sastyk | August 9, 2010I was planning to whine a little. You see I got back from Maryland and I was really, really tired. Got up at 4am after a late night to get to the train the first night. Four hours sleep the second night, because I was (you pity me, right?) drinking wine with Dmitry Orlov, Megan Bachman, John Michael Greer and other cool people until the wee hours. Then my train pulled into NYC close to midnight and I didn't get to bed at the Hotel In-Law until the wee hours again. Up at dawn to catch the next leg of the train up to home, with guests coming a couple hours later. So I was most definitely…
sastyk | August 4, 2010You can be doing more fun things. I'll be out of touch and my blog will be quiet. But you could be reading some of my old colleagues and some new cool stuff at the new cooperative blog group "Scientopia." Zuska's there and Dr. Free Ride, and a lot of awesome folk - so have fun!
Sharon
sastyk | August 4, 2010I'm about to go out of town for three days to a conference on dealing with poverty issues, energy depletion and climate change, and I'm a little nervous. We've had no babies born since Meadowsweet's appearance two weeks ago, and I have three does due in the next week - not only am I a little nervous about abandoning Eric and Phil-the-Housemate to delivering baby goats (which has historically been a she who did the birthin' of the boys job), but I'm also a little sad at the thought of missing all the fun!
Still it is a good and important thing, and it reminds me to let y'all know about…
sastyk | August 3, 2010Now it is no secret that I think that we are facing a major shift in our society, and one that will not be entirely fun, to put it mildly. It should also be no secret that while I love to write jokingly about when zombies come, I don't actually believe we're facing an apocalypse of any kind. Indeed, as I've written many times, part of the problem with addressing our situation is that we flit wildly between assumptions of techno-utopianism and absolute apocalypticism. I think what we are facing is serious enough without turning it into a cartoon, unless, of course, there are actual zombies…
sastyk | August 2, 2010It was a busy weekend here - figuring out whether we were moving, my sister was visting, other friends were visiting, we hit the local County Fair, worked in the garden, you know, life. So until just now, I hadn't paid any attention to the empty meanderings about science blogs in the Times Magazine. But I did have to read it eventually - Monday comes eventually to all of us - and lo and behold, I got me an awesome dig from the Times - Virginia Heffernan attacks all science bloggers for being part of the "religion-baiting, peak-oil crowd."
Now that's kind of funny, because I wasn't aware…
sastyk | August 2, 2010
When Aaron Newton and I conceived _A Nation of Farmers_ we began each chapter with a framing image from World War political posters about food, energy and gardening. We wanted to bring home the point I make in writing in _Depletion and Abundance_ - that at critical moments in our history, including times of war or great economic strain - ordinary daily acts are transferred from the private sphere into the public one. That is, the act of eating, or buying clothing, or travelling from one place to another becomes not a "personal choice" but part of one's basic participation in civil society…
sastyk | August 2, 2010We almost did it. We really did. We went so far as to get mortgage pre-approval, meet with a builder about the costs of repairing the barn and the house, and make an appointment to make a written offer. And we decided to stay here.
There were several reasons for doing so. The first was that our offer would be contingent, and we thought there was a better than 50-50 chance that the sellers might well sell the house out from under us - that is, since we didn't per se want to sell the house, but rather to buy *this particular different house* the fact that we're in no way ready to show (my…
sastyk | July 29, 2010Something told the wild geese
It was time to go,
Though the fields lay golden
Something whispered, "snow."
Leaves were green and stirring,
Berries, luster-glossed,
But beneath warm feathers
Something cautioned, "frost."
All the sagging orchards
Steamed with amber spice,
But each wild breast stiffened
At remembered ice.
Something told the wild geese
It was time to fly,
Summer sun was on their wings,
Winter in their cry. - Rachel Field
I'm trying to get back to normal - even though things aren't quite normal here. In the last three weeks my blogging home has melted down twice and my physical…
sastyk | July 28, 2010Pursuant to my previous post, today's project in the decision making process for Eric and I (we'll finally see the inside of the house tomorrow) is to find how long the commute to Eric's job and our synagogue is. These two things make up about half of our total driving - only half simply because we are very fortunate, and Eric has managed to work his academic schedule so he's only on campus three days per week.
We realized last night that the house is further from SUNY Albany and our synagogue in Niskayuna than we'd realized - we'd figured it would be about the same since the house is only…
sastyk | July 27, 2010Hat tip to reader Abbie who pointed me to this video. When we talk about local and organic, one of the central things that often gets lost is this - who does the work? And how are they paid? And how do you change this so that they get paid fairly - because right now the way we pay for food leaves a lot of folks out.
Dateline NBC introduces you to your five year old tomato picker
Sharon.
sastyk | July 27, 2010It might have been Serendipity - we happened to be driving by, just Eric and I on our brief solo trip. Or it might have been the survey ribbons that went up across the road a few weeks ago - the suggestion that our neighbors who have been building a 5000 square foot house with a special dog-washing bathroom (no, I'm not kidding) are going to help finance that by selling off the plot of open land right across the street. Or it might have been the fact that our property tax assessment went up by nearly 2000 dollars this year - to almost 6K! Or it could be the fact that despite the face we're…
sastyk | July 27, 2010Interesting query and discussion at Martin Wolf's blog about how economics came to conflate natural resources and capital, and whether it should continue to do so. You'll want to read the comments too!
The idea that land and capital are the same thing is evidently ludicrous. It requires us to believe that the economic machine is self-sustaining -- a sort of perpetual motion machine. Capital is the product of savings and investment. It is the result of human frugality and the invention required to imagine and create new capital goods. Labour is also -- and in today's circumstances,…
sastyk | July 27, 2010Dave Pollard's latest at Salon is an interesting cry in the dark about how hard it is to connect with others when you see collapse coming. My guess is that some of my readers will respond with a great deal of identification, while others will be annoyed by Pollard - but I think it bears some considering.
For me, what's interesting about this is the most basic and ordinary social challenge - because this is a painful, hard and ugly place to do the most important work of adaptation from - building community. But in observing that it is painful, hard and ugly, I do not mean to imply it is…
sastyk | July 26, 2010C'mon, you know you've always wanted to. This is the chance - if you've never made a comment (or you've made a thousand), tell me who you are and what interesting stuff you are doing to save the world - or even just to get along decently. Or tell me something interesting and cool I should know about. Or write me a haiku. I'm flexible.
I love it when I meet someone who says "Oh, I comment as..." and I meet a lot of people who say "I never comment, but I've always kind of wanted to." And now you will have, if just one time! Plus, if you say "I'm a commenter" (which you now get to do)…
sastyk | July 26, 2010Once upon a time, I advised people looking for a peaceful and happy future to choose land under which there were no energy resources. I should have taken my own advice - I'm on the fringe of the Marcellus Shale and the discussion and debate is becoming heated here. Like everyone, I don't particularly want a natural gas flare and dig across the road from me, but that alone wouldn't be enough to make me object - they have to drill somewhere, and Americans use a lot of energy. NIMBYism itself isn't sufficient. What's much more important is that I'm not convinced that the results will be…
sastyk | July 25, 2010I assume you noticed the quiet demise of the Climate Bill, consented to by most of the people who claimed they gave a damn about the climate. It was a lousy, weak, inadequate bill, but that's still no excuse for giving up the ghost. This makes the 1 bazillionth time in my lifetime I've been ashamed to be associated (if only because the US has no real left, and thus anyone on the left ends up with a default association with the Dems) with the American Democratic Party. I'm used to it by now.
On the other hand, maybe the death of our attempt to deal with climate change will force a change in…
sastyk | July 25, 2010Ugo Bardi has a lovely article about both peak oil and intergenerationalism:
I sort out again my old watch, "You see, this old watch is still working, more than 70 years after it was made. Whenever I look at it, I feel a kind of kinship to the man who had left it to me. I am grateful to him because he left me something that still works, that I can use and that I like. And I think he may be happy, too, if he looks at us from above, that his old watch is still appreciated by someone in this world". I pause for a moment to look upwards, as if I were seeing the ghost of the old Swiss man. The…
sastyk | July 23, 2010
Yesterday at 3pm EST, I was part of a critical stage of labor negotiations between SEED Media and Science Bloggers, and I'm happy to report that through the sole grace of my diplomatic skills, the strike was resolved. There were some other folks there too, but I cannot tell a lie - it was your Blogiste who saved the day, got Science Blogs back on track and came up with a critical strategy for making us better, faster, more relevant and bionic.
Or, I would have, really, if I hadn't had my hand up to my wrist in a goat's vagina. I was totally on the conference call - for the first 15 minutes…
sastyk | July 20, 2010Betcha giving head to a movie star betcha gotta llama riding in
Your car betcha u gotta tv built in your jet skis, betcha giving
Head to a movie star betcha gotta llama riding in your car
Betcha u gotta tv built in your jet skis.
Hidee high, lowdy low, get up and go to the show.
Ain't it funny how the money makes the honey taste like nothing
You can't have no more? Now we know. Ain't it funny how the
Money makes the honey taste like nothing you can't have no
More? Now we know. Ain't it funny how the money makes to
Honey taste just like nothing - people act like they have but
They're bluffing…
sastyk | July 20, 2010The first two pieces of this series were largely comic pieces. This one is more serious. I have said this before, but I'll repeat it - I came to science blogs for one reason, and one only - because there was no one else talking about facing up to our material limits on this kind of site, with this kind of audience. I didn't come for the money (you may or may not believe me on this one, but as I keep saying, it isn't that I probably don't have a price, it is just that it isn't a few hundred bucks a month) - I've donated everything I've ever earned here (well less than 1K, given that they…