I decorated this PvZ cake for Lisey’s birthday. The plants are marzipan with colored icing and sprinx for eyes. The walkways on either side of the pool are white chocolate.

I ordered a cake with a green top and brown sides, and the baker spontaneously thought to make it look like a block of sod – she did a great job! The icing base is light brown buttercream, with the green spritz on top and with crumbled chocolate pressed on the sides. Happy birthday, Lisey!

No, I’m not linking to the article. It’s easy enough to find, and I am not interested in referring traffic.

I subscribe to a newsletter of theirs, and it was infuriating to see a chart praising Mark Hurd side-by-side with these gratuitous remarks. Maybe HP’s board is wimpy. Maybe this woman is acting in bad faith. Maybe Mark Hurd is an executive genius. Not one minuscule part of that story benefits from smearing her.

Nani and David hosted a fine, authentic Hawaiian pig roast. These pictures are from that weekend in late July.

“Some people say my cat is a child substitute, but his pediatrician says that’s not true!”

Humans do every mammalian thing to extreme. Hey, Aphid-farming ants: bow down before the sheer scale of the manure pits alone on a pig farm. Sex? We (sort of) conceal whether we’re ovulating—that’s how interested we are in getting it all the time. Caring for young? What mammals even come close to the prodigious and promiscuous capacity for adoption – within and outside our species – of humans? (Even if it does seem like half the people you meet must surely have been raised by wolves.)

My cat’s not [strictly|exactly|only] a child substitute. I am his mother substitute.

And it turns out this works for dogs, too. This article looks at research that examines the conditions under which we learned what we think we know about alpha canine behavior (from wolves from different families, grouped in captivity, and thus in competition for attention and status). Like cats, and probably every other mammal on the planet, the most essential bond in wolves in the wild is the first-degree family bond, particularly (from a pecking order point of view) parent and child.

The article also takes aim at dominance displays for dog training, like those advocated by The Dog Whisperer, labeling as cruel the technique of rolling a dog and pinning it at its throat. This doesn’t mean that you don’t effectively train a dog by making sure it knows you’re the boss.

Says Bonnie Beaver, former president of the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA): “We are on record as opposing some of the things Cesar Millan does because they’re wrong.” Likewise, the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior (AVSAB) issued a position statement last year arguing against the aggressive-submissive dichotomy. It is leadership by showing a good example, not dominance, that AVSAB says owners should strive for in relation to their dogs.

Your house, your rules—just like any good, involved, boundaries-setting parent.

One of the most effective ways to annoy a monkey is to place it in proximity to a flying squirrel, a new study of Japanese macaques has found.

Also, monkey-annoyance expert?? HELLO, DREAM JOB.

From Christoph Niemann’s always wonderful illustrated blog.

I have a soft spot in my heart for the Newton Meffage Paq (with handwriting recognition!), but I never realized how absolutely essential it could have turned out to be.

In an experiment of one, Dr. Kessler tested his willpower by buying two gooey chocolate chip cookies that he didn’t plan to eat. At home, he found himself staring at the cookies, and even distracted by memories of the chocolate chunks and doughy peaks as he left the room. He left the house, and the cookies remained uneaten. Feeling triumphant, he stopped for coffee, saw cookies on the counter and gobbled one down.

“Why does that chocolate chip cookie have such power over me?” Dr. Kessler asked in an interview. “Is it the cookie, the representation of the cookie in my brain? I spent seven years trying to figure out the answer.”

The two gooey chocolate-chip cookies are Chekhov’s gun. Maybe a scientist has to spend 7 years figuring this out, but any student of literature knows that the deliberate introduction of such a compelling device demands that it have consequences.

That said, the larger point, that by combining fats, sugar and salt in innumerable ways, food makers have essentially tapped into the brain’s reward system, creating a feedback loop that stimulates our desire to eat and leaves us wanting more and more even when we’re full, is an interesting one. The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite is the book he wrote about it.

The Vatican today made the “attempted ordination” of women one of the gravest crimes under church law, putting it in the same category as clerical sex abuse of minors, heresy and schism.

Vatican makes attempted ordination of women a grave crime

CatholicCulture.com helpfully explains that these are simply separate issues, and offers suggestions for how to educate the public about what is meant here:

From the Vatican’s perspective—the canon-law perspective—the issue of women’s ordination belongs in the same category as the issue of sexual abuse; they are both among the most serious offenses that clerics can commit. Fine. But the rest of the world sees these things from a different perspective, and can’t make the same associations. So provide two briefings. First tell reporters about the norms as they apply to sexual abuse, providing story #1 for the headlines. Then, a day or two later, hold a second briefing and explain the norms about women’s ordination. That story will then run separately. The issues won’t be confused, and perhaps the stories won’t be so sarcastic.

Remedial public relations for Vatican officials

No, actually. The people who actually read the source document will go ahead and discuss them together, and even the people who are late to the party will still make the connection.

Oh, really, it’s just hopeless, isn’t it?

“It’s pretty clear that human beings aren’t improving,” said Spencer Greenberg, 27 years old and the brains behind Rebellion’s AI system. “But computers and algorithms are only getting faster and more robust.”

Savor that for a moment. But wait! There’s more:

The firm’s current portfolio is largely defensive. One of its biggest positions is in gold stocks, according to people familiar with the fund.

The defensive move at first worried Mr. Fleiss, who had grown bullish. But it has proven a smart move so far. “I’ve learned not to question the AI,” he said.

Letting the Machines Decide: New Wave of Investment Firms Look to ‘Artificial Intelligence’ in Trade Decisions

Got a question for the Old Spice man? Want to comment on his amazing abs? Do it. Reach out on Twitter, facebook, or your personal blog. He will find it and respond. You can follow the action on Twitter or on the Old Spice brand channel.

They have made a ton of these already, and Mustafa continues to be utterly charming. The man is a complete professional. Which of course is why I am so interested. Because after 15 years in the advertising industry, I deeply appreciate this kind of dedication and excellent creative. Yep.

UPDATE: Making the Old Spice response videos. They have made over 150 so far (June 14)!

Oh and he sent real flowers in real life to Alyssa Milano! I love this campaign.

I am in love with it.

I want to marry it.

UPDATE, June 15: Throwing in the towel. Don’t get excited, though – towel not actually thrown.

The fact that WEIRD people are the outliers in so many key domains of the behavioral sciences may render them one of the worst subpopulations one could study for generalizing about Homo sapiens…. WEIRD people, from this perspective, grow up in, and adapt to, a rather atypical environment vis-à-vis that of most of human history. It should not be surprising that their psychological world is unusual as well. (2010: 79-80) [...]

So, to sum up this post-Henrich, next stage concern: I worry that W.E.I.R.D. classification flatters the WEIRD, focusing on traits that Westerners typically highlight to describe themselves in ways that are, however inadvertently, pretty self-congratulatory. If we were to call the same group, Materialist, Young, self-Obsessed, Pleasure-seeking, Isolated, Consumerist, and Sedentary (MYOPICS)… you get the idea. (By the way, I’m not committed to this, only to getting my own acronym – You know the steps in the cheap acronym process: Set acronym. Find words to fit each letter.)

We agree it’s WEIRD, but is it WEIRD enough? by Greg Downey—where there is much much more, plus charming illustrations.

And in this context, we have to realize that the US no longer has a truly adversarial press. It has a commercial press that is entirely driven by fear of losing readers and/or viewers. Remember that the MSM allowed Palin – then a total unknown – to go an entire campaign without an open press conference. She knows they’re patsies. She’s much less afraid of them than they are of her. And rightly so.

More at “Moms Just Know When There’s Something Wrong”

Reporting in the journal Animal Behaviour, the Steele team showed that when squirrels are certain that they are being watched, they will actively seek to deceive the would-be thieves. They’ll dig a hole, pretend to push an acorn in, and then cover it over, all the while keeping the prized seed hidden in their mouth. “Deceptive caching involves some pretty serious decision making,” Dr. Steele said. “It meets the criteria of tactical deception, which previously was thought to only occur in primates.”

And many other squirrel facts of interest in Nut? What Nut? The Squirrel Outwits to Survive.

A series of type sets made from materials, including soil, hair, paperclips, and gummi bears—all very prettily photographed. The hair one in particular is oddly gross. Soil is my favorite.

Bryne was the first trainer ever killed by orcas at a marine park. It took Sealand employees two hours to recover her body from Nootka, Haida, and Tilikum. They had stripped off all of her clothes save one boot, and she had bruises from bites across her skin. “It was just a tragic accident,” Al Bolz, Sealand’s manager, told reporters at the time. “I just can’t explain it.”

Emphasis added. From The Killer in the Pool.

What is the four-sided Mind of which Nick Carr speaks — this imaginative, rational, inventive, subversive angel striding through the ages, showering the generations with its beneficence? Who is this promethean shapeshifter, whom we’re now in our churlishness binding to some rock for the crows to feast on its innards? What Carr is describing isn’t a historical reality — it’s a god. And it does not exist.

Reading isn’t just a monkish pursuit: Matthew Battles on The Shallows

Rothstein also noted in a post that “If you’re a reporter, you’re supposed to be objective. We shouldn’t know if he voted for Ron Paul, President Obama or David Hasselhoff. If you’re going to be reporting on any political movement, you are supposed to take an unbiased position.” This is how a smear campaign starts, with an argument that in principle, [ostensibly] sounds correct, but really is, at its core, ill-informed, ignorant, and sensational. —Foster Kamer

I’ve been reading about the Dave Weigel thing all morning, only because I couldn’t get away from work long enough to focus on it yesterday. Wow. Village Voice blogger Foster Kamer sums it up nicely and has all the pertinent links. It’s a tawdry tale of true believers being angry that someone who knows a lot about them can see them so clearly, hacks who fantasize about being take-down artists suddenly discovering the value of “journalistic principles,” and, in the end, a really great demonstration of something Jay Rosen has been blogging about heavily lately: the ideology of news reporting gives priority to ritualistic theatre above accuracy, transparency, and fairness.

Dave Weigel’s Twitter stream

Update June 27: Nate Silver weighs in on the bizarrely unrealistic central issue here:

Is the expectation really that journalists aren’t allowed to develop opinions about the subjects they cover, even if those opinions are expressed only in private? We have a name for people who are so indifferent about society: we call them sociopaths. Or is the expectation that journalists are allowed to have opinions, provided that they keep them secret?

Also of note, the very sensible observation that the ‘blog ethos’ of frankly including point of view “is just magazine-journalism ethos with the addition of cat pictures. This approach is immeasurably richer than the fake-objectivity approach of newspapers because, as Jim Henley continues, “The writer will make sure to include a substantial account of challenges to her perspective, if only to knock it down later.”

Pelicans receive fish at the London Zoo

Pelicans have been perfect since the early Oligocene, according to a newly published analysis of a fossilized bill, and partial skull and neck. The study’s lead author, Antoine Louchart, doesn’t actually want to commit to that interpretation, but the 30-million-year old fossil he reports on is so similar to today’s pelican species that it would be classified in the Pelecanus genus.

Study at J Ornithol

I’m a healthy woman, and judging from comments I chose not to approve back in April, my attitude toward homeopathy is regarded in some quarters as being rather unkind. So I wanted to take this opportunity to state my support for the basic principle of homeopathy as a key part of a healthy lifestyle: Drink water. Drink it early and often. Drink lots of it.

Almost everyone should drink more water than they are drinking now. (As long as it’s clean water, of course, and really if you’re reading this you’re likely living somewhere with a hot and cold running supply of it.) Your body is mostly water, and you lose a little bit of it every time you breathe, not to mention sweating and peeing. Often when people feel “hungry,” they are actually thirsty, so starting with a glass of water can satisfy them—and curb the intake of extra calories. You might be stunned by how easily fatigue, congestion, muscle soreness, or headaches recede with a big old glass of water. Staying hydrated supports alertness, helps your body promptly flush waste products, and keeps your tissues comfortably moist so they can do their jobs.

So drink lots of water! You can prepare water yourself by opening a tap in a home or other structure that is supplied with potable water, perhaps improving the taste by running it through a faucet-mounted or carafe-based (eg, Brita) filter.

“We believe all wells can be drilled incident free. We believe this well will be drilled incident free and we won’t need a relief well,” [Mark MacLeod, Chevron's Atlantic Manager] said.

Chevron is drilling a well in more than 2,600 meters (8,530 feet) of water off the Canadian coast, making it twice as deep as the BP well that has been fouling the Gulf of Mexico with oil since April. —Reuters Africa

Stunningly, bafflingly, foreshadowingly, the name of the rig doing the work (and the field it’s working on) is—wait for it—Blind Faith. I’ll say! Oh yeah, at least one of the ships it listed in its relief plan (saying it could be there in 10 days when the truth is probably more like a month) is already on the job in the Gulf.

I can sincerely say, because it’s better for all of us, that I hope this does not turn into the grimmest punchline of the decade.

The chairmen of four of the world’s largest oil companies broke their nearly two-month silence on the major spill in the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday and publicly blamed BP for mishandling the well that caused the disaster.

OK, ha ha, well, sure, we can all understand the impulse. But are they sure they are really so different?

Although most of the Congressional fire was aimed at BP on Tuesday, the other executives came under criticism as well, particularly for the response plans that they prepared for a major spill in the gulf. The five companies submitted virtually identical plans to government regulators and to the committee. The 500-page document, prepared by a private contractor, refers to measures to protect walruses and gives a phone number for a marine biologist who died five years ago.

James J. Mulva, chief executive of ConocoPhillips, said the citations were “certainly an embarrassment to Conoco,” adding, “Plans need to be updated more frequently.”

From Oil Executives Break Ranks in Testimony.