Netzingers -- Explicit coquina que est optima medicina.

How to Survive Popular Wisdom

If it is a "Movement," then it is probably wrong.  Movements should be limited to plate tectonics and bowels.

If it is something that most people view as crazy and impractical, then it is probably right.  Most folks see the right thing as unpleasant and tiresome.

If it is something  radically new and different, then it is probably not a good idea.  Finding the value of new ideas takes time, and like asbestos and bloodletting, may take longer than you have to discover the drawbacks.

It is always easier to make better the good than remedy the evil.  Let natural selection be your judge.

Dear Secretary Vilsak:

As a member of a rural farm community, please support the small farmers.  We need more fresh fruits and vegetables, not more cattle ranches. Please push for parity for the fresh market with animal agriculture.

Respectfully,

Jim Wiegand

"The sound body is the product of a sound mind."

-- George Bernard Shaw

High school students in Arkansas eat fewer fewer fruits and vegetables than students in any other state.  This is not surprising in a state where a vegetable is something cooked in the bottom of a roasting pan and left on the plate after the meal is over, and a fruit is something used to decorate the far end of a dessert buffet. 

It makes me shudder to think of where half these kids will end up in thirty or thirty-five years.  Already I am seeing the middle-age gap, where on one side you have folks dying in their forties and fifties, and on the other side you have old folks in their late seventies and eighties who had no choice but to eat their vegetables growing up.

Soon, a decent lifespan will  come to mean making it past 50.  Again.

Jason Schiller wrote in ARIN-DISCUSS:

> The IETF has recently passed draft-iana-rfc3330bis-08. This draft
> documents the fact that the following address ranges have been reserved
> for documentation:

> - 192.0.2.0/24 (TEST-NET-1)
> - 198.51.100.0/24 (TEST-NET-2)
> - 203.0.113.0/24 (TEST-NET-3)

This seems like the perfect set of networks when you run out of other options, or need to get that latest wireless config tested! I haven't been this excited since my first NAT implementation.

America was founded on the radical notion that everyone has a right to personal freedom.  As individuals, localities, states, and as a whole we can assert our desires and pursue them to the very limit of the rights of your neighbor.  The founding fathers, in their wisdom, allowed us the freedom to learn, change our opinion, and alter the very law of the land to conform to new desires.

This holiday weekend was a time for all Americans to consider the blessing of their freedoms, to count them and hold them up for adoration.  As a vegan, I have a particular appreciation of freedom.

I am free to stop the unnecessary killing of animals.  I am free of the worry of having to worry about promoting the spread of novel disease like swine and avian flu, tuberculosis, and mad cow disease.

I am free to stand up and declare what I will or will not choose to eat.  I am free to eat the way I want, and eat as I believe.

I a free to avoid heart disease by eliminating meat from my diet.  I am free to fend off cancer, diabetes, strokes, and the thundering advance of premature aging.

I am free to reverse my asthma, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, and obesity.   I am given the blessed gift of energy and lightness and a busy life.

I am free from the weight of causing the death of harmless creatures.  I am free from the guilt of taking grain from my brother's mouth to feed it to a salmon, chicken, pig, or cow.  

I am free to sow compassion about me, mindful all the time of the awesome power of love.  With power comes responsibility, and I thank God most for the freedom to spread the word preaching non-violence.

The principle of disengagement is a simple strategy for eliminating animal exploitation.  Disengagement withdraws excess resources from animal enterprise.  Where there is a choice, choose the option that does not involve domesticated animals.  If there is no ready choice, seek one out and encourage its development.

There are more animal products in the food chain than ever before.  Humanity has never eaten like this before.  There is also no compelling reason to choose this diet.

Today, we have an uprecedented number of food choices.  Used to be, you ate what you had.  Growing up, you ate what your mother gave you, and it was whatever your parents could raise or barter for.  In this, an unprecedented time of global prosperity, options multiply with the ebb and flow of commerce.   In the supermarkets there are over 49 000 products, designed more for the profit of the retailer than the convenience of the consumer.  With choice comes the ethical burden of choosing responsibly, backing up your ethics and beliefs with the power fo commerce.  To leave this decision to those who choose suffering and death simply to make more money is an essential surrender. I choose not to surrender.

Super simple instant cornbread:

Ingredients:

2 cups self-rising cornmeal (I used White Lilly Brand)

2 cups vegetable stock

1 teaspoon ground psyllium husk

1/8 teaspoon olive oil

Method:

Cream the psyllium with the stock and olive oil with an immersion blender.  Fold in the corn meal, stir only enough to form a coarse batter.  Remove the paddle from a bread machine.  Grease bread machine pan with canola spray oil and pour in the batter.  Set tobake only mode and set time to 45 minutes.  This gave a nice flaky top with a lightly browned bottom using our Panasonic SD-YD250.

I came home today frustrated from a hard day at work and decided to clear out the hickory tree behind the house.  After all, I figured, there was still plenty of light left, and I had thoroughly mapped out the cut.  This was to be the "practice tree" to prepare for taking out the bigger broken trees in front of the house.

 The cabling went fine, and the wedge cut - where I had gotten stuck on previous jobs- was really clean.  I was able to lean the tree over nicely with the winch and we were fairly confident that it would fall away from the house.

 Then I made the mistake of angling the toppling cut.  When the tree started to go, it skidded on the stump and fell down on the opposite side of the stump from me.  Thankfully, the tree did not come down straight at me, but it did pivot and fall toward me.  Diana started yelling and I looked up and saw it coming and ran, but it came down fast - close enough for the branches to sweep me off my feet and send me tumbling. 

I bounced up and immediately started yelling "I'm all right, I'm all right," and Diana was next to me, trembling with tears.  Amazingly, all I came away with was a couple of scratches on my forehead from the hardhat headband, a twig stuck behind my ear like a carpenter carrying a pencil, and a mystery tear in my pants.  

The chainsaw bar guide was crunched, but the engine was running, so I picked it up and switched it off.  These darn hickory trees have a habit of crunching up the bars.  Even the small tree was far heavier and far harder than I had realized.  

I felt nothing until I was getting ready to go back into the house.  The day's work was done.  I summed up the experience in three words: "Thank You Jesus."  

A lesson was learned.  I would never again pick up a chainsaw in anger.