Two Jobs And Not Enough Time

A wife wears many hats, especially if she works outside the home. She works inside it as a given. That is her first and always-primary job. Household management is intelligent labor; it requires planning, ordering, purchasing, delivering, and cleaning, among other services not rewarded monetarily. And that is WITHOUT kids. With kids, it goes beyond full-time fast, and in the early months beats the medical resident's hours at their worst.

To ask us to work outside the home is hardly modern, as women have often worked the fields and served alongside men in various capacities. But the modern insistence that the woman is equivalent to a man and thus can ignore the home duties or leave them to paid substitutes is perilous. Who can afford to pay others in these economic times? So we struggle to meet expectations ourselves, and the dust bunnies gather.

I have two jobs and not nearly enough time to do them justice.

Patient or consumer? How about fellow human?

Paul Krugman recently wrote a post in the New York Times about not liking the fact that Republicans sully the sacred relationship between doctors and patients by calling the patients, "consumers". Sorry to break it to him, but the doctors did that a long time ago. From what I have seen, "patient" does not even mean "fellow human" to many doctors anymore. It means "profit machine". Many of the most commonly prescribed drugs (statins and anti-depressants, anyone?) have been shown to be of limited to no benefit for most of the patients taking them. Likewise for invasive procedures like mastectomy for DCIS (which has a death rate of 0.7%, and is classified with the non-lethal skin cancers by the CDC in terms of mortality), stents and bypasses for asymptomatic coronary blockages, and cancer treatments for screen-detected "incidentalomas". One of my grandmothers was treated for years for diabetes when she did not have it, simply because she was obese and fit the profile. She was a Medicare cash cow for the doctors, who treated her for a disease she did not have AND all the attendant side effects of the drugs. She was reduced to a "health care consumer", obediently taking 11 drugs a day, by the doctors. I'm afraid our health care system needs a total rebuild, not just reform. When you hear med students choosing residencies on the basis of how soon they'll be able to retire, and doctors recommending tests for you and your loved ones when recent medical lit shows such tests to do more harm than good, simply because they will find SOMETHING "wrong" if they test hard enough, then they can steal all your retirement money in the name of "saving your life" with procedures that show little survival benefit, something has to change. The entire moral outlook is wrong. It does not MATTER whether private insurance or pubic tax-payer dollars fund this sinking ship. There aren't enough funds. Both political parties are looking to patch the Titanic, when water is already over the decks. We need to man the lifeboats and start teaching true prevention (simple diet and exercise) instead. Let her sink and build a health CARE system in which humans treat humans as they would be treated, not a money-extraction, disease-mongering system.

A Dietary Manifesto

O.K. I'm a budding biochemist with a problem. I keep getting mad when I read otherwise reasonable people talking about healthy eating without a blooming IDEA about basic biochemistry and human physiology. We're talking science writers and physicians with best-selling books who should know better. Points to ponder (with references where available):

1. Coconut oil is NOT a health food. Just because a saturated fat comes from plants does not make it O.K. (for just a sample, see this link). I have a colleague from India who comes here periodically to do research. She is from an area of South India where most people are vegetarians, and their major dietary fat is traditionally coconut oil. THEY DIE OF HEART DISEASE AND STROKE! They fry stuff in coconut oil, just like we do with oils in the Southern US, and they die like we do. Saturated fats, from plant or animal sources, are bad for your heart, your brain, and anything else dependent for function on good blood flow as you age. My Dad, who often donates platelets for leukemia patients, could not donate one evening after stopping for a burger. The visible, yellow blobs of fat in his bloodstream clogged the machine. He felt so guilty about not being able to donate (they call him in the event of a tissue match, when someone is in real need), that he never ate that evening burger again. And making it "organic" and "grass-fed" would have made little difference. Ask a phlebotomist (a person who draws blood regularly) what happens when the blood starts to separate, and if they can tell who eats lots of fat and who does not.

2. Low fat diets are good. They are a lot like abstinence from sex outside marriage (which is also good), though; they can't work if they are not implemented. The WHI has been widely cited to "prove" that low fat diets do not work. However (see the citation for a sample), the low fat group never got their intake near the target, and the "high fat" group was at almost the same level by the end of the study. You won't see a difference if there isn't one. People say we've gotten fatter since the government started recommending fat reduction, and this is true. However, we never really implemented the fat reductions. WE JUST ATE MORE OF EVERYTHING (except fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, of course). Cookies are fat free? Eat the box! With ice cream! Aargh. Or get a fatty dessert with your Diet Cola.

3. Fiber is valuable if you want your colonoscopies to be seldom and short. If you really like long rods with clippers and cameras (I've seen them at a conference- you do NOT want to see the equipment they use) where the sun don't shine, avoid grains and beans, fruit and vegetables. They may give you gas and happy intestinal flora to help you avoid illness, after all. A lot of benefit for a little gas.

4. So what should we eat? The diet gurus of all stripes agree that we eat too much junk and too little vegetable matter. As Mr. Pollan said, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. ". If it's in a brightly colored box, don't eat it. If it has a cartoon character on it, beware. If it is in the produce section, shop ad libitum (except for the salty, white-bread croutons and nasty chemical dressings. Get a good mustard, olive oil, and vinegars and herbs and make your own dressing if you must). Stuff your fridge with vegetables, then eat them. Get a good cookbook to help you start. How? Go to your local library. Hit the vegetarian section. Look for one using real food (like vegetables, beans, rice or other whole grains, etc.). Cook a few recipes to see if you have the same tastes the authors do. Here's one I liked enough to buy. Learn the techniques, then play.

5. Want a little meat and dairy? Fine. But if you like your colon and prostate, limit them. Please. Stick to veg with a little fish or poultry once in a while. You'll resemble most of humanity throughout recorded history. Even Neanderthal skulls have been found with cooked grain in their teeth. So much for grain-free paleo dieting, eh?

End of rant. Back to normal programming. One of my fall harvests is shown above. The tomatoes out front did well this year.

My hope for 2010

"You shouldn't have to work that hard." That seems to be a refrain I hear often from people in my parents' generation (the Boomers). Their parents, growing up during the Great Depression and World War II, came through those crises grimly determined to get only the best for their children. They succeeded, and for a lot of people who came to maturity in the 60s and 70s, life was expected to come easy. Get a degree, work in an office, come home to lounge in front of the TV. Big salary, big house in the suburbs. Retire to travel, get a place in Florida in a retirement community, and relax. That was how it was supposed to be.

Things are changing. Even the white-collar jobs are being outsourced overseas. Unemployment is becoming a long-term issue. My generation (born in 1971) will have to shoulder a lot of burdens in the future, with increased taxation to pay incredible debts, care of elders not provided under a decreased Medicare, and care of our childless selves as we age.

We really will have to work hard, probably harder than many Americans in recent generations have worked. We'll have to relearn the skills of frugality (rice and beans and backyard vegetables, hand washing and line drying clothes to make them last longer, sewing and repair, etc.) and extend them. We'll have to reject the label of "consumer" and produce something good for other people. We'll have to turn from our culture's idolization of self and back to God for any long-term good to be done. Let's start in 2010.

Staying Alive

They're still out there! We're still getting tomatoes, too, from the shelves indoors. Life is good.

Still amazed by the lack of response to the whole "Climate-gate" thing in official circles. It is as if the political ball is already rolling too hard to stop for the mere TRUTH- the researchers fudged the data to get and keep funding, and will continue to do so. A co-worker convinced of global warming responded to my comment that the globe has been cooling in the past 10 years, and it is hard to convince people of global warming when they are freezing in this manner:

"The uneducated will believe what they see. You have to be educated to see the truth of global warming." Yup. Cold is really hot, you can warm your home without a fire and drive your car on magic electricity, and there really is no absolute truth after all (umm, how could we have bank accounts, court cases, speeding tickets, or any science requiring measurements or calculation without absolute truth? Just wondering...). Hope I never get THAT educated.

"Climategate", Cash, and Scientific Integrity

It has been an interesting week in the scientific community, reading about the hacked emails from CRU, to say the least. As a Christian and a graduate student, I am interested in how the affected parties respond, and if any scientific revision will take place. The answer to the latter, at least so far, seems to be "no". I've seen interesting posts from programmers indicating that the code in the hacked documents is not good, and was designed to generate the results it did.

I've seen stories in top journals defending the investigators, for doing things that would get me hanged (or at least kicked out) as a grad student. Subverting peer review is a huge one. Sure there are some people in every field who produce suspect work sometimes, but you subject their papers to appropriate public scrutiny; you do not block their publication. Avoiding releasing raw data is another. If I told my boss I had lost YEARS of raw data in a move and tried to shrug it off, I would be toast. If I refused to show him my notebooks, or altered them before he could view them, again a very hot seat (or a cold kick out the door) would be mine. People paid with taxpayer money are employees of the taxpayer. Their data should be (and by law is) public property. Yet these guys, and the ones in the US, have avoided FOIA requests for years.

The "adjustment" of the raw data is another issue. According to surfacestations.org, most of the North American temperature stations do not meet standards in terms of siting. A lot of pavement has been laid down in the last 50 years, some of it close to these stations. My own backyard did not get hit by frost this year until November 30; the heat island effect of cities is very real. Let's face it- people would naturally put a station where they could get to it easily for maintenance, and way out in the boonies an hour from any road is not an accessible place. Next to a parking lot-much better. And if the parking lot gets paved and the numbers shoot up after 1970, so much better for you!

What about the satellite data from NASA and NOAA? Reading through layers of the atmosphere, in which the temperature rises and falls for each layer until you reach bottom, and even there the read temperature would depend on the surface over which it is read, and the time of day, etc.? It would be a lot like trying to read the back page of a newspaper section through the upper ones, if the pages were transparent, but not the ink. Tricky, and controversial. That the satellite data agrees with "adjusted" ground data does not make either one right. Precise but inaccurate leaves the hunter very hungry, even if all the arrows fall in the same place.

Modern science is funded by the acquisition of government grants from committees of scientists evaluating and rating the grants, then administrators doing their thing. For decades (at least in the biological sciences, according to multiple scientists I have met in various places), grants have had to include certain key words (cyclic AMP, siRNA, high-throughput screening, tumorigenesis, etc.) to get funding. If you d0 not have the "right" keywords, it has become increasingly difficult over the past several years to get grants, unless you are at the top of the field and are GENERATING the key words. In which case you shape the future of the field for years to come. If you are right or if you are wrong, everyone else will be too.

The scientists implicated at East Anglia were some of the top ones in their field. They and a few others at NASA and NOAA and in a center in Japan were generating the key words. It will be interesting to see how these investigations unfold (or not) and what they mean for climate science.

Blogger Action Day

OK this is a rant, plain and simple. IT IS MIGHTY DIFFICULT to convince me of the assertions of the global warming crowd when I'm freezing cold and we've had a record rainy year, as the two main assertions they hammer on are the following:

"The average temperature of the earth will get 4-6 degrees hotter unless we all stop emitting carbon immediately (what, stop breathing too? We're animals. We can't emit ZERO CARBON. It is physically impossible.)."

"We will run out of fresh water (three days of sun this month, soggy, saturated soil even during the summer, and you're telling me to believe your computer model rather than my eyes? Dream on. We have wet years and dry years.)."

An awful lot of local problems could be solved locally by replanting mangrove swamps to buffer against tsunamis and storms (and breed depleted wild fish stocks), replanting forests to buffer dry years so that the trees draw up water from the ground, actually helping the poor instead of watching them die to relieve "excess population", not drinking anything from a can( soda companies drain aquifers and pollute ground water to make their products), etc. Instead people blame those local effects on global warming as measured on thermometers mostly located in cities, which have been surrounded by concrete and steel over the past 150 years, and experienced increases in temperature like the bank thermometer over the parking lot, and do nothing to help local people solve local problems. It is easier to blame global warming, and the excessive Western lifestyle, and oil companies, and corporations and CEOs, than it is to say "But if we just did this simple thing, we could store our own purified water, and replant the forests to shade us and supply our food and heat, and..." Too simple. Not complex or expensive or sacrificial or technologically advanced. Not enough. Despair must rule the day. The earth must be drying out, even if we are knee-deep in mud. The earth must be warming, even if we are cold earlier this year, and last. Crazy.

Conserve resources? Learn to live without driving in cities, and only use indoor climate control as necessary? Absolutely. Despair over a computer model generated by someone who profits directly from driving you to give him money? Naah. Look it up in the real journals. Get a dictionary. Look up the statistical methods in Wikipedia or Wolfram's website. Stretch those brain cells. Relax when you realize that biased information from selected sources generated by people whose only career future is in generating fear might not be the most reliable in the world. If you look at the real journals, the fear mongering is strong in the news section at the front. If you go to the back, to the meaty articles, and dig into them, you'll find that the best of the models cannot match the past very well unless the real data is "smoothed" to match the model. Hmmm. And most historical temperatures were measured in cities. And accurate thermometers are only 150 years old. Relax. Grow your food and can and store it, turn the lights down and get out your snuggly blanket to save energy, but relax. If they can't predict the weather tomorrow, how will they predict the climate 50 years from now, eh? If you're totally confident that these models are correct, please move to TN (our climate has changed frequently for a long, long time) and observe reality. Thanks.

A Child at Play

That's how I feel sometimes in the garden. Sometimes I'm just a sweaty dirty beast, but at other times, picking tomatoes out of the crape myrtles or wondering why the slugs don't eat oregano, I'm a child wondering at God's creation again. 

A lot of people think that Darwin's theories make God irrelevant. That's like saying that your local mechanic's computer makes the car company and its engineers and factories irrelevant. Darwin's theories are not nearly as all-encompassing as some people would lead us to believe. They DO NOT explain altruism, or love, or joy, or why a lot of insects in amber (millions of years old? Tree sap?) look a lot like their many-great-grandkids. Ants are still ants, bees still bees, lizards still lizards. Waist sizes and hair configurations may change, but that certainly does not involve "evolution" in humans; why should it in insects? I'm one of those who believes more in de-evolution. Downhill, not up, from brilliantly complex to simpler, especially on the ecosystem level. The fossil record shows that in parts of the planet not inhabited by humans, God seems to play around with fantastic body forms and shapes and sizes (Burgess shales, Cambrian explosion, Chinese beds, etc.). He mercifully lets the most delicate and beautiful die before we show up to kill them. We see things with a chance to survive around our clumsy, dangerous, and fallen selves. We live in a world impoverished by our sin, yet incredibly rich nonetheless. Let's take care of it so our descendants can ask those many questions about the wonders they see.

Apple Butter On the Way

The dark red, rock hard cooking apples were at the Farmer's market today. You know what that means. Apple Butter Time. Must run. First, a short rant.

I stopped to get some apple juice or cider (storebought, they are the same thing these days) yesterday for the week-end's preserving. All the juice on the main shelf (even the dirt cheap stuff on sale, and the name brands) was from CHINA! We grow tons and tons of apples in this country. What on Earth are we doing getting apple juice from China? I finally bought an "organic" brand that appeared to be American. Aargh. Off to drown my frustrations in a half-bushel of apples. Whew!

My memories of 9/11/2001

I was still teaching middle school math and science in 2001. Newly married during the summer, starting a new school year with a great group of kids and an outstanding team of teachers, I felt that we were off to a great start.

Fifteen minutes into the school day, the assistant principal unexpectedly interrupted the morning routine: "Turn on your televisions now." We did, just in time to see the second plane slam into one of the towers.

We were all in disbelief for a while. Then shock set in. The towers fell. People ran. The images started to repeat. A few students asked to go call parents in the airline industry or other relatives in D.C. or New York. A few parents came to pick up children.

I changed my lesson plans from my usual interactive fare to a routine worksheet the students could do without thinking too much- many were too shocked to function well. I let them talk at will, and shut off the television after less than an hour. It was one of the quietest days in my room, even though the kids could talk freely. The students coming later in the day were relieved to find a refuge of quiet; the social studies teacher left her television on all day.

I don't believe adolescents (or adults for that matter) need to be continually bombarded with horror, no matter how "historic" it is. They need to know the facts, and they need to remember them.

Christians do not believe that everyone is fundamentally good, and we all really worship our own "inner light", and as long as you're sincere, you're O.K. If we read the Bible, we know that all men, all human beings, are fundamentally lost. We all tend by choice to do the wrong thing, the cruel thing, the inhumane and unjust thing if we gain power to do it, and we are not fully in Christ. Most of us don't have command of an airplane when we're unjustly fired from a job, or we see others with privileges we do not share, or a gun in our hands when we see our child hurt by another. Thank God for that.

The freedom and balance of powers in America set up by our Christian and Deist founding fathers (even the Deists knew more scripture and had a more Bible-shaped world view than most church attendees have now) must continue. They are not outdated, nor should they "evolve" to reflect a modern amoral worldview. We have to continue holding up a lamp beside the open door for the huddled masses out there. I'm not saying America is a Christian nation. That ended, especially in academia, a long time ago. I am saying that the freedoms we share are based in a Christian system of beliefs and ethics we cannot reject without devastation.  All human efforts to gain Heaven without Christ end in a fireball, no matter how good our intentions. We must remember, and remain free, and fight to help others achieve freedom as well. That is the right remembrance for this day.

WYSIWYG

I'm a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) girl. I don't wear makeup  (chemosensitivity and oily skin turn my face into an itchy, sludgy mess, even with the "hypoallergenic" stuff). I get my husband to hack off my split ends a few times a year hairwise. I'll go gray naturally. I'm currently wearing a 20-year-old skirt, long and elastic-waisted, totally comfortable.

I think more women would be happier if they gave up the pursuit of consumerist cosmetic perfection and just made themselves comfortable. Stop trying to walk with spikes strapped to your heels and get some shoes you can use without shortening your tendons. Let your hair do as it will. Wear clothes that make you happy, not necessarily the clothing retailers. Relax. Your smiling expression will do more for your appearance than all the anti-aging creams and cover-ups on the planet. Smile. And go plant something- watching things grow (and relentlessly hacking out bushes) helps me immensely. If you like fake nails, look at the undersides under a dissecting scope. You eat with those hands. Relax. Your real nails will do fine. Starve the consumer-debt-slave monster and feed your soul. It will work out much better for you.

How To Discern Science from Pseudoscience

What do you do when you see a new "scientific story" ? Do you believe it automatically if it suits your political viewpoint? Do you doubt everything, or are you trusting of Ph.D.s, or environmentalists, or your favorite group? How can you tell what is true?

I start in 2 places: Google Scholar for general scientific topics or Pubmed for medical topics.

Here's an example: someone mentioned the detrimental effects of ocean acidification with rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at lunch one day. Totally convinced the ocean is set to become an acid-bath dead zone. I went to Google Scholar to check the facts. From most university campuses (and probably the big-city libraries as well), you can access all the major journals. I was surprised by what I found. Several papers came out in 2003 and 2004 on the topic of ocean acidification. Most started with some variation of the following sentence from a paper in Science, one of the top scientific journals in the English language (I am quoting from memory, so this may be a slight paraphrase):

"Due to a paucity of observational data, we are basing the following calculations on computer modeling of known ocean biochemistry and projected CO2 levels." In other words, all the projections are based not on observation (which has shown ocean pH declining by 0.1 from about 8.2 to about 8.1 in the past 100 years (no citation was available, assumed to be common knowledge in the field)), but on computer models. Other papers from the same time period showed that ocean biochemistry far from human habitation is quite different from that close to land, and some admitted that, long term, more CO2 means a more alkaline ocean, not more acidic. Only in the short term would the ocean become more neutral (7 is neutral so it is alkaline right now). Yoicks! Pays to do a little scientific reading in reputable journals rather than accepting lunch-table environmentalism as fact. 

FDA In the Field

A group most accustomed to regulating drugs produced in clean rooms is now venturing out to the field. they have issued draft regulations (to serve as a "baseline") for the growth and processing of tomatoes, leafy greens, and melons at

http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/Product-SpecificInformation/FruitsVegetablesJuices/FDAProduceSafetyActivities/ucm174086.htm.

Some things are common sense, like making sure workers wash their hands after using the restroom, and providing them with facilities. Wearing plastic aprons, gloves, sleeves, and hair-nets while harvesting tomatoes (I kid you not! They recommend it! ) would look a little odd, and be rather hot for the workers. Other guidelines, like making sure no wildlife (including amphibians and reptiles) wanders through the field, are rather crazy. You need toads to eat bugs, and you need snakes to minimize the rodents. Bats and birds will do as they will. Dust will blow through in dry weather, and mud will splash up in wet weather. All of these things are to be somehow minimized. I'm really glad I'm not a California lettuce grower. If a rabbit nibbles a leaf, and it poops nearby, you have to destroy part of your crop! I'm going to go weed, then pick tomatoes for our own consumption with dirty hands. No hand sanitizers and no gloves! My hair is not properly netted! I will brush off all kinds of insects and their excreta! Aargh. If Americans are really that immuno-compromised- grow food hydroponically for them. For the rest of us- let's grow as much as we can ourselves, and/or go to their site and comment over the next 90 days before they publish the final draft.

20-year reunion Coming Up

Wow. I graduated from high school 20 years ago! And I still wear some of the same clothes! Not kidding. I like clothes that last. It's going to be fun, and a chance to see the parents and old, old friends.  One wants to get the old gang that went to prom together and dance the night away. We went as friends (I think there was one actual couple in the group), and I think that staying "just friends" is best in high school. You learn a lot more from being friends with people than you do from trying to impress them in exchange for illicit favors. And you can have fun without the pressure to "perform" for anyone. 

Harvesting Sunflower Seeds and Fretting

Today I decided that several sunflower heads looked dried out and gross, so I took them inside. They had little sunflower seeds in them! Lots of little seeds from the small ones, and one large head of only slightly-smaller-than -normal ones from a volunteer plant near the bird feeder. Cool.

I've been fretting lately about the speed at which things are being pushed in Washington. They're spending too much too fast, in a continuation of the pattern that got us in a mess last year. I think there should be a constitutional amendment (at every level of government) that "NO LAW (regulation, etc.) shall be passed until every legislator voting on it has read it in its entirety in its final form, and said law has been published in a public forum available to all concerned citizens (Internet, newspaper, chiseled on stones in the public square, whatever) for a minimum of 10 (ten) days before the vote for every 100 pages of the law. Any legislator changing said law after the vote without consent of the governed will be expelled immediately, forfeiting all benefits of office, and demoted to the lowest-paying public position (janitor, dog catcher, whatever) in his or her voting district. They'd have to inform us of what they were doing, and stick to it. Maybe I'm too hard on them, but I get the feeling their imposed tax burden is going to be tough on all of us in years to come. Aargh.

Sometimes You Love Unpopular Things

Yesterday, when I told some of my committee members that I miss the classroom, some of them were very surprised. They seemed to think I would not like teaching at the college level. They find it boring, something they have to do. They'd rather be in the lab or in their offices.

I am a Teacher. It is part of who I am. I started teaching in Vacation Bible School with pre-schoolers when I was 12. Never looked back. Wanted to teach. I still do, but in an environment where I will be physically safe, and where I can contribute, even if my joint condition becomes severely disabling.

I love helping people learn new things. It is fun, even if you have spoken the words 30 times previously today, to help out one more time with that last class. To see it "click" for someone who did not "get it" before- that is an awesome responsibility for me and a joy, especially in a church class. 

I love the Bible and I love teaching, too, so combining the two is great. I hope to make money teaching science, maybe even basic biology. I hope someday to settle in a church and help make lives again teaching the Word to children, which is beautiful as it molds their moral development and opens their hearts to God. Someday.

Poona Khira

This is a traditional variety of cucumber from India, usually available only in the area around the city of Puna. The plant TOOK OFF growing when the temperatures went above 95 F for daytime highs. It is supposed to stay sweet despite the heat. If global warming is going to happen, or global cooling, or whatever changing conditions may be, it is wise to use our global communications to ask others, "what do you grow in hot,dry-yet-humid conditions? How do you plant it, fertilize it, and grow it? How do you know it is ready to eat? How do you prepare it?". Maybe the land grant institutions could catalog and maintain seed banks and information, not just for "germ plasm" as raw material for experiments, but as a rich record of the agricultural ingenuity that enables humans to live and grow food in a wide variety of conditions all over the world. It would be a lot easier to help people adapt with resistant plants that already exist than to say "Give us millions of government dollars, and we'll engineer a resistant plant- sure it'll need a ton of water and specific fertilizers to make up for the fact that the inserted vector hit an essential enzymatic pathway, but it'll be rust resistant!" Can't we just try using what God has already given? We do not have to reinvent the wheel when a very nice vehicle sits in the driveway, fueled and ready to go.

Solar Clothes Drying Without Offending Neighbors

So how can you air your laundry without offending your HOA? Many options. A backyard with a privacy fence would work, or using a back porch (what they can't see can't offend...) or, if your attic is floored and has stairs as ours does, you can get some exercise and dry laundry very efficiently at the same time. These are our clotheslines. I use the old TV antenna at the back for hanging shirts on hangers, or pot holders or aprons with loops. I can generally hang about 2 loads at a time up there, hung early in the morning this time of year, and taken down in the evening. No, the light bulb is NOT a CFL. Why? I have bumped my head on a bulb up there and broken it before, and I do not relish cleaning up mercury-contaminated (CFLs dirty secret- all of them currently contain mercury, so if government forces us all to convert, mercury environmental contamination will get A LOT worse) glass in a hot attic. I haven't seen any mercury cleanup kits in the light bulb section of the store, as we would be required to have at work if we use a mercury-containing product.

Anyway, these lines are old, but they work quite well. The clothes get that slightly stiff feeling that comes from not being beaten to death in a dryer, and they last longer. You save money all the way around.

Summer Has Changed Since I was Young

If you grew up on the edge of suburbia/rural America as I did, summer went by in a hot, happy blur of outdoor play, lying indoors reading, drinking tea, and leaning off the back porch eating juicy peaches and watermelon. Evidently kids don't do such things anymore. According to the National Institute for Summer Learning (warning: sales pitch for structured summer activities for kids), kids gain three times as much weight during the summer as they do during the school year, because so many sit at home alone all day eating and playing video games indoors instead of running around outside. How sad is that?

I can say as a caveat to the statistics they provide, that I grew a LOT the summer after my seventh grade year- an inch a month for three or four months. I ate massive amounts of food. My BMI probably changed pretty dramatically- though I was a severely skinny child, anyway. I could eat an entire medium pizza alone, and not look like I had eaten anything, like the skinny cows in Pharaoh's nightmare. I just got taller. I still get accused of having an eating disorder, even though I have a healthy weight. So, "kids gain a lot of weight in the summer" might just mean they are growing- or might not. It just might mean somebody needs to kick them out in  the yard, or take them to a park, or leave them with someone who can- which is where those summer programs have their place. I'm going out to run around in the yard now.

Fantasy and Reality- Energy Activist Style

I was lying on the couch last night, reading a peak-oil-activist account of the near future, with fewer cars and limited electricity, when the contrast between her vision of reality and the actual reality of my neighborhood came into sharp focus. My college-age neighbors drive their cars and trucks half a block to go to school. Not kidding. I wish I could walk or bike the 3 miles to my workplace, but it is not safe to do so. Being a victim of robbery is considered "paying Memphis tax" around here. 

Though the temperature was in the mid-80s and cooling, the neighborhood roared with the sound of air conditioners (I could hear them because our windows were open, and our AC has remained off since the heat of summer broke last fall). Our electricity is stable, and 2/3 coal-fired. Houses glow with security lights and big-screen TVs.

Our city is not set up for much use of mass transit. There's no way to travel from my house to work by bus without walking at least 1/2 mile to a less-safe area, then having to go all the way downtown, change buses, and come back. I could walk all the way there in only a little more time than it would take by bus, if I could make it without getting mugged.

I know things  may change, but I wonder if the people who advocate using carbon taxes to beat us all into using less energy have fully considered the suffering they are asking to inflict on others. Who drives the oldest, gas-guzzling cars? Who lives in older houses with bad windows and old appliances? The poor and the elderly. They cannot afford solar panels and wind turbines and rain barrels. They cannot afford a $40,000 electric vehicle, or the electricity to charge it through their aged wiring, or new batteries every 2 years. Activists point out that climate change is already inflicting suffering on people. I would counter that the Earth has warmed and cooled several times without our input, and will again. Didn't the Viking explorers call Greenland by its name for a reason, and grow crops there for a few hundred years before it got too cold again, and call Canada Vinland for all the wild grapes?

Yes, we should prepare for coastal flooding- but in hurricane prone areas, they should have been prepared anyway. We should help people who need to relocate, if they request help. We should not waste the bountiful gifts God has given us, and a bit of walking would help greatly with the "obesity epidemic". But taxing people into submission has been tried here before-with mixed results (reduced smoking recently, revolution in the more distant past). I'm afraid to see the stories of hypothermia in winter, heatstroke in summer, and hardship because it was too expensive to drive and too unsafe to walk to work. I hope these people get out of their urban or suburban middle-class enclaves and ask how the other half lives (Drive your Prius through Frayser, will you please?), then think things through before advocating "drastic action" that could kill thousands, drain funds, and not accomplish a thing for the climate.