sastyk | May 29, 2012The minute I announced my pregnancy with Simon, the first question most people asked me was "Oh, are you trying for a girl?" I admit, the question annoyed me. The implication seemed to be that everyone dreams of the perfect matched set, one boy and one girl. In fact, I always had a strong intuition from the first moment that my babies were boys (Isaiah was the only time I wasn't totally sure), and I was never at all unhappy about that. I also objected to the implied impugning of my math skills - if I didn't want a CHILD, I certainly wouldn't bet on a 50-50 shot ;-).
As my house filled up…
sastyk | May 28, 2012For some reason the steamed and boiled fruit pudding never properly took permanent hold in the New World. It was, by and large, the dessert of choice in Britain for centuries. You could certainly find it in the early days of the colonies, and into the early 19th century, basically as long as open-fireplace cooking was the norm, it was around. But despite its many virtues, almost no one makes them today. They do have virtues - it could be cooked along with a soup or stew so was quick and easy to mix up and prepare, it lasts forever (you can make a traditional plum pudding today and eat…
sastyk | May 23, 2012So with the return of spring comes the return of Occupy, which by and large, is probably a good thing. OWS deserves some props for drawing attention to inequity, for bringing radicalism back, and for showing a very complacent corporate and political leadership that the people still have bite in them. Generally speaking I approve of Occupy.
One of the things I don't approve of, however, catchy as the framing is, is the "1% vs. 99%" rhetoric. The reason I don't is that I think it functionally masks really deep inequities - by putting the second percentile together with the 92 percentile, it…
sastyk | May 21, 2012The always-thoughtful Kurt Cobb has a great piece on the intersection between the hydrofracking boom and the mortgage mess:
One fact ought to tell you all you need to know about the risks faced by homeowners signing leases for natural gas drilling on their property: Wells Fargo & Company, both the largest home mortgage lender in the United States and a major lender to the country's second largest producer of natural gas, Chesapeake Energy Corp., refuses to make home loans for properties encumbered with natural gas drilling leases.
This salient fact comes from an article (PDF) written for…
sastyk | May 21, 2012These fragments I have shored against my ruins. - T. S. Eliot
The national news trucks hit my neighborhood last fall, as some of you will remember. When Tropical Storm Irene caused severe flooding and destruction in surrounding communities, and particularly to many of my neighbor's farms, we were briefly in the news. Then, as is normal for any community that has experienced disaster, came waves of volunteerism and assistance, and then a gradual diminishing of attention and interest, and the slow, long process of reclamation and rebuilding. As spring came around, the houses in the village…
sastyk | May 11, 2012I get a lot of books for review, and for the most part, they are wonderful surprises. Because I receive and read so many books, I rarely sit around saying "Hey, where's my review copy of...X?" Generally I've got a giant pile of books that I need to get to anyway, so I'm much more likely to say "Oh, I didn't realize X was out." So let us first note that I was so anxious for my review copy of Sandor Katz's _The Art of Fermentation_ that I actually sent emails to beg for a copy - only to find that UPS had stuffed this book and another in a really weird place and it had been waiting for me…
sastyk | May 10, 2012Let's be honest, when you work on energy and environmental issues for a living, good news is always welcome. And when it is good news that makes your kids happy, well, even better. President Obama's coming forward in support of gay marriage didn't fix all problems, but it made everyone in our home more cheerful.
All the children living in my house have close family members - parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles etc... who are gay. I would say that there is more than passable odds that one of these days one of the little boys in my house will be coming out. All of them know that…
sastyk | May 9, 2012Isn't it obvious? We gave women the right to vote. As Raw Story reports:
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a tea party activist that's appeared several times on Fox News, and founder of an organization where Sean Hannity serves as an advisory board member, said in a sermon recently published to YouTube that America's greatest mistake was allowing women the right to vote, adding that back in "the good old days, men knew that women are crazy and they knew how to deal with them."
I'm completely on Patterson's side, in fact, I'm sure he agrees with me that the real problems began when we extended the…
sastyk | May 8, 2012Speaking as someone with kids who pretty much are Alligators All Around and Wild Things most of the time, I'm going to miss him. Thanks, Maurice, for the books that fed my childhood and now the childhood of all the kids I love!
sastyk | May 8, 2012So here's what we actually ate yesterday. In addition to the list below, btw, C. and K., the new guys ate a fair number of totally non-local oranges and bananas, as well as some local apples. Because they've experienced real hunger, they have a bowl of fruit in their room that they can eat anytime, so that they never need to worry there won't be food. The first night they were with us Eric took them shopping and let them pick out some junk food to put in the bowl (sugary granola bars and fruit-roll ups), but when we ran out of that stuff, we moved on to just fruit, which is going very well…
sastyk | May 8, 2012it has been quiet around here because late last Tuesday we got a placement of two boys, C., 7 and K., 8. In the chaos of getting everyone settled, dealing with all the legal requirements, paperwork and appointments that a foster placement entails and getting them back to school, the blog has taken a backseat, but I'm more or less back. The boys are doing great, and are truly sweet, wonderful kids. They've had a really rough time, but everyone is really getting used to each other and having a blast. They'll be with us until at least mid-June, so we are in for some spring fun with six boys…
sastyk | April 30, 2012The Astrophysicist, when he has time, will have something to say about his reading of the physics of the material Tom Whipple sums up.
This situation however seems to be changing following a lengthy interview with a fellow out in Berkeley, California by the name of Robert Godes of Brillouin Energy. He has been working in this field for the last ten years and says that he not only has a reliable heat-producing device, but also understands the physics behind it - which he calls the Quantum Fusion Hypothesis. He says that this theory of just how low-energy nuclear reactions work has allowed…
sastyk | April 26, 2012Just about every sustainability magazine on the planet, much less the food ones seems obsessed with no-knead breads. No-knead is trumpeted by everyone on the planet as the easy, awesome way to make bread, the thing that will convert non-bread makers into converts. Now don't get me wrong - I don't really have a dog in this hunt - I'm certainly not opposed to no-knead, but I don't see it as the miracle that some do.
I've had some utterly delicious no-knead breads. I don't think they are bad - Kate at Living the Frugal Life demonstrated a lovely recipe that I've enjoyed a number of times. I…
sastyk | April 24, 2012
(Mina with Goneril and Cordelia - Regan is on the other side of her out of sight)
No-drama Obama has nothing on No-drama Mina, who calmly gave us triplet doelings last night with no muss or fuss. Yes, that's three little girls from her over-achieverness. And she politely waited until we were done with dinner, and by the time we realized she was in labor, she had delivered three goats and had them all up and nursing. All in all, an incredibly auspicious beginning to our kidding season and just one more reminder of Mina's basic awesomeness.
As you may remember, every season's kids get a…
sastyk | April 23, 2012Note, I'm horrified to realize I inadvertantly left out the link to Rhagavan's piece - SO SORRY about that, and please do click through - it is well worth a full read.
Barath Rhagavan has a superb article about the conversion of many climate scientists to support of nuclear power and the reasons this is problematic. These match my own major objections to nuclear as a response. As serious as the environmental impact of failure is, that's not the single biggest issue I see. Even if I thought the siting would avoid any future climate related disasters (I don't), the main issue is the…
sastyk | April 20, 2012The EIA, unlike the IEA, has been strident in its dismissal of peak oil. But the data that the EIA publishes tells a very different story than the one it wants us to hear. Gail the Actuary has a really good analysis up at the Oil Drum.. The essential message - that crude oil production remains basically flat, as it has since 2005, and that growth in non-crude "liquids" (all those things that have made up for the lack of crude growth in world demand) aren't growing as fast as desired or predicted.
Among the critical takeways - that unconventional oil production probably will cease to keep…
sastyk | April 20, 2012Note, no matter what I do it won't embed properly - sorry about that. Here's the link and thanks to Kerri for finding it: http://tinyurl.com/3sxfdjf
Friend Jerah sent this to me, pointing out that since I don't use a refrigerator, my family is among the .04% of the US population that constitutes the "deserving' poor. I'm so proud!
I thought it had to do with income, in which case I'm not, in fact, poor, but no, it is all about the appliance ownership! We're really getting somewhere now - who knew picking up a microwave at a yard sale or living in a subsidized apartment with an actual fridge…
sastyk | April 18, 2012So you had babies, or are about to, right? Now you have to milk. It really, really helps to see it:
We're on baby goat watch here, and looking forward to the run of milk!
Sharon
sastyk | April 16, 2012"Context is everything. Breastfeeding is almost universally beneficial in infants, but in an elderly cardiac patient, it can be fatal." - Spider Robinson
Quite a number of readers suggested I respond to James McWilliams' piece in the New York Times "The Myth of Sustainable Meat." McWilliams has garnered quite a bit of attention by critiquing the idea of local food, and in some cases, some of his analyses, as far as they go, are right. For example, McWilliams is quite right that if everyone in America eats as much beef as they always have, but converts to grassfed beef his figures are…
sastyk | April 12, 2012
In the NYTimes today, Nicholas Kristoff asks just the wrong question "Is an egg for breakfast worth this?" Of course, it isn't, but that's not the right way to frame this. Nothing about an egg for breakfast could be worth this in terms of animal cruelty, human health or any number of other considerations:
"It's physically hard to breathe because of the ammonia" rising from manure pits below older barns, said the investigator, who would not allow his name to be used because that would prevent him from taking another undercover job in agriculture. He said that when workers needed to enter…