We've kept up some things. Not lutefisk, though.

I fear that my kinswoman Sarameg is losing her heritage. Christmas without lutefisk is like, um--ok it's just like Christmas with lutefisk but less stinky. Still, tradition!

Paging bon bon!

Remember when we had that discussion about the "largest urban park"? I thought it was Griffin or Fairmount and you mentioned a park in Arizona.

What was the real deal?

I ask because the LATimes had an editorial about Griffin park and mentioned it was the largest and I'd love to be able to ding them with a correction.

eta I found a blog that has acreage on parks which is making me laugh.

About fruitcake: Have any of you had a Monastery Fruitcake from Holy Cross Abbey? They are supposed to be excellent.

I'm not a fruitcake partaker, but the truffles look good and I trust the Trappists as they make great beer.

The science of cute [link]

Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.

The greater the number of cute cues that an animal or object happens to possess, or the more exaggerated the signals may be, the louder and more italicized are the squeals provoked.

eta: Oh my, we are such a silly species:

A recent study at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at the University of Michigan showed that high school students were far more likely to believe antismoking messages accompanied by cute cartoon characters like a penguin in a red jacket or a smirking polar bear than when the warnings were delivered unadorned.

This page might have the craziest e-cards I've ever seen. [link] Rejecting a marriage proposal, giving an ultimatum -- VIA E-CARD.

Bahahahah! that's fantastic Jesse! I hope it's a joke.

The Don't Care Bear break-up card is hilarious! Great find, Jesse.

This is the poem from the marriage proposal rejection:

I really want to give this

Relationship a go

Right now I'm not ready

So I'll have to say no

I'm not as happy with our fruitcake this year as I am most years. Mother and I should have had coffee before we were allowed in the kitchen. It tastes decent enough, but it doesn't have any structural integrity.

However, we managed marzipan for the first time in ever, so there's that at least.

(Fay, I had a wedding cake, but it's sadly not the norm here. Well, you have wedding cake, but that's not at all the same thing, though I had one of them, too, out of respect for all the weirdo fruitcake haters on the US side of the invited guests.)

Consuela, any chance you're around?