Climate Culture
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Julia Roberts greens up
Nothing like another child on the way to get a gal thinking about the health of the planet. Apparently, Julia Roberts, who's preggo again, is planning to green up her Malibu abode with some solar panels, recycled tiles, and sustainable wood products.
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Beans, beans, good for your recipe
In keeping with the recent topics of eating low on the food chain for environmental reasons (e.g., beans instead of meat) and cooking for a crowd, I dug out an old recipe for a curried red lentil soup with an apple cider or pear juice base, so I could double it to serve 10-12 people instead of 5-6.
I've always been told that to double a recipe, you should double the basic ingredients but not the spices. What I do is adjust the spices by slowly adding small increments and tasting the results. The amounts that work usually do turn out to be less than twice the original.
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Lawyers instead of engineers
As a warm-up for suing California over fuel-economy standards, automakers are … suing Vermont over fuel-economy standards.
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Er, food data that is
I'm not much of a gourmand, but I do love to play with food. Well, food data, anyway. So when I happened upon the Food System Factoids blog, I totally pigged out.
The menu may not be for everyone, but if you have a craving for analyses of food pricing trends, or evaluations of carbon emissions from U.S. agriculture, you'll find plenty to satisfy.
Take, for instance, this post on the relative change in prices of soft drinks and processed fats vs. fruits and veggies. The data's a bit old now, but what a story. From 1985 to 2000, the real, inflation-adjusted cost of fresh fruits and veggies went up almost 40 percent, while the costs of soft drinks went down by nearly a quarter.
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From Hogs to Hogwarts
Tee party Check out these biker-chic tops made from bamboo and printed with PVC-free ink. Perfect for the beach. Or climbing trees with your twin. Or humping posts. Or awkwardly leaping. So basically, what we do every day. Photo: Chopper Couture Déjà poo Things to look forward to: cavorting on cow crap and expounding on […]
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Bike commuting fashion tips
Took a long ride in the pouring rain a couple days ago to deliver some engineering drawings and test out some new gear. I'm looking for novel ideas to facilitate bike commuting. A commuter should be able to step off the bike and head straight for the coffee machine without having to change clothes or take a shower.The key to that is an electric hybrid bike, but clothing is also all-important. Although I'm confident I'd look real fine in spandex, it doesn't fit my stated design parameters. But if you must wear it, do not repeat the mistake made by the Polish bike team a few years ago. Make sure the shorts are black, not red. Word of warning to all you nerds out there: Spandex bike clothing will one day go the way of the mullet. Don't be the last one wearing it.
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Bill McKibben questions thinking as usual when it comes to climate.
The old thinking, as author and thinker Bill McKibben explains in today's LA Times, goes like this: bigger is always better, growth is good no matter what, and a booming stock market is the ultimate measure of our success.
McKibben illustrates the kind of lopsided priorities that naturally flow when we're ruled by the bottom line, pointing to a scarcely-reported White House report that said the U.S. would be pumping out almost 20 percent more greenhouse gases in 2020 than we did in 2000, our contribution to climate change going steadily up -- against all warnings to the contrary.
That's a pretty stunning piece of information -- a hundred times more important than, say, the jittery Dow Jones industrial average that garnered a hundred times the attention. How is it even possible? How, faced with the largest crisis humans have yet created for themselves, have we simply continued with business as usual?
New thinking, by contrast, might go something like this: measure what matters.
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And they (heart) us!
You may find this hard to believe, but there are people we love even more than we love ourselves -- our readers! Especially those of you who help us fight the good fight by sending a li'l dough our way now and then.
And how do we show our love in return, aside from imparting daily wit and wisdom? By giving away nifty prizes to donors whose names are randomly drawn out of our recycled hemp hat!
Below, we show off a couple of unsolicited photos that came after our last fund drive. Look how attractive and intelligent and funny (and did we mention attractive?) our readers are! (And see, we really do give away those prizes!)
