Just preordered Marcia’s new book: DIY Cocktails (great cover!)

Stephanie took some great food photo shots in A lunch in Bali

And how!

For all of Zuckerberg’s EQ, Facebook runs on a very stiff, crude model of what people are like. It herds everybody — friends, co-workers, romantic partners, that guy who lived on your block but moved away after fifth grade — into the same big room. It smooshes together your work self and your home self, your past self and your present self, into a single generic extruded product. It suspends the natural process by which old friends fall away over time, allowing them to build up endlessly, producing the social equivalent of liver failure. On Facebook, there is one kind of relationship: friendship, and you have it with everybody. You’re friends with your spouse, and you’re friends with your plumber.

(Not that this hasn’t been said before…)

Santa’s LCD screen is red: Incident

Great post, great photos: Comté Cheese Making

Talk about ethereal: Shinchi Maruyama throws water from his hands or from glasses and catches the temporary sculptures they make with his camera.

Finally righting a wrong: ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ is repealed by Senate; bill awaits Obama’s signing

I’m falling behind on my blogging! Thankfully Stephanie has picked up the baton: Getting to Bali

Supernice post by Leona about our trip to/in New Zealand: Justin and Stephanie are living the DREAM in New Zealand (it’s always amusing to see how other people view our wacky adventures)

Stephanie blogs about the islands in our future: Planning as we go

For my friends in Sonoma County: Natural Process Alliance (have you heard about this?) via Steve and Jill

It sure is an interesting world we live in: Library of Congress blocks access to Wikileaks

For future reference: Great Rail Journeys (by which I mean a future where I have more money than I know what to do with)

Good read: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

This system that we look at and think that it’s in disrepair, that nobody can possibly fix it or in which you have “activist judges” on one side and uncaring, throw-the-book-at-them judges on the other side just isn’t a fair characterization.

New form of life discovered: bacteria with arsenic DNA found in Mono Lake

Neat gift idea indeed: Homemade Vanilla Extract