With so much (understandably) emphasis on sustainability, I thought it time to talk about flowers in our gardens that can also come to the dinner table. Those of us who want our colorful gardens and also want to grow some vegetables and herbs, can mix the two knowing that it all can come together in our food.

Picture a beautiful pot of pansies mixing with varieties of lettuce, spinach, Swiss Chard with calendula peeking above the mix. I am sorry I don't have a picture of this combination but if you use your imagination in the pictures below, you can conjure up not only a vision but a recipe for success!

• Combining Pansies, Calendula and Swiss Chard in your potted garden this winter.

Pansy petals add a mild sweetness to salads as well as brilliant color.

Pick your flowers in the morning and keep them in water until you are ready to add them to your dish. For both of these flowers, I recommend using just the petals, removing all other parts of the flower.

Swiss chard leaves can be sliced in 1 inch strips and boiled for 3 minutes. One of our most healthy leafy vegetables, Swiss Chard can replace spinach in many pasta and egg dishes.

Check with your favorite local chefs to see what they are doing with flowers in their food. I know about growing the plants but they know about cooking them!!

We're only fifteen minutes away from the final Presidential debate of the election season, coming to us from Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. The moderator for tonight's debate will be Bob Schieffer of CBS News and host of CBS's "Face the Nation."

So, what can we expect tonight?

For one, terrible ratings. From the Washington Post:

The first one was The First One. The second one was, ‘Is Obama going to [mess] up?,’ ” one network exec explained to the TV Column, of the two debates’ nearly identical numbers.

But Monday’s third debate — while sure to be the night’s most-watched event, running as it does on a multitude of networks — had three strikes against it:

1.) The debate was scheduled to air against Monday Night Football.

2.) The debate was scheduled to air against Game 7 of the National League Championship Series.

3.) The debate was set to focus on foreign policy.

The first two make sense, of course; the third is somewhat depressing to consider, though unsurprising.

Which brings us to the topics of this evening's debate, from CNN.com:

Similar to the first debate between Obama and Romney, the debate will be broken into six 10-minute segments.

Two of those segments will focus on the first topic, "The Changing Middle East and the New Face of Terrorism," the [Commission on Presidential Debates] statement said.

The other regional topics are "Our longest war — Afghanistan and Pakistan," "Red Lines — Israel and Iran," and "The Rise of China and Tomorrow’s World."

"America’s role in the world" is the fifth topic. The CPD said the topics may be raised in any order.

That being said, what can we actually expect from the candidates? For that, check out this analysis from Audrey Farber of PolicyMic:

While hawk President George W. Bush was able to curry votes thanks to his enthusiasm for promoting military actions abroad via the War on Terror, it is doubtful similar militarism will be successful for Romney with what is now a war-weary populace. So Romney will have to play to the fiscally conservative, rather than hawkish, elements of the GOP. His outsourcing legacy with Bain Capital should come up in discussion, and the fiscally-aware voter base will be looking for policies towards China. The security buffs will be looking to answers on Schieffer’s terrorism questions, and answers to questions on Afghanistan and the rate of troop withdrawal from the Middle East will be on everyone’s radar screens.

On the other side, Obama’s inability to make “progress” in the Middle East (what’s new?) and his administration’s handling of the Arab Spring and the Libya crisis will almost certainly be a point of contention, though I’d expect him to bring up the successful assassination of Osama bin Laden. Then there was the mini-scandal last November when Obama and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy were caught criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Obama and Netanyahu have disagreed on several issues in the past, including the building of Israeli-government-financed settlements in the West Bank. The “peace process” is the perennial topic-du-jour so this is sure to arise.

Either way, it should be an interesting show — and if not, there's always football.

Simply put, this is one of the greatest pranks that I've ever heard of.

Four days after Cal beat Stanford with "The Play," a kickoff return that's as famous for its numerous laterals and on-field chaosas it is for the Stanford trombonist that was run over in the end zone, brilliant members of the Stanford Daily student newspaper saw fit to create a fake edition of Cal's Daily Californian filled with stories meant to convince students that the NCAA had awarded the game to Stanford.

From ESPN Playbook:

Thirty years after several Stanford Daily newspaper staffers produced a fake, four-page “Extra” Daily Californian that reported the NCAA had overturned Cal’s famous, last-second, lateral-filled kickoff return against Stanford four days earlier, they still have trouble picking out their favorite part.

But lurking on the Berkeley campus that Wednesday morning of Nov. 24, 1982, posing as Cal students while watching real Bears faithful pick up the fake Daily Cal, is definitely at or near the top.

“Oh, it was a total crackup,” says Adam Berns, 50, who came up with the idea, sold it to the paper’s editor-in-chief and business manager and recruited his best buddy on the staff, Mark Zeigler, to write most of the stories with him. “People were everything from being really super pissed off to a couple crying to, you know, all sorts of reactions. In fact, Mark and I probably stayed later than any of the other people [at Cal] ... to watch the reaction of people, which was really funny.”

Says Zeigler: “Obviously we were never going to change that outcome, but this was probably the next best thing.”

For the rest, see ESPN Playbook.

• Claire Felicie

Slate has the word on this series of photos by Dutch photographer Clair Felicie entitled "Here Are The Young Men." The series depicts the face of 20 Dutch Marines before, during and after their tours in Afghanistan. Slate's Heather Murphy captured the feeling in the photos perfectly here:

What's interesting about this project is that you can convince yourself that someone changed dramatically from middle to right, only to compare right to left and talk yourself out of it. It must just be angle or lighting, you say. But even after you’ve concluded that wrinkle isn't really any bigger, it's undeniable that there is a difference. No this was not a perfectly controlled scientific experiment, but there is no science to walking into a room, looking into a friend's face, and immediately knowing that something has happened. It's not about the obvious clues like a frown or matted hair, but something far more nuanced.

For more, head over to Slate, or to Claire Felicie's site.

From Mexico City, Marta Molina filed this recent report in Waging Nonviolence on the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity's actions to remind the Meixcan government that its lack of transparency and resolve means there remain no answers for those who grieve over the 80,000 killed and disappeared. The series of actions are especially meant to remind outgoing Mexican President Felipe Calderón that he's failed to keep his promises.

Molina's story is a well-written testimony of what is taking place right now. I recommend you read the entire post here. From Molina:

“Because they were taken alive, we want them returned alive.”

This was the call made by the mothers and family members of the disappeared in front of Mexico City’s Secretariat of Governance on October 10. The initiative was started by the mothers of the disappeared and assassinated, who are members of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD). Their goal is to bring visibility to those who can neither be called dead nor alive, and to those who continue searching for justice. It was the first in a series of activities planned for the coming months to ask for transparency from Felipe Calderón’s government, and to highlight the national emergency now that there are fewer than two months left before he finishes his term.

“My daughter was taken from her home in the state of Oaxaca — I’m from Michoacán — by a group of armed men,” explains Margarita López, an MPJD organizer. ”Like many mothers, I have had to investigate on my own, and I too am trying to find out if the body they say they found is that of my daughter. I’m doing the same as thousands of other mothers.” She continued:

Just as our children have names and faces, the authorities that have failed to do their jobs also have names and faces. We want the world to know who isn’t doing their job, and who is obstructing justice for those who are trying to find our disappeared children or know the details of the killings that have happened, even within the Movement for Peace.

According to the MPJD, by the end of Felipe Calderón’s term there are 80,000 dead, 20,000 disappeared and 250,000 displaced. The figures almost lose meaning when looking at how quickly they’ve grown in the last six years. But each number has a name and a family. No one who was disappeared has returned home. No cases have been resolved, no one has been sentenced and none of the commitments made to the movement have been met after a year and a half of organizing.

On October 10, members of the MPJD covered themselves from head to toe in black thread, and faced the Secretariat of Governance offices in Mexico City. “These black threads represent the number of disappeared,” explains Laura Valencia, a visual artist and member of the MPJD’s art group. This is the way she has found to illustrate an oxymoron: to make a disappearance visible. “This action was developed from serious reflection on a case of disappearance I experienced in my family,” Laura said. She added:

[I]t made me think about how to understand this hole, this hollow space that a disappearance creates … [I]t’s hard to understand just how awful it is for a family to have someone disappeared, because they cannot fill that hole until there’s justice.

The victims of the supposed war on drugs that Calderón began when he assumed the presidency in 2006 want to show Mexico’s president that he has essentially abdicated his job of governing Mexico. They want him to leave office knowing he accomplished nothing and to draw the attention of all Mexicans to the lack of political will to resolve cases of disappearance.

This is proof positive that everything old is new again. From New Scientist, it turns out that hard disks are on their way out as mediums for high-density information storage, as a result of the physical limitations of hard disk technology. The solution, interestingly, is related to what's currently sitting in my nearly-old-enough-to-buy-beer pickup truck: the cassette tape.

From NewScientist:

Researchers at Fuji Film in Japan and IBM in Zurich, Switzerland, have already built prototypes that can store 35 terabytes of data - or about 35 million books' worth of information - on a cartridge that measures just 10 centimetres by 10 cm by 2 cm. This is achieved using magnetic tape coated in particles of barium ferrite.

But the real debut for this technology is likely to be the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), the world's largest radio telescope, whose thousands of antennas will be strewn across the southern hemisphere (New Scientist, 2 June, p 4). Once it's up and running in 2024, the SKA is expected to pump out 1 petabyte (1 million gigabytes) of compressed data per day.

Current projections by the trade body Information Storage Industry Consortium show that although hard drives will be able to store 3 terabytes a piece in a decade's time, that still amounts to at least 120,000 drives a year.

Using tapes should cut down drastically on energy use, too. Data centres based on disc drive arrays use over 200 times more power than would a tape library of similar size, according to a 2010 study by The Clipper Group, a technology consultancy based in Rye, New Hampshire. That's because disc drives in large arrays tend to remain powered-up, so their platters spin continuously, in case data is required, says Jon Hiles of Spectra Logic, a digital archiving firm in Boulder, Colorado. But tape drives only use power when they are being read or recorded on, he says.

So there it is, folks. They're more energy-saving, able to store more data, and likely to make my dad's old Clapton tape to feel less alone in this world.

For more, check out New Scientist.

Last week, the Arizona Daily Wildcat student newspaper got into some hot water for publsihing a comic that was as unfunny as it was offensive (you can check out our reactions to it here and here); as a result, the comic's creator was canned and Wildcat editor-in-chief Kristina Bui heard numerous calls for her to step down from her position. Considering that she appears to have a spine, she has not.

However, today she published an apology detailing the what caused the comic's publication, the previous editorial process, and the editorial process moving forward. We've excerpted some of it here; for the rest, head over to DailyWildcat.com.

From the Daily Wildcat:

Last week, I made a terrible mistake.

In a distracted rush, I allowed the Daily Wildcat to print a comic strip illustrating a parent threatening his child to scare him about coming out. The child makes a crude joke, both fictional characters laugh.

Its intention was not to be funny in the same way that comics like “Garfield” should be. Instead, it meant to highlight a social commentary about hate speech and crimes against the LGBTQ community. But the cartoon’s message came across as “this should happen” although it meant to say “this does happen.” And the message should have been, “This does but should not happen.” That message could not fit in a four-panel drawing.

The world is full of awful things, and joking about them can work to shed light on them. But the jokes can only work if you use your medium to make those awful things better, not worse.

However, just as progress is hindered by satire that fails to contribute to meaningful discussion, progress is also hindered by moves to quash free speech. And, no matter how offensive it is, offensive speech remains protected.

It’s true that the cartoonist’s employment with the Wildcat was terminated Wednesday night, which led other readers to cite his First Amendment rights. But no one is constitutionally guaranteed space in a newspaper. The cartoonist can still publish. He just can’t do it in the Wildcat.

Earlier this month, Border Patrol agent Nicolas Ivie was killed when he and two other agents responded to an alarm raised by a faulty ground sensor on Oct. 2nd. Now, the L.A. Times has revealed that Ivie's death may not have occurred had a plan to update security systems along the border not stalled.

From the L.A. Times:

U.S. Customs and Border Protection "must replace outdated sensors with more modern, effective technology that can assist the Border Patrol in securing our borders while not sending agents into the field unnecessarily," said Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the senior Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee.

The initiative, called the Arizona Border Surveillance Technology Plan, was launched in January 2011 and was projected to cost $1.5 billion over 10 years. However, the Department of Homeland Security has spent little of the $300 million set aside so far by Congress to buy new camera towers, surveillance trucks and ground sensors, among other equipment, according to current and former department officials. Homeland Security officials did not return requests for comment.

"They are experiencing delays," said Ron Colburn, former deputy chief of the U.S. Border Patrol. "It is taking longer than they had hoped."

The purchases have been stalled in the acquisitions office at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which is widely seen as understaffed after a series of congressionally mandated cuts.

"We could do a lot more technologically on the border than we have done, and it's a tragedy that we haven't done it," said Stewart Baker, former head of policy for the Department of Homeland Security. "We have let the perfect be the enemy of the good," he said.

The key here, of course, is the bureaucratic gridlock that has a number of damaged, improperly-working sensors currently laying in the ground. As the story notes, much of the work has been left unfinished due to a lack of clarity in plans outlining the necessity of new and updated systems.

For the rest of the piece, check out LATimes.com.

Yep. I can't stop watching the Body Form video made in response to a man's post on the company's Facebook page regarding women's periods being depicted in commercials as joyous, adventurous occasions. Oh, dear lord, I too wish that monthly visitor brought such happiness to the world.

His Facebook post:

Hi , as a man I must ask why you have lied to us for all these years . As a child I watched your advertisements with interest as to how at this wonderful time of the month that the female gets to enjoy so many things ,I felt a little jealous. I mean bike riding , rollercoasters, dancing, parachuting, why couldn't I get to enjoy this time of joy and 'blue water' and wings !! Dam my penis!! Then I got a girlfriend, was so happy and couldn't wait for this joyous adventurous time of the month to happen .....you lied !! There was no joy , no extreme sports , no blue water spilling over wings and no rocking soundtrack oh no no no. Instead I had to fight against every male urge I had to resist screaming wooaaahhhhh bodddyyyyyyfooorrrmmm bodyformed for youuuuuuu as my lady changed from the loving , gentle, normal skin coloured lady to the little girl from the exorcist with added venom and extra 360 degree head spin. Thanks for setting me up for a fall bodyform , you crafty bugger

On Monday, Oct. 22, the Bus Riders Union will meet at 4 p.m. at the Ronstadt Transit Center (at Sixth Avenue and Congress Street) to discuss "the possible destruction or downsizing of the Ronstadt Center due to downtown developers' desire to squeeze profits out of this prized downtown piece of land."

From the press release:

The Bus Riders Union feels that poor people, in this case bus riders, should not be forced out of downtown. Like City Council Member Regina Romero said in her first campaign: “It should be a downtown for everyone.”

A PLAN TO BEGIN TO FIGHT THIS CLEANSING OF THE DOWNTOWN BY MONEYED INTERESTS WILL BE UNVEILED.
JOIN US !

City Council Member Karin Uhlich will join the Bus Riders Union for this event.

Coffee, Cookies, and DONUTS will be SERVED!

For more info: Brian Flagg at (520) 624-0312