From KOMO News: Technology is being worked on to do away with “controversial” — not to mention horrific and fatal — testing of cosmetic-related chemicals on animals. A “working prototype” is expected to be available in 2011, and European laws require this type of testing to be eliminated by 2013.

“Near Arctic, Seed Vault Is a Fort Knox of Food” in the Feb. 29, 2008 New York Times is about the Global Vault. The vault is a high tech, high security storage facility for all kinds of seeds from collections all over the world. The seeds are being stored as a safety net for maintaining biodiversity to mitigate the potential effects of global warming or some kind of large-scale disaster (natural, man-made or pest-induced).

Fascinating.

Fun fact: The world has 1,200 types of bananas. Wow, that’s a lot of bananas!

Just 4 Steve {not this Steve, the other Steve}: BIBO.

GGN 2 AFZ 2 join AAAAA.

ADBB!

This afternoon, I listened to part of an audio cassette recorded by my paternal grandparents over 30 years ago. Does anybody remember audio cassettes? On the great technology timeline, they fall between 8-tracks (even I’m too young to really be familiar with those) and CDs.

My immediate family lived in the Puget Sound area of Washington state while my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins lived in other parts of the country. During the 1960s and ’70s, long distance telephone calls were deemed “too expensive” so the family—maternal side as well as paternal—kept in touch by recording cassettes and mailing them to each other. (Nowadays, those of us who keep in touch do so mainly through e-mail.)

In the early ’70s, blank cassettes cost approximately one dollar and family members could ramble on for 30, 60, or 90 minutes. How do I know how much they cost? I have a small stack of family cassettes, one of which has a price sticker on the case. I don’t know if cassettes actually were less expensive than long distance calls, but they certainly were perceived as being cheaper. I don’t have any of my parents’ old phone bills, so I can’t do a cost comparison. A year or so ago, I could have done one—I shredded tons of old bills and other paperwork that belonged to my parents, and “tons” is probably literal. Some of the bills were dated as far back as the ’60s, though most were from the mid-’80s and later.

But I digress.

The cassette I listened to was recorded in December 1972, with grandma talking about the gifts she and grandpa received that Christmas. Among grandma’s presents was a variety of greeting cards. She commented, “They are so pretty, and have such nice verses. So often, cards don’t have nice verses.”

So that’s where I get that!

I often get frustrated when choosing paper greeting cards. I find cards with lovely graphics and sappy sentiments or awful attempts at poetry, or cards with decent verses and not-so-great graphics. Sometimes I buy multiple cards and sort of combine them—I’ll get one with a well-crafted message that I then transfer to a “blank,” well-designed card. (For some reason, e-cards are less of a problem. Maybe “online” inherently means “easier”?)

Anyway, now I know that this particular nitpicking is inherited.

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Microsoft’s new operating system is getting mixed reviews. See Fortune’s “test drive”; two New York Times articles — one in the Art & Design section, one in Technology; and the Hexus story about the end user license agreement (EULA).