Polar bears cover their noses for camouflage

Cows can walk upstairs, but not down. Bats always exit caves to the left.

Ricky Gervais is just full of animal facts in this recent interview on the Daily Show. I love how he keeps saying, "It's true! It's true!"

Did You Know Amazon.com Sells NCAA Garden Gnomes?

Have you ever scrolled all the way down on Amazon's home page? My goodness...

Best Locavore in the World

This story inspired me to make an understated return to the blog.

In other news, I am overwhelmed with baby projects!

Jackson's Aran Sweater

Somebody get this baby a sweater!

Done! I finished this sweater about six weeks ago but I've been a little lax on the posting. Kate found the pattern. It's got cables all over and is really fast.


It doesn't have any shaping on the armholes or sleeves, but those little bulges under the arms just make room for more squeezable baby cuteness. Babies don't really need clothes that fit, right? I love the cute button shoulders--fashionable and functional.

How to Hug a Baby (thanks Chicagoist)

ha!

more cat schadenfreude

An Engineer's Guide to Cats

First in a series of funny cat videos. (Long, but funny)

"I suspect that there may be a problem or an intruder near our territory."

I love these dog bark translations! They're also pretty accurate. Blondie uses #4--"He-ey! Pay attention to me!" (my trans.) and #6--"I have to go outside!" (my trans.) a lot.

I don't think he's going to be a drum major any time soon....

I wouldn't exactly call this stick-twirling bear "dexterous." But then again, he doesn't have thumbs...

tardy cardigan

I finally finished this cardigan that I've been working on for a little over a year. I made a big push so that I could wear it on my trip to Northern California over spring break. (See how sunny it is behind me? See my springy outfit?)


It actually needs a tiny bit more work: the button holes need to be reinforced with a special embroidery for that purpose, and the button band needs to be reinforced with a ribbon (that's what I get for picking heavy buttons--see that one sagging?). I got the buttons at Nina. They're actually not wood, but some sort of nut. For a while last year, a bunch of the boutiques on Division were selling jewelry with the same buttons repurposed as beads.

My next sweater project (way on the back burner) is thankfully in the round--I need a break from all the finishing this sweater took. As always, it was too short the first time I knit up all the body pieces. Stupid long torso! I've actually seen (I think on knitty) this article about how you can add short rows to sweaters if you have a long torso. Maybe it's time to look into that. Then, it was actually a rolled-edge pattern, but I modified it to add the ribbing (and the little lace stripe on the right front). So I had to pick up the button bands along the edges of the front. Then there was a lot of sewing--the back, fronts, and sleeves were all knit straight. Then I had to add the neck, and then weaving in all the ends! I did that on the plane on the way to SF. And then, voila! It was ready to wear!

Now I'm working on a lot of baby projects, none of which will be able to be shown here until they are presented to the babies.

Melissa's Geographical Heritage, Pack Animal Edition (plus a bonus!)

The epitome of Britishness, the shire horse, is threatened. The Shire Horse looks a lot like its cousin draft horse, the icon of my hometown brewer Anheuser-Busch, the Clydesdale.

Is the donkey the epitome of Italianness? Having a sizable chunk of Italian heritage, I think I could find pros and cons. Here's video of the annual donkey race in Torrita di Siena, Italy, which is nearly 400 miles from my great grandparents' native Napoli.

Bonus! I think I see Ringo Starr over there in the shade...

The Book Tally

We're moving, which foments topics, though not time, for blogging. In any case, I've had a chance to take stock of my books, so I'm finally publishing a list (in some cases, to the best of my memory) of books Blondie has eaten. It's a nice little microcosmic autobiography (of me, not the dog):

American Heritage Pocket Dictionary
Benjamin, Carol Lee, Surviving Your Dog’s Adolescence: A Positive Training Program
Crewdson, Gregory, Twilight
The Daily Show and Jon Stewart, America, The Book: A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction
Faulkner, William, The Sound and the Fury*
Fauset, Jesse, There Is Confusion
Gilfoyle, Timothy, Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark***
Gilroy, Paul, There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack
Glaspell, Susan, Plays
James, C.L.R., C.L.R. James on the “Negro Question”
Kuhl, Nancy, Extravagant Crowd: Carl Van Vechten’s Portraits**
Lawrence, Jacob, The Great Migration**
Lee, Harper, To Kill a Mockingbird
Lonely Planet, Southeast Asia on a Shoestring
Manning, Russ, 100 Hikes in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Nafisi, Asar, Reading Lolita in Tehran
The Norton Anthology of American Literature (edition chewed off)
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
O’Keefe, Georgia, The Poetry of Things**
Obama, Barack, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Parker, Wolf, and Block, Scene Design and Stage Lighting
Reed, Adolph, Stirrings in the Jug: Black Politics in the Post-Segregation Era****
Rowling, J.K., Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince*****
Spitz, Bob, The Beatles: The Biography

* This book was over 15 years old and I had read it multiple times. Probably why it was so tasty.
** An art book :(
*** a free review copy that a friend gave me
**** nibbled, but not eaten. Maybe he found it distasteful (though I do not).
***** a borrowed book that I had to replace (see the media edition of this list for more of these)

Today I left the house without securing a box of records I had packed. So stay tuned for the media edition!

dog-opticon

Chris and I are going on vacation soon, and we hoped our friends who often dog sit for Blondie would be able to take care of him, but, eek, they can't! We weren't sure boarding Blondie would be a good idea or even possible, because of his people aggression. But we contacted the behaviorist and found out that the doggie daycare where she offers classes is pretty good with "special needs" dogs like Blondie (I'm not kidding, she really said "special needs," and they also used the word "special." Blondie thinks "a special" is a pig ear treat.)

Today I brought Blondie over for an evaluation, and he passed! The best part: he gets to do group daycare, which means he'll get to spend most of every day playing with other dogs while we're gone. I'm hugely relieved. Also, they have a webcam, so we'll be able to check on him while we're gone. (I know, I'm pathetic.)

It's a pretty posh-looking place, all hip and steel and glass. Luckily, the rates are pretty comparable to all the other places in town, so it won't break the bank, and we're staying with friends when we're gone, so the lodging budget can go to the dog. (Here's where I reel at how crazy this dog has made my life.)

National Pig Day

It's National Pig Day--hooray for Pinto, the painting pig at the Brookfield Zoo! (He plays basketball, too!)

A note about Animal Testing

I've demonstrated excitement on this blog for certain experimental findings that involved treatment of animals that was slightly dubious. The monkey who is strong with the force, after all, had to have electrodes implanted in her brain. Now, the brain doesn't have any pain sensors, so my guess is that she did not experience any pain once the electrodes were in place, and my impression from reports of the experiment was that she was treated very well. Many of the people to whom I've described that project have expressed puzzlement about its usefulness--in other words, they act as though this is science for geek's sake--but the technology being developed by that particular project could help millions of people disabled by debilitating diseases, amputations, and the like. On the other hand, it seems to me grossly unnecessary to test beauty products or designer drugs on animals, who, after all, indisputably have personalities and feel pain.

Thus, I feel ambivalent about animal testing, and I'm not sure it can be categorically dismissed as cruel. I have friends and family members who have participated in research using lab animals, and in many cases they expressed nothing if not love for the animals with whom they worked in the lab. An article in this week's issue of Newsweek reports on the sentencing of groups that have committed violence against animal researchers at UCLA, and the practices of these groups--bombing and vandalizing homes of professors, publishing their home addresses in order to aid in harassment--seem frankly deplorable to me. Some of the comments in the discussion thread for the article are quite wise (and I'm not talking about the bizarre tangent to abortion and anti-abortion-rights-terror): if the government is so serious about regulating stem cell research, then why can't it regulate animal research more vigorously?

Yarn CSA!

Just found out about this yarn CSA from Chris. Amazing! But I find it hard enough to cook with all the things I get in our vegetable CSA. We've decided to stick to farmers' markets this summer, and fortunately this lady sells at the Logan Square market. Hooray!

Oh, the Audacity!

As everyone knows, I am a big fan of Obama's, at first in spite of myself and now with a fervor that has surprised me, especially in the way that his campaign (if not his followers or the press coverage of the election) is constantly overwhelming my capacity for cynicism.

Anyway, for this reason I am not embarrassed to mention that I decided to read Dreams from My Father. Besides my admiration, it bears research interest for me, and I wanted to see what the pre-campaign Obama was like (he wrote it in 1995). I am a little embarrassed, though, to admit how much I like this book. I'm not too far along, so I'm still reserving judgment, but so far I find it beautifully written and smart. I won't say more because this blog exists in part for me to compartmentalize and not talk about stuff like my work. Indeed, it exists to talk about my dog.

By all rights, Blondie should be a fan of Obama's too. But yesterday I accidentally forgot to latch the bedroom door, and Chris got home to discover a whirlwind of destroyed boots (fortunately I had been planning to give them away), slippers (also old), and this book. The good news is it's still very much in tact as far as reading it goes.


Postscript on animal rhythm: Chris said, "Of course animals have rhythm. Haven't you ever heard a bird singing?" OK, duh. But what I'm more excited about is the prospect that all around the globe animals may be engaging in activities akin to the electric slide (like these penguins). And that's what I plan to find out about soon (I'm v. busy right now).

strange potty doings in the animal kingdom

At the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, dogs go potty in a specially-made arena in the basement of the hotel. From The New York Times:


Love the hydrants!

Meanwhile, Millennium Park in Chicago is overtaken by a huge kitty that does strange things:



I don't have anything to say about this video but "oh, my goodness!"

Giving Alcohol to Minors

At 2 years and a few months, Blondie is, in dog years, a tender 16. But that doesn't stop him from partaking in the occasional sip of wine at home.


Don't know how this happened, exactly, but at some point we discovered that (a) Blondie loves wine and (b) it's hilarious to watch him drink it out of a glass. His tongue is so long! Anyway, now whenever we drink wine he stares at us with that hungry look. The green flash in his eyes here is no trick of the camera--it's his Hulk face. (For the horrified, fear not: we only let him drink the last few drops at the bottom of the glass, the ones you can never get out. Why let it go to waste?)



Ok, so he's a fan of beer too, though drinking it is considerably harder (notice the spill on my leg). Whenever we drink, he's pretty much begging. How did this happen? Is it the drinking, or is it that we only let him drink certain things? If we fed Blondie OJ from a glass, would he beg when we drank that too?


In the mean time, I've been wondering whether animals have rhythm. I'm going to try to find out and report back.

Knitpicks Jack Hoodie

I have posted previously about my friend Ryan's adorable son Dash; he's now almost 1-1/2 and cuter than ever. I FINALLY finished the sweater I began knitting for him just after he was born (which I had planned to give to Ryan at our 5-year college reunion last June--this, by the way, is why I always choose the 12-month size or larger when knitting baby garments). Hooray! (Note: only wonky knitters like me should read after the photo, but there are other photos.)


It is Knitpicks' Jack Hoodie, done with their Swish Superwash worsted. I don't know why anyone would ever knit clothes for a baby or toddler that weren't machine washable.

First of all, let me say that this is a great pattern. The sleeves are knit in the round and then joined to the body and knit up all together, so the only finishing is a little kitchener stitch (so amazing) for the underarms and sewing on the hood. And then, oh, there's the zipper. But I'll come to that shortly.

This sweater actually also knits up very quickly, even though you know it took me nearly a year to knit it. First, I ordered only the exact amount of yarn (3 skeins of the red and one skein of each other color) and I ran out of the other colors. Normally I would have ordered extra, but since I was using their pattern and their yarn (the recommended yarn, no less!) and I had the right gauge, I didn't think I would run out. And the killer is, I only needed a tiny bit more of each color, so now I have a little less than a 50 g. skein of each color. What am I going to do with all that?

Anyway, back to the pattern. The pattern is very clearly written, with two exceptions. First, it doesn't recommend which decreases to use. Fortunately, the psychedelic squares pattern taught me all about how to make symmetrical decreases for the shoulder "seams."


These are K2togs, which lean to the right. For the other side, I used SSK, which leans to the left. There are different ways to do SSK (slip, slip, knit): the best-looking one I've used is to slip both stitches as if to knit (that is, to stick the needle through the front of the stitch), then to knit both together through the back loop. But the link there has another method which is even more complicated. I like my way. I can't really tell the difference.

The second unclear part of the pattern was how to sew up the hood, and I had to redo it a few times to get it looking decent. The hood is knit as a flat piece that basically resembles a fat upside-down T, or a chimney. You start it as a wide rectangle, then bind off a bunch of stitches at the beginning and the end and keep making the chimney up the middle. Then, at least as I interpreted it, you sew the bound-off edge to the side edge (selvedge) of the chimney to make the hood. It ends up looking a little boxy, but cute.

The real stumbling block for me on this project was the zipper. I had never sewn on a zipper before. The really hard part was pinning the zipper to the sweater, since you have to keep the zipper closed, and the side edge of the knitted piece is all curled up and so hard to pin down. Too late for this project, I was reminded that I could have kept the sides from curling in by slipping the first stitch on each row. Or I could have tried this neat technique. Either of these would also create a stiffer edge, which would support the zipper better. That would have been really, really useful to remember. But, it's done!

Lastly, I love Knitpicks. They sell high-quality, natural fiber yarns at great prices, they have a lot of variety for being a big discount site, including multiple choices for machine-washable yarn. I got their "Options" interchangeable needle kit for Christmas and I absolutely love it. They did not pay me to say this. I just think they're great. I also love supporting local yarn shops (like Nina, in my neighborhood) but I'm a bit of a bargain hunter by nature, and living on a grad student income.


Uh...who's that?

Can this computer tell my dog to be good?

Wow!

Avuncular

Jackson Rece, b. 2/1/2008, 8 lbs. 3 oz.

Blondie 2.0: Barker Edition

Blondie was paid a visit on Friday by the lovely Brandi Barker (no joke), dog behaviorist extraordinaire. (On the almost nonexistent chance that anyone is reading this seeking information about a misbehaving dog and lives in the Westtown/Logan/Wicker/Bucktown area, I recommend Brandi completely and wholeheartedly. She's great!)

Brandi assessed Blondie's "lungy-barky" behavior and determined that he is "a very complicated guy." Acting out of some fear, some "correcting behavior," and "a high prey drive," Blondie has in the last three months or so increasingly lunged at strangers on our walks and behaved quite rudely to houseguests. Moreover, Blondie is an unusually stoic dog who gives very few signals about his feeeelings. In other words, he is a bad communicator.

But all this is soon to be a distant memory, we hope. Brandi advised us first to recondition Blondie so that he'll appeal to us in situations where he is frightened. In order to do this, we have to give him treats whenever a stranger approaches, no matter what he does! Brandi explains that we have to create a new baseline before we can train him to do anything, because right now he is just too afraid. I think of it as sort of like reformatting a corrupt hard drive. She also gave us a lot of pointers about training in general, plus a couple of new tricks to work on. We learned a ton, and it didn't cost any more than a visit to the vet.

So far, so good. The cold weather has made treat dispensing tricky, and we are experimenting with a few different strategies on that front, but Blondie is already doing well at some of his new tasks, like "touch" and "leave it." The jumping not so much, but we haven't even really started on that yet. I'm ready to be patient on that front. In the mean time, check out this article about other animals and their politicking social behaviors.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, dogs dressed up for Halloween

Chris and I were searching the internets the other night for some booties for Blondie. In this cold weather, his poor little paws freeze up. He'll be walking along fine, and then he'll suddenly become a tripawd. Poor guy! Here I am, wearing about 15 layers, and he's walking in bare feet! Who can blame him for being cold?

Anyway, along the hunt for the perfect dog shoe, we came across these:


And this:
And...





wait for it....








That's right, you can humiliate your dog for only $18.99! Oddly, most of the costumes sort of look like they've been photoshopped onto these dogs. I can't imagine why a dog wouldn't calmly acquiesce to wearing one of these things, considering they usually succumb so easily to that old blanket-over-the-head trick.

Between the Vader prosthetic limb technology and these, it's been a Star Wars-themed week.

monkey uses the force to make robot walk

omg