“Snackster.net is a powerful cookbook program that redefines how people will get their recipes. Snackster.net is the world’s best peer to peer recipe sharing program. Unlike other popular file sharing networks Snackster.net is dedicated to only cooking.”
“The SWIPE Toolkit is a collection of web-based tools that sheds light on personal data collection and usage practices in the United States. The tools demonstrate the value of personal information on the open market and enable people to access information encoded on a driver’s license or stored in some of the many commercial data warehouses.”
Li’l G’n’R is the first ever Guns ‘n’ Roses kid’s tribute band. Be sure to check out the audition video.
Build an excellent camping stove from one Pepsi and one Guinness can.
Build your own “growing bag” hanging planters from 4-inch pvc pipes. (I’ve got a notion to do something like this for the farmers’ market…)
Folks in the middle of Detroit are turning abandoned lots into mini-farms, complete with livestock. “Roughly a third of this 139-square-mile city consists of weed-choked lots and dilapidated buildings. Satellite images show an urban core giving way to an urban prairie.”
You may have heard about American foie gras farms, where ducks and geese are kept in tiny cages and mechanized pipes force feed directly into their stomach to make their livers swell. An influential California lawmaker has introduced legislation that would outlaw the possession of foie gras produced this way (and the high-class restaurant industry, formidable in California, is up in arms over the idea). In Europe, American-style factory farms started to become the norm in their foie gras production, too, until the EU outlawed the practice (France and Hungary, the two leading producers of foie gras, have been given a waiver while they try to find alternatives). But, like most everything agricultural, it doesn’t have to be done like a factory. An English couple produce foie gras the traditional French way on a small farm in northern France, and (if you’re not adverse to the notion of killing animals for food), it doesn’t sound bad at all.
Most people around here think we live in Cherokee country. We don’t, actually, as the Cherokee lived farther north. This was Creek country, at least until shortly after the US Revolution, when pressures from the Americans to the east, Spanish to the south, French to the west, and Cherokee to the north finally did them in. The remnants of this once vast confederation of related tribes are now in Oklahoma, having been forcibly moved there along with the other “civilized tribes” by Andrew Jackson.
Here is the Library of Congress’ on-line map collection, 1500-2004.