cutest ever

Goodbye, Tintin!

What I did on my vacation

By Margaret Fleming

1) Got hugs from the Bobcat
2) Did some sewing and some painting!

The back:

The front:

English Rain

I-Tals doin it the only way they know how.

A six-week initiative promoted by the Italian lingerie brand Intimissimi essentially exchanges one form of padding for another: used bras collected at its brand name stores throughout Italy will be recycled into insulated and soundproof panels used for construction.

To raise awareness of the “pressing problems that afflict the ecosystem,” Intimissimi is accepting the bras through the end of this month. A multimedia ad campaign featuring the Russian model Irina Shayk urges women to bring used bras to an Intimissimi store to “help save the planet.”

“Doing good for the environment is also a matter of style,” she advises consumers.

For every used bra brought in, a customer receives three euros ($4) toward the purchase of a new bra, an offer more commonly associated here with used cars, refrigerators or air conditioners. “Well, why not bras?” said the orchestrator of the project, Sandro Veronesi, president of the Italian lingerie company Calzedonia Group, which owns Intimissimi.

“There are programs for the scrapping of appliances, but no one thinks about what’s involved in the waste management of brassieres,” he said in a telephone interview.

Mr. Veronesi said that bras pose their own particular recycling challenges because they’re made of several different materials. Enter Ovat Campagnari, a Veneto-based company that specializes in the disposal and re-engineering of apparel waste.

The bra fibers are mixed with other textiles to make the soundproof insulating panels. Mirco Campagnari, one of the company’s owners, said he hoped the campaign would generate a greater awareness of the environmental benefits of using recycled materials in construction. “Many companies have been contacting us since the campaign started,” he said.

So far, Ovat’s effort constitutes an experiment. To expand and continue the initiative will require weighing the costs and logistics once all of the bras and related numbers are in.

Initial results have been positive, Mr. Campagnari said. Since the program started on Oct. 18, 30 to 40 percent percent of all bras sold in Intimissimi stores have involved the trade-in bonus.

Intimissimi is not the only ecofriendly lingerie maker on the market. In recent years, Triumph International Japan has designed several brassieres to raise environmental awareness, including one that comes with reusable chopsticks (for markets in Asia, where millions of wooden chopsticks are chucked each year); a bra sold with fold-up reusable bags made from recycled polyester fiber inside the cups; and a bra made from recycled bottles. None of these models were created for mass consumption.

Mr. Veronesi said his company was looking into environmental sustainable materials for manufacturing bras but that the effort was still in the embryonic stage. “For now a synthetic component is necessary for support, but this is a sector that we look to develop,” he said.

Mimmy Osa

Ok...heres the buns after a groomin'

Thistle has the tufted ears and juniper has the small head (like Mang0)

Sh'Hallowe'enja

SHEIK

What the hell

Read this vegans and rejoice in your sensibility. This makes me so mad.

Cheese, Grommit!

SULU!

Guess what's not healthy.

From the CDC:

Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body. Smoking causes many diseases and reduces the health of smokers in general.¹

Smoking and Death

Smoking causes death.

• The adverse health effects from cigarette smoking account for an estimated 443,000 deaths, or nearly one of every five deaths, each year in the United States.^2,3
• More deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined.^2,4
• Smoking causes 90% of all lung cancer deaths in men and 80% of all lung cancer deaths in women.¹
• An estimated 90% of all deaths from chronic obstructive lung disease are caused by smoking.¹

Compared with nonsmokers, smoking is estimated to increase the risk of—

• coronary heart disease by 2 to 4 times^1,5
• stroke by 2 to 4 times^1,6
• men developing lung cancer by 23 times¹
• women developing lung cancer by 13 times,¹ and
• dying from chronic obstructive lung diseases (such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema) by 12 to 13 times.¹

Smoking and Cardiovascular Disease

• Smoking causes coronary heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States.¹
• Cigarette smoking causes reduced circulation by narrowing the blood vessels (arteries) and puts smokers at risk of developing peripheral vascular disease (i.e., obstruction of the large arteries in the arms and legs that can cause a range of problems from pain to tissue loss or gangrene).^1,7
• Smoking causes abdominal aortic aneurysm (i.e., a swelling or weakening of the main artery of the body—the aorta—where it runs through the abdomen).¹

Smoking and Respiratory Disease

• Smoking causes lung cancer.^1,2
• Smoking causes lung diseases (e.g., emphysema, bronchitis, chronic airway obstruction) by damaging the airways and alveoli (i.e., small air sacs) of the lungs.^1,2

Smoking and Cancer

Smoking causes the following cancers:¹

• Acute myeloid leukemia
• Bladder cancer
• Cancer of the cervix
• Cancer of the esophagus
• Kidney cancer
• Cancer of the larynx (voice box)
• Lung cancer
• Cancer of the oral cavity (mouth)
• Cancer of the pharynx (throat)
• Stomach cancer
• Cancer of the uterus

Smoking and Other Health Effects

Smoking is associated with the following adverse health effects:

• infertility,
• preterm delivery,
• stillbirth,
• low birth weight, and
• sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).^1,8

Smoking is associated with the following adverse health effects:⁸

• Postmenopausal women who smoke have lower bone density than women who never smoked.
• Women who smoke have an increased risk for hip fracture than women who never smoked.

Bout Damn Time

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/california-licenses-worlds-biggest-solar-thermal-plant/?hp

And the endangered tortoise wont even know anything about it ...

News

Eric is getting two angora baby rabbits on Monday.
Annie and Wiley should be here on Sunday.
My tattoo is all colored in (even the feather).
I am a "real molecular biologist" according to my advisor Pat.
We played D&D for over three hours last night.
These are important videos to watch:

and now in technicolor...

Tour de Fat

A success! Blisters and sunburn all around. Pictures to follow...

Old Favorites

Alison Kraus:

Seldom Scene:

Charlie Rich:

Lay down sister!

Here we are at the dress rehearsal for Tour de Fat. It was an awesome practice, with a fridge full of Budweiser, homemade goat tacos, and chocolate chip cookies. Plus human-powered rocknroll. Afterwards we went out for hamburgers and decided on our band name, since Gutpile was already taken.




So that's Lay Down, Sister: Dane (guitar), Eric (drums), me (bass), Dani (guitar) and Pat (band leader, vocalist, bike builder, guitar)
Who looks better in this outfit? We're going to be well costumed for Tour de Fat.

Brazil photos pt 1

The view from my room

Hens...they're everywhere

The horse palace

A piglet!

Brazil photos pt 2