(Link fixed)
Something in our culture is uncomfortable with people talking about how much they love their children. Our culture prefers to hear people talking about their children as though they were demon possessed, greedy little parasites sucking up their parents' lives, brain cells, energy, and creativity, swallowing it whole in one gulp and then screaming, "Sssssssssluuuuuuuuuurp. Now I vill have your soul!"
Not to mention the checkbook, credit cards, and car keys.
Ethnic slurs are out, but rug rats, ankle biters, and spawn- those are acceptable words for those people to whom we owe protection, care, and tender affection. I know, I know. It's just a joke. It's just funny. And the worst thing about it is that it is often funny. I laugh, too. I laugh at other inappropriate things, too, because my sense of humour is not the most redeemed and sanctified part of me. What we forget is that demeaning other human beings should not be funny, and that what we think of as funny is subjective. We learn that these things are funny. There was a time when the word we call in our family 'The 'N' word was 'funny,' too, and still is with some groups of people. We don't find that admirable. The 'N' word is, in our family, a vile word. Had we been born a handful of decades earlier, maybe we'd have thought it was as funny then as everybody else did.
Oddly enough, at the same time we talk about our children as though they were gum on the bottom of our shoes, we refuse to take any responsibility for their behavior, permit them to run wild in grocery stores, kick fellow passengers on airlines, shriek for (and receive) toys at the mall, and just generally behave like little Tasmanian devils. When other people request that we not permit our children to ruin their clothing, places of business, or evening out, we react in anger- towards those people- as though they were being unreasonable by expecting children to behave as though somebody cared enough about them to teach them some manners. Or maybe it's not all that odd that we allow children to run wild and act like little animals and then find them annoying enough to be around that we make jokes referring them as rodents and demonic little pests nipping at our ankles.
We don't want to take the trouble to teach them to behave, so we get children raised by wolves- children who have no idea that they might be able to control themselves and be considerate of other people, so then we call them names and snicker amongst ourselves about what selfish little beasts our children are- and we're the ones who encourage that behavior in the first place!!
Isn't that a lovely cultural trait?
Friday, April 30, 2010
A few double-standards
Actor Harrison Ford, outspoken environmentalist and passionate pilot/owner of seven aircraft has said that he loves flying so much he takes one of his planes up the coast just to get a cheeseburger. Asked if that wasn't just a wee bit hypocritical, he basically said that yeah, it was, and he'd start walking everywhere when we peons started walking everywhere. What is this 'everywhere' nonsense? Nice try, Buster. We are not talking about everywhere, although I would like to know when and where he walks on his errands instead of taking a gas-guzzler. We're talking about using a few hundred pounds of fuel on a whim. Since I don't even hop in a much more fuel efficient landbound vehicle and run into town when I have a sudden yen for Chinese or even when I find I am out of milk or some other vital ingredient in the midst of a recipe, how about that gas guzzling hypocrite do the right thing and start first? He can let me know when his personal use of carbon resources has come down to merely twice what our family of nine uses.
And somebody explain to me why anybody cares what these guys have to say. Actors are great sources of information on acting, and not much else. Being very talented at reading lines written by somebody else is no reason to imagine you have moral authority to tell anybody else what to do. Because without a script... well, check it out:
Here's another example of some self-serving and double dealing in the green arena:
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Fannie-Mae-owns-patent-on-residential-_cap-and-trade_-exchange-91532109.html#ixzz0mbY3oJ7K
And somebody explain to me why anybody cares what these guys have to say. Actors are great sources of information on acting, and not much else. Being very talented at reading lines written by somebody else is no reason to imagine you have moral authority to tell anybody else what to do. Because without a script... well, check it out:
CNSNews.com also asked Ford about ways individuals could conserve energy and reduce their carbon footprint.Ooookay.
Ford said, “I think there are a variety of different efforts, each according to their particular circumstances. But I think, first of all, it derives from the consciousness of the necessity to lower our carbon footprint and to give full credit to what it is that the use of fossil fuels is doing to the planet, and to understand that and to make efforts in mitigating (it).”
Here's another example of some self-serving and double dealing in the green arena:
When he wasn't busy helping create a $127 billion mess for taxpayers to clean up, former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Officer Franklin Raines, two of his top underlings and select individuals in the "green" movement were inventing a patented system to trade residential carbon credits.Patent No. 6904336 was approved by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office on Nov. 7, 2006 -- the day after Democrats took control of Congress. Former Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., criticized the award at the time, pointing out that it had "nothing to do with Fannie Mae's charter, nothing to do with making mortgages more affordable."It wasn't about mortgages. It was about greenbacks. The patent, which Fannie Mae confirmed it still owns with Cantor Fitzgerald subsidiary CO2e.com, gives the mortgage giant a lock on the fledgling carbon trading market, thus also giving it a major financial stake in the success of cap-and-trade legislation.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Fannie-Mae-owns-patent-on-residential-_cap-and-trade_-exchange-91532109.html#ixzz0mbY3oJ7K
And here's another example of a huge double-standard. Once upon a time a certain candidate insisted that it was the President's responsibility to stop his surrogates from questioning the patriotism of those who opposed the President's polices. But that was then.
The Last Day of Poetry Month
Gods of the Copybook
Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Climate Change in the News
IPCC caught again citing grey literature in their report, when they claimed it was entirely peer reviewed. This time, it's a press release - and they have to be schooled on the rules for sharing their sources as well.
Ooh, La, La- the Gores have new digs:
Do they know that the President thinks "at a certain point you have made enough money?"
Regarding climate change in the news, Douglas Keenan has at last, as I think we've mentioned here before, succeeded in getting the raw data released from some reluctant researchers. The researchers and their university have given various reasons for their refusals over the years, and the new one is that information Keenan wants will not work for proxy temperature records, but there is a problem with this, as Steve McIntyre points out:
Ooops. Sadly, neither The Guardian nor the Times reporters seem aware of this.
Further, the same trees were discussed positively as possible temperature proxies in 2009.... by Baillie.
Common Room and other young (and old) Scholars interested in reading more about the science and pros and cons of using trees as thermometers should read this.
The Climate Change defenders in the comments at both the Guardian and the Times insist that if the University must release it's data because it is paid for by the public, well, then, they should be able to march into the University and help themselves to the desks and computers, because they are paid for by the public, and taxpayer information gathered by the public is likewise fair game (one senses they have all been reading the same talking points)- they also insist that Douglas Keenan should put on his boots and collect his own tree cores instead of asking to see the measurements of his betters.
Over at Climate Audit in the comments, Craig Loehle points out:
Several commenters have stated that if the public payed for the data it should be public. That is missing the point. In a field where replication is cheap and easy such as some areas of chemistry, it is sufficient to describe the methods and others can replicate your results. If your experiment is on a supercollider, you better publish your data so others can check them. Even moreso if it is tree rings because no one will ever be able to recore exactly the trees you used. If it can’t be checked or replicated, it isn’t science. There is a problem with people using the data for their own analyses (not just checking the work), and this can be worked out, but the current system with all the data hidden away so no one can check anything is simply not good.
Emphasis added. Commenter TAG follows up:
And this is actually a really bad sign that we're going to be somebody's lunch:
Think about the CPSIA and remember that regulations are merely the big guys' preferred method of eliminating competition and creating a market favorable to them.
Consider what's happened to 'Earth Day' and it's hard not to snicker:
I <3 Judith Curry, I hope I am wrong, but I think we are witnessing the implosion of her career in Climate Science and she is simply too honest to realize this. She says:
She's also quite clear and specific about the corruptions in the IPCC process, and this is vitally important because the IPCC is used as the basis for sweeping governmental policy changes that affect ALL of us-and by 'us,' I mean the entire planet:
And the IPCC's Pachauri is, again, lying about the IPCC and the peer reviewed literature. He's overstating the number of peer reviewed sources (he says over 18K, it was closer to 12) and greenwashing the number of 'gray' literature cited - it's actually almost 1/3rd of the sources.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/21/mann-of-oak/
Pajamas Media:
And this is actually a really bad sign that we're going to be somebody's lunch:
Think about the CPSIA and remember that regulations are merely the big guys' preferred method of eliminating competition and creating a market favorable to them.
Consider what's happened to 'Earth Day' and it's hard not to snicker:
I <3 Judith Curry, but I think we are witnessing the implosion of her career in Climate Science and she is simply too honest to realize this. She says:
She's also quite clear and specific about the corruptions in the IPCC process, and this is vitally important because the IPCC is used as the basis for sweeping governmental policy changes that affect ALL of us-and by 'us,' I mean the entire planet:
Ooh, La, La- the Gores have new digs:
The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.
Do they know that the President thinks "at a certain point you have made enough money?"
Regarding climate change in the news, Douglas Keenan has at last, as I think we've mentioned here before, succeeded in getting the raw data released from some reluctant researchers. The researchers and their university have given various reasons for their refusals over the years, and the new one is that information Keenan wants will not work for proxy temperature records, but there is a problem with this, as Steve McIntyre points out:
Baillie made a similar statement to the Guardian:
“Keenan is the only person in the world claiming that our oak-ring patterns are temperature records,” Baillie told the Guardian.
Rob Wilson agreed with Baillie on this point, telling the Times that “oaks were virtually useless as a temperature proxy”.
Mann et al 2008
Notwithstanding the considered opinion of Baillie and Wilson that oaks are “virtually useless as a temperature proxy” and “dangerous” to use in a temperature reconstruction, no fewer than 119 oak chronologies were used in Mann et al 2008.
Ooops. Sadly, neither The Guardian nor the Times reporters seem aware of this.
Further, the same trees were discussed positively as possible temperature proxies in 2009.... by Baillie.
Common Room and other young (and old) Scholars interested in reading more about the science and pros and cons of using trees as thermometers should read this.
The Climate Change defenders in the comments at both the Guardian and the Times insist that if the University must release it's data because it is paid for by the public, well, then, they should be able to march into the University and help themselves to the desks and computers, because they are paid for by the public, and taxpayer information gathered by the public is likewise fair game (one senses they have all been reading the same talking points)- they also insist that Douglas Keenan should put on his boots and collect his own tree cores instead of asking to see the measurements of his betters.
Over at Climate Audit in the comments, Craig Loehle points out:
Several commenters have stated that if the public payed for the data it should be public. That is missing the point. In a field where replication is cheap and easy such as some areas of chemistry, it is sufficient to describe the methods and others can replicate your results. If your experiment is on a supercollider, you better publish your data so others can check them. Even moreso if it is tree rings because no one will ever be able to recore exactly the trees you used. If it can’t be checked or replicated, it isn’t science. There is a problem with people using the data for their own analyses (not just checking the work), and this can be worked out, but the current system with all the data hidden away so no one can check anything is simply not good.
Emphasis added. Commenter TAG follows up:
As well, when analyzed data is being sused to guide public policy (a la the IPCC) then that data must be available for public scrutiny.Pajamas Media:
If e nuclear power company indicated that their proposed power plant would be safe for earthquakes but refused to release the data beyond a summary report, then their proposal would be rejected. It would not matter if the summary had been peer reviewed by a number of eminent scientists and engineers. The power company could not argue validly that the data and codes used to process were proprietary and subject to IPR and patent restrictions. They would produce the data and code or see their proposal rejected.
Whether Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs has committed a crime remains to be seen, but the investigation may well uncover the environmental lobby and its public figurehead. For nearly a decade, Goldman Sachs has been a quiet but major investor in cap and trade. And Goldman’s main investment partner has been Al Gore.
About a decade ago, Goldman executives recognized that personal fortunes could be made with the invention of a carbon trading system through the passage of a U.S. cap-and-trade bill. [...]
Today, seven of Gore’s GIM chief partners are from Goldman Sachs. The company is now valued at $2.2 billion.
It doesn’t stop there. The Goldman Sachs/Gore team then established the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a new cap-and-trade carbon trading platform, and partnered with the UK-based Climate Exchange, Plc (CLE), a holding company listed on the London Stock Exchange. CLE does carbon trading in Europe. In late 2004, they also created the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFX).
In September of 2006, Climate Exchange Plc acquired the remainder of CCX it didn’t own and placed £12.2 million of new shares with Goldman Sachs.
Goldman is reported to have made an investment of $23 million in the venture. Between Gore and Goldman, they are the largest investors in the Chicago Climate Exchange, owning 20% of it.
And this is actually a really bad sign that we're going to be somebody's lunch:
The nation's largest electric utilities association and three of the country's biggest oil companies will endorse the climate proposal Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) will introduce Monday, Kerry told supporters in a private phone call Thursday evening.
The declarations of support show the three senators have made some inroads with the business community in drafting their plan, but have yet to win over traditional opponents of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Several consumer groups will back the plan as well. Kerry's office declined to comment on the matter.
Think about the CPSIA and remember that regulations are merely the big guys' preferred method of eliminating competition and creating a market favorable to them.
Consider what's happened to 'Earth Day' and it's hard not to snicker:
The organizers wanted it to be one-time event, but it has become an annual, global celebration. The first one cost about $122,000 to put on; today, the Earth Day Network, which oversees Earth Day worldwide, boasts an $8.5 million budget and a long roster of corporate sponsors, including Underwriters Laboratories, Siemens, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, AT&T Mobile and Procter & Gamble.More about that here.
In 1970, students at San Jose State buried a car as a protest against consumerism. In 2010, there will be Earth Day events in Washington put on by Chevrolet and Ford.
[...]
In fact, many also seem to have absorbed the lesson that the best thing for the environment is to buy things.
This year, a poll conducted by professors at George Mason, Yale and American universities showed that respondents who were most alarmed about climate change were more than eight times more likely to express their concern through shopping for "green" products than by contacting an elected official multiple times about it.
I <3 Judith Curry, I hope I am wrong, but I think we are witnessing the implosion of her career in Climate Science and she is simply too honest to realize this. She says:
The Oxburgh investigation initiated by the UEA took on a very narrow slice of these overall concerns: whether or not the CRU records of temperature change had been deliberately biased or manipulated by UEA scientists. While the Oxburgh report is hardly a ringing endorsement of the CRU science, their main conclusion is that they do not find any evidence of scientific misconduct such as falsification of data. The basis for this conclusion is examination of a selection of 11 research papers published by CRU (based upon a recommendation from the Royal Society, the exact provenance of this recommendation is unknown) and interviews with CRU scientists.
Criticisms of the Oxburgh report that have been made include: bias of some of the members including the Chair, not examining the papers that are at the heart of the controversies, lack of consideration of the actual criticisms made by Steve McIntyre and others, and a short report with few specifics that implies a superficial investigation. When I first read the report, I thought I was reading the executive summary and proceeded to look for the details; well, there weren’t any. And I was concerned that the report explicitly did not address the key issues that had been raised by the skeptics. Upon reading Andrew Montford’s analysis, I learned: “So we have an extraordinary coincidence – that both the UEA submission to the [UK Parliament's Science and Technology] Select Committee and Lord Oxburgh’s panel independently came up with almost identical lists of papers to look at, and that they independently neglected key papers like Jones 1998 and Osborn and Briffa 2006.” I recall reading this statement from one of the blogs, which seems especially apt: the fire department receives report of a fire in the kitchen; upon investigating the living room, they declare that there is no fire in the house.
So in summary, Jones, Briffa et al. can be relieved that they have been vindicated of charges of scientific misconduct. Even with the deficiencies of the Oxburgh report, I don’t disagree with their conclusion about finding no evidence of scientific misconduct: I haven’t seen any evidence of plagiarism or fabrication/falsification of data by the CRU scientists. Sloppy record keeping, cherry picking of data, and inadequate statistical methods do not constitute scientific misconduct, but neither do they inspire confidence in the research product. Further, the “bad apple” issue is still out there, but this is something that is impossible to assess objectively. And the behavior of these scientists (sloppy record keeping, dismissal of skeptical critiques, and lack of transparency) has slowed down scientific progress in assessing and improving these very important data sets. Therefore I have been proposing that we move away from the focus on individual behavior, and shifting focus to issues related to the IPCC assessment process, addressing issues related the availability of data and transparency of the methods, and to improving the temperature data and proxies. Once these issues are addressed, the “bad apple” issue becomes mostly moot.
She's also quite clear and specific about the corruptions in the IPCC process, and this is vitally important because the IPCC is used as the basis for sweeping governmental policy changes that affect ALL of us-and by 'us,' I mean the entire planet:
Corruptions to the IPCC process that I have seen discussed include:
• lead/contributing authors assessing their own work – (e.g. von Storch criticism in 2005), in some cases resulting in an overemphasis on their own papers written by themselves and their collaborators;
• tailoring graphics and not adequately describing uncertainties ostensibly to simplify and not to “dilute the message” that IPCC wanted to send;
• violations of publication (in press) deadlines for inclusions of papers in the IPCC report;
• inadequacies in the review process whereby lead/contributing authors don’t respond fairly to adverse criticism; this inadequacy arises in part to the authors themselves having ultimate authority and in part to cursory performance by the Review Editors;
• evasiveness and unresponsiveness by the IPCC regarding efforts to investigate alleged violations occurring in the review process;
• IPCC Review Editors and authors using the IPCC to avoid accountability under national FOI legislation.
And the IPCC's Pachauri is, again, lying about the IPCC and the peer reviewed literature. He's overstating the number of peer reviewed sources (he says over 18K, it was closer to 12) and greenwashing the number of 'gray' literature cited - it's actually almost 1/3rd of the sources.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/04/21/mann-of-oak/
Pajamas Media:
Whether Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs has committed a crime remains to be seen, but the investigation may well uncover the environmental lobby and its public figurehead. For nearly a decade, Goldman Sachs has been a quiet but major investor in cap and trade. And Goldman’s main investment partner has been Al Gore.
About a decade ago, Goldman executives recognized that personal fortunes could be made with the invention of a carbon trading system through the passage of a U.S. cap-and-trade bill. [...]
Today, seven of Gore’s GIM chief partners are from Goldman Sachs. The company is now valued at $2.2 billion.
It doesn’t stop there. The Goldman Sachs/Gore team then established the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), a new cap-and-trade carbon trading platform, and partnered with the UK-based Climate Exchange, Plc (CLE), a holding company listed on the London Stock Exchange. CLE does carbon trading in Europe. In late 2004, they also created the Chicago Climate Futures Exchange (CCFX).
In September of 2006, Climate Exchange Plc acquired the remainder of CCX it didn’t own and placed £12.2 million of new shares with Goldman Sachs.
Goldman is reported to have made an investment of $23 million in the venture. Between Gore and Goldman, they are the largest investors in the Chicago Climate Exchange, owning 20% of it.
And this is actually a really bad sign that we're going to be somebody's lunch:
The nation's largest electric utilities association and three of the country's biggest oil companies will endorse the climate proposal Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) will introduce Monday, Kerry told supporters in a private phone call Thursday evening.
The declarations of support show the three senators have made some inroads with the business community in drafting their plan, but have yet to win over traditional opponents of mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Several consumer groups will back the plan as well. Kerry's office declined to comment on the matter.
Think about the CPSIA and remember that regulations are merely the big guys' preferred method of eliminating competition and creating a market favorable to them.
Consider what's happened to 'Earth Day' and it's hard not to snicker:
The organizers wanted it to be one-time event, but it has become an annual, global celebration. The first one cost about $122,000 to put on; today, the Earth Day Network, which oversees Earth Day worldwide, boasts an $8.5 million budget and a long roster of corporate sponsors, including Underwriters Laboratories, Siemens, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, AT&T Mobile and Procter & Gamble.
In 1970, students at San Jose State buried a car as a protest against consumerism. In 2010, there will be Earth Day events in Washington put on by Chevrolet and Ford.
[...]
In fact, many also seem to have absorbed the lesson that the best thing for the environment is to buy things.
This year, a poll conducted by professors at George Mason, Yale and American universities showed that respondents who were most alarmed about climate change were more than eight times more likely to express their concern through shopping for "green" products than by contacting an elected official multiple times about it.
I <3 Judith Curry, but I think we are witnessing the implosion of her career in Climate Science and she is simply too honest to realize this. She says:
The Oxburgh investigation initiated by the UEA took on a very narrow slice of these overall concerns: whether or not the CRU records of temperature change had been deliberately biased or manipulated by UEA scientists. While the Oxburgh report is hardly a ringing endorsement of the CRU science, their main conclusion is that they do not find any evidence of scientific misconduct such as falsification of data. The basis for this conclusion is examination of a selection of 11 research papers published by CRU (based upon a recommendation from the Royal Society, the exact provenance of this recommendation is unknown) and interviews with CRU scientists.
Criticisms of the Oxburgh report that have been made include: bias of some of the members including the Chair, not examining the papers that are at the heart of the controversies, lack of consideration of the actual criticisms made by Steve McIntyre and others, and a short report with few specifics that implies a superficial investigation. When I first read the report, I thought I was reading the executive summary and proceeded to look for the details; well, there weren’t any. And I was concerned that the report explicitly did not address the key issues that had been raised by the skeptics. Upon reading Andrew Montford’s analysis, I learned: “So we have an extraordinary coincidence – that both the UEA submission to the [UK Parliament's Science and Technology] Select Committee and Lord Oxburgh’s panel independently came up with almost identical lists of papers to look at, and that they independently neglected key papers like Jones 1998 and Osborn and Briffa 2006.” I recall reading this statement from one of the blogs, which seems especially apt: the fire department receives report of a fire in the kitchen; upon investigating the living room, they declare that there is no fire in the house.
So in summary, Jones, Briffa et al. can be relieved that they have been vindicated of charges of scientific misconduct. Even with the deficiencies of the Oxburgh report, I don’t disagree with their conclusion about finding no evidence of scientific misconduct: I haven’t seen any evidence of plagiarism or fabrication/falsification of data by the CRU scientists. Sloppy record keeping, cherry picking of data, and inadequate statistical methods do not constitute scientific misconduct, but neither do they inspire confidence in the research product. Further, the “bad apple” issue is still out there, but this is something that is impossible to assess objectively. And the behavior of these scientists (sloppy record keeping, dismissal of skeptical critiques, and lack of transparency) has slowed down scientific progress in assessing and improving these very important data sets. Therefore I have been proposing that we move away from the focus on individual behavior, and shifting focus to issues related to the IPCC assessment process, addressing issues related the availability of data and transparency of the methods, and to improving the temperature data and proxies. Once these issues are addressed, the “bad apple” issue becomes mostly moot.
She's also quite clear and specific about the corruptions in the IPCC process, and this is vitally important because the IPCC is used as the basis for sweeping governmental policy changes that affect ALL of us-and by 'us,' I mean the entire planet:
Corruptions to the IPCC process that I have seen discussed include:
• lead/contributing authors assessing their own work – (e.g. von Storch criticism in 2005), in some cases resulting in an overemphasis on their own papers written by themselves and their collaborators;
• tailoring graphics and not adequately describing uncertainties ostensibly to simplify and not to “dilute the message” that IPCC wanted to send;
• violations of publication (in press) deadlines for inclusions of papers in the IPCC report;
• inadequacies in the review process whereby lead/contributing authors don’t respond fairly to adverse criticism; this inadequacy arises in part to the authors themselves having ultimate authority and in part to cursory performance by the Review Editors;
• evasiveness and unresponsiveness by the IPCC regarding efforts to investigate alleged violations occurring in the review process;
• IPCC Review Editors and authors using the IPCC to avoid accountability under national FOI legislation.
Frugal Travel Games
Life as a Mom has her weekly Frugal Fridays post up.
My frugal hacks post is due to show up at around 6 a.m..
It's about frugal games to play while traveling or sitting around in a waiting room.
You can find more Ive written on this topic here, here, and here (and other places on the blog).
We're planning an upcoming family road trip to a friend's wedding with some stops at some historical sites along the way. What are some of the ways you all keep road trips on budget? Got any tips for me on inexpensive accommodations, cheap and healthy travel meals, games to play in the car?
Let's hear them.=)
Be sure to come back every Thursday when the Four Moms:
Kim @ Raising Olives
Connie @ Smockity Frocks
Kim @ Life in a Shoe
and ME
Linked at We are THAT Family's WFM Wednesday
My frugal hacks post is due to show up at around 6 a.m..
It's about frugal games to play while traveling or sitting around in a waiting room.
You can find more Ive written on this topic here, here, and here (and other places on the blog).
We're planning an upcoming family road trip to a friend's wedding with some stops at some historical sites along the way. What are some of the ways you all keep road trips on budget? Got any tips for me on inexpensive accommodations, cheap and healthy travel meals, games to play in the car?
Let's hear them.=)
Be sure to come back every Thursday when the Four Moms:
Kim @ Raising Olives
Connie @ Smockity Frocks
Kim @ Life in a Shoe
and ME
Linked at We are THAT Family's WFM Wednesday
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Four Moms Get Out of the Kitchen And Talk Homeschooling
Welcome to another Thursday post in the Four Moms, 35 kids series (37 if we count Blynken and Nod, who were here from Wednesday thru Tuesday, and are back again today). We wanted a break from the kitchen, and mine is in a state of chaos, anyway (no sink or stove top. No counter!), as it's being repaired after a fire last fall. We're going to talk about homeschooling, but I think what I have to say applies to just about any situation where you find yourself going against the flow, doing something out of the mainstream. And if you have never done anything outside the mainstream, well, it's high time you started!
Our oldest girl went to preschool (two days a week), and then public school kindergarten. Our second girl was in preschool for two months while her big sister was in kindergarten- that was a huge mistake. The Equuschick loathed preschool and simply boycotted any involvement to the point that the teacher thought my early talking, verbally gifted chatterbox was mute and did not even understand most of what was said to her. She's always been stubborn, the Equuschick.
We officially started hsing in 1988. We would have started sooner, because kindergarten just was not working out for us, but I thought the HG should finish what she started. It was probably years later when it dawned on me that kindergarten was not something the HG started, it was something we had started for her.
When we started our reasons and our vision for what we were doing could be summed up in about one word- reactionary. We had no vision for where we were going or who we were as a family- we simply knew where we were not going and what we were not doing. That's a start, and in important one- but it's not enough to get you down the finish line.
So much of the process of becoming free in my country, it seems, is in withdrawing from all the awful things we've been deliberately and systematically taught to need—everything from additives in the food to a car for every really "independent" person; so that a good deal of our manner and program must be negative rather than positive.
We are the folks who do not do all those corrupt things, etc. etc. But the positive, new, and forward aspects of the life are coming on strong now, and will exonerate us in the long run, I'm sure, from any accusation that we merely drew back without pushing upward as well.
From Total Loss Farm, A Year in the Life
by Ray MungoThis tension between the need to draw away from, to reject, and the need to have a positive goal, something to embrace, the reactive versus the proactive, exists in any counter-cultural push, and homeschooling is one of the most counter-cultural pushes you'll ever make- especially if you resist the urge to conform in tiny little schoolish groups as we have.
The waking awareness that something is wrong, that the popular direction, the cultural flow, is not somewhere we want to go, that we're drifting in a current that flows counter to what we really believe and value in life is an important first step.
You cannot counter that current, decide to escape it, swim in a different direction, take charge of your own life and purposefully, deliberately, and thoughtfully examine the popular assumptions of the day without first noticing what's happening and in some degree rejecting to it- reacting to it.
Homeschooling is this way. Most of us begin by reacting. We might be reacting to the popular assumption that kids are a pain in the neck and we can't wait to see the backs of them come September. Perhaps the reaction was more specific and local- something specific in our local school. Perhaps it is a principled political reaction developed out of some growing awareness of the inherent immorality of picking other people's pockets for our pet social causes, or some other cause that pushed you to consider homeschooling.
Those and other similar reasons are all good reasons to start homeschooling, but few people are able to continue homeschooling encouraged only by the bread of reacting. .
At some point you have to replace fighting the current in which our culture swims with deliberately setting out with some positive goal in mind. Otherwise, you're just flailing in the water without any purpose, and you burn out.
You can begin by being reactive, by rejecting one option, but if you want to stay in any counter cultural direction for the long haul, you have to become proactive. You need to develop a strong philosophy about what you're in favor of, not just what you're 'agin.
I speak of homeschooling, but this is true of any rejection of common culture. When your reasons and decisions are all reactive, you're still letting the common culture control what you do and why- you're still being pushed by that current and you're expending a lot of energy pushing back. That's exhausting, and in the end all you have to show for it is all the things you disagree about, and you sound disagreeable.
Our family began homeschooling as reactive people, and planned to homeschool each of the kids for merely the first two or three at most years, and then put them in public school for the remainder. I couldn't decide when would be the best time to enter them in ps. I think my eldest was fifth grade before I realized that homeschooling for us was now a way of life, not just something we did in the mornings because the alternative was so bad. At some point homeschooling had become not just a reactionary response, but something I embraced for its own sake and I did not want to give it up.
It has now been many years since we realized that we homeschool because it's a beautiful way of life, a lovely creation in its own right, a delightful way to live as a family. We don't plan to ever quit until there are no more children left at home to be educated..
Two important things we learned along the way:
What about socialization?:
Not since leaving school myself to join the 'real world' have I been limited to spending most of my days Monday thru Friday with 25 other people the same age who have all been chosen to be my associates on the basis that they live within the narrow limits of an assigned school district, and who are all doing exactly the same thing as me at precisely the same time. In the real world we spend time with people from a variety of age, social, and community backgrounds doing a variety of different activities. Depending on the work you do, even people working for the same business in the same room are often doing different things. At the grocery store, for instance, some people might be stocking shelves, some are cashiering, some are cutting meat, some are running clean-up on aisle five. At the library some are helping clients find books, some are helping to check them out, pages are stocking books, some are in the back transcribing old documents and genealogical material. You get the picture. There are a few types of employment that are the equivalent of "Everybody pull out your books and turn to page 239..."
2. Don't try to duplicate school at home. This is trading away your strengths as a homeschooling mom for the weaknesses of public school. It's not that schoolish methods are weak in schoolish settings, though.
You're not a school. You're a family. Many of the tools for school (worksheets, multiple choice tests, true/false tests) are effective ways of working with a large group of unrelated people within a constrained amount of time to get them through the same amount of material that was imposed from the top down and needs to be crammed into in nine months or less. Using their tools to homeschool is like using a chainsaw to butter your bread or an institutional kitchen and cafeteria to feed your family of five. Public schools are dealing with kids whose parents didn't come home last night, kids who got off to school with a smack and a curse, kids who have been brought up in an environment as stimulating as a piece of white bread. They are dealing with 20-30 kids with varying interests, abilities, and background and a limited calendar and clock. They are dealing with a climate of suspicion making it impossible for them to kiss a child, give out an tylenol, or defuse a tense moment with a group prayer.
You don't have most of these issues to deal with. Even those of us with adopted children from difficult backgrounds have fewer than 20 of them, and we have them 24 and 7. You can curl up on the couch with a good history book and your sweet children and read together and talk about it and you will have covered as much ground in literature, critical thinking, vocabulary, and history in half an hour as a public schooled child does in a week. You may not have pen and paper work to show for it, but the work of the mind happens in the mind, and it is what happens in the mind and heart that constitutes education.
So what about you? If you have kids, how did you choose where to educate them? Was it an active decision or the default? What are some other ways you go against the flow?
See what the rest of the Four Moms have to say:
Kim @ Raising Olives
Connie @ Smockity Frocks
KimC @ Life in a Shoe
Over the next few Thursdays, the Four Moms will be talking further about homeschooling:
May 6 - Picking a curriculum, method or tactics that work for a large family.
May 13 - Teaching little kids
May 20 - Teaching big kids. what changes? what do they need that little ones don't and where do you need to give more freedom. How do you make the transition.
May 27 - Putting it together. How does it work?
June 3 - Husbands and homeschooling
June 10 - Keeping house while homeschooling
More about socialization here
I wrote further about why we homeschool here.
Seven tips for highly effective homeschooling- I think these are a bit different than those you'll find elsewhere.
Nuts and Bolts tools for homeschooling
The day I did a public school at home day on purpose and to most excellent effect. Yeah!
The cost of homeschooling
A little bit more about how we do what we do, specifically about books and literature.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
St. Genevieve Encourages the Men of Paris, vintage book illustration
It seems to be an illustration of this tale:
King Clovis, who embraced the faith in 496, listened often with deference to the advice of St. Genevieve, and granted liberty to several captives at her request. Upon the report of the march of Attila with his army of Huns, the Parisians were preparing to abandon their city, but St. Genevieve persuaded them, in imitation of Judith and Hester, to endeavour to avert the scourge, by fasting, watching, and prayer. Many devout persons of her sex passed many days with her in prayer in the baptistry; from whence the particular devotion to St. Genevieve, which is practiced at St. John-le-rond, the ancient public baptistry of the church of Paris, seems to have taken rise. She assured the people of the protection of heaven, and their deliverance; and though she was long treated by many as an impostor, the event verified the prediction, that barbarian suddenly changing the course of his march, probably by directing it towards Orleans.
I would like to tell you which of my books has this illustration, but alas- I did not make a note of it when I took the picture and I don't remember!
A few news links
This is kind of cool- watch a fast action video of the assembly of a Boeing 737
The White House Press Corps is in the midst of a Lover's Quarrel with the President. No sympathy here, and it's impossible to take them seriously, particularly when they are still as blind to the faults of their lover as ever. The poor dears have to endure nasty emails when they merely ask a question the White House does not like. And sometimes they even hear cursing over the telephone. How dreadful. I note, however, that they are careful not to antagonize their abusive lover by actually TELLING THE PUBLIC what those dangerous questions are, or share the details of those hateful emails or vile phone calls. They continue to cover their abusive lover's trail of guilt for him even while complaining about his neglect.
Ann Crompton of ABC says this:
Heh- several of the commenters to the original Politico story suggest that what this really is all about is media spin, trying to make the public think they actually do ask hard questions. That would explain why there is no example of those hard questions given.
Here's a story the press could really try to cover.
Here's another. And another. Or this one.
WAIT for a scandal or for somebody to screw up? How about:
Charles Rangel, Geitner, Daschle, the number of lobbyists working in the WH, including a few from Goldman-Sacs.
Did Obama lie about a couple things regarding the Blago case? (via the Anchoress) Why is he letting GM get away with lying about paying back their bail-out?
They might try some self-awareness:
Oh, sheesh. I read that the Mexican government had issued some sort of travel advisory to Mexicans traveling in American in the wake of that new law in Arizona giving state police the right to question the immigration status of people they stop on other causes if they have a reason to suspect the law-breakers might have broken other laws as well. Well, do you know what that so-called travel advisory actually says?
Um. Isn't that good advice for anybody traveling to a foreign country? via Wizbang
The White House Press Corps is in the midst of a Lover's Quarrel with the President. No sympathy here, and it's impossible to take them seriously, particularly when they are still as blind to the faults of their lover as ever. The poor dears have to endure nasty emails when they merely ask a question the White House does not like. And sometimes they even hear cursing over the telephone. How dreadful. I note, however, that they are careful not to antagonize their abusive lover by actually TELLING THE PUBLIC what those dangerous questions are, or share the details of those hateful emails or vile phone calls. They continue to cover their abusive lover's trail of guilt for him even while complaining about his neglect.
Ann Crompton of ABC says this:
"They ain't seen nothing yet," the longtime ABC reporter said. "Wait 'till they have to start really circling the wagons when someone in the administration under attack, wait 'till there's a scandal, wait 'till someone screws up, then it'll get hostile."And I could only laugh, because it's ridiculous to cry over politics. Gee, what will the press do when somebody in the administration is under attack, there's a scandal, or somebody screws up? They'll keep doing exactly what they've been doing as they have ignored story after story that fits Crompton's criteria- they will cosy up to the Prez as usual, carry his water, fetch him his slippers, and viciously lash out at those pointing out these things- police know that responding to a domestic violence call is one of most dangerous of all to be in.
Heh- several of the commenters to the original Politico story suggest that what this really is all about is media spin, trying to make the public think they actually do ask hard questions. That would explain why there is no example of those hard questions given.
Here's a story the press could really try to cover.
Here's another. And another. Or this one.
WAIT for a scandal or for somebody to screw up? How about:
Charles Rangel, Geitner, Daschle, the number of lobbyists working in the WH, including a few from Goldman-Sacs.
Did Obama lie about a couple things regarding the Blago case? (via the Anchoress) Why is he letting GM get away with lying about paying back their bail-out?
They might try some self-awareness:
Oh, sheesh. I read that the Mexican government had issued some sort of travel advisory to Mexicans traveling in American in the wake of that new law in Arizona giving state police the right to question the immigration status of people they stop on other causes if they have a reason to suspect the law-breakers might have broken other laws as well. Well, do you know what that so-called travel advisory actually says?
Mexicans in Arizona should carry documentation and "act carefully" after the state passed a law requiring local police to determine the immigration status of anyone suspected of being in the country illegally, Mexico's Foreign Ministry said. ...
"There is an adverse political environment for migrant communities and all Mexican visitors," Mexico's ministry said. "It's important to act carefully and respect the local laws."
Um. Isn't that good advice for anybody traveling to a foreign country? via Wizbang
Incredible Footage of Babies in the Womb
I was clicking through my back links- seeing who had linked to us and when and where, and I found several links to this post at Jennifer's favorite links (Jennifer blogs regularly at The Conversion Diary).
I clicked on over to see what was up, and while browsing I found a link to this amazing website. It is probably the most comprehensive online reference source for information on human development in the womb that I have ever seen. You can see video footage week by week, choose from a variety of playlists, such as facial expressions in the womb, arms and legs development, heart movement in the womb, and more. I've just spent the last half hour browsing around and I still have looked at all the options- they are so cool!
Did you know that at 8 weeks, "Touching the embryo elicits squinting, jaw movement, grasping motions, and toe pointing?" That's from video #47, and includes some really delightful video footage.
"By three weeks the brain is dividing into 3 primary sections called the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain."
There's an interactive prenatal developmental timeline, and you can select further for specific body systems as well complexity of information- this is an incredible resource for science studies as well as just a beautiful resource for those of you who are expecting.
In case you miss the small print there- "All ages referenced to fertilization, not last menstrual period"
I clicked on over to see what was up, and while browsing I found a link to this amazing website. It is probably the most comprehensive online reference source for information on human development in the womb that I have ever seen. You can see video footage week by week, choose from a variety of playlists, such as facial expressions in the womb, arms and legs development, heart movement in the womb, and more. I've just spent the last half hour browsing around and I still have looked at all the options- they are so cool!
Did you know that at 8 weeks, "Touching the embryo elicits squinting, jaw movement, grasping motions, and toe pointing?" That's from video #47, and includes some really delightful video footage.
Video 53, 9 weeks: The fetus can also grasp an object, move the head forward and back, open and close the jaw, move the tongue, sigh, and stretch.By four weeks (video 21) the little heart is beating 113 times a minute.
Nerve receptors in the face, the palms of the hands, and the soles of the feet can sense light touch.
"In response to a light touch on the sole of the foot," the fetus will bend the hip and knee and may curl the toes.
"By three weeks the brain is dividing into 3 primary sections called the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain."
There's an interactive prenatal developmental timeline, and you can select further for specific body systems as well complexity of information- this is an incredible resource for science studies as well as just a beautiful resource for those of you who are expecting.
In case you miss the small print there- "All ages referenced to fertilization, not last menstrual period"
News and views
Planned Parenthood caught facilitating the rape of a minor child yet again. And again. In fact, in Alabama:
Confirmed: The Republican Party run by a bunch of clueless idiots. Great gravy, I am glad I am not a Republican.
Moving goal posts- Obama now says he is open to a VAT tax, which would be a direct and blatant violation of his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. He says not- he now claims he ALWAYS (letmebeperfectlyclear) said he would't raise income taxes, and his promise was only about income taxes.
Oh, yeah?
It would seem 'any' means something else in the Obamaverse, kind of like 'is' in the Clintonverse, and 'read my lips' in the Bush, Sr. verse and 'free market' in the Bush2verse. The reality is that all politicians live in Humpty Dumpty's world and words mean whatever they say they mean.
Identity theft and copying machines- you may make sure your doctor's office shreds your personal documents- but did you know the copy machine has a hard drive with a copy of everything scanned in that machine? And it's almost never cleared before sold off.
Stories have been making the rounds comparing the press's coverage of Bush on the golf course to that of Obama, and of course, it's silly and would embarrass a reporter who hadn't already lost all self-respect in their slavish devotion to the One. I don't think there are any of those left, but still, it didn't strike me as that big of a story. It's still not that big of a deal, but it does rather turn the stomach to read several examples of the fawning press coverage in a row. And note this:
The Marshmallow Test for success
"Birtherism" I am NOT a 'birther,' if by that we mean somebody who thinks that Obama wasn't born in the US. I think its more than probably that he was. But I also think it's more than disturbing that it somehow puts somebody outside the boundaries of polite discourse to point out that if the Constitution does set forth a requirement to be President, it is NOT unreasonable to have some sort of mechanism in place to make sure that requirement is met. Kind of like SDN says here:
Prompted by a Live Action video, the Alabama Health Department placed the Birmingham clinic on probation after conducting its own investigation which found 9 legal violations.
Confirmed: The Republican Party run by a bunch of clueless idiots. Great gravy, I am glad I am not a Republican.
Moving goal posts- Obama now says he is open to a VAT tax, which would be a direct and blatant violation of his promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. He says not- he now claims he ALWAYS (letmebeperfectlyclear) said he would't raise income taxes, and his promise was only about income taxes.
Oh, yeah?
“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
It would seem 'any' means something else in the Obamaverse, kind of like 'is' in the Clintonverse, and 'read my lips' in the Bush, Sr. verse and 'free market' in the Bush2verse. The reality is that all politicians live in Humpty Dumpty's world and words mean whatever they say they mean.
Identity theft and copying machines- you may make sure your doctor's office shreds your personal documents- but did you know the copy machine has a hard drive with a copy of everything scanned in that machine? And it's almost never cleared before sold off.
Stories have been making the rounds comparing the press's coverage of Bush on the golf course to that of Obama, and of course, it's silly and would embarrass a reporter who hadn't already lost all self-respect in their slavish devotion to the One. I don't think there are any of those left, but still, it didn't strike me as that big of a story. It's still not that big of a deal, but it does rather turn the stomach to read several examples of the fawning press coverage in a row. And note this:
Bush played 24 rounds of golf in two and a half years before giving up the game. Obama has played 32 rounds of golf in fifteen months. Bush was a villain for amusing himself on the golf course; Obama’s a cool, self-confident hero for playing golf in the midst of the same wars and a collapsed economy.
The Marshmallow Test for success
"Birtherism" I am NOT a 'birther,' if by that we mean somebody who thinks that Obama wasn't born in the US. I think its more than probably that he was. But I also think it's more than disturbing that it somehow puts somebody outside the boundaries of polite discourse to point out that if the Constitution does set forth a requirement to be President, it is NOT unreasonable to have some sort of mechanism in place to make sure that requirement is met. Kind of like SDN says here:
Hospitality
Excerpts taken from: The Complete Home, An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Life and Affairs Embracing All the Interests of The Household, by Julia McNair Wright.
Mrs. Wright wrote to help impoverished families economize during the depression of the 1870's. She writes in the first person in the character of a delightful old person named Aunt Sophronia. Aunt Sophronia has three nieces of her own whom she is guiding, and she is aunt by courtesy title to most of the young people in town. In this section she holds a tea party to discuss hospitality, and asks the local minster to speak. He says:
What staples do you like to keep on hand 'in advance of need' for serving company? Do you have very many drop-in guests? Would you serve brown bread and milk with a plate of berries to share?
Linked at Hearts for Home
Mrs. Wright wrote to help impoverished families economize during the depression of the 1870's. She writes in the first person in the character of a delightful old person named Aunt Sophronia. Aunt Sophronia has three nieces of her own whom she is guiding, and she is aunt by courtesy title to most of the young people in town. In this section she holds a tea party to discuss hospitality, and asks the local minster to speak. He says:
"The hospitality of a home should not have a superfluous magnificence and display which overawes and embarrasses the guest, making him feel ill at ease and self-conscious, while the hospitality itself becomes to the entertainer a burden too heavy to be borne. Our hospitality should be easy, brotherly, ready, and offered in that quiet simplicity which gives best opportunity for the steady conduct of our ordinary home-life...."Good housekeepers, says Aunt Sophronia, will always have foresight and be "provided in advance of demand." They will "have things made ready in advance of need, and in large enough quantities." Some of the supplies she suggests necessary to help a young housekeeper quickly set out a luncheon for a surprise guest include bread, small pots of jam, pickles, and arrangements for sandwiches. Drop in guests, says Aunt S., should not be made to feel like they are a "bomb-shell thrown into the domestic camp." When one of her proteges asks what that luncheon should be, she tells her young friends:
Chocolate is very nice in cold weather, and lemonade in hot weather, if you can afford it. Where rich milk is plenty, nothing is more delicious than a dish of brown bread and milk, and a plate of fresh berries. Sandwiches, either of ham, beef or tongue, are good....Cold chicken; biscuit sliced thin; plain 'training-day gingerbread;' a plate of thin bread and butter to accompany a plate of sardines laid out whole and dressed with thin rounds of lemon, or of cucumber-pickle; a dish of crackers, and another of mixed figs and raisins- all of these are good for luncheon. Have little cake or pie... but plenty of fruit."
What staples do you like to keep on hand 'in advance of need' for serving company? Do you have very many drop-in guests? Would you serve brown bread and milk with a plate of berries to share?
Linked at Hearts for Home
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Crock Pot Barbeque Chicken
This saucy chicken recipe is also a crockpot recipe, one of our favorites, very family friendly (families who like more spice can just add cayenne pepper and diced hot peppers for added ZING). Links to other crock pot recipes below- including crockpot recipes that can be combined and frozen uncooked, and thawed and dumped in the crockpot on cooking day for cooking. You really cannot beat that for simplicity.
Crock Pot Barbeque Chicken
1 frying chicken cut up or quartered (we don't do this- we just use chicken breasts and thighs, boneless or bone in)
1 can condensed tomato soup (we make such a large batch that we use a giant can from the restaurant supply section of the grocer's)
3/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup vinegar
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of basil
1/4 teaspoon of thyme
OR just use two or three cups of your own home-made bar-b-que sauce.
Put the chicken in your crockpot. Combine the other ingredients and add them to the crockpot. Cook on low for 6-8 hours
OR put this all in a roaster and cook in a 325 degree oven for 1 1/2 hours, maybe two. To increase the proportions (which we do, this only serves four), layer the chicken and put one recipe of sauce in between each layer.
Serve this with basil biscuits and a green salad, maybe some corn on the cob.
Here are some other freezer/crockpot meals we've made and posted about:
Freezer Meals: Days One and Two Dump Chicken recipe links for the crockpot, a tasty chicken legs with Italian tomato sauce recipe, chicken spaghetti, and a spicy chicken tomato pizza sauce (could also be used for dipping bread sticks), as well as feeding a family on less than .50 a person.
Freezer Meals: Day Three Crockpot Cashew Chicken
Freezer Meals: Day Four Mmmm, Crockpot chicken with creamy chive sauce
Freezer Meals: Day Five Crockpot Tomato Beef Stew
Freezer Meals: Day Six Crockpot Asian Style Pot Roast (This was a big favorite, and the recipe for the BokChoy/Carrot salad we include in this post is a delicious summer recipe, piquant, refreshing, and bursting with good flavor)
Freezer Meals: Day Seven Crockpot Beef "Fajita" Filling (not authentic, but still delicious inside a tortilla)
Freezer Meals: Day Eight Crockpot Pizza Fondue, or Pizza Dip- wildly popular with the teens and under, not so bad for us grown ups, either.
Freezer Meals: Day Nine Crockpot Spicy Sloppy Joes
Freezer Meals: Day Ten Baked Fish (not a crockpot recipe, but an easy to make ahead recipe)
This post linked at Crockpot Wednesdays and Tuesdays at the Table
Crock Pot Barbeque Chicken
1 frying chicken cut up or quartered (we don't do this- we just use chicken breasts and thighs, boneless or bone in)
1 can condensed tomato soup (we make such a large batch that we use a giant can from the restaurant supply section of the grocer's)
3/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup vinegar
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of basil
1/4 teaspoon of thyme
OR just use two or three cups of your own home-made bar-b-que sauce.
Put the chicken in your crockpot. Combine the other ingredients and add them to the crockpot. Cook on low for 6-8 hours
OR put this all in a roaster and cook in a 325 degree oven for 1 1/2 hours, maybe two. To increase the proportions (which we do, this only serves four), layer the chicken and put one recipe of sauce in between each layer.
Serve this with basil biscuits and a green salad, maybe some corn on the cob.
Here are some other freezer/crockpot meals we've made and posted about:
Freezer Meals: Days One and Two Dump Chicken recipe links for the crockpot, a tasty chicken legs with Italian tomato sauce recipe, chicken spaghetti, and a spicy chicken tomato pizza sauce (could also be used for dipping bread sticks), as well as feeding a family on less than .50 a person.
Freezer Meals: Day Three Crockpot Cashew Chicken
Freezer Meals: Day Four Mmmm, Crockpot chicken with creamy chive sauce
Freezer Meals: Day Five Crockpot Tomato Beef Stew
Freezer Meals: Day Six Crockpot Asian Style Pot Roast (This was a big favorite, and the recipe for the BokChoy/Carrot salad we include in this post is a delicious summer recipe, piquant, refreshing, and bursting with good flavor)
Freezer Meals: Day Seven Crockpot Beef "Fajita" Filling (not authentic, but still delicious inside a tortilla)
Freezer Meals: Day Eight Crockpot Pizza Fondue, or Pizza Dip- wildly popular with the teens and under, not so bad for us grown ups, either.
Freezer Meals: Day Nine Crockpot Spicy Sloppy Joes
Freezer Meals: Day Ten Baked Fish (not a crockpot recipe, but an easy to make ahead recipe)
This post linked at Crockpot Wednesdays and Tuesdays at the Table
The Immigration Law (s)
The Immigration Process in Pictures
Cafe Hayek has some good arguments, and the comments themselves contain good points on both sides- I read one comment and think, yes, yes, that's true, and then I read a disagreement with that one and think, yes, yes, that is true, and then I read another one and think, "oh, good point." In short, I remain unsettled.
I'd be in favor of wide open immigration if there were serious welfare reform- starting with no welfare for illegal aliens.
That said, I would like to see some accurate reporting- the Arizona provisions are largely already part of the federal code.
Mexico's Immigration laws are pretty draconian.
And MSNBC is pretty stupid. What else can you say about a reporter who claims the AZ law makes it a crime to be an illegal alien?
What's your opinion- and why?
No Room for a Bedside Table
Edited repost:
When the HG was in college and still living at home, she slept in an attic garret of strange proportions, and there really wasn't room for a table next to her bed, and she is a late night reader.
Happily, she is only 5'2" tall, so used what she called a bed-top basket instead. A taller person or a restless sleeper could store the basket on the floor by the bed or under the bed at night. The HG just left her basket at the foot of the bed because she slept curled up like a kitten and didn't thrash much.
She used her basket to hold current journals, books she was reading, books she wanted to read (only a small selection of those), pens, bookmarks, lotion and chapstick.
*Water froze in that attic bedroom on winter nights so she used a hot water bottle.
* The pink and orange bear is a Nosy Bear. She had one when she was small but lost it somewhere on an international flight. I found one at a thrift shop shortly before her 19th birthday, however, and she loved it.
*The rabbit was made by my sister-in-law, a very talented lady.
In similar small space situations, I have had offspring use totebags hung on the bedposts as well, and a windowbox planter hung over the headboard or foot-board would also provide extra storage.
For other 'Works for Me' posts see We are THAT Family
When the HG was in college and still living at home, she slept in an attic garret of strange proportions, and there really wasn't room for a table next to her bed, and she is a late night reader.Happily, she is only 5'2" tall, so used what she called a bed-top basket instead. A taller person or a restless sleeper could store the basket on the floor by the bed or under the bed at night. The HG just left her basket at the foot of the bed because she slept curled up like a kitten and didn't thrash much.
She used her basket to hold current journals, books she was reading, books she wanted to read (only a small selection of those), pens, bookmarks, lotion and chapstick.
*Water froze in that attic bedroom on winter nights so she used a hot water bottle.
* The pink and orange bear is a Nosy Bear. She had one when she was small but lost it somewhere on an international flight. I found one at a thrift shop shortly before her 19th birthday, however, and she loved it.
*The rabbit was made by my sister-in-law, a very talented lady.
In similar small space situations, I have had offspring use totebags hung on the bedposts as well, and a windowbox planter hung over the headboard or foot-board would also provide extra storage.
For other 'Works for Me' posts see We are THAT Family
Singing Pigs and La La La
A cow says moo.
A sheep says baa.
Three singing pigs say la, la, la.
to look at once more (having just read it to the Dread Pirate Grasshopper twice after his Mama read it to him two or three times), and The Dread Pirate Grasshopper looked at me in righteous indignation, balled both his sweet little starfish hands into fists, shook those adorable fists in the air, turned beet red and made a noise distinctly expressive of RAGE, so naturally, being a Grandmama, I instantly handed over the book to the dear boy.His mother fixed a steely eye on me and informed me that the universe would not have come to an end if he had been made to stop shaking his fists at said Universe at large and sign 'please' first.
Well, no, it wouldn't, but I'm the Grandmama and he wanted the book.
quod erat demonstrandum
So, anyway... His mama went ahead and read the lad the book. Again. And without making him say please, in case anybody is wondering.
I returned to the writing of this post- only when the Equuschick got to the line that I had already noticed was his favorite, which would be this line:
"and cats and kittens say
MEOW"
The now happy and very excited Dread Pirate Grasshopper bounced in her lap and SAID MEOW ALONG WITH HIS MOMMY.
And after that, there is really nothing else to add .
Sandra Boynton is an artist and all her books are classics.
This post linked at Barnyard Bash
When I Learned to Cook
Over at Balancing Beauty and Bedlam Jennifer is hosting Tasty Tuesdays, where other bloggers can share links to special recipes they've made this week, AND she's asking people to share when they learned to cook. I like this question so much I answered it briefly at her blog and want to talk about it further here.
I was around six years old when I learned to poach my own eggs for breakfast, and I had to pull a chair up to the stove and stand up on it to reach the top of the stove. I don't remember doing this alone in the kitchen- in my memories, my mother is always in the kitchen with me, nearby when I was that little. Later, she let me loose to do pretty much what I wanted in the kitchen, as long as it wasn't expensive.
There were a number of stars in my universe aligned to influence my youthful bent for all things baking.
First of all, my mother did not learn how to cook until after she was married. My father, something of a gourmet cook and a real foodie himself, taught her to cook. She's never complained about being tutored by my dad in cookery, but knowing my dad, this can't have been all that fun- he was never a patient person.
They do have one story about how he, a southern boy, wanted gravy and explained how it was made. That night at dinner he professed first not to recognize it, and then when she asked him to pass the gravy, he asked "One lump or two?" Such a wit, he was.
So my mom didn't want me to have to learn the way she did and she started early making sure that wouldn't happen.
Secondly, my Mom worked full time for all but about two or three years when I was growing up- she needed us to be somewhat independent, and she had us help a lot in the kitchen. Since she had to be in there anyway, this was a way to spend time with us when she was home from work, and if we helped, that meant she spent less time in the kitchen, which brings us to the next point...
My mother hated to cook. She is quite a good cook, but not an adventurous one. She finds good recipes and follows the directions carefully and keeps those recipes forever. Since she didn't like it at all, she was quite pleased to have anybody else but her take on the cooking, which brings us to the next point...
I liked cooking and baking and my mother did not. In addition to helping in the kitchen from an incredibly young age and poaching eggs by six, I also took cooking classes in 4-H in the fourth and fifth grades and always chose Home Ec as an elective when I had that option (starting in 7th grade it was an option), and by the time I was a freshman in high school my mother was paying a friend and I to cater work parties she hosted for a political group she was active with.
I liked experimenting in the kitchen, and since my mother hated to cook and wanted me to like it, she encouraged my experiments. I experimented with ingredients, I experimented by trying out new recipes, I experimented with garnishes- at one of those political parties my friend and I made a veggie tray with radish roses, carrots hollowed out and filled with cream cheese and then sliced into flower shapes, and a veggie-cheese dip in a hollowed out green bell pepper which was then decorated to look like a face- grated carrot hair, green olive eyes- this was probably NOT what my mother had in mind for her work-party, but she never complained about it.
I also experimented with old recipes, really old recipes. By the time I was 12 I was occasionally cooking from a book belonging to my great-great-grandmother which had been published in the 1870s- The Complete Home, An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Life and Affairs Embracing All the Interests of The Household
, by Julia McNair Wright. Mrs. Wright wrote to help families in 'reduced circumstances' economize during the depression of the 1870's.
I was thrilled (yes, even at around 12) to be cooking from a century old recipe, and tickled to death that Mother let me try. I made this first:
Those are all the directions 'Aunt Sophronia' (the narrator of my old book) shared, but by 12 I had been baking long enough that I knew to cream the butter and sugar, I cream the butter and sugar, lightly beat the eggs and add them one at a time, add the milk and then, combine the dry ingredients, and stir them into the liquid to make a batter. I think I put it in a greased loaf pan and baked it at 350 until it was done- but I don't recall how long that took and it has been a long while now since I made it. I did make it quite a few times after I was 12, and I know I was still pretty young when I tried substituting orange juice for the milk with very pleasing results.
Not much later I tried this one:
I used muffin tins, and I think I used a hot oven (400). These were not at all sweet, of course, and they were hollow inside. I remember mother and I ate them with butter and thought them too plain, but they might have been delicious with some sort of sweet custard inside, or a little jam.
When I got a job my senior year of high school in a small tourist trap town near where my foster sister worked, I would occasionally put together nifty little lunches for us- they were the equivalent of bento box lunches, American style, although I had never heard of bento box lunches then. I would make special salads, cut sandwiches in fancy shapes, make tiny hor d'ourves on toothpicks and put sauces, dips, and dressings in cunning little jars saved from pepperidge farms Christmas gift packages a couple of relatives always sent us for Christmas and we'd meet and eat in a public garden near our shops- my foster sister didn't like to cook, either, but she didn't mind eating my concoctions.
Around the time I took cooking in 4-H, so about age 10 or 11, Mother had me cook dinner for our family of five once a week. Mother was constantly telling me I was a better cook than she was, and she spread the praise of my cooking thick and sweet. She had to spread it thick for two reasons. One was to make up for the complaints of my hard-to-please brothers (one of them still complains about some awful dish I made. Only, oddly enough, the peasant fare of One Pan Dandy turned out to be a family favorite, not only of my husband and children, but of several friends who had it as well).
The other reason was because, as I said, she hated to cook and wanted to nurture any activity on my part that would relieve her of that duty. She never minded washing dishes, so it was a lovely treat for me to make all the messes I liked and have somebody else clean them up. When I was a married mother and would come home for visits I would do all the grocery shopping and cooking, and she would buy the groceries and clean up after me in the kitchen- an arrangement both of us thoroughly enjoyed.
She would tell me what a terrible cook she was and what a lovely cook I was, and she said it so often I believed it. I was well into my twenties when I realized that all my best recipes, the ones that other people asked for again and again, came from my mother.
I'd been had. She's not a terrible cook. She's just not an inventive cook. She doesn't fiddle with ingredients and she doesn't make things up, but she dislikes cooking enough that she's going to make it worth her while if she has to mess about in the kitchen. This translates into a pretty good cook with a good track record.
Me? The process interests me as much as the product, which is good, since sometimes the product was experimented with to the point that it needed to go directly into the garbage can. I may have considerably more variety in my cooking than Granny Tea does, and I may have a lot more successes than she in the kitchen, but I have a good many more failures, too.
I have always been grateful my mother made sure I knew how to cook early, because not only did I enjoy it for 'my own self,' my husband really likes his food. When we were first married, as I have shared here before, he told me (because I asked, and because he, not being a cook at all, had no idea what he was asking) that he really didn't like to have the same food more than twice in a month- and being newlyweds and starry eyed in love I worked hard (and successfully) to come up that kind of variety on a beans and rice budget.
I taught my kids to cook young, too, although they weren't poaching eggs at 6.=) They started by helping me in the kitchen even when it wasn't helping, and I let them use more convenience foods than I normally use (one of their first meals included frozen fried chicken- they were five and six).
Make your range a place where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and your children just may take over dinner a few nights a week. I can't say I did that as well as Mom did, not by a long shot (I had the FYG in tears over the Pistachio Cake, unfortunately) - my older girls primarily learned to cook because when I was pregnant, they either cooked or ate sandwiches, and they quickly tired of sandwiches. Granny Tea's way was more pleasant for all concerned.
I was around six years old when I learned to poach my own eggs for breakfast, and I had to pull a chair up to the stove and stand up on it to reach the top of the stove. I don't remember doing this alone in the kitchen- in my memories, my mother is always in the kitchen with me, nearby when I was that little. Later, she let me loose to do pretty much what I wanted in the kitchen, as long as it wasn't expensive.
There were a number of stars in my universe aligned to influence my youthful bent for all things baking.
First of all, my mother did not learn how to cook until after she was married. My father, something of a gourmet cook and a real foodie himself, taught her to cook. She's never complained about being tutored by my dad in cookery, but knowing my dad, this can't have been all that fun- he was never a patient person.
They do have one story about how he, a southern boy, wanted gravy and explained how it was made. That night at dinner he professed first not to recognize it, and then when she asked him to pass the gravy, he asked "One lump or two?" Such a wit, he was.
So my mom didn't want me to have to learn the way she did and she started early making sure that wouldn't happen.
Secondly, my Mom worked full time for all but about two or three years when I was growing up- she needed us to be somewhat independent, and she had us help a lot in the kitchen. Since she had to be in there anyway, this was a way to spend time with us when she was home from work, and if we helped, that meant she spent less time in the kitchen, which brings us to the next point...
My mother hated to cook. She is quite a good cook, but not an adventurous one. She finds good recipes and follows the directions carefully and keeps those recipes forever. Since she didn't like it at all, she was quite pleased to have anybody else but her take on the cooking, which brings us to the next point...
I liked cooking and baking and my mother did not. In addition to helping in the kitchen from an incredibly young age and poaching eggs by six, I also took cooking classes in 4-H in the fourth and fifth grades and always chose Home Ec as an elective when I had that option (starting in 7th grade it was an option), and by the time I was a freshman in high school my mother was paying a friend and I to cater work parties she hosted for a political group she was active with.
I liked experimenting in the kitchen, and since my mother hated to cook and wanted me to like it, she encouraged my experiments. I experimented with ingredients, I experimented by trying out new recipes, I experimented with garnishes- at one of those political parties my friend and I made a veggie tray with radish roses, carrots hollowed out and filled with cream cheese and then sliced into flower shapes, and a veggie-cheese dip in a hollowed out green bell pepper which was then decorated to look like a face- grated carrot hair, green olive eyes- this was probably NOT what my mother had in mind for her work-party, but she never complained about it.
I also experimented with old recipes, really old recipes. By the time I was 12 I was occasionally cooking from a book belonging to my great-great-grandmother which had been published in the 1870s- The Complete Home, An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Life and Affairs Embracing All the Interests of The Household
, by Julia McNair Wright. Mrs. Wright wrote to help families in 'reduced circumstances' economize during the depression of the 1870's. I was thrilled (yes, even at around 12) to be cooking from a century old recipe, and tickled to death that Mother let me try. I made this first:
Cheap Pound Cake
One cup sugar, one-half cup butter, one-third cup milk, three eggs, one and a half cups of four, one teaspoonful baking powder.
Those are all the directions 'Aunt Sophronia' (the narrator of my old book) shared, but by 12 I had been baking long enough that I knew to cream the butter and sugar, I cream the butter and sugar, lightly beat the eggs and add them one at a time, add the milk and then, combine the dry ingredients, and stir them into the liquid to make a batter. I think I put it in a greased loaf pan and baked it at 350 until it was done- but I don't recall how long that took and it has been a long while now since I made it. I did make it quite a few times after I was 12, and I know I was still pretty young when I tried substituting orange juice for the milk with very pleasing results.
Not much later I tried this one:
Chicago Puffs
Four cups of flour, four cups of new milk, four eggs, butter the size of a walnut; beat it as light as possible. Bake in cups about twenty-five minutes.
I used muffin tins, and I think I used a hot oven (400). These were not at all sweet, of course, and they were hollow inside. I remember mother and I ate them with butter and thought them too plain, but they might have been delicious with some sort of sweet custard inside, or a little jam.
When I got a job my senior year of high school in a small tourist trap town near where my foster sister worked, I would occasionally put together nifty little lunches for us- they were the equivalent of bento box lunches, American style, although I had never heard of bento box lunches then. I would make special salads, cut sandwiches in fancy shapes, make tiny hor d'ourves on toothpicks and put sauces, dips, and dressings in cunning little jars saved from pepperidge farms Christmas gift packages a couple of relatives always sent us for Christmas and we'd meet and eat in a public garden near our shops- my foster sister didn't like to cook, either, but she didn't mind eating my concoctions.
Around the time I took cooking in 4-H, so about age 10 or 11, Mother had me cook dinner for our family of five once a week. Mother was constantly telling me I was a better cook than she was, and she spread the praise of my cooking thick and sweet. She had to spread it thick for two reasons. One was to make up for the complaints of my hard-to-please brothers (one of them still complains about some awful dish I made. Only, oddly enough, the peasant fare of One Pan Dandy turned out to be a family favorite, not only of my husband and children, but of several friends who had it as well).
The other reason was because, as I said, she hated to cook and wanted to nurture any activity on my part that would relieve her of that duty. She never minded washing dishes, so it was a lovely treat for me to make all the messes I liked and have somebody else clean them up. When I was a married mother and would come home for visits I would do all the grocery shopping and cooking, and she would buy the groceries and clean up after me in the kitchen- an arrangement both of us thoroughly enjoyed.
She would tell me what a terrible cook she was and what a lovely cook I was, and she said it so often I believed it. I was well into my twenties when I realized that all my best recipes, the ones that other people asked for again and again, came from my mother.
I'd been had. She's not a terrible cook. She's just not an inventive cook. She doesn't fiddle with ingredients and she doesn't make things up, but she dislikes cooking enough that she's going to make it worth her while if she has to mess about in the kitchen. This translates into a pretty good cook with a good track record.
Me? The process interests me as much as the product, which is good, since sometimes the product was experimented with to the point that it needed to go directly into the garbage can. I may have considerably more variety in my cooking than Granny Tea does, and I may have a lot more successes than she in the kitchen, but I have a good many more failures, too.
I have always been grateful my mother made sure I knew how to cook early, because not only did I enjoy it for 'my own self,' my husband really likes his food. When we were first married, as I have shared here before, he told me (because I asked, and because he, not being a cook at all, had no idea what he was asking) that he really didn't like to have the same food more than twice in a month- and being newlyweds and starry eyed in love I worked hard (and successfully) to come up that kind of variety on a beans and rice budget.
I taught my kids to cook young, too, although they weren't poaching eggs at 6.=) They started by helping me in the kitchen even when it wasn't helping, and I let them use more convenience foods than I normally use (one of their first meals included frozen fried chicken- they were five and six).
Make your range a place where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and your children just may take over dinner a few nights a week. I can't say I did that as well as Mom did, not by a long shot (I had the FYG in tears over the Pistachio Cake, unfortunately) - my older girls primarily learned to cook because when I was pregnant, they either cooked or ate sandwiches, and they quickly tired of sandwiches. Granny Tea's way was more pleasant for all concerned.
Pot Rack to Plant Hanger
Looking for the 239th homeschool carnival, history of home education in America edition? click here.
Potrack in the old house:
I picked up the green wire rack for 7.00 at a second hand store. I asked the lady if she knew what it was supposed to be, and she said no, but it looked neat, and she wondered what I was going to do with it. I told her it was going to be my potrack.
There's no room for a pot rack in my kitchen ceiling in the 'new' house (now four years old), so we flipped it over and it's been a plant rack and wind-chime hanger in my sunroom:
Four years, and the walls still aren't finished. Not sure they ever will be, because we cannot fix the leak problems out here. I almost wish we'd left the walls off and just screened the thing.
Pretty much all the windchimes, pots, planters, and the porcelain pillar you can just barely see the top of, all came from thrift shops, yard sales, or the basement of The Rattery, too.
Other ideas for a pot-rack: an old bicycle wheel, a spray painted wagon wheel, part of an old gate, fence, or bed (headboard, footboard), any piece of scrolled metal, wrought iron- attach with chains, strong hooks, and make some 's' hooks for the pots using a wire coat-hanger, wire snippers and pliers to shape the s hook.
This post linked at Life as a Mom Frugal Fridays
This post linked at Trash to Treasure Tuesday
And Southern Hospitality's Thrifty Treasures
Coastal Charm's Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays.
Potrack in the old house:
I picked up the green wire rack for 7.00 at a second hand store. I asked the lady if she knew what it was supposed to be, and she said no, but it looked neat, and she wondered what I was going to do with it. I told her it was going to be my potrack.
There's no room for a pot rack in my kitchen ceiling in the 'new' house (now four years old), so we flipped it over and it's been a plant rack and wind-chime hanger in my sunroom:
Four years, and the walls still aren't finished. Not sure they ever will be, because we cannot fix the leak problems out here. I almost wish we'd left the walls off and just screened the thing.
Pretty much all the windchimes, pots, planters, and the porcelain pillar you can just barely see the top of, all came from thrift shops, yard sales, or the basement of The Rattery, too.
Other ideas for a pot-rack: an old bicycle wheel, a spray painted wagon wheel, part of an old gate, fence, or bed (headboard, footboard), any piece of scrolled metal, wrought iron- attach with chains, strong hooks, and make some 's' hooks for the pots using a wire coat-hanger, wire snippers and pliers to shape the s hook.
This post linked at Life as a Mom Frugal Fridays
This post linked at Trash to Treasure Tuesday
And Southern Hospitality's Thrifty Treasures
Coastal Charm's Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Climate Links
Government funding as a corrupt influence on just about everything it touches, including scientific research:
Dave L.:
Speaking of hopelessly gloomy predictions, check out:
In March of 2007:
The thing that bothers me most about this next article is that the information had to be revealed via an FOI request:
Dave L.:
Regarding federal research funds, I believe Lindzen sums it up the best:On Earth Day I read several gloom and doom predictions about how we are 'this close' to the end of the world because of our unsustainable lifestyles and the damage done to the earth. I know we could do better- in fact, one of the things that bugs me about the global warming hype is that I do think it is mostly not so dire as predicted, and it is a distraction from things we could be working on- but anyway, here are some indications that some things at least are not as bad as they could be:
“In brief, we have the new paradigm where simulation and programs have replaced theory and observation, where government largely determines the nature of scientific activity, and where the primary role of professional societies is the lobbying of the government for special advantage.”
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.3762.pdf
It is my contention that reliance upon federal research grants is a major reason why more scientists are not speaking out about Climategate and the problems with the IPCC process. It takes a lot of courage for Dr. Curry to buck the politics operating behind the scenes at DOE.
Losing? Forget facts such as that agricultural yields and proven reserves of petroleum are today at all-time highs. Instead, focus on one of the best single indicators of the state of the environment: life-expectancy.
Life-expectancy across the globe is rising. It’s now higher than ever – and not just, or even especially, for rich westerners such as Americans (whose 78.1 years of expected life duration today is 7.3 years longer than it was 40 years ago). Indians today live, on average, 20.6 years longer than they did in 1970; South Koreans 16.9 years longer; Brazilians 12.1 years longer; and the Chinese 11.8 years longer.
Speaking of hopelessly gloomy predictions, check out:
these comments on global warming from John Maddox, the legendary editor of Nature. They're taken from his 1972 book, The Doomsday Syndrome, which cast a sceptical eye over some apocalyptic predictions.
In March of 2007:
Pachauri was asked about the Stern Review, a report written by economists employed by the British government. Pachauri told Bloomberg the IPCC was aware of the 700-page report but that his organization's ability to make use of it was limited because it was not peer-reviewed.In one case, this non-peer reviewed report was the sole support for a major claim. Click through to see.
Imagine my surprise therefore, when an audit of IPCC references I organized recently revealed that the IPCC had cited the Stern Review all over the place. Not once or twice. And not in a chapter or two. I'm talking at least 25 times across 12 chapters.
The thing that bothers me most about this next article is that the information had to be revealed via an FOI request:
Biofuels such as biodiesel from soy beans can create up to four times more climate-warming emissions than standard diesel or petrol, according to an EU document released under freedom of information laws.
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Tom Maguire also posts this quote from the comments at HotAir by somebody who just cannot understand why it's so awful that he considers himself to be somebody who:
Seriously- why does it not trouble more people that the press was absolutely rabid about the back story and every detail of Joe the Plumber's life, but remains studiously disinterested in learning anything about the President's record?
Maguire says:
and the whiz-bang media job there.