I will be off for a long-promised, computer-free family vacation in the Four Corners region over the next week.  Luck and last-minute preparations at work and at home permitting, I will pre-post this 'n' that before departure, so that this weblog will not languish too much in my absence.  For the moment, another of my irregular miscellanies of links to others' sites:

• Food and Drink: An epicure's lament from Tom Wark.

• Pop a [mushroom] cap: There does not appear to be any resurgence of the local health authorities' urge to clamp down on wild mushrooms here in Los Angeles, but there is a fresh bloom of fungal regulation in New York.  [Link via Walter Olson and Overlawyered.  You should perhaps also follow the adventures of Walter's former Overlawyered compatriot Ted Frank on his tastily-named new personal weblog, Lagniappe.  Ted may or may not keep up on his posting there after he joins the American Enterprise Institute on July 1.]

• What's Good in Life:  Awwwww.  The floppy ear is a particularly nice touch, as is the subtle Dalmatian motif in the forelegs.

• Literchur:  Chris enthuses over Umberto Eco's new, semi-graphic [in the sense of "partially illustrated," not "somewhat explicitly violent"] novel, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana.   If you would like a taste before hunting up your own copy, I mentioned the novel and linked the New Yorker's publication of what proves to have been an unillustrated excerpt from it -- and a darned good stand-alone story in its own right -- in this post back in March.

• Tempora, Mores, etc.:  George Hunka superfluates on The Nouveau Rude:

Remember when pride was a sin and modesty a virtue?  There are a few things the Middle Ages got right after all.

• Art/Empire/Industry:  Graham Lester points to a marvelous online exhibition from the UK National Archives: The Art of War, compiling work -- illustrations, paintings, propaganda pieces -- by dozens of British artists from World War II.  The exhibition can be browsed by category, by artist (look, it's Mervyn Peake!), and most likely in other ways I've not yet had the opportunity to discover.
  
  • Not included is anything by Sir Stanley Spencer -- my post about whom regularly draws misguided Google traffic here from people who only want to find their local Spencer Gifts store -- such as his great series of paintings, held by the Imperial War Museum, of Shipbuilding on the Clyde, some study drawings for which are collected here.