A Sad Funeral Announcement.

Dear friends,
It is with the saddest heart that I pass on the following. Please join me in remembering a great icon.

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71.

Doughboy was buried in a lightly-greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Cap'n Crunch. The grave site was piled high with flours as long- time friend, Aunt Jemima, delivered the eulogy, describing Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very "smart" cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he -- even still, as a crusty old man -- was considered a roll model for millions. Toward the end, it was thought he would rise again, but alas, he was no
tart.

Doughboy is survived by his wife, Play Dough; two children, John Dough and Jane Dough; plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart.

The funeral was held at 3:50 for about twenty minutes.

;-)

Information Panic and Junk Science

News and information enter our lives in endless torrents, flooding our senses to the overload point. The Media shouts the "news" at us in such a variety of ways that it can be very hard to pick out the real news behind the "news". Every story is trying to grab the headline only to be replaced by a new headline in days or even in minutes. Every "news" story claims to be giving the facts even when the stories conflict with one another. And, every story claims to be using "credible sources" meaning the story is accepted as true. In reality, news stories rarely contain ONLY truth or even ALL the truth. News stories contain the information that the writer wants you to know and nothing else.

Unfortunately writing is learned skill that can be used to the advantage of whoever is writing the paycheck. A story can "prove" just about any point the buyer wants to make. That is why advertising works so well; skilled writers suggest facts based on what they are hired to sell, so we see phrases like, "gets clothes 40% cleaner" 40% cleaner than what??? According to who??? What water temperature did they use???. The statement is based on someone's evaluation and may be true, but isn't a scientific fact that has been proven using accepted scientific practices. This is called "Junk Science"

"Junk Science" covers a whole range of company sponsored tests, studies and panel reviews, as well as unrepeatable clinical studies. Several large pharmaceutical companies have been in the news lately for using Junk Science to get bad drugs approved for human consumption. All science is not created equal and all news stories are not created equal either.

Some of the current sources of information include:
CNN and other news channels.
Discovery and other science based entertainment channels
Internet, including everything from personal websites to Published Scientific Journals
Printed Newspapers such as Seattle PI
News magazines such as Time and Newsweek
Charitable Infomercials like Feed the Children and CBN
Professional Journals like JAMA


News is news right? All news story details should be correct and presented in an unbiased manner right? WRONG! Most news gathering agencies are driven by advertisers that direct what is acceptable news for the publications they support with advertising dollars. Charities present "News" that supports the greatest chance of contributions. Professional Journals publish stories that meet Peer Review and so shun new and revolutionary ideas. Newspapers commonly print full page advertorials that may or may not have the "paid advertisement" notice depending on the paper's policies. Reporters regularly inflate or over-emphasize numbers to create interest in their stories. Most "news" is just hype, created to cause distress in the consumers and profits for the Media, period.

The next time you see a disturbing news story, ask yourself, "Who is profiting from this?" Then, check the citations to see where the journalist got the information. If there are no citations then the writer could have just written it without any facts at all, therefore, the information is useless. If citations are given, consider the sources. Are the sources web pages, blogs, charities, pharmaceutical companies or is the story based on University based clinical studies?? Does the information come from water-cooler gossip or the CDC?

Source evaluation
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Source evaluation is the skill of analysing information sources in order to assess their credibility. The ability to assess different sources of information is highly relevant to the task of operating within a complex information society. Engeldinger (1998) uses the term information literacy in order to describe the ability to recognize information when it is found, and further to determine if it is the best, most accurate, or most current information available.

To understand the news:

1) Look for citations.
2) Check to make sure the citations exist and have been used accurately.
3) Do the math & check it twice.
4) Think for yourself & use logic to decide if the story even makes sense.

For example the website for Inconvenient Truth includes this page:
http://www.climatecrisis.net/thescience/

It lists a group of "facts" about Global Warming and at the bottom gives the citations(Italics are my findings concerning the source cited):

1 According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this era of global warming "is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin" and "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence of the global climate." The IPCC is completely devoted to "Special Report on Safeguarding the Ozone Layer and Global Climate System: Issues Related to Hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons (SROC/SROCF) "The IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters." In other words, IPCC is not interested in or paying attention to Global Warming. In fact IPCC is monitoring GLOBAL COOLING due to hydrofluorocarbons.


2 Emanuel, K. 2005. Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30 years. Nature 436: 686-688. Online here: http://www.mindfully.org/Air/2005/Cyclone-Increasing-Destructive4aug05.htm A well written study but I have to point out that the author cites his own works and this is a big no-no in scientific circles. Also the material covered in the paper only goes back 70 years total so there is no way to know if this trend is new or part of a global cycle.


3 World Health Organization This is an incomplete citation. I did a search and found 600 documents on the web that use this same citation but when I searched on WHO's website not a single article supported this idea. Instead, "Malaria occurs in many regions of the country: the Pacific Coast Region, the Amazonian Region and the Central Region, and it is closely related with population movements resulting from the social situation in the country."

4 Krabill, W., E. Hanna, P. Huybrechts, W. Abdalati, J. Cappelen, B. Csatho, E. Frefick, S. Manizade, C. Martin, J, Sonntag, R. Swift, R. Thomas and J. Yungel. 2004. Greenland Ice Sheet: Increased coastal thinning. Geophysical Research Letters 31. Original Article Not Found.

5 Nature. Incomplete citation. Although 32,000 web pages seem to present this statement, proof of the original study is not available and without knowing what "Nature" refers to, we have no way of finding it.

6 World Health Organization This is an incomplete citation. A search of WHO's website showed no information on deaths caused by Global Warming at all

7 Washington Post, "Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change," Juliet Eilperin, January 29, 2006, Page A1. This is taken out of context. The paragraph this is quoted from:

Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer, who also advises the advocacy group Environmental Defense, said one of the greatest dangers lies in the disintegration of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets, which together hold about 20 percent of the fresh water on the planet. If either of the two sheets disintegrates, sea level could rise nearly 20 feet in the course of a couple of centuries, swamping the southern third of Florida and Manhattan up to the middle of Greenwich Village.


8 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. 2004. Impacts of a Warming Arctic. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Also quoted in Time Magazine, Vicious Cycles, Missy Adams, March 26, 2006. This paper is available online as part of a 1200 page document. The Article "Vicious Cycles" is available here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1177014,00.html
and says "sea levels could rise nearly 220 ft. (72 m). That's a worst-case scenario." Missy Adams is an internet-research journalist that specializes in short essays (375 words seems to be her limit.)

9 Time Magazine, Feeling the Heat, David Bjerklie, March 26, 2006. Quote: One study estimates that more than a million species worldwide could be driven to extinction by the year 2050 David did not give a citation so I have no idea who did the study. This is the ONLY thing he has written for TIME.


This is a very good case for Junk Science. The Author of this page has used very bad citations and in doing so invalidates the points given on the page.

In closing: Please START THINKING FOR YOURSELF!

In Favor of Sustainable Building

Housing is an ongoing problem in America. It is expensive, impersonal and for many inadequate and inaccessible. Having a place to call your own is one of the most basic needs for human beings, yet a large portion of us are forced to live in a succession of rental places at the whims of uncaring and greedy landlords. But....that is a rant for another day.

My ancestors came from Ireland, England and Germany mostly in the 1870's and 1880's. Both sets of ancestors eventually made their way across the country to Oregon and then to the Pacific Northwest. When my mother's parents got here the first thing they did was buy a small piece of land and then built a home. The home wasn't fancy, it wasn't huge but it lasted for over 40 years and never carried a mortgage. The oldest part of the home was a log cabin built from the trees on the property. Later additions were added in stone and in salvaged lumber as space was needed and materials could be purchased.

When my grandfather had an especially large project, he would call on all the neighbors...to raise a ridge pole or lay cedar shakes or to build a stone addition for the new summer kitchen, just as the neighbors would call on him when there was work to be done at their places. Community was built along with homes and great friendships were forged that have endured a lifetime.

This last spring, my partner and I moved into a tri-plex. We have been here over a year and can only recognize 2 of the other tenants here and do not know any of our neighbors. The apartment is expensive and eats up about 1/3 of our income to offer 2 bedrooms, 1 tiny bath and a tiny kitchen, all built and finished to the standards of 1970's slum housing. We are not alone. Here in Seattle, housing is always at a premium. I would love to fix the place up but my lease says otherwise.

Homes do not exist for renters, instead we live in drywalled shoeboxes, but the cost of buying a house is impossible to manage. I would love to follow in my grandfather's footsteps and buy a lot and build a house but I suspect that building a log cabin in Seward park would probably get me a visit from the planning department and maybe even the police. The Seattle building department, like most other building departments, have set rules concerning building materials and methods that can be used to build a house.

To quote: In order to obtain a permit for new construction, additions and remodels, customers must provide
King County with the following:
A. Affidavit for Application Form;
B. Property Tax Account Number;
C. Legal Description of Property (three copies);
D. Proof of Legal Lot;
E. Site Plan (or Plot Plan) (on DDES template, to an engineer's scale, with no brokenlines. See text; three copies.);
F. Working Drawings (See text for requirements; two copies.);
G. Information on Heating Systems, Fireplaces and Stoves;
H. Critical Area Designation Approval (If installing new septic or well system)
I. Certificate of Sewer Availability and Related Documents;
Obtaining A Residential Building Permit
J. Certificate of Water Availability and Related Documents;
K. Valuation for Special Site Items;
L. Fees for Reviews Completed Before Permit Approval;
M. Contractor’s Registration Number OR Affidavit Regarding Contractor Registration; and
N. Miscellaneous.

WHEW!!

No wonder we do not build our own homes anymore. Just the paperwork is worth paying someone $400,000 to do it for us...right?

In reality most of the "rules" are in place not to protect a perspective owner/build but rather to protect home buyers from shady contractors. The "rules" list has been expanded every time a person has been injured in their home, or when quality complaints start coming in. The rules are in place to protect home buyers from bad workmanship, cheap materials, and corner cutting but what these "rules" have really done is isolate the home owner from the process of building the home. Most homeowners can barely clean out their gutters, let alone replace a window or add a room. Nearly all the maintenance and repair of the modern home must be handed over to "professionals" because the homeowner has no idea what may be inside the walls or in the eves of their own home.

America has mostly given in to the pressure by buying stick made homes, built by professionals, and by calling a contractor every time something leaks, rattles or breaks. The result of this is that people no longer feel any connection to their homes. Homes have become something to trade up or flip. And, ironically, home construction is just as bad as it ever was. Cheap spec homes are put on the market everyday. They are built by day laborers, using cheap materials. Then everything is drywalled and painted "contractor-white-flat-latex", and the future buyer thinks they are getting a great house. Wrong! They are getting a house that will not last as long as their mortgage and in most cases they do not care because they are going to sell it in 5 or 10 years anyhow.

Personally, I am not buying it. I miss the days of building a home from what ever materials were available whether it be a soddy or adobe or straw bales or stone. Building a home built connection to the world and community we live in and respect for the nature of our planet. We are much poorer beings for having lost this.

More information on Handmade Homes:


Strawbale Construction:
http://www.strawbale.com/

Thatch:
http://www.roofthatch.com/

Building with Cob:
http://www.cobcottage.com/

Green Homes:
http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/

Papercrete Houses
http://www.northcoast.com/~tms/papercrete.html

Peak Oil and Global Warming

How will global warming affect my lifestyle? How does Peak oil affect the Global Warming Theory?

These issues are both on America's social mind now as we are bombarded daily with the possible scenarios associated with each. I propose a new idea that connects the two issues to create a more probable scenario: Petroleum reserves will run out before the climate is substantially changed for the worse.

We have all seen the movie by Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, and according to that idea, our use of Petroleum products is causing global warming. This idea states that by the year 2100 the sea levels will rise 110 to 770 mm (0.36 to 2.5 feet), causing widespread flooding.The world average temperature will go up by 2 to 5 degrees celsius causing widespread famine.

I see a few problems with this whole notion:

1) This assumes that we will still be using petroleum in the year 2100 when all forecasts show that oil is running out and world use of it will have to decline over the next 90 years until finally it will be too expensive and too scarce to be worth using. According to the Hubbert Prediction oil usage in the year 2100 will be about the same as the usage in the year 1930 and by 2150 98% of the world reserves of oil will be gone causing usage to drop to preindustrial levels.

As people look to other methods of energy production, petroleum will be phased out. Assuming that newer technologies and energy sources will be inherently less likely to produce CO2 and other greenhouse gases, then naturally the CO2 levels will even out and begin to drop.

2) Temperature increases of 2 to 5 degrees will actually add thousands of acres to the worldwide supply of arable farmland. This acreage is already beginning to show up in the northern United States and Southern Canada in the form of longer growing seasons and hotter summers. With a 5 degree increase in temperate these areas go from 220 frost free days to 265 frost free days. This part of the US and Canada represents vast tracks of land that is too cool for farming now, but becomes the world bread basket with just an additional 5 degrees climate change. As desert lands, already depleted and marginal, become unable to grow food, huge fresh tracks will become farmable.

3) As Co2 levels rise, temperatures rise. As temperature and CO2 increase, plant growth increases and absorbs the CO2. The higher the CO2 concentrations is the faster plants will grow. Commercial greenhouses actually supplement CO2 levels by burning methane or propane. Plants absorb CO2 continually during their growing periods in amounts equal to about 90% of the plants mass, so a plant weighing 10 pounds has absorbed about 9 pounds of CO2 to achieve that mass. A tree will absorb tons of CO2 over it's lifespan. As more land becomes capable of growing trees instead of just grass, more CO2 is locked into these long term storehouses.

Peak oil and Global Warming are intertwined in a way that each will be affected by the other. As Oil runs out more and more crops will be grown for bio-diesel. These crops will lock hundred of thousands of tons of CO2 into the green mass and will recycle the current CO2 levels back into usable fuels. Bio-diesels release 45% less CO2 than conventional fuels so the more we use the less CO2 will be released. I can actually see a point in the far future where low CO2 levels become a problem.

Worth Looking at.

http://eartheasy.com/live_menu.htm

10 Way to Survive Post Oil

This is borrowed from: http://eartheasy.com/article_ten_ways_post_oil.htm

The best way to feel hopeful about our looming energy crisis is to get active now and prepare for living arrangements in a post-oil society.

Out in the public arena, people frequently twang on me for being "Mister Gloom'n'doom," or for "not offering any solutions" to our looming energy crisis. So, for those of you who are tired of wringing your hands, who would like to do something useful, or focus your attention in a purposeful way, here are my suggestions:

1. Expand your view beyond the question of how we will run all the cars by means other than gasoline. This obsession with keeping the cars running at all costs could really prove fatal. It is especially unhelpful that so many self-proclaimed "greens" and political "progressives" are hung up on this monomaniacal theme. Get this: the cars are not part of the solution (whether they run on fossil fuels, vodka, used frymax™ oil, or cow shit). They are at the heart of the problem. And trying to salvage the entire Happy Motoring system by shifting it from gasoline to other fuels will only make things much worse. The bottom line of this is: start thinking beyond the car. We have to make other arrangements for virtually all the common activities of daily life.

2. We have to produce food differently. The Monsanto/Cargill model of industrial agribusiness is heading toward its Waterloo. As oil and gas deplete, we will be left with sterile soils and farming organized at an unworkable scale. Many lives will depend on our ability to fix this. Farming will soon return much closer to the center of American economic life. It will necessarily have to be done more locally, at a smaller-and-finer scale, and will require more human labor. The value-added activities associated with farming -- e.g. making products like cheese, wine, oils -- will also have to be done much more locally. This situation presents excellent business and vocational opportunities for America's young people (if they can unplug their Ipods long enough to pay attention.) It also presents huge problems in land-use reform. Not to mention the fact that the knowledge and skill for doing these things has to be painstakingly retrieved from the dumpster of history. Get busy.

3. We have to inhabit the terrain differently. Virtually every place in our nation organized for car dependency is going to fail to some degree. Quite a few places (Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami ...) will support only a fraction of their current populations. We'll have to return to traditional human ecologies at a smaller scale: villages, towns, and cities (along with a productive rural landscape). Our small towns are waiting to be reinhabited. Our cities will have to contract. The cities that are composed proportionately more of suburban fabric (e.g. Atlanta, Houston) will pose especially tough problems. Most of that stuff will not be fixed. The loss of monetary value in suburban property will have far-reaching ramifications. The stuff we build in the decades ahead will have to be made of regional materials found in nature -- as opposed to modular, snap-together, manufactured components -- at a more modest scale. This whole process will entail enormous demographic shifts and is liable to be turbulent. Like farming, it will require the retrieval of skill-sets and methodologies that have been forsaken. The graduate schools of architecture are still tragically preoccupied with teaching Narcissism. The faculties will have to be overthrown. Our attitudes about land-use will have to change dramatically. The building codes and zoning laws will eventually be abandoned and will have to be replaced with vernacular wisdom. Get busy.

4. We have to move things and people differently. This is the sunset of Happy Motoring (including the entire US trucking system). Get used to it. Don't waste your society's remaining resources trying to prop up car-and-truck dependency. Moving things and people by water and rail is vastly more energy-efficient. Need something to do? Get involved in restoring public transit. Let's start with railroads, and let's make sure we electrify them so they will run on things other than fossil fuel or, if we have to run them partly on coal-fired power plants, at least scrub the emissions and sequester the CO2 at as few source-points as possible. We also have to prepare our society for moving people and things much more by water. This implies the rebuilding of infrastructure for our harbors, and also for our inland river and canal systems -- including the towns associated with them. The great harbor towns, like Baltimore, Boston, and New York, can no longer devote their waterfronts to condo sites and bikeways. We actually have to put the piers and warehouses back in place (not to mention the sleazy accommodations for sailors). Right now, programs are underway to restore maritime shipping based on wind -- yes, sailing ships. It's for real. Lots to do here. Put down your Ipod and get busy.

5. We have to transform retail trade. The national chains that have used the high tide of fossil fuels to contrive predatory economies-of-scale (and kill local economies) -- they are going down. WalMart and the other outfits will not survive the coming era of expensive, scarcer oil. They will not be able to run the "warehouses-on-wheels" of 18-wheel tractor-trailers incessantly circulating along the interstate highways. Their 12,000-mile supply lines to the Asian slave-factories are also endangered as the US and China contest for Middle East and African oil. The local networks of commercial interdependency which these chain stores systematically destroyed (with the public's acquiescence) will have to be rebuilt brick-by-brick and inventory-by-inventory. This will require rich, fine-grained, multi-layered networks of people who make, distribute, and sell stuff (including the much-maligned "middlemen"). Don't be fooled into thinking that the Internet will replace local retail economies. Internet shopping is totally dependent now on cheap delivery, and delivery will no longer be cheap. It also is predicated on electric power systems that are completely reliable. That is something we are unlikely to enjoy in the years ahead. Do you have a penchant for retail trade and don't want to work for a big predatory corporation? There's lots to do here in the realm of small, local business. Quit carping and get busy.

6. We will have to make things again in America. However, we are going to make less stuff. We will have fewer things to buy, fewer choices of things. The curtain is coming down on the endless blue-light-special shopping frenzy that has occupied the forefront of daily life in America for decades. But we will still need household goods and things to wear. As a practical matter, we are not going to re-live the 20th century. The factories from America's heyday of manufacturing (1900 - 1970) were all designed for massive inputs of fossil fuel, and many of them have already been demolished. We're going to have to make things on a smaller scale by other means. Perhaps we will have to use more water power. The truth is, we don't know yet how we're going to make anything. This is something that the younger generations can put their minds and muscles into.

7. The age of canned entertainment is coming to and end. It was fun for a while. We liked "Citizen Kane" and the Beatles. But we're going to have to make our own music and our own drama down the road. We're going to need playhouses and live performance halls. We're going to need violin and banjo players and playwrights and scenery-makers, and singers. We'll need theater managers and stage-hands. The Internet is not going to save canned entertainment. The Internet will not work so well if the electricity is on the fritz half the time (or more).

8. We'll have to reorganize the education system. The centralized secondary school systems based on the yellow school bus fleets will not survive the coming decades. The huge investments we have made in these facilities will impede the transition out of them, but they will fail anyway. Since we will be a less-affluent society, we probably won't be able to replace these centralized facilities with smaller and more equitably distributed schools, at least not right away. Personally, I believe that the next incarnation of education will grow out of the home schooling movement, as home schooling efforts aggregate locally into units of more than one family. God knows what happens beyond secondary ed. The big universities, both public and private, may not be salvageable. And the activity of higher ed itself may engender huge resentment by those foreclosed from it. But anyone who learns to do long division and write a coherent paragraph will be at a great advantage -- and, in any case, will probably out-perform today's average college graduate. One thing for sure: teaching children is not liable to become an obsolete line-of-work, as compared to public relations and sports marketing. Lots to do here, and lots to think about. Get busy, future teachers of America.

9. We have to reorganize the medical system. The current skein of intertwined rackets based on endless Ponzi buck passing scams will not survive the discontinuities to come. We will probably have to return to a model of service much closer to what used to be called "doctoring." Medical training may also have to change as the big universities run into trouble functioning. Doctors of the 21st century will certainly drive fewer German cars, and there will be fewer opportunities in the cosmetic surgery field. Let's hope that we don't slide so far back that we forget the germ theory of disease, or the need to wash our hands, or the fundamentals of pharmaceutical science. Lots to do here for the unsqueamish.

10. Life in the USA will have to become much more local, and virtually all the activities of everyday life will have to be re-scaled. You can state categorically that any enterprise now supersized is likely to fail -- everything from the federal government to big corporations to huge institutions. If you can find a way to do something practical and useful on a smaller scale than it is currently being done, you are likely to have food in your cupboard and people who esteem you. An entire social infrastructure of voluntary associations, co-opted by the narcotic of television, needs to be reconstructed. Local institutions for care of the helpless will have to be organized. Local politics will be much more meaningful as state governments and federal agencies slide into complete impotence. Lots of jobs here for local heroes.

So, that's the task list for now. Forgive me if I left things out. Quit wishing and start doing. The best way to feel hopeful about the future is to get off your ass and demonstrate to yourself that you are a capable, competent individual resolutely able to face new circumstances.

James Howard Kunstler is a leading writer on the topic of peak oil the problems it poses for American suburbia. Deeply concerned about the future of our petroleum dependent society, Kunstler believes we must take radical steps to avoid the total meltdown of modern society in the face looming oil and gas shortages. For background on this topic, read Kunstler's essay, "Pricey Gas, That's Reality."


See the original post at: http://eartheasy.com/article_ten_ways_post_oil.htm

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope that we don't have to wait 'til oil and coal run out before we tackle that." — Thomas A. Edison (1847-1931)

Cheap Eats Recipe-Biscuits and Gravy

Country Biscuits and Gravy

Biscuits:
2 c Flour
4 ts Baking powder
1 ts Salt
2 tb Olive Oil
2/3 c Sweet milk

Sift dry ingredients together. Rub in oil, add
milk all at once. Mix to a smooth dough, roll out
1/2" thick. Cut with biscuit cutter. Handle as
little as possible to make light, flaky biscuits.
Bake at 425 for 10 minutes.

Gravy:
1/4 lb ground meat
1 med onion, chopped fine
2-3 large button mushrooms, chopped fine
16 oz can of chicken or beef broth.
3-4 tb all purpose flour

Brown the ground meat, add onions and mushrooms and sautée together until tender.
In a bowl, whisk broth and flour together until all lumps are gone. Add broth mix to ground meat and stir over medium heat until thick and bubbly. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To Serve: Split a biscuit in half and pour gravy over. Serve sliced tomatoes on the side.

YUM!