Happy yardsale-ing, Jilli!

I love Noah's hair.

His hair is ridonk. The irrepressible TinTin tuft in the middle is being joined by matching columns coming up from the sides as those get longer. Little Mr. Heat Miser.

t eta sorry, more picspam - Noah hearts NY and shows off his guns in support of the FDNY.

Interesting NYT article on China's huge pollution problem. [link]

Stuff I didn't know:

Much of the particulate pollution over Los Angeles originates in China, according to the Journal of Geophysical Research.

'Course, they don't say how much 'much' is....

Experts once thought China might overtake the United States as the world’s leading producer of greenhouse gases by 2010, possibly later. Now, the International Energy Agency has said China could become the emissions leader by the end of this year, and the Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency said China had already passed that level.

Huh. Although on a per-capita basis, we're still way-ahead....

Public health is reeling. Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Bummer. And it seems that Chinese Communism is less prepared to deal with the problem than the west. So far, anyway.

I'm pretty amused by how often my RSS Twitter feed matches up with the LOLCat pictures in this mashup feed:

This is pretty much why the Internet was invented, right?

Oooh, I'm glad I had a reminder -- NBC has a special prime-time pre-football Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight, at 7 EST.

Random question: is there anything you can substitute for Marsala in a recipe? The recipe I'm looking at is a pork and mushroom dealie. I just can't see buying a whole bottle when I want to use a couple of tablespoons.

I'd go with the port, it should work. Chances are it's a bit stronger flavor than marsala, so you might want to use a bit less.

Of what you've got, the port will be the closest (and there's no need to refrigerate port -- the extra alcohol is there to preserve it.)

What amych said, and FWIW the same would be true of the Marsala -- fortified wines are shelf-stable the same as hard liquor. (I use dry vermouth for white wine in recipes all the time for this very reason.)

Jess, dude! At last there's a use for that bottle of vermouth that's been through four of the hub's house-moves!

(srsly - at our last party, we were joking about how vermouth comes out every time and nobody has a martini. I was joking about it being S's dowry, and his BFF was all, "no, it was from the apartment before that... actually, the one before that ...")

Or you could just drink more martinis...

(The vermouth/wine substitution idea came from CI/ATK, naturally. They're so smart.)

I just looked for and found my father's LinkedIn profile. WHY DO I DO THESE THINGS?

(I mean, it's not like it's myspace, but I'm still sitting here thinking "is it weird to send a Friend request to dad? and will he respond with 'you should call home more'...?")

(Now that I think about it, this may militate for more martinis)

Don't drink liquid nitrogen

Within two seconds, I collapsed to the floor, unable to breathe or indeed do anything except feel intense pain. The ambulance arrived. The police arrived. The journey to the hospital. The attempt to explain to baffled ER staff how something like this could happen. Then I passed out.

I woke up the next morning connected to beeping machines. It turns out that, in accordance with popular belief, you really should not drink liquid nitrogen.

...

I was badly burned from epiglottis to stomach bottom. The gas expanded to fill my chest cavity, and the pressure collapsed a lung. After what I'm told was a grueling all-night surgery, they removed part of my stomach and ran my entire digestive system on a machine. I was on a breather for a day until my lung was restored. There are a few considerably uglier details which I will spare you.