sastyk | July 19, 2010The first thing you need to know about my farm is that it is huge. I mean enormous - by world standards. The vast majority of the world's farms - more than 80%, are very small farms, of less than 2 hectares (about 5 acres), and they produce the majority of the world's staple crops and calories.
I suspect most folks in most of the Global North will find that a little surprising. The term "farm" in the US tends be applied most often to very large farms. We have a strong internal sense that small scale agriculture is particularly unsuited to growing staples. Most small farms in the US…
sastyk | July 19, 2010I've noticed that the comments have been kind of nasty lately around here, and I just wanted to remind everyone of my comment policy. The major part of it can be summed up as "please make an effort not to be a complete jerk." Look, I know we all get angry sometimes and say what we oughtn't - me too. But for the most part I expect you to keep such incidents to a comparative minimum, say what you oughtn't fairly creatively, without resorting to obvious expletive, and confine your insults, if you must offer them, to me. That is, within reason you are free to call me a jerk or an idiot or…
sastyk | July 13, 2010"How did you get there, Roo?" asked Piglet.
"On Tigger's back! And Tiggers can't climb downwards, because their tails get in the way, only upwards, and Tigger forgot about that when we started, and he's only just remembered. So we've got to stay here for ever and ever - unless we go higher. What did you say, Tigger? Oh, Tigger says if we go higher we shan't be able to see Piglet's house so well, so we're going to stop here."
-AA Milne, "The House At Pooh Corner"
Note: I wrote this essay several years ago, and have been thinking about it a lot in relationship to the BP problem, so I…
sastyk | July 13, 2010Longtime readers of ye olde blogge will remember that we talked a lot about wheat stem rust and other wheat diseases in the last few years, since Ug99 began to devastate Kenyan wheat production, and then again as it appeared in Yemen and Iran, but I don't think I've posted anything about the track of wheat stem rust since I moved over to Science Blogs. But the Economist has a good introductory article on the issue this month that is worth reading for those of you who haven't been following this.
The new variant is called Ug99: Ug for its country of origin; 99 for the year it was confirmed.…
sastyk | July 13, 2010In the previous thread commenters DC Sessions and Prometheus have been discussing the pure aesthetic appreciation of the BP disaster and other man made problems with splendor that is grim. And what they say is true -and I think interesting and worth looking at. After all, all of us are just a teensie weensy wee bit bloodthirsty, right?
For me, however, what came of the discussion was the irresistable urge to play "Beauty in the Bellow of the Blast" from Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, which seems on target. So I leave you with it (the Tit Willow bit at the beginning is also delightful,…
sastyk | July 12, 2010If a whole nation can have its fingers crossed, I suspect it does right now. But what happens if it (and the other containment efforts) don't work? I don't think this is fear mongering,after 3 months of oil blowing into the Gulf. We have to ask the question.
Greg Laden has an answer, by way of University of Hawaii - and perhaps unsurprisingly it isn't pretty.
Sharon
sastyk | July 10, 2010There's a great post at The Oil Drum by Jeff Radtke that gives people a good way of evaluating the resource uses in their cars. Now you don't actually have to do this to figure out that light cars are better than heavy ones - the results aren't that difficult. But if you think it is fun to figure out smaller distinctions, it is worth doing.
This type of analysis is useful because it is easy to factor in conversion efficiencies and payload versus tare weight. Rather than use motor output power, one can use the thermal power theoretically available in the flowing fuel. EROI may be factored in…
sastyk | July 10, 2010I've been meaning to write something about this New York Times article that suggests that affluent homeowners are strategically defaulting more than middle class and poor ones, but Mike the Mad Biologist said it better.
While I realize regulation has become a four-letter word, regulation does force the regulated to act in certain ways that they would otherwise not. To the extent we want an ethical economic system, it needs to be structured and enforced in order to remove incentives and advantages for unethical (or 'athetical') behavior.
But I realize that would be like totally Hitler
What I…
sastyk | July 8, 2010As a lot of you probably knew long before I did (we loaned our computer to our housemate who is frantically prepping for his orals ;-)), Scienceblogs took down the Pepsi blog. This actually exceeded my requests to management as parameters for me coming back. I had asked that Scienceblogs create a separate area for its advertorial content, mark it explicitly as such, and distinguish it visually from the other blogs. They removed it entirely. So I'm back.
There are other issues at scienceblogs as well, which you've probably all heard about now - I think my colleague Martin Rundkvist gets a…
sastyk | July 7, 2010Until Science Blogs decides whether it wants to be a platform for science writers or a platform for corporations to buy credibility, this blog is on hiatus. You can find my work at Ye Olde Blogge aka www.sharonastyk.com. Updates as events warrant - or rather, if events warrant. If you'd like to find out the secret evil backstory of my defection, you can read it here.
Sharon
sastyk | July 7, 2010I'd been planning to write this post for several days, and then late last night, got a nasty surprise that changed the focus of it for me. By now many of you will have heard that Pepsi bought a blog on science blogs and is using to to establish credibility by writing a blog focused ummm...on food and nutrition. Note long pause for your comments...feel free not to censor.
Let me be clear - my fellow science bloggers and I were blindsided on this - there was no advance notice, and let's just say that a lot of us are pretty pissed. All of us suffer credibility hits here, but for me and the…
sastyk | July 6, 2010Garden Calendar
When the dogstar is aglow
plant petunias in the snow.
When the snow begins to melt
Wrap your hollyhocks in felt.
When the felt begins to bloom
pick the apples off your broom.
When the broom begins to wear
weed the turnips in your chair.
When the chair begins to rock
prune the snowdrops in your sock.
When the sock is full of holes
blame the whole things on moles.
When the moles inquire: "Why
pick on us?" say simply "I
will instruct you how to grow
pink petunias in the snow. - NM Bodecker
Note: Today is the first day of my month-long fall gardening class, which will help more…
sastyk | July 5, 2010Not only does my terrific colleague at Myrmecos have some of the prettiest beehives I ever did see, but he's got the best collection of hive art out there. Check it out! I forsee an art project over the winter at Gleanings Farm!
Sharon
sastyk | July 5, 2010The northeast is having its first heatwave of the year, and I thought it was a good time to re-run a piece I wrote about what to do in extreme heat if you don't have air conditioning. Because we all know what heatwaves mean - not just physical stress, health crises and unnecessary deaths from heat, but also blackouts and brownouts as everyone charges up their a/c. So what do you do when the power is out and the heat is on? These suggestions include, I think, the most important strategy - be aware of other people.
There are a lot of parallels between dealing with extreme heat and extreme…
sastyk | July 4, 2010Just to let you know, I'm going to be starting another class this coming week, beginning on Tuesday - this one helping people get started with fall gardening and season extension.
If you are like most folks, you probably start out enthusiastic about your garden, but around the middle of the summer, you get focused on harvesting, or overwhelmed and let the cool season garden peter out. And that's a mistake, because with very simple and cheap methods of season extension and a little attention right about now (for those as northerly as me, a bit later for folks south of me in this hemisphere…
sastyk | July 4, 2010Some years ago, I had the occasion of being at a dinner party on the fourth of July with a bunch of graduate students, and we realized that among 11 of us, we came from 9 different countries. After commenting on this and the date and discussing American fireworks laws for a while, we began to compare what we'd been taught in our home countries in school about the history of both our own nations, and about the world. It was a deeply enlightening, often funny conversation.
One of the funniest and most worriesome parts of the evening occurred when the other American and I compared notes. I had…
sastyk | July 2, 2010Madeline Holler at Salon has a rather cute essay about her failures at becoming a radical homemaker. On my first quick skim through it (it was sent to me by several readers, so thanks!), I was inclined to give it a total pass, because I found myself rather liking Holler, and sympathizing to an extent.
At least she was trying to live on a comparatively lower income. At least she made the yogurt. If she really hated it, well, at least she was sort of trying to live up to her principles - something all of us have a tough time doing. I may make my own bread, but I have my own hypocrisies.…
ejohnson | July 1, 2010Late Wednesday evening, a terrible disaster began to unfold in the ScienceBlogs universe: word emerged that a zombie attack was taking place in our bloggers' homes. While the attack was believed to have begun somewhere in the southeastern United States, with patient zero Scicurious, it has now spread across the continent and even as far as Martin Rundkvist in Sweden. But even while in pursuit of human brains, the zombies are still dedicated to the mission of communicating science—in this case, getting the word out about the real science of zombiekind. To read up on how zombie epidemics spread…
sastyk | July 1, 2010In the spirit of helping my readers increase their preparedness, I thought I'd remind you that you have 0 more days before Zombie Day to shop and get ready for Zombie attacks. So just in case there are zombies coming down your pike, and you aren't ready, I offer a reprint of a piece I wrote about what to do if you haven't been preparing or storing food, water or medicines (as everyone from FEMA to the American Red Cross advises every citizen to do). Crisis shopping is really not the way to do this - you are better off making preparations in advance, but just in case you have been ignoring…
sastyk | July 1, 2010
(Awesome image of zombie me by Joseph Hewitt of Ataraxia Theatre and the originator of the cool RPG Gearhead Check out my fellow bloggers to see their zombie pix! I wonder if New Society would let me use this as my book jacket photo for the new book?)
As all of you obviously know, July 1 is International Zombie Day - celebrated around the world by the zombifying oneself, posting brain recipes, strategies for fightin' em off, etc... Well, ok, it is kind of a new, science-blogs-only-holiday so far (credit for the idea goes to Scicurious!), but following the stunning success of international…