Mon, 27 Dec 2004

Quan Yin
Quan Yin is the Buddhist deity of compassion and mercy. Here’s wishing that we may all give and receive compassion and mercy in the New Year.

posted at: 10:09 | path: /living | link

Wed, 22 Dec 2004

Greed
An interesting site by an academic on greed. I didn’t read his essay all the way through, so for all I know it could degenerate into extreme left or right wing badness, but I thought the nut game that demonstrates greed was quite interesting.

posted at: 13:59 | path: /living | link

Fri, 17 Dec 2004

Institute for the study of the Neurologically Typical
Entertaining for anyone who believes they don’t always come across as ‘normal’.

posted at: 16:07 | path: /living | link

Executive Dysfunction
Dan Savage, in his book about adopting a child, makes an amusing statement about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. He reads the list of behaviours associated with FAS and says something like, “If that’s FAS, then I and all my friends have it!”. And I have to agree- many disorders, dysfunctions and syndromes represent the extremes of behaviours that we all know and… know. With that in mind I think that I and a large slew of the people I know will identify with executive dysfuntion. Check out the humorous Top 10 Signs You Might Have Executive Dysfunction. Yeah baby!

posted at: 12:35 | path: /living | link

Autism
Growling Joel has an interesting website here about what it is like to be an autistic living in a world of NTs (neurological typicals). He links to this article about autistic people working in the world of computing.

posted at: 11:01 | path: /living | link

Thu, 16 Dec 2004

The Spectrum
Here are a number of interesting pages written by someone with Asperger’s syndrome. Most excellently, he suggests that people with Asperger’s can use telemarketers to practice their social interactions with NT (neurologically typical) people. He writes:

“Outbound telemarketing involves solicitation by organizations, usually using predictive dialing equipment. Generally they do not use “opt-in” lists and almost universally, they don’t care.

Or maybe they do care. On Planet Aspie telemarketers exist for the purpose of training people how to interact. Perhaps it’s the same way here.

Much as it’s possible to learn how to drive a car in snow by intentionally skidding the car in a safe place, telemarketers offer a “safe place” to learn how to interact badly. So even if you learn by getting your number “blacklisted” by telemarketing companies, you learn nevertheless! ”

Excellent!

posted at: 19:12 | path: /living | link

Social Skills
Still working on those all important social skills? I am! Mind you, I have improved considerably since my teens. Learning to speak at slightly under 600 words a minute was a definite plus. You’d think that, as a social species, these things would be more automatic. And apparently, for some people they are! I found this discussion pretty interesting.

posted at: 18:54 | path: /living | link

Wed, 15 Dec 2004

Eggless Cakes
May and I are looking for an eggless cake recipe- for reasons which may not yet be revealed… So far, one of the basic eggless cake templates appears to be a cake called a Crazy Cake. This recipe was developed during the depression, when eggs were scarce. But frankly, this recipe is somewhat short on the exciting ingredients. It seems that, if eggs are removed, some other exciting thing, like sour cream, should be added. This leads us to the Easy Eggless Chocolate Cake which appears to have sweetened condensed milk in it. Unfortunately, this is a ruse. The sweetened condensed milk is only in the icing. After extensive searching, it looks like the Crazy Cake is it. It’s also known as Wacky Cake. I like the name wacky cake better, so a wacky cake it is.

posted at: 17:03 | path: /living | link

Fri, 10 Dec 2004

Dung Fire!
I’m writing an article on sustainable housing options for cold climates. As usual, daring to tread where others fear to, or perhaps simply refrain from, treading in pursuit of sustainability, I’m doing some research on dung as a fuel source.

posted at: 22:40 | path: /living | link

Procrastination
Sometimes I have a hard time knowing when I’m procrastinating. The way I can tell if I am procrastinating is to ask myself: “Jen- are you going to have to do Task A at *some* time?” If the answer is yes to this question but I find myself currently doing tasks that I *don’t* have to do at some time, then I am procrastinating. Doh!

I found this to be a very helpful discussion of procrastination.

posted at: 11:49 | path: /living | link

High Tech Windows
I was looking for some information on how to make the best use of the sun’s energy in cold climates. In the process I came across this interesting article on current window technology.

posted at: 10:42 | path: /living | link

Tue, 07 Dec 2004

Life in the Arctic
An interesting synopsis of life in the arctic. I’m intrigued by arctic life, since I think it is pretty close to space travel, in some ways. At least, it is the most extreme environment that we as a species have experienced besides space. As this site says: “Clothing extremely tailored.B The closest we know of to a space suit.
a. Waterproof seams. Fully insulated.
b. Always made by women. Those without a wife who was a competent seamstress risked death.”

posted at: 17:21 | path: /living | link

Stilt houses
I had this idea that you could avoid frost heave by building houses on stilts. You could drive the stilts deeply enough so that they wouldn’t be affected by frost heave. You would then build the rest of the house in the air, thus avoiding having to dig a huge hole in the ground. I thought the idea might work, but it sounded kind of wacky, so I was very pleased when I came across this site. It describes just this technique, which apparently was popular in Siberia.

posted at: 17:00 | path: /living | link

Frost protected shallow foundations
I’m doing some research on how to build buildings in cold weather climates. One of the biggest challenges for small scale buildings is dealing with frost heave. I came across an interesting article here about a method that allows you to have relatively shallow foundations that are still protected from frost heave.

posted at: 16:54 | path: /living | link

Mon, 06 Dec 2004

Sarah McLachlan’s producer
An interesting article here about who he is and how he does his thing. Colin liked this- he produced some oohs and ahhs while reading the article.

posted at: 21:47 | path: /living | link

The true times
English quarterstaff fighting.

posted at: 12:16 | path: /living | link

Irish Stick Fighting
An Irish take on some martial arts wisdom.

posted at: 11:53 | path: /living | link

All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.