Marketing in the form of branding comes to your local plant nursery. There’s a big market of gardeners out there and nurseries are taking advantage of the tried and true results of renaming generic products to make them more attractive to consumers. Resilient Jewels, Lasting Jewels, Hot Jewels, Cool Jewels, Superbells, Superbena, Supertunia. Thank goodness these plants come with more than marketing-speak names and pretty packaging; many also include instructions on their care and feeding, with more information available on company websites. Like everything else that gets branded, it’s all about introducing consumers to convenience.

A Massachusetts cat was in a tree for eighteen days before being rescued by an Animal Rescue League worker trained in tree climbing by an arborist. (thanks Jen!)

The folks at The Undetectables, a company that helps mobile phone companies in the U.K. camouflage their cell antennas, used to build sets and scenery for Aardman Animations, the makers of Wallace and Gromit. (via Slashdot)

Logitech’s new IO pen captures your handwriting but doesn’t include handwriting recognition software. It stores what you write with the pen in an image format that you can then attach to documents or just keep around for reference. Although I type faster than I can write and have almost mastered Palm’s Graffiti (after several years of sporadic training), I still like to scribble out notes in many cases instead of using electronic text. It allows me to be expressive and use more graphical information (arrows, many underlines for emphasis), plus the doodling helps me think. I’m not sure I need it in electronic format, but if I could somehow search all those scribbles later for things I jotted down, that could be worth the switch from paper. (via evhead)

Within CODeDOC, Whitney Museum’s ‘net art project that takes a look at the coding side of software art, this Java project was especially mesmerizing. From the source code comments: “This code reads in its own source and displays it in a tiny font, then moves three points in ‘code space.’ It essentially comments on itself. The white Insertion Point traces the code in the order it was written. The amber Fixation Point traces word by word as someone might read it. The green Execution Point shows a sample of how the computer reads it. The code lines themselves gradually get brighter as they execute more.” More on the author’s related projects at TextArc. (thanks Succa)

Despite the lamentable woes of Amtrak, there is still a romance to cruising the country by rail, the lulling clickety clack, the Doppler-affected clangs of crossings, and, most importantly for me, the absence of car or plane motion nausea. As most of us think about train trips we picture a comfy chair and perhaps a snug little sleeping compartment. But there’s another option for the well-heeled. You can charter a private railroad car. The American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners has listings of cars available for you to rent for parties, unique business trips, honeymoons, whatever your fancy. These cars are attached to Amtrak trains traveling the usual scheduled routes, so you won’t be going anywhere you can’t get to with usual passenger rail. But imagine the luxury of having your own private section of a train! And perhaps then the family pet can come along?

Take a peek at this luxurious car that comes with an executive chef. And there are plenty more to choose from… the Scottish Thistle, Francis L. Suter, Dover Harbor, Northern Sky. The Caritas has Art Deco styling. Read about the inspector-with-an-attitude that kept the Virginia City car off the rails for over a year! The last Presidential rail car is on display in a Miami museum. If you want to buy your very own railroad car, be aware that you may have to pay property tax on it. California’s Private Railroad Car Tax is the only property tax that is collected by the state itself (CA residents pay property taxes to the county).

At the Weber Grill Restaurant, everything is cooked over charcoal on those familiar Weber kettles. Heat is heat, but there’s something about food roasted over coals, and this is a gimmick that makes some sense.

Late one evening I heard a scrabble scrabble on the roof (and I don’t mean two copies of the word game). The cat raised her eyes upwards and her ears followed suit. I knew what this meant, I had read about it in the home inspection reports for other houses and heard the experiences from fellow new homeowners: roof rats. Well, we roof rat hosts are in good company, with the rich and famous of Beverly Hills fighting an infestation of “Rattus rattus”, past carrier of the Plague, chewer of metal, wood and concrete, eater of vegetables, flowers, and fruits. The citizens of southern California are debating the balance between feral cats versus dirty rats. It seems the rats got worse when the cats were trapped. Hmmm. But the good people of 90210 are unlikely to want scrappy cats running around their neighborhoods even if it does solve the rat problem. Meanwhile back in Silicon Valley, we’re blocking any holes we find into the attic … but those little guys can fit through holes the size of a quarter.

Steven Pinker has a new book out, “The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.” Edge has a lengthy interview with him. Pinker’s book fights the “blank slate” view of mind, that we are all formed by parenting, nurturing, society. His ammunition is the results of studies in the field of behavioral genetics. Although the brain has a great capacity to learn, “research is showing that many properties of the brain are genetically organized, and don’t depend on information coming in from the senses.” So the old nature versus nurture arguments get some weight on the nature side from the dominance and persistence of our genes. (Thanks Skot)

Connecticut makes nearly $600 million annually in gambling revenues. It’s a staggering amount considering the small size of the state (about 3.2 million population). The Christian Science Monitor takes a look at New England casinos, pointing out the shift from traditional Puritanical views to a new view of entertainment and profits. Other states are considering opening casinos as well, with Native American tribes promising large revenues and thousands of jobs. Casinos do take a toll, however, with bankruptcy and crime created by “problem gamblers” which then costs the state money. Groups who are fighting the casinos are even comparing the gambling industry to the tobacco industry, predicting that lawsuits could arise if they don’t acknowledge the problems. It seems unlikely that a state that allows gambling will be sued, after all they allow tobacco to be sold (with sin taxes of course), so that won’t stop them from creating new revenue streams. What will be interesting to see is how much money there is to spread around. Will Connecticut’s revenues decrease if neighboring states open casinos?