Went to the bank with The Man this morning after dropping off the Kiddo at school. Then up to the main post office where the leave letters/packages that you were not home to get, those ones requiring a signature. Stepping out of the post office he says, so, do you need to go see your yarn guy or something? It was all I could do to keep myself from jumping up and down with glee. Cruised by the import shop for basmati and falafel mix and we spied some locally grown avocados. Picked up two of those to try. Curious to see how they'll be. I've always wondered why they were not more popular here for the climate is perfect for growing them.

My LOYM, again. Scored big time with Lana Grossa cable cotton. Holey moley. Lilac, lime, chocolate cable weight. A woodsy brown not so heavy and a bellissima orange cotton viscose blend which I'll put aside in hopes he digs up more. I have a "date" with him next Monday, he said he'd bring the rest of the cottons he had in stock. When I visit him, the packs of yarn I want I just set on aside on another table. Every time I turned back to my pile of cottons I found a pack of linen viscose. A gorgeous chocolate BUT way too thin for me to even consider working with. It would sit and sit and oh gawd I'll probably end up adopting it too but left it behind. I think I've filled in the cotton deficit besides what delights he might have next week. Now I'm ready for the cashmere/silk cones :)

On to the Reads dump.
An interesting post on War Photoblog on Al-Reuter's photo manipulation - Reuters manipulates news photo
. I don't find it surprising yet I am surprised to find so many people shocked that a news agency actually manipulates the news. I imagine these are the people that really believe it when they say "peaceful inner struggle".

Of note on Front Page from last week. Heather MacDonald's - Why Racism Won't Wash

While the race-mongers try to stoke blacks’ suspicion of whites, the public is showing that it regards all Americans, whatever their color or economic situation, as brothers and sisters. That people are giving so feverishly in spite of the competing images of looting by the flood victims and the reports of murder and rape is even stronger proof that racism has lost its grip on the American mind: the givers are refusing the bigot’s reaction of impugning an entire race by the loathsome behavior of a few.

The unstoppable charity towards New Orleans’s largely black survivors is so massive that even the racial demagogues cannot completely ignore it. Braun acknowledges that “the heart of the people has been touched by this tragedy in ways unknown a century ago.” So Braun is forced into an untenable distinction: the government is racist, but the people are not. This is quite a turnaround for the political and cultural elites. They have always looked to the government to protect blacks from the redneck American public’s racism—through the imposition of racial quotas in hiring, contracting, and college admissions, among other endeavors. Now it turns out that the public doesn’t need all that mandated affirmative discrimination: they see blacks as fellow human beings, not as some inferior “Other.”

Dhimmi Watch - censorship at it's finest people. God forbid you offend the you know whatties! Finland: "Technical error" leads to omission of part of Hirsi Ali book critical of Muhammad. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an MP in the Netherlands (liberal), she emigrated there from Somalia, she "knows Islam". Her efforts to tell the world about the treatment of women under the little black tents as warranted numerous death threats from oh I dunno those Mormons or somethin' and the death of Theo Van Gogh. At any rate, I just can't quite believe that a technical error would so convienently edit out passages of a book in this way. I get the drift from those "tolerant" ones that Free Speech is fine and dandy as long as you don't say anything that offends them. Which of course isn't free at all. BTW, CAGE is hosting the movie that Van Gogh was killed for - Submission, scroll down, link under the veil.

Also by way of Dhimmi Watch, an op-ed on the American Thinker by Magdi Khalil on the The Ordeal of Arab Christians. Robert Spencer's intro to the article is concise.

You can usually gauge the health of a society by taking measure of two social conditions: how the society treats women, and how it treats religious or ethnic minorities. The Muslim world's failing with regard to the first condition is well-known, but its inability to successfully integrate with a sizeable Christian Arab community has received far less publicity. As author Magdi Khalil relates in his excellent article in the American Thinker (thanks to Scaramouche), Arab Christians are finding it more and more difficult to live in a region increasingly defined by a monolithic and resurgent Islamic fundamentalism: Read the article.

Finally something that has always been fascinating to me. The population control in China. I've posted about it in the past yet can't find the old posts since they're in draft form (I'm missing a good chunk of 1994 posts because I'm too lazy to reformat them). On The Internet Journal of Public Policy - China Poised to Reap Disaster from "One Child" Policy. Freaky. One of those sociological experiments gone bad. It also mentions the famine, when I read it I finally understood the "clean your plate, there are starving children in China" (not that I was ever told that but you know). And the fact that perhaps it was a government induced famine and not just crappy weather. I wonder the same thing about Africa sometimes. The last thing I want to do is buy GM food grown there while our farmers here are paid not to grow. Let them grow the GM food to feed their own. Only logical, no?

Nearly forgot, a few new links on the sidebar: SerandEZ, Eye on the UN (by way of Israpundit, when he dubbed them the "UN's worse enemy" I just HAD to check it out ; ) ) , Done With Mirrors and Psycho Toddler (always makes me chuckle). Also added The Sneeze, absolutely disgusting food, Steve tastes them for us so we don't have to. Last but not by any means least Trying to Grok, another pointy stick weilding LGF reader (:

We all scream for ice cream! and a Whattie the... - Seething over "offensive" ice cream.

A piu' tard.