Once again I have let my feed reader get dangerously behind as I had a busy week of “real life.” I joined the YMCA and began taking exercise classes (my whole body protests) and had the new-homeowner pleasure of my very first appliance dying on me. And it was my refrigerator. In other words, this week I’ve been hurting and living out of a mini-fridge. As a results of all these excuses, this week’s follow Friday will be a bit light. I’m sure next week will make up for it!
News
In exciting news, DNA tests have shown that all redheads are related to each other. Which means I’m also related to all redheads since my little sister is a ginger (and, I suspect, soulless. Haha J/K Love you, Amy! Don’t steal my breath in my sleep!) I read this over at HuffPo Science, which is a good resource for aggregating interesting scientific discoveries, though if you’re really interested in something you’ll probably have to do more research beyond that site. Sadly, this means I’m related to hot-natural-ginger Kevin McKidd. Damn.
Blog Posts
I was delighted to see that my good friend Bill Grant’s latest blog post included a really neat slice of history. His father served as a chef in WWII and Korea and passed his Army Cookbook down to Bill. See his post for the (huge quantity!) recipes he made from the cookbook, along with pictures from the era and a picture of the amazing book itself at Bill’s Sunday Suppers.
This one is from a few weeks ago, but a conversation about litter on Facebook brought it up. This artist in NYC takes people’s detritus – cigarette butts, chewing gum, etc., tests their DNA and then recreates life masks of what they might look like. Neat or 1984? I think it’s a little bit of both.
Websites/Blogs
I’m very interested in the vagaries of “race,” ethnicity and culture so I avidly follow NPR’s Code Switch. Their latest post encouraged people to send in weird, insulting, clueless racially charged things they had been asked with the hashtag #theyasked. You can see all the results here.
As a big believer that ignorance and lack of familiarity drives a lot of hate or fear (ex: the politicians who come out for gay rights after they actually meet a gay person), I tend to agree with the commenter who said that even though these questions are clueless, some of them might be genuine attempts at dialogue. For example, I remember hearing my black friends complaining about being “ashy” and thinking “What does that mean!?” but not asking because I thought I would come across as ignorant. (If I recall, I think I finally just asked my friend Joel. When I was like 26. O_o) On the other hand, some of these questions are just ridiculous or intent on hurting, so feel free to laugh and laugh at those fools on the wrong side of history.
That’s all for this week! I promise to catch up on my feed reader this weekend and be more interesting next weekend. Until then… Happy Detecting!
2 thoughts on “Follow Friday: Army-Style Supper, Questions of Race & Gingers”
We’re related! Yay!
I’m 99% certain you have a soul! J/K J/K But isn’t that awesome? Apparently blue eyes are a mutation like that, too, but no word on whether they all go back to the same person.