Category Archives: Uncategorized

ok, I’m back, showered in both rain and hot water, shave… and have a smile on my face. Mentally clear and have the cobs brushed away…. but I’ll still probably take that nap later.

I have a *lot* of tasty, healthful food… all my arms could carry. I don’t feel guilty for using plastic bags because I was walking in the rain and recycle ’em anyhow, as kitchen trash or back at the market’s recycling center… I’m delighted that this city uses a waste-to-energy program(opens in a new page) and recycles so much… no giant landfills here to deal with, and the resources are put to better use. (Heck, we even water the city grass with recycled wastewater… like spraying fertiliser on the stuff… the greenest grass around.

Back to rest and relaxation, dear journal.

testing a new pic host

Didn’t get much sleep last night, I forgot to use the CPAP for the first time in ages…only the comfort and company of my two favorite redheads made it worth my while… I love them both so much!

I plan on taking a nap in a little bit to try to recharge my batteries some. It’s raining lightly outside, and I feel more placid now… have some champa burning, and a much more positive outlook. Newt impresses me by scratching his chin with his right rear paw, effortlessly. I wish I could do that… though I’d prefer to have a prehensile tail to Newt’s running / navigation strip. (He does have great colors, though… stripey-tail is very fashionable this season, I imagine.)

Off to go grocery shopping… I got fresh fruit yesterday, time to restock the other stuff. I’m making some stir-fry for supper tonight… I dont mind walking in the rain… it’s refreshing, and I’m not getting anything that’ll melt.

Some piccies of me and Newt sleepin’ and playin’…mostly sleepin’

Talked to my brother on the phone…he seems to be doing pretty well all things considered. Charlie hooked him up with a frozen coffee and friendly conversation. She sounds like a nice gal.

He has some things to work out.. hopefully they’ll be taken care of inside the next week or so. I asked him about Charlies LJ, but she doesn’t want him to read it, I think. Personal stuff, and all that. It’s funny what a person can put out for stangers to read, but would be mortified if folks they knew could see it.

Two New Beans from America

from Our Vegetable Travellers

Before Columbus, the Old World was familiar with numerous kinds of beans, but neither our common bean, Phaseolus vulgaris, nor the lima bean, P. lunatus, was known. Their American origin is fixed by descriptions and references to finding them at many widely scattered points over the Americas about 1500 and soon after.

The word “bean,” like the word “vegetable,” is indefinite. It is used to refer to the seeds of many different kinds of plants.

Our use of the expression “common bean” is in accord with the scientific name Phaseolus vulgaris, which means exactly that. It includes our dry, field varieties, such as Navy or Pea Bean, Red Kidney, Pinto, Great Northern, Marrow, and Yellow Eye. It also includes all our edible-podded garden beans called stringless or snap beans and formerly called string beans. (Some varieties are stringy.)

The English first used the name “kidney bean” in 1551 to distinguish our American common bean from Old World types.

In the South and some other parts of this country lima beans are commonly called “butter beans.” In New England this colloquialism is sometimes used to refer to yellowpodded (“wax”) varieties of snap beans.

Lima Bean a Native of Guatemala

Not long ago Brazil was believed to be the country of origin of lima beans, but new evidence points to Guatemala. Wild primitive lima beans have been found there, along with a remarkable diversity of cultivated forms. Their distribution from Guatemala has been traced by the various “prehistoric varieties” left along Indian trade routes.

One course of prehistoric “bean migration” extended up through Mexico into what is now our Southwest, thence eastward to spread from Florida to Virginia. The lima beans grown by the various Indian tribes over all that territory varied from the present small types used by the Hopi Indians in the Southwest to the Sieva type found in the East.

Another course extended down through Central America into Peru, where the large-seeded, large-podded types were developed in the warm coastal areas. The name “lima bean” obviously came from Lima, Peru, one point at which the species was found by early European explorers.

A third, but less extensive, branch of development extended eastward through the West Indies and thence southward toward the mainland of South America. This Caribbean branch of the species contains types that tend to develop poisonous quantities of cyanide under certain conditions, but the other two branches have not shown this treacherous tendency. These “bad actors” are generally very small, nearly round, and often are hardly recognizable as lima beans.

There is an almost endless diversity of seed sizes, shapes, and color combinations among the lima beans, although few colored varieties are now grown in the United States.

Since dry common and lima beans are highly concentrated foods and are easily carried and stored for long periods, the explorers and slavers of the early 1500’s found them ideal for replenishing their ships’ stores. Supplies were obtained from Indians in numerous places in the Americas and incidentally carried to the farthest parts of the earth-Europe, Africa, the East Indies, India, the Philippines.

By the late 1700’s there were many records of the lima bean in all those places. Apparently it was first recorded in Europe about 1591. It is far less important in most of Europe than is the common bean, since it requires warm weather for good growth.

The bush varieties of lima bean are of rather recent development (since 1875), although the dwarf mutation on which they are based had doubtless recurred innumerable times before anyone thought of making use of it.

The common bean also is believed to have originated in Central America and to have undergone somewhat the same distribution as the lima bean. Because of its greater range of cultivation all over the Americas at the time of discovery, and its greater diversity in North America, it is probable that its culture is even older than that of the lima bean.

Beans a Mainstay of Indian Diet

When the white man discovered the Americas, beans were almost as universally grown as maize and supplemented maize in the diet to a very important degree. Climbing beans were generally planted along with maize all over the Americas.

Maize is high in starch but deficient in certain proteins, while beans are high in those proteins. The combination of beans and maize, we know in the light of modern nutrition, met most of the requirements of those Indian tribes of Central America that used little or no meat. The Indians invented succotash.

The pods of some forms were eaten in the green state, at least by white men, virtually from the time of their discovery. It was less than a hundred years ago, however, that truly stringless, nearly fiberless, tender-podded varieties, such as we know today, were developed.

Ann and Bob are having a disagreement.

“Clearly,” says Ann, “The empirical world is a trap from which we must escape, because it is, ultimately, immutable.”

“Clearly,” says Bob, “The world of our perceptions is a trap from which we must escape, because it is, ultimately, unreliable.”

“Fortunately,” says Ann, “We have a realm of culture and language which we CAN control. The more we devote ourselves to such things, the more perfectly human we will be.”

“Fortunately,” says Bob, “We have systems of logic and mathematics, upon which we CAN rely. The more we devote ourselves to such things, the more perfectly human we will be.”

Which one is right?

Perhaps more importantly… why aren’t they listening to one another?

I missed the M*A*S*H reunion… hopefully it’ll be rerun soon.

Pam at work has Bell’s Palsy along the right side of the face… she went to the ER today… I hope she’s all right. I understand she and her youngest son are staying with Msk, so she’s in loving, capable hands. I hope a correction for it appears soon….the good news is that it wasn’t a stroke. Fortunately, it’s not permanent. Still scary as all get out.

weird keywords to my site –

Google chuck norris picture in the shower
Yahoo photos of scotsman bum
Google sad stories of people with achondroplasia

tucking in, and snuggling into a deep, comfy sleep.

sweet dreams, dear journal.

interesting link popularity analyzer

Total links for www.scottobear.com are 949… Google 28, AllTheWeb 662, AltaVista 169, AOL 19, MSN 25, HotBot 19 and Lycos 27 links.

scottobear.livejournal.com Google 0, AllTheWeb 616, AltaVista 4, AOL 4, MSN 6, HotBot 4 and Lycos 7 links.

scottobear.com/newtcam/newtcam.html Google 0, AllTheWeb 12, AltaVista 2, AOL 0, MSN 0, HotBot 0 and Lycos 6 links.

livejournal.com/users/scottobear Google 0, AllTheWeb 88, AltaVista 3, AOL 0, MSN 0, HotBot 0 and Lycos 0 links.

livejournal.com/~scottobear Google 0, AllTheWeb 1, AltaVista 1, AOL 0, MSN 0, HotBot 0 and Lycos 0 links.

found while evaluating meta-tags… my pages have none, save for my super-secret silly page, made maybe 3 years ago, or whenever I first discovered metas.

Back from walking, and I think I have my mental image of how I want things more in place now.

Colors / Fonts will be – (for the moment)

.largebrown {font-size: 110%; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; color: #996633;}
.medlightbrown {font-size: 100%; font-variant: small-caps; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; color: #cc9966; letter-spacing: 3pt;}
.smallredbrown {font-size: 80%; font-variant: small-caps; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; color: #663300; letter-spacing: 1pt;}
.standardplain {font-size: 90%; font-family: verdana, sans-serif;}
.footer {font-size: 80%; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; color: #663300;}
.smallyellow {font-size: 80%; font-family: verdana, sans-serif; color: #cc9900;}
.beige {background-color: #cc9966;}
.lightbeige {background-color: #ffcc99;}
A:visited {color: #993333;}
A:link {color: #336633;}
A:hover {color: #ffcc00;} – This one I’m not sure about. Still hard to read. maybe I’ll do a more maroon.


I’m not sure if I want to lock the size like I did last time, or let it expand to any ol’ range yet… I’m leaning to expansion, but that’ll make the layout a little more tricky.

I think it’ll be my project for this weekend… I just need to focus on it, and crew it up for more than 20 minutes at a pop.

Yoda is my hero.

no spoilers, but just that.

Saw star wars tonight, and he stole the show as far as I’m concerned.

It’s not terribly memorable, aside from the little green guy. No dialog or clips stand out in my mind, and there’s not a lot of chemistry on screen. all the parts that were memorable were cgi or costumes. the people didn’t grab me. neat starships, scenery, and droids.

Tucked my beloved in, and now I ponder briefly, before hitting the sack, m’self.

Sun and Moon. Day and Night. Consciousness and Dream. Sun gods usually have to demand blood; the Moon gets hers every 28 days, like clockwork. My sweetheart is ovulating right now, and working on her tan. More and more Sun and Moon.

I’m hitting the sack… nigh nigh, dear journal.

Mysteries surround us daily.

I like to pick out one or two unexplained things every day, and try to find a solution to it… or, barring that, make up a myth about how it came to be that way.

I’m not sure what today’s mystery is yet. perhaps that’s a mystery in and of itself.

I’m wondering why we have two of one sort of body part…. like nostrils. why two? did we need “stereophonic scent” at one point? Two eyes give us binocular vision, and two ears make it so that pinpointing a sound works well, via triangulation. Why two lungs, and two kidneys, but only one heart and liver?

Tonight, I’m getting out of work early to see Star Wars with the goon squad at work, as well as a few misc folk… I hope baby Boba isn’t as annoying as baby Darth was.

It was lightning out this morn, so instead of walking I just watched an interesting movie, Waking Life, an animated film written and directed by Richard Linklater (“Slacker,” “Dazed and Confused”), while puttering a little bit with paint shop pro. I pretty quickly got caught up in the film, only about one icon into it before stopping to pay closer attention to what was happening on-screen.

The plot summary in the IMDB gives you an idea of the quirkiness of the film:

“Dreams. What are they? An escape from reality or reality itself? Waking Life follows the dream(s) of one man and his attempt to find and discern the absolute difference between waking life and the dreamworld. While trying to figure out a way to wake up, he runs into many people on his way; some of which offer one sentence asides on life, others delving deeply into existential questions and life’s mysteries. We become the main character. It becomes our dream and our questions being asked and answered. Can we control our dreams? What are they telling us about life? About death? About ourselves and where we come from and where we are going? The film does not answer all these for us. Instead, it inspires us to ask the questions and find the answers ourselves.”

Somehow, the beautiful rotoscoped animation makes a scene of two talking heads discussing existentialism or the nature of dreams interesting for the eyes as well as the ears. It presents a lot to think about for anyone interested in dreamlands.

A lengthy anecdote concerning Philip K. Dick and “Flow My Tears The Policeman Said.” Speculations about what happens in those minutes between the death of the body and brain death. Some excellent rants. A few good tips on how to tell if you are dreaming.

Digital readouts; particularly watches, are usually garbled when dreaming.

Small print is usually gibberish. In fact, most text is an impression rather than actual words unless you pay careful attention.

Light levels don’t usually change in dreams, unless, of course, the light levels are the whole point to the particular dream. Which is rare. If you suspect you are dreaming, flip a light switch to see if anything happens.

Nifty stuff… I’m going to have to remember to try a few of those hints. I had peaceful dreams last night, but not memorable ones. I just awoke refreshed and calm.

Off to pick up 10 tickets for star wars… looks like we’ll be catching the 7:15 show tomorrow, so I’ll get to duck out early, but the 9-to-5ers can stay the whole day. Hee hee!

Until later, dear journal.

Wow, I just got done chatting with Tman… First Robb pops back out of the woodwork, and now this. I’ve not heard from him or Pix in an age. They’re still an item, and are moving in together in August… I’m so happy for ’em.. they’re an adorable couple. Both are working, Pix is doing Antonios part time, and massage… Tman is still up to his Computer net shenanigans. In honor of them, a long overdue scotto-poll.

Ok, really nigh night, now.