Rotundus.com

A news report on a church that practices snake-handling - something fairly dubiously based on Mark 16:

Alton Brown's Savory Polenta

Haven't eaten too much polenta before but this went along fairly well with a few other things. Used turkey broth instead of chicken broth, though I doubt that had much of a flavour impact. Any regular-polenta-eaters out there who can suggest how to fry up leftover polenta without it sticking to the pan too much?

Ultimate Cheater Pulled Pork

Didn't make any pulled pork but used the rub ingredients there and threw it with some very-much-not-boneless ribs in a slow cooker. Was pretty tasty. I'd been looking for a use for my liquid smoke - think I might have to try this with a larger chunk of meat in the future.

Eggs in purgatory

I'm still not quite sure what to make of the combination of eggs and tomato sauce. Think next time I might made more of a bell-pepper / chili tomato sauce.

Boerenkool Stamppot (Kale Hash)

Just grabbed a random recipe for this sort of thing - I didn't bother trying to follow it. I've discovered that the key to this sort of dish is dairy - without it, you might as well scrape the contents of the pan straight into the garbage but with dairy it's not bad.

Slow Cooker Bolognese

This has become somewhat of a regular thing to make - basically since I normally have everything needed to make this in the house already.

Risotto of Almost Anything

I've made more paella than risotto in the past as, though they're fairly similar in many ways, paella you don't need to stir whereas risotto you do. Realized when I was going to start making this that I didn't have some of the ingredients and didn't really know what to pair pumpkin with so a quick consult of The Flavor Bible turned this into a pumpkin-sage risotto. The sage worked out quite well. I may take some advice from Mark Bittman and try a brown-rice risotto in the not-so-distant future.

Disney to make new 'Star Wars' movies, buy Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion from George Lucas

"A decade after George Lucas said "Star Wars" was finished on the big screen, a new trilogy is destined for theatres as The Walt Disney Co. announced Tuesday that it was buying Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion. The seventh movie, with a working title of "Episode 7," is set for release in 2015."

Sweden Wants Your Trash

"Sweden's program of generating energy from garbage is wildly successful, but recently its success has also generated a surprising issue: There is simply not enough trash. Only 4 percent of Swedish garbage ends up in a landfill, according to Swedish Waste Management. ... Sweden has recently begun importing around 800,000 tons of trash annually from other countries."

Outlawed by Amazon DRM

"A couple of days a go, my friend Linn sent me an e-mail, being very frustrated: Amazon just closed her account and wiped her Kindle. Without notice. Without explanation. This is DRM at it’s worst."

A Part-Time Life, as Hours Shrink and Shift

I think that Canadian labour laws generally specify a 4 hour minimum shift time whereas it seems that in the US employees can be scheduled shifts of just 2-3 hours. I wonder what fraction of the problems outlined in the article - e.g. part-time employees not being permitted to switch to full-time work - may really be due to government incentives making it favourable for businesses to hire part-time employees over full-time ones.

Here's something to think about:

Despite the American obsession with voting differences between men and women – the famed U.S. election “gender gap” – there is a far bigger “gap” dividing likely voters in 2012 - the yawning divide between marrieds and unmarrieds. Fifty-seven percent of likely voters who are unmarried support Democratic President Barack Obama in the Nov. 6 general election ... Among married likely voters, Romney led by a 13 percentage point margin, 53 percent to 40 percent, in a sample of 1,322 respondents, for a yawning 37-point “marriage gap.”