From a publisher’s description of Betty Crocker’s Cookie Book, 2nd edition:

“Betty Crocker’s celebration of the cookie includes more than 240 recipes for everything from Deluxe Chocolate Chip Cookies to Walnut Biscotti. Rpclu Rpad Bars, No-Roll Sugar Cookies, and more.”

Rpclu Rpad Bars?

Three nuns in their sixties are awaiting heavy sentencing for breaking into a nuclear missile site and painting crosses on the silo cover in their own blood, plus some fairly symbolic (given that the nun in the picture is fairly petite– your fun size nun, if you will) hammer damage. Their lawyer says the serious crackdown by the Man is due to intolerance of dissent since you-know-what, but I’m betting that it may have something to do with how far several fairly small non-muscular older ladies got in their quest, and how very much further anyone with any active malice or appropriate tools would get.

I’m confident that everybody who reads this also reads memepool, but I will nevertheless point to the Rotten Library. Their summary of everybody’s favorite money-draining cult pretending to be a religion (I won’t name the beast, lest it look in my direction, but you can find it under Religion. Kathy Griffin calls it Somethingology) is brief, to the point, and right on the money.

If you need to preserve food for a long time, you have a few main options. If you’re going on a long space journey, I recommend canned food. If you’re backpacking, I recommend dried food to reconstitute on the road (make sure you find potable water!). If you’re at home, try freezing your food.

A few freezing tips are available from your local (or not so local) agricultural extension office (North Dakota), (Ohio), food conglomerate, or bridge club (huh?).

You can also try preserving in fat or pickling if you have dodgy electricity.

The ultimate in retro car customization: an in-car record player! Bonus points if you can engineer one that doesn’t require specially-engineered records.

A weblog of cool tools, edited by a guy who used to edit Whole Earth Review.

The wonderful Sara Ryan mentions in her blog a piece by Sara Paretsky called Truth, Lies and Duct Tape, about bad shit that has happened in publishing and libraries and the culture in general. It’s not real cheering.

According to this article (and why would the Sci-Fi channel lie?), there will be a Firefly DVD release, with at least some commentary, including the three unaired episodes. Also, hold on to anything that might come loose, it looks like a movie is in the works!

Information on previous presidential administrations goes to the National Archives, and snapshots of the previous whitehouse.gov are helpfully archived. Clinton’s complete letters and speeches are available as well.

The full context of the Bush quote turned up in the New York Times, December 21, 2000, from a news conference naming the treasury secretary.

Q. Mr. President-elect, this morning your office spoke about the need for a new energy policy. Can you tell us something specific that you would do, for instance, in the first 100 days, to correct rising energy prices?

A. I strongly believe that we must work in concert to increase the amount of supply available for American consumers. Supply of natural gas, supply of coal, supply of plant and equipment.

I believe we need to review all federal land policy to make sure that we’re not missing an opportunity to explore for natural gas in the country. Natural gas is hemispheric; I like to call it hemispheric in nature, because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods, and it is immune from price manipulation by OPEC. It is — there are supplies of gas to be discovered in America.

The issue with natural gas is not only its discovery, but its transportation. So we must review all policies that would prevent that construction of pipeline to be able to move gas from field to market.

When we’re undersupplied as a nation and demand increases, prices will go up. And that’s what’s happening in the energy field.

I look forward to working with Congress to pass clean coal technologies, money for clean coal technology, so that we can explore and develop the vast coal reserves in our country with the comfort of knowing that we’re not going to ruin our environment.

I look forward to working with our friends and allies in our own hemisphere to put together a hemispheric energy policy, an energy policy that will allow for the free flow of natural gas, in particular, across our respective borders to make sure there is ample supply, ample supply to meet the demand of this nation.

And so, Carl, I look forward to when I’m swearing in as to put together a strategy that will make clear to the American people that we will address the needs. . . .

Brooklyn Public has an archive of The Brooklyn Eagle that should be fun to browse, once the megablog traffic dies down. A writer for the Observer gives a pretty good impression of the subtle flavors of powerlessness involved in being a government functionary and a fascinating insight into Refusal Shoes. Librarians teaching people new to the net how to evaluate information used to give lectures on the difference between .com, .org, and .gov, but that has now all gone by the wayside. A horrifying discovery typifying this trend: Moneyfactory.com, which is actually the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing. And such an undignified name, too.