Author: Christopher (Page 17 of 29)

As humans reach the carrying limit of the planet, we are going down the food chain exploiting protein resources. The one resource that we have not exploited, at least not in the West, is insects. I’m sure if I were starving I’d eat grasshoppers and worms. I’d prefer not to. There are all sorts of arguments for eating bugs, nutritious and full of protein.

I read this short blog post today about using insects to replace fish meal. Why didn’t anyone think of this before? I have no problem feeding grasshoppers to pigs or chicken. Especially when the alternative is feeding them the leftover bits of pigs and chickens. I’m against high density feedlots. Of course we’d need to study how that’d affect the taste of the meat, but I would imagine there wouldn’t be much of a downside. Using insects as feed keeps us from eating directly down the food chain. There are people who advocate eating insects. This I find a reasonable compromise.

2007 is over with but will the insanity continue? I don’t know. I don’t feel comfortable writing about personal stuff. After all this is a public blog. If it didn’t involve the naming of names, I’d probably go ahead and do it. On the plus side there are a lot of annoying people I no longer have to be around though there are a few non-annoying people I will miss. I suppose I could rant and rave about public issues. That’s fair game. I just finished reading The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney and if your outrage meter isn’t pegged or broken it will be if you read this book. Anyway, Happy F*#king New Year!

If you’ve seen Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman you’ll understand the question: Is it safe?

Time for my rant about the current crop of Republicans in power or were recently in power.

Well my outrage meter finally pegged. In fact it broke. It’s a lot like one of those Bugs Bunny cartoons where you see the steam gauge go Sproing! I was a retard to vote for Bush in 2000. I knew that invading Iraq was for the oil even before we went in. Bush lost my support for the Iraqi invasion when the Baghdad Museum was looted and 7,000 years of Civilization disappeared. Though it later turned out to be an inside job, but it hasn’t changed my position. It was indicative that the Bush administration had no post-war plan. My jaw dropped. Well they did have a post-war plan and it is an abomination. Then the Bush administration worked their magic on post-Katrina New Orleans. It too is unconscionable. And you can only sit back in awe and disgust what does it take for America to say: No, no, bad Bush. Bad Cheney. Naughty Cheney. Oh look Inhofe is foaming at the mouth again!

Well I can categorically state that the Republicans are a plague upon America. With their mix of religious conservatives and big business interests they have created a toxin that is destroying the America we knew and loved. You are asking yourself what finally caused my Sproing! moment? For some people that moment happened long ago. I was in the middle of reading The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney. As someone who has a deep love for science and understand how it works, to see it being undermined and destroyed angers me to the core of my being.

Liberals misuse science, the media often reports science badly, but the conservatives win the prize for the monumental scale of their abuse. Exploiting scientific uncertainty is their mantra. Sound science and junk science are their buzzwords. Among their biggest victories is to delay any action on global warming. Not to mention lead-tainted and date-rape drug-laced toys; poisoned dog and cat food; and the continued use of the frog deforming pesticide atrazine. Ah but their good deeds don’t stop there. Sadly the all blame for this cannot be placed at the cloven hooves of Dick Cheney and the rest of the Bush administration. Nor the obstructionist Republicans in Congress. They are the culmination. It started in the early 70’s but didn’t really take off until the Republicans took over Congress. I’ll have more to say later, probably in another entry. I don’t have time at the moment to flesh out the details of this rant.

I tried to take a picture of it with my camera phone but it turned out crappy. You cannot see where I pierced the thumbnail. Shortly before Halloween I went over to my sister Debbie’s house. She and her son Derrick were carving pumpkins. I decided to volunteer my cutting skills because the big pumpkin she was carving wasn’t going so well for her.

Since the pumpkin was tough and the knife wasn’t that sharp, I used the point to perforate a circle around the top. The idea being it would be easier to cut the top off by joining the perforations with a second round of deeper cutting. The blade was about eight inches long and an inch and a half wide at the base. At one point on a down stroke I missed the pumpkin and pierced my left thumbnail. I think had I stabbed flesh the blade would have gone deeper or hit bone. I don’t know how deep the point went but the cut in the nail was a quarter inch wide. I suspect the tip went about that deep too. a drop of blood welled up not long after. I cleaned and dressed the wound (and slathered it with Neosporin for the next couple of days).

It would have sucked mightily had if the nail bed had gotten infected. Six weeks have passed since the incident and the cut is growing out. Eventually the thumbnail will grow out and the cut will be gone. But for now it is a visible reminder not to stab my thumbnail while carving a pumpkin (or anything else for that matter).

For the record it did hurt and I did finish cutting the top off the pumpkin so my sister and nephew could scoop it’s guts out.

On December 9-10, 2007, Tulsa had the worst and weirdest ice storm ever. Over 200,000 homes without electricity in the Tulsa area alone. Another 200,000+ in the OKC area. Trees and tree limbs down everywhere. We lost power about 1:30 am on Monday morning. There were some limbs down when we left for work that morning. When we came back that evening there were even more limbs and trees down. What was weird is that the roads never froze.

I made two videos: one just shows damage around our house. The other on a short drive near work.

Around the House

Short Drive

PSO our electric utility says it’s going to take a week to ten days to restore everyone’s power. I wished they’d been able to give an percentage estimate, that say X% would be on by such and such day and another Y% a day or two later. But they haven’t. Those homes which have lost their lines directly from the grid to the house (say a tree falls on the lines in the backyard) will be the last to get restored.

All of Oklahoma has been affected by this storm. Maybe I’ll write more later.

Fascinating. A nice vid about sustainability.

Permaculture is:

Permaculture is an ecological design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor. It teaches us how build natural homes, grow our own food, restore diminished landscapes and ecosystems, catch rainwater, build communities and much more.