Elderberries, that is. Claire Ptak at the Guardian presents her recipe for elderberry jelly:

I had a bottle of Champagne that was burning a hole in my cupboard, so I used it and a few bouquets of the pollinated blossoms to make a refreshing jelly…

Before getting into the jelly, Claire talks about a puzzling encounter with giant hogweed.

A most interesting creature, not one you want to encounter. According to a news account, the thing will be invading southern Florida waters:

The lionfish, a native of the Pacific Ocean, is both gorgeous and dangerous.

Many people may never have seen a lionfish in the waters surrounding South Florida, but many people will be seeing these intriguing fish a lot more often.

Scientists don’t use the word “invasion” lightly, but that’s exactly what they are predicting of the exotic-looking lionfish.

The establishment of the fish near Florida is expected to threaten the lobster, grouper, snapper and many more animals that call these waters their home. They’re bold and they have no natural predator in the Atlantic. And where do they come from? Aquarium owners.

(Photo courtesy of NOAA)

Iraqi leaders are having trouble with the long-term security agreement that the U.S. is trying to work out. It has features including the perpetuation of American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, allowance for nearly 60 permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, immunity for foreign contractors and control over air space. Little wonder there’s some foot-dragging going on in Baghdad.

Comments from Iraqi leaders use words such as colonization, new occupation, loss of sovereignty. And this isn’t from the Iraqi leaders who hate us, but the ones who are supposedly on our side.

But leave it to Joe Lieberman to spin this into an achievement:

The second thing I’d say is the very fact that we’re at a point where the Iraqi leadership wants to negotiate this agreement is a sign of our success in Iraq, which is that Iraq now has a sovereign, independent, self-government.

It’s always good news to the White House. Two months ago the resurgence in violence was yet another sign of success.

I was asked this morning when I was going to drop the hyphen in, for example, “a fund-raising effort.” She wants me to make the switch to fundraiser.

Ouch! That wasn’t easy for me just to type it out. Look at the dr together. It just isn’t right.

I’m quickly becoming a stodgy old editor on this one.

Someone asked for survival tips if he were to be transported back to the year 1000. Why? “…in case I am unexpectedly transported to a random location in Europe.” A little odd, but he got an answer:

hope you have an expensive gold wedding band but otherwise start off by keeping your mouth shut. Find someone who will take care of you for a few days or weeks and then look for employment in the local church. Your marginal product is quite low, even once you have learned the local language. You might think that knowing economics, or perhaps quantum mechanics, will do you some good but in reality people won’t even think your jokes are funny. Even if you can prove Euler’s Theorem from memory no one will understand your notation. I hope you have a strong back and an up to date smallpox vaccination.

Retired FBI agent Jack Cloonan had this to say about torture during a Washington, D.C., hearing:

Based on my experience talking to al-Qaida members, I am persuaded that revenge, in the form of a catastrophic attack on the homeland is coming, that a new generation of jihadist martyrs - motivated in part by the images of Abu Ghraib, is, as we speak, planning to kill Americans and that nothing, gleaned from the use of coercive interrogation techniques will be of any significant use in forestalling this calamitous eventuality.

An al-Qaida marketing agent need only send out e-mails with Abu Graib photos to get his recruits, Cloonan said.

Not everybody at the hearing liked the way the testimony was going. Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) used an objection to force the Senate into recess and disrupt the hearing.

That’s an odd crop of flowers springing up at Morenci Elementary School. And yes, the word “spring” is a pun relating to the project. Art teacher Heidi Drake guided students through a project that produced flowers from old soft drink bottles, with the blossoms mounted on old bed springs.

This week’s print edition includes:

Those are the highlights; there’s even more in print.

Barbara sent an e-mail filled with sand sculpture photos. She wasn’t sure where they came from, but it was probably from this link.

This is from Harrison Hot Springs, the Sand Sculpture Capital of the World. I won’t dispute their claim. These things are truly incredible. And it’s sort of like chalk on the sidewalk; it’s not going to last. Well, not quite like that. This is from the FAQ section:

How do we keep them up for a month? The real enemy of the sculptures is a hot, dry wind that sucks the moisture from the sculpture and allows individual grains of sand to blow away in the wind. Rain, even heavy rain, actually strengthens the sculpture. After the sculptures are carved, we spray each completed sculpture with a product called “WeatherTect II” which is a water-soluble polymer that helps keep the water in. WT II is bio-degradable and environmentally friendly & was developed by the U.S. Navy to stop the erosion of sand dunes. Even WT II will not keep a sculpture intact if it wasn’t built properly in the first place.

Kevin Rushby in the Guardian discusses the prohibitions of carrying food and drink across the borders of many European countries. It reminds him of an incident from his past:

Even further back, I was addicted to a wonderful breakfast food called FruGrains (yes, it’s still available) and took several boxes with me to southern Sudan. Unfortunately, the FruGrains attracted rats and the rats attracted snakes. I ended up confronting a spitting cobra at two in the morning. That’s where over-developed affection for foodstuffs gets you. And anyway, isn’t part of the point of travel to taste the difference?

Rushby says to each the food of the country you’re visiting, even some deep fried insects if that’s what’s being served.

There’s a dollar to be made in everything, even the Rapture. A company called You’ve Been Left Behind will send e-mail messages to your heathen friends six days after the Rapture:

Our purpose is to get one last message to the lost, at a time, when they might just be willing to hear it for the first and last time.

It’s only good for 62 friends, so don’t hang out with too many of us lost ones.

I’m waiting for someone to write and tell me this is just an Onion-ish hoax, an Observer April First-ish story. Probably not. More likely a P.T. Barnum-ish enterprise.

For someone who enjoys storms, I certainly felt trapped last night in city hall, watching the storm move in while waiting for the city council meeting to begin. It looked like a doozy. One of the more menacing skies I’ve seen in many a storm.

Finally, we got some rain with this one. 1.27 inches, to be exact, according to George Isobar’s official National Weather Service rain gauge.

What will it be - the body scan or the pat-down? Detroit’s Metro Airport is among 10 locations for the new body scanning devices that see what’s beneath your clothes. Here’s a Transportation Security Administration comedian from Baltimore:

“We’re just scratching the surface of what we can do with whole-body imaging,” Schear said.

If you don’t want somebody oogling your flesh, you can refuse and submit to a pat-down. About 4% of passengers prefer to be touched.

The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers’ faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person’s gender. “You can actually see the sweat on someone’s back,” Schear said.

Pres. Bush stated in 2006 that he didn’t know the man when asked about everybody’s favorite lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. A new Congressional report indicates Abramhoff was a very popular stranger in the White House:

New documents from the White House and other federal agencies show 70 previously undisclosed contacts between Abramoff or his associates and White House officials, according to the draft report, which was produced by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Those documents confirm an additional 84 contacts the committee had already figured out by combing through Abramoff’s billing records back in 2006. Those billing records had showed yet 401 more White House contacts that this new report does not corroborate (or rule out).

I’ll bet you’ve never been to the Ultrabrown website, unless you took a link that I posted many months ago. It’s the work of…I’m not even sure who…reporting on the scene from India. Here’s an entertaining post about Groucho Marx:

This was a surprise. Yesterday’s Delhi Times had a piece – probably taken from some website or syndicated from an international publication – listing Hollywood’s “most mushy lines of dialogue”. The list mostly contains genuine samples of mush, including “You complete me” from Jerry Maguire, “I want to take care of you” from Monster’s Ball and “I want all of you. Forever. Every day” from The Notebook, but then placed without comment in the midst of all the gooeyness is this line spoken by Groucho Marx to Margaret Dumont in A Day at the Races:

“Marry me and I’ll never look at another horse.”

Wonder if someone misunderstood the tone or whether including it in the list was some kind of tribute to Marxist humour. (Incidentally, Groucho also once said “Alimony is like buying hay for a dead horse.”

You might be interested in a few words about how you smell:

ometimes the smell of body odor means more than just “Wash me!” A person whose sweat starts to smell fruity may have developed diabetes, and an ammonia smell may indicate liver or kidney disease. Odor of rotting fish may signal trimethylaminuria — a rare syndrome caused by a defective gene that prevents people from metabolizing trimethylamine, a natural byproduct of digestion of certain foods like saltwater fish, eggs, and liver.