I recently mentioned Camp Blaze, a firefighter camp in Washington for young women. For the east coasters there’s similar camp in New Hampshire, Camp Fully Involved, where 15 to 20-year-olds spend a week putting out Dumpster fires in gear weighing almost 100 pounds and learning search & rescue techniques. 14 women from all over New England participated last week in the camp’s first year.

A disadvantage of skipping over commercials with Tivo is that I miss crucial reminders for new programs such as Alton Brown’s Feasting on Asphalt Part 2. I think the Tivo did catch it for me as a suggestion but I ignored it thinking it was a repeat of his first series. Well, Part 2 started on August 4th and will surely be repeated in the future. I’ve got a Season Pass set up now to follow his ride up alongside the mighty Mississippi on a BMW R 1200 GS (yellow). He manages not to break any bones this time around.

Animal-rights activists have been campaigning to shut down the horse meat industry. It turns out that zoos are the largest consumers of horse meat in the U.S. Zoos feed it to carnivorous animals such as lions since it is leaner and better matches their diet in the wild. As the horse meat suppliers gradually shut down some zoos have switched to beef and deer. The Oregon Zoo orders their meat from Canada. The majority of U.S. horse meat is actually shipped abroad.

The most useless “helpful” commuter article ever: the Seattle P.I.’s unconventional ways to beat the I-5 backup. Jet packs, wormholes, and a visit to Spain. Gee, thanks for nothing.

The annual economic indicator that is Vogue’s September ad count has posted a solid gain. The tally is 727 ad pages, more than 100 over last year. It still remains to be seen if the retail season will be strong through back-to-school and Christmas shopping. I may need to purchase a stronger shelf for my heavy collection of September Vogues though.

Violin teacher Elizabeth Faidley traveled to New York to find a new violin and left with an instrument she didn’t want and a plan to hook the salesman, Jonathan Solars, who knew it wasn’t the right violin for her. Her plan consisted of calling him once a week for a month to ostensibly discuss the violin’s unsuitability. Their story makes for a musical Vows column in the N.Y. Times, which includes a video of the two playing a duet despite Mr. Solars’ confession that “Elizabeth’s horrible to play music with because she has to be in charge.” He eventually found a violin bold enough for her personality. And their wedding was suitably filled with music from friends and students.

Puffin photos! From Project Puffin in Rockland, Maine.

Shopping carts are so easy to roll off and so handy to cart off your shopping to the bus stop, your home, your car parked a few lots away. City officials estimate that 100 carts are abandoned in east Bellevue every day. So they are going to crack down on this “blight and a safety hazard” by creating regulations for store owners to contain their carts. “Cart-containment plans” and fines in Renton have been effective at reducing the number of carts littering the landscape.

Was Hitler’s record collection really sitting in an attic near Moscow all these years? Alex Ross (the New Yorker’s classical music writer) doubts it. Stephen Moss of the Guardian is also suspicious. But sensational headlines sell, and the original reports focus in on the recordings of Jewish soloists and music from those Nazi classified “subhumans”: Tchaikovsky, Borodin and Rachmaninoff.

Diners certainly differ in their waitstaff tipping philosophies and the many reader comments on a Seattle Times article about gratuities show how strong those opinions can be. A reader whose sick of tipping writes “get some training so you can get a better job!” Another anti-tip commenter says he only tips because he doesn’t want servers to put anything nasty in his food. One ex-server claims that the tip jar contents at Salumi goes straight to the owner (or did when he worked there; he says he was fired for mentioning it). There’s a lot of bitterness in these comments.