The New Scientist interviews Stefano Padulosi, head of underutilised food crops for the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute. He travels the world, finding crops that ought to be used for food alongside the more common crops. Over 95% of the planet’s foodstuff comes from only 30 varieties of plant. Sound like putting all your eggs in one basket? I find it fun to grow uncommon plants in my own garden. Two varieties of Amaranth. Quinoa. Native corn. Domesticated lambsquarters (yum!). Unique watermelons. Heirloom tomatoes. And so on. Why grow the same old stuff you can get at the grocery? If you’re going to grow your own brocolli (for example), try to find something besides the ultra-selected Burpee’s variety. Seeds of Change is a nice place to start.

[Bug Eyed Earl sings](http://www.phs.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/fm.cgi?caption=Put your rear on y%27 ear and wiggle your toes&leftpic=crazy1&leftq1=Ain%27t nothing like it%2C you know it%27s true. Doin%27 the the hoodleehoo%21&leftq2=I know that note was wrong.&leftq3=Don%27t tell me I%27m wrong%21&rightpic=crazy2&rightq1=That was wrong.&rightq2=I%27m tellin%27 ya%2C buddy-&rightq3=Well%2C you listen to me when I%27m talkin%27 to you%21) Cartoon Planet’s Hoodleehoo, thanks to Daniel Marks’ Red Meat Generator. Steve Wildey pointed me to this. I’d link to him if he had a website.

Woo hoo! Max Cannon has greatly improved the Red Meat Archives! Now you can pull up your favorite Red Meat strip by title or by favorite character.

Somebody found this page while searching for “hampster dance lyrics”. Ummm…. maybe I can help you out:

Hampster Dance Lyrics
Do dit do da do de doh doh, dee bah do dit doh. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doh de doh. Ha ha ha ha!

Hope that helps.

Today is Kestrel’s Nest’s first birthday. After reading weblogs for some time (Robot Wisdom, CamWorld, EatonWeb, PeterMe, CardHouse, and Obscure Store were my daily rotation), a year ago I decided to start one of my own. But it was hard, mostly due to weird restrictions from my ISP and my laziness in moving to another. Then in late August 1999, Blogger was born. And Blogger was everything I needed. Since last August 30, I’ve been writing nearly every day. The last twelve months have seen an amazing amount of change in my life, and writing has helped me see things clearly and focus on what is important. Thank you for coming by over the last year. It means a lot to me that so many of you not only have wandered in, but return from time to time to see what I’m up to. And even more, while I’m no Jorn or Cam or Peter or Brig, it is wonderful that I have inspired a few of you to begin writing as well. Everyone should write more. Even if it is just a few sentences a day on scraps of paper that get thrown away, write more.

Here’s a time lapse log of the last year:

August 30, 1999: It lives!
September 30, 1999: Cheese Roll Goes Down Well
October 29, 1999: Phil dE Cat with Grape Jelly
November 30, 1999: The Clothespin Repertory Theater
January 1, 2000: I went to the Gobbler
January 31, 2000: Udderly Smooth Udder Cream
February 29, 2000: Tour my house
March 30, 2000: Too jittery to sleep
April 30, 2000: I destroy a city
May 30, 2000: Sweet, sweet apple fritter
June 29, 2000: Abortion in the news
August 1, 2000: Confederados in Brazil
August 30, 2000: You are here

I’m voting for James “Kool” Polk. Who loves ya, buddy!

The finale of Cartoon Network’s Staylongers is now online. If you haven’t seen this wonderful take on Survivor , take a gander. The Cartoon Network webmaster has messed up the URLs a bit, so here’s the five episodes directly: one, two, three, four and five.

It’s “make you own hooch” week at CNN, apparently, Yesterday: Making illegal liquor – and profits – in Appalachian hills, with a nice description of the distilling process. Today: Try making an alternative wine, complete with recipes. It’s “make your own hooch” week at my house, too. Tonight’s feature is hard ginger ale. It’ll be ready in a couple weeks.

My new favorite scientific term: Rings of Repugnance. These are the tall rings of grass that circle cow patties in the pasture. Cows won’t eat that close to their dung, so the grass grows taller. There is a variety of fungus (“Coprophilous” – “dung loving”) that lives in dung piles. To thrive, spores from these fungii must get eaten by an animal in order to get redeposited in a fresh dung pile. But, due to the Ring of Repugnance, they have a hard time finding a way in the animal. The solution? The spores have developed little propulsion systems that launch them outside the Ring of Repugnance. For more information, see Be It Ever So Humble, There’s No Place Like Dung from the Carolina Biological Supply Company. Incidentally, most “magic mushrooms” are coprophilous. You might want to wash them before you snack.

My kitten and I have a lion / lion-tamer relationship. Only in reverse. When I yawn, she sticks her head in my mouth. I don’t think I need to say how disconcerting that is.

An excercise in remembering the early years
When I was very young, my family had one of those old-fashioned washing machines, with the open drum and the mechanical wringer. We kept it in the bathroom, which was a step down from the rest of the house. The bathroom was pretty large, and was always cooler than the rest of the house. There was a tub in the center, the toilet, a shower in the corner, and the washing machine. Sometimes we’d store cases of soda that dad brought home from “The Pop Shop”, grape and strawberry and orange and other hard to find sodas. I don’t recall a dryer, so I guess we hung the clothes out on the line. I knew the masher was old, and was facinated by all the moving parts. My mother impressed upon me the knowledge that the wringer was very dangerous. I pictured my whole arm getting sucked in and squished flat, so I was always afraid of it. One day, the machine broke and could not get repaired, so we started going in to town to use the laundromat. There were two I remember going to. One was next door to my father’s service station (an Amoco he got caught owning during the ’70s oil embargo). [Side story: Once while my mom was laundry there, I got into talking with a stranger. I wasn’t supposed to do that, of course, but the man was pretty nice. He ended up buying me a candy or soda or something, and that got me into trouble. I had to sit by myself and wait for the laundry to finish. Later (that day? I don’t recall), we went to a fair. The fair had a pony ride, the type where the ponies are tied to a wheel and they walk around in circles all day. The man running the pony ride was the one I’d met at the laundromat. I thought that was significant at the time.] The other was in a space-age kind of building and had an old-time red fire engine parked in the playground. Kids could climb all over the truck while their parents were inside washing clothes. Near this laundromat was an Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips. (I’d thought the chain went out of business, but I see they’re still alive and kicking.) I don’t think we ate there but a few times, but it was a treat when we did. I absolutely loved the battered crispy fish, so long as it was drowning in malt vinegar. What’s the point of all this? I still love fast food fish, drowning in malt vinegar. Every so often, I stop in Captain D’s or Long John Silver’s, and as I eat, I think back to when I was very, very young.