'm not sure I'm going to agree with everything there) so I'm planning to go back and read more.
• Effect of spearmint (Mentha spicata Labiatae) teas on androgen levels in women with hirsutism. Herbal Science Research
• Instructables Toasty slippers"These slippers are made from recycled woolen blanket, recycled fleece fabric and scraps of brightly coloured fabric from my stash! I have a pair with red polka dot binding, they are so comfortable and keep my feet nice and warm."

What caught my eye today...

I'm trying a new tactic today; starting a "what's caught my eye today" post in the morning and adding links over the course of the day. It feels much more time efficient! I'm so behind on bloglines though that this post is going to be very heavy on Independent articles because I had a lot of headlines to look through from them, and they seem to have lots of articles I'm interested in at the moment.

Picture of the Day

This stunning blue quilt, hand pieced and quilted. One of these days I'll get back to quilting, my husband would love a quilt like that (blue is his favourite colour).

At the BBC:

I notice that BBC4 is featuring The Edwardians through May, lots of interesting looking programmes. The one that caught my attention in listings was called "What the Edwardians sounded like" but the link seems to be broken. There are also Edwardian themed shows on music hall, food, Saki, photography, shopping and more. I hope some of the shows make their way to BBCAmerica but I won't hold my breath.

A crossover -- scientists have found multiple ancient texts hidden in parchment recycled in the thirteenth century to make a prayer book. I noticed an article on this story at the BBC a few days back, and today read the Independent's article (which I think has more information). I love the idea of finding lost texts hidden behind other old documents. And having taken A-Level Ancient history I have an inkling of some of the lots texts we think have been lost forever that it'd be so exciting to discover hidden in this way!

In the Independent

Covering up 'best protection from sun' - experts say wearing clothes and hats that shield us from sun exposure is actually preferable to just slapping on sunscreen. (also covered by the BBC)

Why Britain can't cope with gays in high places: We like to think that Britain is a pretty tolerant place, a nation in which diversity is celebrated, where our private lives can remain just that. But as this week's sensational 'outing' of Lord Browne demonstrates, for those in the upper reaches of society, homosexuality remains a powerful taboo. Paul Bailey reflects on why one man's shame reveals a much wider hypocrisy

The Mighty Quinn: Art and agnosticism: The artist's 'Angel' was meant to provoke a debate about the existence of God. So where better to house it than a cathedral?

Theatres to be banned from turning bad reviews into a show of support - I've seen this story elsewhere too. It does seem ridiculous that theatres and similar can get away with the false advertising of taking snippets of reviews wildly out of context.

Britain's maligned moths suffer drastic decline: Sir David Attenborough is turning his attention to the humble - but increasingly endangered - moth.

Blushes

An article at the BBC looking at Embarrassment gives examples of embarrassing stories, talks about its physical symptoms and speculates as to why we get embarrassed (and the blushing, oh the blushing). I definitely embarrass easily, and agonise (for many years sometimes) over embarrassing situations that everyone else probably forgot fairly instantly so this is some comfort:

Instead of feeling awkward about being easily embarrassed, Professor Crozier says it's a sign of greater emotional intelligence.
"A prerequisite for embarrassment is to be able to feel how others feel - you have to be empathetic, intelligent to the social situation," he says.

Of course sometimes my greater emotional intelligence (if indeed I possess such) is over-ridden by my attempts to overcome shyness.

Embarrassment is a way of making us adhere to social codes so that we don't insult our friends, reveal our basic instincts or show too much of our private emotions. People who are unembarrassable are likely to be poor at reading social situations. So while everyone else cringes, they plough on, unable to pick up the sensitivities of the situation.

I think I can sometimes be the seemingly unembarrassable just because I'm pushing myself to not sit in the corner and say nothing and depending on where I am that leads to suppressing some sensitivities until words are out of my mouth, or (worse) I replay a conversation in my head later and cringe. Thankfully that doesn't happen too often, and at least it's only a temporary affliction. We certainly know people who don't seem to have much clue about social codes and make everyone else awkward.

I guess I'm not the only one interested in embarrassment; the article seems to be among the most popular stories at the BBC website at the moment.

Random Things

I have amassed a long list of links and articles to post. I wanted to write at least a little comment about a lot of them and haven't found the time to sit and write. So lest it look as though I've given up on this blog already, I'm going to skip to a few things I came across today and get back to the other stuff if and when I can.

First of all I was glad to see that Bill Moyers has a new show on (Bill Moyers Journal). Of course I forgot (or wasn't able to because of baby's needs) to watch it when it was on. The good news is that you (I) can watch stuff from the show at the website, and they have transcripts too! I watched the interview with Jon Stewart (being a Daily Show addict). It was interesting, not quite as excellent as I'd hoped, but thought provoking to be sure. The question of whether what the Daily Show does is journalism is an interesting one. Jon Stewart always seems emphatic that it's not, and I guess he should know. Seems to me it's satire rather than journalism, but it does seem that it's more than fake news and the interviews certainly get to be more like real journalism at times (there are some examples in the Moyers interview).

On a completely different subject, there was an interesting article about breastfeeding at the BBC News website today entitled "Lying down may help breastfeeding". 'Twas a little confusing to me -- they talked about lying down producing more of the mammalian nursing reflexes in nursing infants (because it's a more natural position than sitting up which seems reasonable). But then they're talking about the woman lying on her back with baby on top rather than side lying position which is certainly the position I think with other mammals I've seen nursing lying down (eg. cats, dogs, pigs), and of course some nurse standing (eg. cows, horses). Having said that I think the position's value is somewhat true in my experience. It actually took me longest to get the hang of side-lying nursing. But, when my daughter was pretty little I tried nursing lying on my back and it was quite good for us both (freaked out my husband a bit because he was afraid she'd suffocate or fall off but she had a strong neck from early on and could turn her head, and I was so hyper-aware of where she was I don't think she was in much danger of slipping off me even if I snoozed a little).

Oh, and also at the BBC News site, for those interested in Ancient History, read about "Gladiators' graveyard discovered ". There's an episode of Timewatch about it coming up. (That's a show I'd love to be able to watch on-demand, I love being able to keep up with BBC radio online, I'd love to be able to watch some TV too. BBC America just doesn't have a lot of what I miss.)

Things that caught my eye today...

Chocolate 'better than kissing', at least according to an article at the BBC News website. Hmm...

Also at the BBC, this time on Radio 4's Woman's Hour, a piece about Women War Artists. Apparently at the beginning of World War 2 there was a project to get artists to record scenes of everyday life to preserve "everyday town and country scenes it was feared would be lost" as a consequence of the war. The segment for Woman's Hour is largely a recording of three of the women artists getting together at the Imperial War Museum and taking a look at some of their paintings and talking about the project (listen online). I hope they put together an exhibition at some point

On one of the crafty blogs I check via bloglines (I have little to no short term memory these days) I saw the "Reduction Tote Bag" which I now must add to my To-Make list. I try to always bring my own cloth bags when I go shopping and this one folds up into it's own little pouch, very handy. The pattern is at the Crochet me Magazine website which I'd not come across before. I'm not really very experienced at following crochet patterns but it may be something that I need to work on if I'm going to make the cute little Dodo someday.

There are posts at various blogs I read today about the story of Baby Evelyn. I don't really feel as though I know the whole story but from what I've read it sounds as though the adoption process was handled horribly irresponsibly, and that now all the people involved are in for heartache (as is so often the case when adoption happens it seems). I've been trying to write more than that, but I'm not sure I can. I've thought a lot about adoption, especially in the last few years for various reasons, and I think it can be a wonderful thing but that it's hard for that to be true for the first families. I think I'll leave it at that since it's taken me ages to write this paragraph and I need my sleep.

On a lighter note, I think I want one of these egg separators that I saw in a post at SlashFood today. It would probably get old quickly though, and I'm usually perfectly capable of doing the job with the egg shells so it's not as though I need such a thing. It's so interesting to me the things that I'm not grossed out by that other people (like my husband) are, and vice versa.

And finally -- go and look at this beautiful picture of bluebells in the woods on a misty moisty morning, scenes like that make me ache to be back in England (much as I love New England).

Commonplace jumble

A recipe for chocolate almond cookies at Bunnyfoot that I want to remember to try out. (Also includes a good paragraph detailing some of the less appealing parts of having a newborn baby to mother.)

Whilst on the subject of food, the NYTimes has an article with The Perfect Bacon Sandwich Decoded which includes an actual formula ("the formula evolved to establish the amount of force in the bite, expressed in newtons, and the level of noise, expressed in decibels, to make the perfect crunch"). I do like a good bacon sandwich.

More articles that caught my eye:

In the Independent: Are mobile phones wiping out our bees? Cheery reading. It mentions that 'Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left"', and lists things some scientists think mobiles could be doing to humans too.

The GuardianOnline has an article from The Observer about Daphne duMaurier (Daphne's unruly passions -- Haunting mysteries, wild landscapes, brooding mansions and secret Sapphic desire ... welcome to 100 years of du Maurier) that I've been reading today. I haven't read a lot of duMaurier, and none at all for many years but maybe it's time again.

I came across this set of pictures through looking at images tagged with Art Nouveau. I don't remember hearing of George Frederick Watts or Mary Seton Watts before so I'm very happy with this discovery! Already did a mapquest check to see whether it'd be a reasonable idea to spend an afternoon visiting the Watts Gallery and Chapel the next time we're in England (answer is Yes, hurrah!).