A weekly digest

I’m hopeful that my stepped up freelance duties at Tonic won’t completely quash my independent musings here, although, one week into the expanded twice-a-day mode, in place of my previous twice-a-month role, I discern the possibility.

Anyhow, I am pleased with the new role, hope that I am doing and will do justice to it all, and look forward to moving (with luck quickly) through the adjustment phase into comfort zone. With that, here are synopsis links to my first batch of articles.

Leave it to rocket scientists to crank the concept of crash test dummy up a few notches.

While it may have required the advent of humankind to bring The Three Stooges into being, laughter may have been the best medicine long before it was fashionable to be bipedal.

For the serious winemaker, a description of finished product reading “notes of black currant and apricot, a grassy nose, and a hint of ladybug taint would ideally be avoided.

It turns out that processed junk foods aren’t just bad for human health. Quoth the raven: You done eating that?

At the bottom of the world lies a time capsule of pre-human conditions on planet Earth. We’re inching ever closer to being able to access this trove, but a cautious approach is required.

A hybrid version of the American chestnut tree may reclaim the prominence it had long held in eastern forests that ran from the southeast states northward into New England and bring key environmental benefits.

A novel design approach frees the offshore wind turbine from the seabed and allows for capturing the resource where the turbines are out of the way and where the winds are stronger too. Could this innovation blow things wide open in offshore wind farming?

Singing for sex is not just for rock stars. The females of a water strider species is found to retract a protective shield and permit mating only after the male cranks the tunes for her.

tee hee hee bagging

I should have left it alone and let it pass quietly, but insofar as I lack capacity to help myself, I did “go there” in my most recent Tonic News contribution.

Up until the middle part of this past week, there certainly was plenty of talk around tea and teabags. Even after I had passed the point of annoyance with it all, my inner sophomoric galoot remained at least mildly amused.

News flash: people don’t like paying taxes. Whoa, Nelly. Stop the presses.

I could not help but react with a combination chuckle-snort during the Wednesday April 15th broadcast of the “Rachel Maddow Show,” during which she observed that the lion’s share of the Tax Day tea protests appeared to have taken place in public parks; and that the public safety of the participants in same appeared to have been facilitated by police and EMTs. It’s a fair guess that such facilities and services were not paid for by private, out-of-pocket donations.

Nobody gets all stemmy and bits-atingle at paying taxes. But I felt it worth noting the pisser panoply of energy and environmental initiatives that were woven into the stim package. It’s good stuff. And it’s about friggin’ time.

better slowly than not at all

It’s a simple equation, really: the manner in which we view and act upon the natural world is necessarily reflective of the state of consciousness that we as individuals (and as groups of various size up to and including the entirety of the human condition) have attained, work with, and bring to the party.

My current challenge is to not be impatient with it all. Things are changing, and I need to be mindful to recognize and celebrate that rather than burn energy wishing that things were moving at a more sprightly clip.

In Tanzania, land management practices achieve the twinned yield of highly prized coffee beans and expanded habitat for chimpanzees. The compelling conservation story allows local farmers to enjoy a premium price, greatly beneficial to the welfare of the local population.

Venice, Italy moves forward with plans to turn the algae that famously blooms in and clogs its canals (along with additional, lab-cultivated algae) into biofuel.

These are projects that differ in location and in focus to the point of perhaps seeming wholly unrelated. I’d suggest that what we see here is akin to standing with your nose to a Seurat painting: you see a few dots of different color that don’t seem to connect or reveal anything of sense, until you take a few steps back, and something of real meaning and beauty arises. (Advisory note: I do not recommend trying this exercise with an actual museum collection pointillist painting. You’ll be escorted out without the chance to delight in that $12 museum cafeteria grilled cheese for which you were hankering.)

The entirety of my latest musings may be found here at Tonic.com.

I came to a certain measure of acceptance and understanding since writing and submitting this piece mid-week, prior to my trip to Maine and back, that the impatience on my part (at what I deem change that is too slow) isn’t constructive.

Observe the changes. Applaud them. Help bring about more. That’s the mission.

worms of endearment

Thus far, this may be among my most absurd (and therefore, my favorite) first paragraph last sentences:

The temps are rising, more fresh offerings appear at the farmer’s market, and the observation of longer days in the wake of setting the clocks ahead still, somehow, comes as some sort of revelatory surprise. Spring has sprung, and my thoughts have turned to hermaphrodites.

The entire article, actually, is about earthworms, and in particular their contribution to the sort of healthy soil from which healthy food may arise. Please go have a peek, and drop a comment over there if you can.

two wheel or not two wheel

really not sure where my revived interest in having and using a bike comes from, but the worldwatch institute email blast regarding bike production’s ongoing upward trend sure resonated.

now, what would be REALLY bitchin’ would be to get a bike, and a new job here on this side of the bay to which i could ride it…

anyhow, bikes be on the brain in my latest contribution to tonic news.

latest offering to tonic news

it’s kind of a ponderous piece, but that’s just where i find myself this time of year as i carve another notch.

i actually feel a little bit of satisfaction and relief with the opening sentence, i think it’s one of the livelier ones i’ve hammered out.

I’ve been flailing for the past couple of days, waving my arms erratically, shoeing away article topic ideas as if they were just so many noisome chiggers I’m loathe to let land and be still.

ok, i’ll keep that one.

and it really, seriously was a complete mind-spank to just go fishing online aimlessly for thought fodder and within a couple minutes, stumble across this major finding that came out of the tufts freaking university department of oh-hell-no-you did-not geology.