mamasewingcircus.com

Interesting infographics showing how much space the 6.9 billion people in the world would occupy if the world’s population lived in one city. (Each info graphic represents the population density of a different city.)

A few years ago I blogged about the NASA Asteroid Watch mailing list. Those bright guys at NASA would email you when an Asteroid or space debris came within sight of the Earth. Yeah, this ranks up there with the antigravity pen in terms of ideas to come out of NASA that weren’t so brilliant. (I’d prefer sirens.)

Anyway, now there’s an app for that.

But if you’d rather hear the news via email, at least this newsletter seems more complete.

Take or upload a photo and cutting edge modeling software will find your doggy match. Very serious business.
http://www.doggelganger.co.nz/

Apparently someone is selling fake eggs in China. At 360 eggs per chicken per year, 2 feet of space required per chicken, and the tiny feeding requirements of each chicken, I just can’t see how manufacturing fakes would be cost effective.

ChinaHush, a website in mainland China where fake eggs are believed to have first originated, suggests the following for consumers to identify fake eggs.

1. After cracking the fake egg, the white and yolk will mix together quickly.
2. Fake eggs have slightly shinier shells than real ones.
3. The shells of the fake eggs feel slightly rougher.
4. You will hear sloshing sounds when you shake a fake egg as liquid will flow from the solid agent.
5. Real eggs smell like raw meat.
6. Tapping a real egg lightly will generate a crisp sound when compared to a fake egg.
7. When frying a fake egg, the yolk will spread without being touched.

Read for yourself. Some people are creeps.

Spurred on by my mother laughing that I was probably baking a loaf of fresh french bread while I was flambéing the lobster shells for our weekly lobster bisque one Sunday afternoon (I wasn’t), I was motivated to find an easy satisfying baguette recipe that would fit into our weekend routine. Now several months later I’ve figured out how the French have their bisque and fresh baguettes, too.

We trialed this recipe:
bread in five minutes a day

I baked up a quick baguette in the early afternoon to sample the recipe. It was the perfect shape, excellent birdseye, with a moist crumb. A perfect baguette made with minimal effort. After sampling half of the original loaf, Doug suggested I make a second loaf for dinner.

I’m saving the other two loaves for later in the week.

Try it. It is kind of like finding an extra few hours in the week.

s:”What is that thing that you’re supposed to cook and it’s supposed to have brown sugar? Oooh ooh, I want oatmeal!!”

BUCS 2011 X.C Carnage! from Joe Bowman on Vimeo.

But my sauteed chard + egg + cheddar + avocado + chipotle pepper burrito is really good.

Acquisition of literacy skills is of particular interest to me as the mother of a bright but incredibly active little engineer and a stereotypically precocious younger daughter. So, I perked up when I read about the Reading Education Assistance Dogs (READ) program. Troubled readers are paired with dogs with sweet dispositions who lay next to them while the children read aloud. The thinking is that reading to a non-judgemental audience, like a dog, is a less threatening way for a troublesome reader to gain confidence in his skills at reading aloud. If nothing else, I figure this is superior to reading to your 4 year old sister with good deductive language skills who yells the correct word at you as you struggle to sound it out.

My how times have changed since I was in first grade. My first grader has moved on to using a calculator in class to manipulate large numbers. As any dutiful parent would, at night I’ve been coaching him at the 362 words he can concoct using shibboleth, the (perhaps, lost?) language consisting of the 10 letters one can symbolize using the crude numbers on a standard calculator.

Come on, admit it, even you laughed at 5318008. (For the kids at the front of the classroom, turn the face of the calculator upside down to read “boobies”)

If you, too, have a first grader, want to get a jump on 1st grade curriculum, or want to take a trip down memory lane, there are some gems, here.