This past weekend I did a simple google search: wild food — and my eyes were opened to the world of food growing all around us.  I decided to turn my attention to the weeds in my neighbor’s yards while walking my dog.  I did not imagine I would find much among the well-maintained lawns and landscaping around Delaware and Hertel.

But even in my over-paved North Buffalo neighborhood, I was able to identify several species of wild plants (ok, weeds) that are allegedly edible.  From the ubiquitous Dandelion to the easily-overlooked Plantain to the suddenly familiar Chicory, I realized that the astute urban forager could gather a meal’s-worth of food within a one-block radius.  Well, a salad’s-worth anyway.  Probably every day, in fact.

My delight increased as I spied Clover, Purslane, Wild Carrot, Wood Sorrel and Lambsquarters.  Granted, none of these would be featured menu items at the local bistro, but they provide sources of nutrition that are routinely overlooked — in fact actively mowed over.

One vacant lot covered in Clover, Queen Anne’s Lace, and Chicory was a paved parking lot within the last decade.  Nothing but neglect and the weeds’ own ambition has ground concrete to gravel and trapped soil between roots.

I wonder what could be done to fight urban hunger by simply turning a trained eye to the unmowed lawns around us?  Is letting my lawn grow long a form of passive-aggressive urban gardening?  Instead of grass seed, should I be sowing vegetables in my yard?

What does it say about us if even the poorest people don’t see value in food if it doesn’t have a Chiquita sticker on it?

This may sound crazy, but after blaming everyone from Time Warner to Homeland Security to our deaf cat Echo, I finally figured out why my cable modem kept losing sync and requiring that I reboot my router.

The clue came when I realized that the internet connection worked just fine, as long as I was not using it.

I dismissed that as anything other than an illusion at first — I mean, I am paranoid and all, but not crazy.  But the pattern became too consistent, so I started using a different netbook, and suddenly the constant loss of sync and router freezeups stopped recurring.

So for now I have stopped using the Acer AspireOne (ZG5) that I’ve been using, and I’m googling for an answer to this problem that doesn’t involve the words “Windows XP.”  I don’t want to blame Ubuntu, but I might have to.

Maybe it’s time for a hackintosh?

I don’t usually write about politics on this blog. Actually, I can’t claim anything as ‘usual’ here, other than silence.

But this morning as I was driving to work I realized why the American Right is so successful in getting their way: It’s because they don’t allow themselves to be burdened by the truth. They can make whatever statement they want, fabricate facts and circular arguments — because it doesn’t matter if it’s true, it just needs to sound truthy enough.

Their supporters can’t tell the difference.

Democrats (who aren’t anywhere near the Left, btw) make the mistake of thinking that they need to be honest, base their arguments on facts, and set policy that they think might actually work. This is an unforgivable error. They are politicians, not scientists! No one expects them to tell the truth.

Guess what — their supporters can’t tell the difference, either.

The health care system is too complex for even above-average Americans to understand. It’s probably too broken to fix at this point, too. We let it get too big to fix.

What we need right now is for someone to tell a better story than the Republicans — and it doesn’t have to be true. Democrats just need to have faith that the people they elected have a real solution in mind, and can get it done.

So until Democrats wise up and start telling lies like the Republicans, they’ll never get anything done.

Venturing into the woods, sleeping in a tent, no running water or electricity — what is it about removing modern conveniences that is so appealing?

This weekend I found myself thinking about this as I looked around at several dozen people of all ages having the times of their lives with nothing but some good company, a little music (provided at times by the multi-talented Bory Buth) and a steady stream of local beers.

Is it that the ease of modern life makes things too easy? Does running water separate us from our biological nature? Do the easy distractions of television and the Internet divide us from our loved ones?

Yes.

When the basics are what you worry about, your worries are basically nada.

Human beings have reached the edge of our solar system. Russian spacecraft have sent back surprising data from Venus. NASA is planning missions to Mars. The moons of Saturn and Jupiter beckon with the possibility of life unlike anything on Earth.

As we leave the Earth and begin to spread outward from our corner of the outer spiral arm (play along, please) how should humanity view the Universe?

There is some precedent for this view in speculative fiction, particularly in Gene Roddenberry‘s Star Trek and Iain M. Banks’ Culture universes.