Two Cents and a Thousand Words

Here’s a quick post about two observations I’ve made having to do with the birds and the… ants… this week.

First, my neglect of the kitchen has led to an influx of tiny little ants. I could blame the dirtiness on the off-and-on flu-thing I’ve had over the last couple of weeks, but it’s really just because I’m lazy. Anyway, the little fellas enjoyed dining on a couple patches of dropped chocolate syrup and a few pieces of shredded cheese.

This posed quite the dilemma for me; I don’t particularly enjoy killing anything that doesn’t have to be killed, but I wanted the little suckers gone. I decided (half-jokingly) to send a warning shot. I brought out the Swiffer and started to mop around them, and then the most peculiar thing happened: they retreated. There’s no doubt they retreated. They marched right back to the hole from which they came. Maybe it was the smell of the lemon citrus scent - or maybe they sent out a warning. I continue to believe that animals are not as dumb as we assume them to be. But as I found out Friday, they’re sometimes a little more uninhibited than we are.

On the way home on Friday night, I saw these two lovesparrows. It’s almost a reflex for me to grab my camera when I see something unusual or something I’ll very likely never see again, so I decided to share it with you.

I’m not sure whether to be taken in the beauty of nature and its many aspects or whether to just be grossed out. Is that like a cognitive dichotomy?

Another idea I should’ve patented…

The Scotsman reports (and MacRumors picked up) that Apple may release an iPod that announces the names of songs or artists as they play.

I wanted to make a piece of software that did that because I always hated fumbling around to find out what song was playing.

Grr… I mean… yay? I dunno.

I’m proud to admit that I’m a treehugger, but I only obsess about it in some cases. Organic food is not usually one of them; I buy it if I can at the store, but the added price isn’t always worth it to this recently-out-of-college frugal kid. It’s all washed anyway, right? It doesn’t make that much of a difference.

My trip today went really well, but one of the things that stuck out most was my sunset drive past a well-known set of blueberry fields in Deblois. Maine prides itself of being a top producer of blueberries in the US (as well it should, as any drive through the Downeast region of Maine will show). Upon driving past these fields, I was greeted with fluorescent orange signs every few hundred feet informing me of the following information:

• The fields had been sprayed with the Imidan pesticide a couple of hours before I travelled through the area.
• People were not supposed to enter the fields for 24 hours.
• If entry was necessary, the persons should wear proper pesticide equipment or apparel.

Turns out there’s been some discussion about blueberry pesticide spraying. It also turns out Imidan is a possible carcinogen and neurotoxin.

What a coincidence. I always thought that adding a carcinogen and neurotoxin would really give my pancakes an extra kick.

Today I’ll be doing my first Maine trip in a while; I think I’m going to be heading east on the Airline (Route 9) and then swing down along the Downeast coast. Pictures (hopefully good ones) when I get back!

Teh Internets is the greatest thing ever and the worst thing ever. Of course, you could say that about journalism itself, too. I was browsing Google News and found these two articles in the top 3 listings for this particular story.

CitizenLink.org (”helping you defend the family”) points out that rulings against gay marriage will, of course, save marriage (?) and will stop those “homosexual activists” from getting their way:

[Chairman of Focus on Family Action Dr.] Dobson said Americans are fed up with activist judges attempting to re-engineer the social structure of their states and the nation with a few strokes of a pen.

Gay City News doesn’t agree:

Seizing upon an illogical argument previously embraced by the Indiana Court of Appeals, a majority of New York’s highest court ruled on July 6 that it is rational for the Legislature to have excluded same-sex couples from marriage in order to encourage heterosexuals, who might carelessly or accidentally conceive children, to marry.

The radical perspectives of both sides make this Forbes article, the third in Google’s group, look far less biased.

It really angers me when critics accuse bloggers of being closed-minded and opinionated. The bloggers aren’t the problem; the problem is organizations that mask themselves as news outfits in order to spread their biased message.

As you might have noticed lately, I’ve had a growing number of posts about videos I’ve found online. Though photography is still my primary artistic love, I’ve really started to appreciate some of the video content that’s being provided online.

This interest (predictably) is not purely as a viewer. For the past month or so, I’ve been working on a new site called Streamables. Its first iteration was the justinrussell.com Video Viewer; after doing a little work this weekend, I’ve decided to open it up to the Semsym community.

Please visit my playlist and watch away. Even better, sign up for a free Semsym account and then head over to streamables.semsym.com (or streamables.com if you’re lazy). As always, please let me know what you think. It’s a simple service that I hope some people will find useful.

Mentos has started advertising on Revver.

I wonder why.

Best marketing decision ever.