Personal Action
sastyk | September 6, 2012End of summer is a really good time to sit down and look at your preparations and your food storage and take inventory. What have you put by? What do you still need more of? What did you use over the last year? What did you have too much of? Whither from here? September is National Emergency Preparedness month, so now is the time to think - am I ready for the next crisis (do you even have to ask whether there will be one?)
If you’ve been working on this, but you don’t feel you are ready, here are some questions to ask yourself, and some possible remedies if things aren't where you want…
sastyk | March 16, 2011One of the good things that could potentially come out of the Japan Earthquake and Tsunami is an awakening of people to the reality that even in seemingly protected and developed world space, disaster, true disaster, is more common than you think, and requires basic preparedness. I pointed out in a previous post that we are so troubled by the idea of preparing for bad times that we often fail to do so entirely, leaving us vulnerable. Others pointed out that for many of the Japanese who lost their homes or had to evacuate, some preparations would be of no value.
There is some truth to this…
sastyk | December 27, 2010We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species. The list of its undeniable abominations is long and hardly bearable. And these abominations are not balanced or compensated or atoned for by the list, endlessly reiterated, of our scientific achievements. Some people are moved, now and again, to deplore one abomination or another. Others - and Hayden Carruth is one - deplore the whole list and its causes. Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come.…
sastyk | December 16, 2009I'm doing the laundry! - The Tick
A new reader, Karen, (yay, new readers!) writes:
I really want to use less energy because my husband is out of work and I care about the planet - can you write about how you do it? We try and conserve, but our utility bills tell me we're not doing that great a job. I guess I care most about the everyday stuff - how you do the laundry, get to places, cook dinner, etc...
Thank you, Karen, for the push, since I'm supposed to be writing a book on precisely this subject right now, and instead have mostly, well, not been. So I thought I'd do a series of…
sastyk | December 8, 2009I was about to post the Chocolate-Banana Bread Pudding recipe that I left out of my food waste post, when I found myself worrying a little bit about whether posting recipes is appropriate for my new forum. You see, I tend to think of Scienceblogs with the first syllable pronounced just like Thomas Dolby in "She Blinded Me With Science" yelling "SCIENCE!" (which I have included a link to for no apparent reason, simply because it pleases me http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V83JR2IoI8k.) Is this warm, fuzzy, chocolatey goodness appropriate to a hard-edged SCIENCEblog? Does PZ Myers post…