Lexica

Real Name:n/a
Location: Oakland, CA
Joined:4-28-2008
Make Lexica a Guide: follow clipper
About me
Basic principles for commenting: Keep it civil. Criticize ideas, not the people expressing them.

Vigorous discussion of differing opinions is both welcome and encouraged. Ad hominem attacks – whether on the author of the original clip, on other clippers, or on me – will be deleted and reposted in disemvoweled form. I subscribe to the Living Room Doctrine – if you wouldn't say it to me or a fellow guest while sitting in my living room, don't say it here.

Why disemvowel?
…one of the points of disemvowelment is that anyone who so chooses can reconstruct the comment and see what was said. Deletion leaves room to wonder. If you're concerned that…comments which were merely dissenting with the opinion of the host, rather than rude, were being altered you're quite free to reconstruct the comments and see for yourself.
Civil speech and impassioned speech are not opposed and mutually exclusive sets.

And yes, I have an official moderator's seal of authority.
Why I use Clipmarks
Because del.icio.us is good for keeping track of links but bad for keeping track of content. Because my husband's nickname for me is ResearchGirl. Because an occasional self-nickname is SieveBrainGirl. Because I use more than one computer, so saving things locally doesn't work well. Because I'm always interested in pointers and recommendations to new things.

Please note: the angrier a comment sounds, or the more times it includes terms like "those bastards", "should die", or any variation of "rat-fuck", the more likely it is to have actually been written by Spiritualmonkey, not me. He doesn't always check that he's the one logged in before he hits "post". *sigh*
Where to find me on the web







   
 
 
 
   
 
top scroll end
0
POPS
Photoblog: Sketchy Santas
Lexica
by Lexica  Today 12:36 AM   
 Several of these actually did make me laugh out loud.
0
POPS
The Namahage: Japanese New Year's devils scare the laziness out of children
Lexica
by Lexica  Today 12:30 AM   
 More: The head of the household will try to appease the devils with a specially prepared meal accompanied with sake. He assures them that no one has been lazy in his household. Then the Namahage, seeing all from their mountaintop, look into their secret book which records the doings of every household and challenge that statement. The head of the household again promises that all have been obedient and hard-working and pleads with the devils not to take his wife and children into the mountains. It takes considerable effort to control these devils with their strong work-ethic. As the negotiations drag on, the head of the household offers more sake… while begging that his wife and child not be taken away. Eventually the Namahage relent placated by the offerings and the sincerity of the head of the household. They bless the next year's harvest and wish good health to all the members of the household. As the Namahage leave, they promise (or rather threaten) to return next year.
0
POPS
Unreleased Jeff Buckley song available for download, free
Lexica
by Lexica  Yesterday 10:08 PM   
 The "vocal Theremin" is Buckley, apparently.
4
POPS
Fennel from fronds to bulb
Lexica
by Lexica  Yesterday 5:55 PM    1
 Click through for recipes for Orange and Fennel Salad, Gingered Fennel Toss, Stuffed Fennel Bulbs, Fennel and Chicken Flatbread, and Fennel and Shrimp Risotto.
4
POPS
The Something Awful/Paypal fiasco
Lexica
by Lexica  12-4-2009   
 More: I'm not going to tell people to close their Paypal accounts. I'm not going to say all their actions were completely unwarranted. I'm just presenting my experience with them and will allow you to draw your own conclusions. However, I harbor a fundamental disagreement with their business practice of assuming all their clients are filthy criminals who must repeatedly prove their innocence to a series of unmanned servers and computer systems. I do not support their ability to freeze entire accounts, take money from whoever they want at whatever time they want, and impose whatever arbitrary rules and regulations they deem necessary without having to answer to any organization. Every single cent in every single Paypal account is earning their company ungodly amounts of interest in their central bank account. They offer users credit cards and the chance to put your money into interest-generating accounts. So exactly why are they not under banking and FDIC rules again?
2
POPS
recipe: Disaster-Prone Cherry Pound Cake
Lexica
by Lexica  12-4-2009   
 Click through for the ingredients and directions.
6
POPS
Aretha Franklin tells PETA to get stuffed
Lexica
by Lexica  12-4-2009    3
 Brava, Ms. Franklin! R-E-S-P-E-C-T indeed!
8
POPS
The death of "wit"
Lexica
by Lexica  12-4-2009    3
 I have been finding that the more attention I put towards my Zen practice, and the more I focus on compassion for all, the less funny I find a lot of the "wit" that's out there. I think that's why this piece spoke to me.
4
POPS
DIY Streets: How locals transformed rat runs into public spaces
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 No Remarks
3
POPS
PlantLock - It's a bicycle rack! No, it's a planter! No, it's BOTH!
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009    1
 Nice – much more attractive than most of the bike racks we see.
3
POPS
A simple way to reduce cancer risk by 77%
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009    4
 Boosting your Vitamin D will also improve your energy level and reduce your risk of osteoporosis. Most people living in industrialized societies are badly deficient in Vitamin D (when I got mine tested, it was half of the lowest normal level. Since I've been supplementing, I feel SO much better. Get your D level checked!
1
POPS
Staying fit while traveling frugally
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 Click through for tips on exercises that can be done while sitting on a crowded plane or bus, exercises that can be done in a tiny hotel room, and even exercises that can be done in a room too small to lie down in.
2
POPS
How do we - and to what extent should we - get bicyclists to obey traffic laws?
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 More: Enter the Idaho stop-sign law. The rule, passed by the Idaho state legislature in 1982 and updated in 2005, essentially allows bikers to treat stop signs as yield signs. If a biker slows down and sees no cars coming, he or she can roll through a stop sign—a so-called "rolling stop." The "Idaho stop" has become a rallying point for vehicularists and facilitators alike—a sort of Great Compromise for bicycles.… Skeptics say that the rule would lead to more crashes. But a follow-up study of the Idaho statute found that accidents involving bikes actually decreased the year after the law was passed and haven't varied much since.
2
POPS
Cyclists are not a menace
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 More: You might say that even if we’re not a menace to other vehicles, we’re a menace to pedestrians. But again the figures don’t stand that up. Cyclists make up about 1 per cent of the traffic in London, and they also cause 1 per cent of the traffic injuries to pedestrians – almost exactly in proportion with their numbers. The injuries they cause are also, as you’d expect, disproportionately at the lower end of the scale. The fact is that only a minority of cyclists indulge in the arrogant behaviour towards pedestrians which gets us a bad name. I would have no problem with a motion that says some cyclists are a menace. But tarring us all with the brush of a minority would be like supporting a motion that says Muslims are a menace. It would be outrageous.”
1
POPS
A Left-Handed Commencement Address: Ursula K. LeGuin at Mills College, 1983
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 More: I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated. I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people. And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark, then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is. Our roots are in the dark; the earth is our country. Why did we look up for blessing — instead of around, and down? What hope we have lies there. Not in the sky full of orbiting spy-eyes and weaponry, but in the earth we have looked down upon. Not from above, but from below. Not in the light that blinds, but in the dark that nourishes, where human beings grow human souls.
2
POPS
Acumen Fund - a new approach to fighting poverty
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 No Remarks
4
POPS
A cloud still hangs over Bhopal
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 More: What’s missing in the whole sad story is any sense of a human connection between the faceless people who run the corporation and the victims. In 1995, a Bhopali woman named Sajida Bano sent a handwritten letter to Union Carbide. The factory had killed her husband in 1981 in an accident, and then, on the night of the disaster, her 4-year-old son. “You put your hand on your heart and think,” she wrote, “if you are a human being: if this happened to you, how would your wife and children feel?” She never received a response. The survivors of Bhopal want only to be treated as human beings — not victims, not greedy money-grabbers, just human beings who’ve gone through hell and are entitled to a measure of dignity. That includes concrete things like cleaning up the mess and providing health care for the sick, and also something more abstract but equally important — an acknowledgment that a wrong was done to them, and an apology, which Bhopalis have yet to receive.
1
POPS
The Waste Land - San Francisco's roving recyclers
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 More: One man, tall and strong with sharp eyes and long dreadlocks…Mute, he pulls a scrap of paper out of his cart and starts writing… “What school?” Berkeley, I say, impressed and somewhat embarrassed that he can tell so quickly my status. “Why here?” he jots. I try to explain. “You’re not too smart,” he concludes, pointing at my thin sweater and shivering hands… Then he offers me the red down coat he is wearing and goes back to work. As I walk around the cardboard boxes that contain the recyclables…I see bits of his scribbled conversations with others. “Temper is going Everyone’s under $ pressure,” reads one…“Me, I don’t sweat the cash too much,” reads another. I return to ask for the paper on which we’d just had our conversation. He looks at me skeptically. “You’re a bad journalist,” he writes. “No tape recorder.” Then he hands over the paper and smiles. I asked for his name, but he holds his forefinger to his sealed lips, then turns and goes back to
1
POPS
Bay Area state parks - what's open, what's closed due to budget cuts
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 The Chronicle seems to have finally fixed their problem of not having diacritical marks, and are now able to refer to "Año Nuevo" instead of " Ano Nuevo"... Hee hee hee. :lol:
1
POPS
Interesting shift in teen & tween attitudes & beliefs
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 More: The survey also probed changing attitudes about drugs, sex, drinking, abortion and willingness to fight in a war - you can see all of the findings in the link above. For those of us who are working with kids, whether in our careers, volunteer work or as parents, the other thing that comes through the study is that teens want to do the right thing, but, they still struggle with knowing what that is, or how to make it happen. The study emphasizes the important role that parents, friends and an extended constellation of adults play in helping teens discover and act on their values.
1
POPS
SF Muni making big changes to bus & light rail this weekend (12/5/09)
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 No Remarks
2
POPS
Barbara Ehrenreich: The uproar over the new breast cancer screening guidelines
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009    1
 More: So welcome to the Women’s Movement 2.0: Instead of the proud female symbol -- a circle on top of a cross -- we have a droopy ribbon. Instead of embracing the full spectrum of human colors -- black, brown, red, yellow, and white -- we stick to princess pink. While we used to march in protest against sexist laws and practices, now we race or walk “for the cure.” And while we once sought full “consciousness” of all that oppresses us, now we’re content to achieve “awareness,” which has come to mean one thing – dutifully baring our breasts for the annual mammogram. …the numbers are increasingly insistent: Routine mammographic screening of women under 50 does not reduce breast cancer mortality in that group, nor do older women necessarily need an annual mammogram. In fact, the whole dogma about “early detection” is shaky… the idea has been to catch cancers early, when they’re still small, but some tiny cancers are viciously aggressive, and some large ones aren’t going anywhere
1
POPS
poem: "Questionnaire" by Wendell Berry
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 No Remarks
1
POPS
How to make a glove work with a touch screen
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 No Remarks
1
POPS
Recipe: Candied Buddha's-hand citrus
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 Ooh, I think I know one of the things I want to do this weekend!
0
POPS
"The world’s greatest deliberative body has been subverted by the threat to filibuster"
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 More: What is clogging up the Senate these days is threatened filibusters that don’t actually happen. This is the imaginary filibuster… In 1975, party leaders in the U.S. Senate adopted a new procedure to deal with filibusters. In order to keep the Senate floor clear for other business, if senators merely threatened to filibuster, the body would automatically impose a 60-vote limit on cutting off debate.… And bills with majority support would die. For the price of a threat, the votes needed to pass a bill could be raised from 50 to 60. It’s not clear why no one foresaw what would eventually happen, but soon the number of alleged “filibusters” was rising. Delighted senators found they had a new tool to stop legislation. With just a threat to filibuster, a senator could stop a bill cold even though the Senate supported it—and without having to actually filibuster. A single senator can unilaterally make it more difficult to enact legislation.
1
POPS
Anne Mustoe: headmistress and round-the-world cyclist (1933-2009)
Lexica
by Lexica  12-3-2009   
 More: The glimpse of the lone cyclist which inspired her own ambition to cycle round the world came in January 1983. She said it took her four years from that defining moment to screw up her courage, resign her job and cycle into the sunrise, but she calculated that she had no ties, her stepsons were married off, and she could just afford it if she lived modestly until her pension came through.… All her incident-packed journeys were recounted in a warm, accessible, no-nonsense prose in which a wry, understated humour was coupled with indefatigable fortitude, enthusiasm and optimism, making light of robberies, injuries, freak floods, storms, desert heat waves, blizzards in the Rockies and ferocious winds in Jutland and Patagonia — and even of being knocked off her bike by a short-sighted nonagenarian in a Fiat Panda. Mustoe cycled off on her last expedition in May this year, but became ill in Syria. She died in Aleppo (Haleb). RIP, Ms. Mustoe.
5
POPS
Does high-fructose corn syrup cause liver damage?
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009    1
 No Remarks
0
POPS
Launch dates of major social networking sites
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009   
 Looks like my LJ makes me an old fogey. Hah! :lol:
3
POPS
Changes in human mobility in one family over 100 years
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009    1
 Interesting to look at in conjunction with How children lost the right to roam in four generations{/url].
1
POPS
video: Whisper chain ("Telephone" game)
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009   
 Big sappy moosh sez "Awww..."
3
POPS
Research indicates empathy is innate in humans
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009   
 More: If children are naturally helpful and sociable, what system of child-rearing best takes advantage of this surprising propensity? Dr. Tomasello says that the approach known as inductive parenting works best because it reinforces the child’s natural propensity to cooperate with others. Inductive parenting is simply communicating with children about the effect of their actions on others and emphasizing the logic of social cooperation… The roots of human cooperation may lie in human aggression. We are selfish by nature, yet also follow rules requiring us to be nice to others. “That’s why we have moral dilemmas,” Dr. Tomasello said, “because we are both selfish and altruistic at the same time.”
9
POPS
Caregiving - from professional to personal
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009    16
 Not an article that lends itself easily to snipping out bits to clip - click through for the whole thing.
3
POPS
James Lipton's beard helps protect teens from themselves
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009   
 Very funny! :lol:
5
POPS
10 reasons why gift cards suck
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009    1
 No Remarks
2
POPS
A Christmas Rewrite, as Dickens Edits Dickens
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009   
 No Remarks
2
POPS
Becoming Your Own Massage Therapist
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009   
 Doing foam-roller work tends to make one curse like a sailor ("oh my @#^&(@#$&*@# that HURTS!!!"), but it feels SO good when you stop. :lol:
6
POPS
This is one of the odder photos I've seen in a while
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009    2
 No Remarks
0
POPS
Can a device that tracks when I swerve, accelerate, and brake make me a better driver?
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009   
 No Remarks
1
POPS
Jesus' General: Here's something to put in the Salvation Army kettles this year
Lexica
by Lexica  12-2-2009   
 No Remarks
— end of the list —

Lexica  follow

loading clips...
Filter
rss tools
Clipmarks
About   Clippers   Privacy   EULA   Copyright   Site Map

OK