Elsewhere on the Web, Inaugural Edition

I'm hoping that this winds up saving me some time: as I wind up with more plants to take care of, I'm spending more and more time on watering (and propagating, grooming, etc.), which leaves me less time to work on the blog. I've still been managing to come up with posts every day, but the reduced amount of time to work on the blog is making it harder and harder to write the plant profiles, and the plant profiles were the whole point of the blog in the first place. I've considered posting less often, but occasionally people have commented about having PATSP worked into their daily routine, so if I went to only posting, say, four days a week, then I'd feel guilty. So, I'm trying this on Sundays for a few weeks. It may or may not last longer than that, depending on how people feel about it and whether or not it actually saves me any time.

New York Times: In a Brooklyn Backyard, Local, Tax-Free Tobacco (Via Comsumerist)
Summary: Brooklyn resident Audrey Silk has taken to growing, curing, shredding, and rolling her own tobacco rather than pay New York's high (and increasing) cigarette taxes.

Far Out Flora: Huntington's Iconic Cacti.
Summary: Pictures of cacti and spiky-pointy cactus allies like whoa.

Minneapolis City Paper: Inside the Multi-Million Dollar Essay-Scoring Business.
Summary: The essay portions of standardized tests are being scored according to how well the essays fit a rigid formula, are subject to pressure to fit certain pre-determined score distributions, and therefore have no reliability as an indicator of a child's ability to communicate through writing, with the most creative thinkers being penalized most severely.
(Not related to plants, but a topic I find interesting. Essay-scoring is a big employer in the Iowa City / Cedar Rapids area, because we have a lot of people with college degrees in non-practical fields who have to pay their bills somehow. As I kind of suspected, essay-scoring sounds like a terrible way to make ends meet, even if you do get to sit indoors in relative comfort while you do it. One also feels bad for the students whose futures depend, however slightly, on a system this arbitrary.)

Flickr: Nature's Assets' Photostream.
Summary: eleven pages of plant pictures, most of them aroids and most of them fairly unusual varieties of familiar plants. (S/He seems to have a special fondness for Philodendrons and Monsteras, though Syngonium, Aglaonema, Scindapsus, Anthurium, and Raphidophora all also make appearances. Several of the IDs strike me as questionable, but it's still a varied and interesting collection, and I'm seriously jealous about a lot of them.)

Bug Girl's Blog: No, Bounce Fabric Softener will NOT protect you from bugs.
Summary: There is some scientific evidence that Bounce brand fabric-softener sheets repel fungus gnats, though they have not, as reported elsewhere, been shown to deter mosquitoes.

All Andrew's Plants: I'm back, a small update.
Summary: Pictures from the Toronto Zoo; do not miss the triggerfish.