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WORD/QUOTATION of the DAY
message 101:
by
Claudine
(new)
Apr 01, 2012 10:12AM
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The misogynist version; Life's a bitch — and then you marry one.
There is the fatalist's version: 'Life is like a sh!t sandwich; the more bread you have the less sh!t you have to eat.'
Boy am I out of the loop. My quirky brain is wondering how is it writers failed so spectacularly in coming up with words for the day that we had to add quotations?Not that I don't think it's a great idea...
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Worse than bad, worse than deplorable, worse than despicable.
Andre Jute wrote: "ExecrableWorse than bad, worse than deplorable, worse than despicable."
I am hanging this word so it is visible in my office making the next eight weeks more bearable.
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Is eight weeks away when you retire?
Andre Jute wrote: "It's definitely a word you want to hang by its neck with a slow-slipping knot.Is eight weeks away when you retire?"
I have already turned in my paperwork to the State and the last day of school is June 1st. We have another 30 days to wrap things up. We are then banned from the premises for the next 30 days; no volunteering nothing. It's a law.
For nearly a year now I have gotten a pretty good view of the cruelty and power of the good ole' boys network and small town politics. In this case the majority of the students will be the losers.
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Andre Jute wrote: "What are you planning to do, Margie?"At this point I wish to maintain my blog or some form of it. I believe, based on statistics, that there are still those that can benefit from what I have already posted. This year I have actually had several authors comment about my reviews which has been great. I feel like I am barely getting started "online-wise". It is going to be hard to review the newer children's books and young adult books without an even larger financial investment on my part. In addition to the reading for reviews I really have enjoyed the readers' advisory aspect of my position. Well actually I have enjoyed everything about being a teacher/librarian especially the host of opportunities presented by all aspects of the ever-changing technologies.
Truthfully, it's going to be a huge adjustment having done this since 1973. I am going to take "things" slow and easy after these past few years. Stopping to smell the roses hasn't actually been on my agenda.
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Andre Jute wrote: "Reviewers get free copies. Write to the publishers of the sort of book you review, point them to your blog, and ask to be put on their list for advance review copies."It's on my agenda, Andre. My one and only attempt was shot down for my blog not being well-established enough, according to the publicist. Thanks all.
Margie, that's why I get ticked off at publishers. They had an offer of free publicity and turned it down. I'll bet their authors weren't consulted. I also bet the authors would have said yes, and been glad for the opportunity you offered.
Patricia wrote: "Margie, that's why I get ticked off at publishers. They had an offer of free publicity and turned it down. I'll bet their authors weren't consulted. I also bet the authors would have said yes, and ..."Patricia, I am hoping that was the case as it was at the author's blog that the free ARC was offered. Time permitting I am going to be in hot pursuit.
Andre Jute wrote: "I'm sure Dakota and Claudine, respectively founder and conceiver of this thread won't mind if I broaden it a bit to include a Quotation of the day."I treasure my little thread, now grown BIG, but I don't mind.
Dakota, I treasure your thread too...Margie, I hope you enjoy your retirement. I am certain your second 'career' will be very well received and successful. All the best!
Sharon wrote: "Dakota, I treasure your thread too...Margie, I hope you enjoy your retirement. I am certain your second 'career' will be very well received and successful. All the best!"
Thanks, Sharon. I am looking forward to the change, I think.
Permaculture - A philosophy of ecological design which attempts to develop sustainable human settlements and agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems.I found a couple of videos about this interesting Austrailian form of agriculture. Thought it was TOO COOL and am sharing.
Ten Acres in Jordan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gPvsl...
Afghanistan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mU0RQu...
There are more, but the one in Jordan is most interesting because it survived 5 years without being tended.
K. A. wrote: "Permaculture - A philosophy of ecological design which attempts to develop sustainable human settlements and agricultural systems modeled from natural ecosystems.I found a couple of videos abou..."
Links please, kench!
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Modelling for large backsides, ladies? Who's volunteering then? I wonder if the clowns who put up these stupidities ever think them through.
God, I love the trendy. They're alway good for a laugh.
I happen to have relatively large rounded buttocks, which I love as they are the only saving grace to my otherwise rather boyish figure.Trendy does not always translate to silliness. F'rinstance, a few years ago it was trendy to watch your salt intake. Today we know it truly can affect ones health.
Permaculture appears to be more about planting forests than farming annuals. I haven't read much about it, yet, but the video about the Jordan 10 acres that continued to thrive without help was what caught my eye.
The fact that it is Australian might be the reason it uses so little water. Indstrial farming needs a lot of water.
Permaculture appears to be more about planting forests than farming annuals. I haven't read much about it, yet, but the video about the Jordan 10 acres that continued to thrive without help was what caught my eye.
The fact that it is Australian might be the reason it uses so little water. Indstrial farming needs a lot of water.
Aussies are ingenius - I've got a saddle made with the most interesting design.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZXMMc...
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You always have the best stories, Andre.
Trendy? Not sure.Interesting way to grow food in the desert. One that looks like it will work without too much fussing. I was researching something else when I stumbled on it.
The thought that deserts could be re-planted is an intreguing one.
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But anyone who tells you that Australian aborigines were planters, settlers, harvesters, farmers of any kind, is a) ignorant and b) a liar. The aborigines were wanderers. Their culture of the Dreamtime is to go walkabout. They take their food where they find it.
The San people of Southern Africa ditto. I've never seen one of them as much as drag a stick in the soil to make a furrow for seed.
Whatever your sources are withering on about, it surely isn't Australian or African desert aborigines. And if they're talking about black people, Bantu, that is as ignorant. Black people aren't aborigines of the deserts but displacers from the savannah; their agricultural "wisdom" adds up to zero as anyone can attest who has ever seen the massive erosion of the dongas their tribally sanctioned farming methods caused.
Yah, I know, it's not what trendy people want to hear. They prefer to substitute wishful thinking for the observable facts. But those are the observable facts, and I have observed them.
If the science of the method of growing stuff in the desert is good, why do they need the snake-oil patter of tying the method to some non-existent ancient wisdom? Sounds fishy to me.
I haven't seen anything that talks about aborigines - yet. What they stress is modern conture planting and something they call 'pioneer' and nitrogene fixing trees.They call goats 'giant maggots' that strip plants from the earth and create deserts. Which I've heard before.
In fact, most of what I've read on creating deserts and erosion blames the goat in the south and the deer in the UK for the lack of young trees and the difficulty in re-planting forests.
Not an aborigine in sight so far.
The Aussie saddle is the most comfortable and the most secure I've ever ridden. Since I started using mine I haven't been bucked off even once. I used to hit the ground on a regular basis when I rode English. Even during lessons, I'm ashamed to say.
I'm not going to give up my helmet, but I can take the old mare out on the trails without worrying she'll dump me and leave me lay.
Andre wrote: I didn't know it was trendy...There's always something trendy about food in North America. This week/month/year everyone is 'allergic' to wheat, next week/month/year it is dairy, and on and on. There's a whole culture of 'food is bad for you' out there. I have a couple of friends who have come to literally fear food. I fear for them.
Still, I do believe we could husband our resources better. At the very least we need to be aware of the consequences of what we do. We had a huge wind storm here in Vancouver a few years ago that took down hundreds of old-growth trees in our urban nature park. It was heartbreaking to see 500-1000+ yr-old trees with ten-foot plus trunks lying there. But it was nature, feeding nature. Most of them were removed, supposedly because they were worried about them being a fire hazard. I was away when it happened and visited the park immediately upon my return. Heartbreaking, no doubt, and the park will never be quite the same. But in some ways it is better. But the looks I get when I mention this! There is more sunlight shining through, bringing a wonderful lightness to the area. Hundreds of old trees survived, and these can be seen and appreciated even better. I suspect too, that they may thrive and grow to a greater extent, and future generations will be just as in awe as we are today...
I grew up with a sister who had food phobia's. I've always felt I missed out on a lot because she was afraid to eat something and kicked up a huge fuss about it.I get puzzled when I see that they are growing Maize in Africa. That's corn, a plant that requires massive amounts of fertilizer in the relatively fertile US soil.
So why in the name of sanity would the subsistance farmer in Africa what to grow something they can import for 1/4 of the price of growing it.
It's a lousy choice of food crop. Wheat or barley would make more sense.
Industrial farming doesn't make a lot of sense to me - when animal waste is concentrated into a toxin instead of fertilizer. Even here at the croft, the soil was only good for producing weeds the first 3 years. But now that I'm spreading the horse bedding mixed with grass seed and wood ashes the pastures are lovely. Everything I buy becomes fertilizer. The horse feed, the wood shavings, the straw, the chicken feed - the chickens eat the bugs and the grass so it becomes fertilizer too.
And it makes more sense to have trees and fruit in desert places where they are native (like dates and olives) instead of annual crops that need horrendous amounts of water. The 'test plot' in the video used only the water it got after the 3rd year - yet it thrived.
Of course, ADM won't get wealthy selling over-priced seed to people who don't need it. It's called creating a market.
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There's always something trendy about food in North America. This week/month/year everyone is 'allergic' to wheat, next week/month/year it is dairy, and..."
Everywhere. There's a certain element of snobbery in it, that they're special.
One of my pedal pals always knows what's the latest thing in the health food store that thrives in our (rich) little town. we all try the stuff she buys there; the best you can say for it is that some of it isn't tasteless, and the rest tastes like crap so much, it's sure to be good for someone (else's bank account). I don't even go in there. The supermarkets sell a better class of bread, and so does the country market and the farmers' market and the deli (named Urru for Urban and Rural, tres trendy).
Anyone who thinks that more of the so-called "fair trade" products' profits land back in the hands of the primary grower need only hold in his hands a bar of chocolate (candy to the Americans) supposedly from Bongo-Bongo, repackaged by westerners to appeal to the vacuous guilt of the ignorant, and a packet of Smyrna figs packaged by a peasant co-op in Israel or Syria or Turkey, and work out on which one the profits went into peasant pockets, and on which one the profits were consumed by advertising and marketing. Those two items are sold within ten paces of each other in my local Lidl. I buy the figs with glee, and put the chocolate back on the shelf with disdain, and pick up the Bourneville on the next shelf, as at least I know the maker has a generations-long policy of treating its suppliers fairly, and of spending big on philanthropy.
But, if you want to hear a really sick joke, a few years ago the President of British Farmers' Union was on the radio, trying to get another layer of cost imposed on the peasants who are at the end of the leash of "fair trade". He said, "How do we know they produce their goods to accepted ethical standards? There should be certification, and we should be involved."
Here's an example of how flaky our own "ethical standards" are, and the level of costs the Farmer's Union want to impose on fair trade suppliers to remove their cost advantage. It costs us in the EU about a thousand dollars, or so, in bureaucracy and tests to put a tag on a calf's ear; without the tag the calf can't even be buried, and can certainly not be used for anything, fertiliser, food, nothing. Of course, we now needn't fear CJD, but the cost is horrendous, and there was a much simpler, cheaper solution: stop feeding cattle the bonemeal made with the remains of other cattle! When I suggested it, I was ostracised by a walking group of public health officials from a conference called to seek a solution because they were *forbidden to discuss it* for political reasons. (In the end, they were forced by the EU to do exactly what I suggested on Day One.)
Andre said: Everywhere. There's a certain element of snobbery in it, that they're special.I might not call it snobbery, but it certainly sometimes is a call for attention. At other times it seems an excuse for carrying too much/too little weight. The saddest part is so many of these individuals are serial bandwagoners. Last month they were certain they had an allergy to wheat, this month they discover they don't, but now it's dairy or yeast or...
I don't mean to disparage the many folks who are proven to have these allergies (or disorders), they are real and serious. I have a very good friend who was literally on the brink of death until she was diagnosed as having celiac disease. Like salt, it is remarkable how often gluten is used as a filler in products and she still suffered for a few months before learning to check the (extremely in most cases) small print list of ingredients in every food product she used, f'instance most oyster sauces.
Of course it all comes back to fresh is best and eating at least three moderate squares a day.
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My brother-in-law was wrongly diagnosed as diabetic...
Andre Jute wrote: "I used to go hillwalking with a celiac who had it under control, but eating in a restaurant with him, as we used to do when we came off the mountains, could be a fraught experience..."Yeah, dangerous stuff for celiacs, that, eating in restaurants - or anywhere outside of home.
ProsodyFrom the Oxford English Dictionary (Andre's fave, kench)
prosody
n. 1. the theory and practice of versification; the laws of metre. 2. the study of speech-rhythms.
prosodic adj. prosodist n. [ME f. L prosodia accent f. Gk prosoidia (as PROS-, ODE)]
From Wikipedia: ...rythym, stress and intonation of speech...
Being skilled in the art of prosody is something every author aught to pracice, ihmo...
Sounds like a disease. Prosody, yech.
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Istanbul - It used to pronounced "Constantinople"(wink)
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Awww, she's such a good'un. Methinks you'll just have to share...
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On 06-06-2012 09:58, Andre Jute wrote:
> The traffic in Sydney is so awful, I used to go to work by speedboat.
> I'd moor it below the Opera House and walk up Pitt Street to my
> office, and cut half an hour off the journey from Vaucluse. It's
> called lateral thinking. -- Andre Jute
Are you sure it's not littoral thinking?
--
Wes Groleau
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Er—
