Another ridiculous web game.

Remember the farm animals that sang? Well this one is almost as fun. Just do it. Besides, I'm pretty sure it does the soul good.

The best part of waking up!

Kopi Luwak (pronounced [ˈkopi ˈluwak]) or Civet coffee is coffee made from coffee berries which have been eaten by and passed through the digestive tract of the Asian Palm Civet (Paradoxurus hermaphroditus). The civets eat the berries, but the beans inside pass through their system undigested. This process takes place on the islands of Sumatra, Java and Sulawesi in the Indonesian Archipelago, in the Philippines (where the product is called Kape Alamid) and in East Timor (locally called kafé-laku). Vietnam has a similar type of coffee, called weasel coffee, which is made from coffee berries which have been regurgitated by local weasels. In actuality the "weasel" is just the local version of the Asian Palm Civet.

Origin and production
Kopi is the Indonesian word for coffee, and luwak is a local name of the Asian Palm Civet. The raw, red coffee berries are part of its normal diet, along with insects, small mammals, small reptiles, eggs and nestlings of birds, and other fruit. The inner bean of the berry is not digested, but it has been proposed that enzymes in the stomach of the civet add to the coffee's flavor by breaking down the proteins that give coffee its bitter taste. The beans are defecated still covered in some inner layers of the berry. The beans are washed, and given only a light roast so as to not destroy the complex flavors that develop through the process. Some sources claim that the beans may be regurgitated instead of defecated.

In early days, the beans would be collected in the wild from a 'latrine', or a specific place where the civet would defecate as a means to mark its territory, and these latrines would be a predictable place for local gatherers to find the beans. More commonly today, captured civets are fed raw berries, the feces produced are then processed and the coffee beans offered for sale.[citation needed]

Economics
Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $120 and $600 USD per pound, and is sold mainly in Japan and the United States. It is increasingly becoming available elsewhere, though supplies are limited: only 1,000 pounds (450 kg) at most make it into the world market each year (Pg 23, The Gospel According to Starbucks; Sweet). One small cafe, the Heritage Tea Rooms, in the hills outside Townsville in Queensland, Australia has Kopi Luwak coffee on the menu at A$50.00 (=US$48.00) per cup, selling approximately four cups a week, which has gained nationwide Australian press.[1]. In April 2008, the brasserie of Peter Jones department store in London's Sloane Square starting selling a blend of Kopi Luwak and Blue Mountain called Caffe Raro for £50 (=US$99.00) a cup.[1]

A 2004 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) scare led to thousands of these civets in China being exterminated, [2][3] but the demand for the coffee was not affected.

A hypothesis to justify this coffee's reputation proposes that the beans are of superior quality before they are even ingested.[citation needed] At any given point during a harvest, some coffee berries are not quite- or over-ripe, while others are just right. The palm civet evolved as an omnivore that naturally eats fruit and passes undigested material as a natural link to disperse seeds in a forest ecosystem. Where coffee plants have been introduced into their habitat, civets only forage on the most ripe berries, digest the fleshy outer layer, and later excrete the seeds eventually used for human consumption. Thus, when the fruit is at its peak, the seeds (or beans) within are equally so, with the expectation that this will come through in the taste of a freshly-brewed cup. As this may be true for the beans derived from wild-collected civet feces, farm raised civets are likely fed beans of varying quality and ripeness, so one would expect the taste of farm-raised beans to be less.

Kopi Muncak (also Kopi Muntjak) is a similar type of coffee produced from the feces of several species of barking deer, or Muntjac, that are found throughout Southeast Asia. Unlike civet or "weasel" coffee, this type is usually not produced from captive deer and most commonly collected in the wild, especially in Malaysia and in the Indonesian Archipelago.

They make a good point.

Conspicuous much?

The Revolutionary Vertical Bed

How many of you have ever wanted just one more minute of sleep on a Monday morning after a weekend of partying? I know I have and if you’re like me, you’re in for a treat. Some smart people have come up with a way to help us grab some precious extra minutes of sleep in some unusual circumstances. With their revolutionary vertical bed anyone can take a short nap while waiting for the traffic light to change, in the elevator or in public transportation vehicles.

The vertical bed comes complete with ear-muffs, mirrored eye-glasses and even an umrella in case it rains. All you have to do is stick your hands in your pockets to protect your wallet and phone and you’re all set for a nice relaxing nap. One day in the vertical bed and you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

A blog by any other name . . .

Here's the story:

The lovely lady who hosts the Sunday potlucks is friends with a few of the guys in Grupo Fantasma. Grupo Fantasma use to play weekly gigs at Prince's club in Vegas. Before being officially booked for these gigs the band met with Prince. Prince had all ten members, with each of their respective instruments, get set up on stage. He then proceeded to pick up each instrument and play it to perfection. When he finished he told them that was how he wanted those instruments to be played.

We're talking 10 plus instruments here! The man may be eccentric but you've gotta respect that.

Anyways, seeing how there's only one degree of separation between the potluck and Prince I figure it's reasonable to expect Prince to stop by. Hence the blog name.


ECCENTRIC:


RESPECT:

Your daily dose of theremin and Daft Punk.

The White Man

A quick note -- This piece is a little too black and white (pardon the pun) for my taste BUT it still frames things in a way that hadn't yet occured to me.

White Privilege, White Entitlement and the 2008 Election
by Tim Wise


For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin’ redneck," like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn’t added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a "light" burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

They're comin around!

THE Church of England will make an official apology to naturalist Charles Darwin for criticising his famous theory of evolution

Coming 126 years after his death, the church's apology will focus on how wrong it was for senior bishops in the past to misunderstand and attack Darwin's theory about man being descended from apes.

Senior church officials will post the apology in the form of an article written by the Reverend Dr Malcolm Brown on the church's website tomorrow.

"Charles Darwin, 200 years from your birth (in 1809), the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still,'' the article says, according to extracts printed by The Mail on Sunday newspaper.

"But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests.''

But the apology by Dr Brown, who is the director of mission and public affairs of the Archbishops' Council, has been dismissed as "pointless'' by Darwin's great great grandson Andrew Darwin.

"Why bother? he said.

"When an apology is made after 200 years, it's not so much to right a wrong, but to make the person or organisation making the apology feel better.''

But Dr Brown says everyone makes mistakes, the church included.

"When a big new idea emerges that changes the way people look at the world, it's easy to feel that every old idea, every certainty, is under attack and then to do battle against the new insights,'' he writes.

"The church made that mistake with Galileo's astronomy and has since realised its error.

"Some Church people did it again in the 1860s with Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.

"So it is important to think again about Darwin's impact on religious thinking, then and now.''

Dr Brown said there was nothing incompatible between Darwin's scientific theories and Christian teaching.



Oh Church of England, you are such a push over. And here's PROOF:

Sounds like somebody has a case of the Mondays

Do you have a problem with your co-workers snagging your lunch from the officer refrigerator?

Now there's a new lunch bag that some say will keep the hungriest thief away from your grub.

It's a lunch bag with mold. Actually, it's a ziplock bag with a pattern that looks like mold.

Parents, this could also be a hit at the lunch table at your kids school.

The designer is New York-based Sherwood Forlee who is actually a trained mechanical and aerospace engineer.

That EU is always one step ahead of us.

Are towns really safer without traffic lights?
One German community removes lights and signs in a daring experiment and sees accident rates decline.
By Isabelle de Pommereau | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the September 12, 2008 edition

Bohmte, Germany - When Ulrike Rubcic heard that her town would take down all of its traffic lights, she rolled her eyes in disbelief.

Tucked between cornfields and cow meadows, the main street in this bucolic northern German community was also a thoroughfare with thousands of cars and trucks zooming to or from nearby Osnabruck. "Are we waiting for the first accident?" she thought then.

But this summer the town reworked its downtown thoroughfare, not only scrapping the traffic lights but also tearing down the curbs and erasing marked crosswalks. The busiest part of the main street turned into a "naked" square shared equally by bikes, pedestrians, cars, and trucks. Now, there is only one rule: Always give way to the person on the right.

Two months into the experiment, "Instead of thinking, 'It's going to be red, I need to give gas, people have to slow down, to look to the right and the left, to be considerate" says Ms. Rubcic.

The bonus? Town people recognize they have become a bit closer to one another. "The whole village has become more human. We look at each other, we greet each other," she says.

In recent years, initiatives that aim at rescuing streets from the hegemony of cars, giving more space for pedestrians and cyclists and combating increased speed, traffic, and trouble have popped up in cities across Europe.

In a new experiment, "Paris respire," the banks of the Seine are closed to traffic on sunny days. Switzerland has set up "zones of encounter" where playgrounds or landscaped areas force cars to slow down and pedestrians have priority. Hundreds of Dutch neighborhoods have successfully done away with traffic signs.

But Bohmte broke new ground. In Germany, a country fond of rules, Bohmte did what politicians had hitherto not dared to do.

"What's revolutionary about Bohmte is that it took off its signs on a state highway with a lot of traffic," says Heiner Monheim, a traffic management expert at the University of Trier, speaking at a recent European conference on sign-free towns convened here. Beyond that, Monheim says, the model's real legacy is to have brought people closer to "rediscovering and appreciating cities not only as traffic places but also as human, social places."

Just like so many other German communities, Bohmte's location as a busy artery was both its blessing and its curse. Close to 13,000 cars and trucks would speed along its main street every day. "Drivers didn't care about kids," says Klaus Mueller, strolling about with his grandchild and noting that the flow of cars is more slow and steady now.

Because Bohmte's main street is a state highway, the town cannot forbid truck traffic. Mayor Klaus Goedejohann knew that the heavy traffic spoilt the town's atmosphere, but that it also provided the town's livelihood. "How do we manage to meet the interest of all the traffic participants without excluding anybody?" he recalls thinking.

Then Mr. Goedejohann heard of a radical traffic-management philosophy called "shared space." Pioneered by a Dutch engineer who thought towns were safer with fewer rules, it envisioned open surfaces on which motorists and pedestrians could "negotiate" with one another by eye contact, other signals, and a greater consideration for one another.

Segregating cars and pedestrians was wrong, argued Hans Monderman, whose death this winter rekindled people's interest in his ideas. Portrayed as a dangerous maverick decades ago, Mr. Monderman put in place more than 100 shared-space schemes in the Netherlands. When the European Union launched a research project on shared space, Bohmte decided to try it, along with six other towns, including Ostend in Belgium and Ipswich in England.

Not everybody feels good about the town having spent close to $3.3 million on redesigning its downtown. On the day of a shared-space conference in Bohmte, Franz Josef Breiner walked hesitantly on the main street's flat surface with his cane, assessing the ground. He is sight-impaired and cannot make eye contact with drivers: shared space robs him of the safety nets that were curbs and sidewalks. "In theory shared space is more human, but we're left out," Mr. Breiner says.

Although shared space "offers a chance to win back space for nonmotorized participants," skepticism also runs high because many people worry that the children and elderly will not be able to communicate with drivers.

Still, a 2008 study in Holland reported that shared space has reduced the number of accidents in sign-free areas.

Goedejohann, Bohmte's mayor, is confident. His town averaged 50 accidents last year. Since the shared space concept was enacted, there haven't been any, he says.

And other city governments are reacting. In Hamburg a new coalition of green and conservative politicians have pledged to design shared space streets in every neighborhood.

"My theory," Monderman said last fall at a new urbanism summit in London, "was if you want to make people behave in a village, maybe you have to make it feel like a village."