Those of us familiar with various brewing techniques already know about this, but it’s relevant for most of you.
One of the biggest problems with the old red-with-meat, white-with-fish wine pairing advice is that it entirely misses the boat on vegetables, and of course wines work beautifully with even vegetarian meals. But before we talk about pairing Syrah with seitan or Albariño with avocados, there’s something you may want to know: not all wines are — in the strictest sense of the words — vegan or even vegetarian.
The fact is that while an increasing number of wines are technically vegan, a substantial number of wines still use animal-based products in the “fining” process: clarifying the wine by removing proteins, yeasts and solid materials that would otherwise make the wine cloudy and visually unappealing, or would even create off-flavors or aromas. Fining agents act as magnets for unwanted materials, and carry the glop to the bottom of the barrel or tank. Then the wine is “racked” — poured off into another holding container, where the wine is separated from the solids. Racking is just like decanting, except on a humongous scale. LINK
Pandas are known to be isolated creatures and poor breeders, and in captivity the problem may be exacerbated. Zhihe and his team have tried a number of measures to try to cure the male panda of his woefully low libido — including showing videos of fellow pandas making love.
In the privacy of their own cages, captive male pandas watch the sights and sounds of love-making on TV. Hopefully, Zhihe says, they’ll be aroused.
“We’re sure the sound of the video will stimulate the panda and the males’ interest,” Zhihe said. LINK
I like this little interview given that a) all of my college friends are now professed Pollan-ites and b) given the fact that the Corn Refiners of America are fighting an ad war to convince Americans that they are not fat and unhealthy because they eat a pissload of refined sugar (and everything else). Read about it here. Also, the youtube video below is oh so relevant.
Below is an excerpt; to read the full story, please go to the New York Times by clicking here.
GUYUN VILLAGE, China Some of the greenest technologies of the age, from electric cars to efficient light bulbs to very large wind turbines, are made possible by an unusual group of elements called rare earths. The world’s dependence on these substances is rising fast.
Just one problem: These elements come almost entirely from China, from some of the most environmentally damaging mines in the country, in an industry dominated by criminal gangs.
Western capitals have suddenly grown worried over China’s near monopoly, which gives it a potential stranglehold on technologies of the future.
In Washington, Congress is fretting about the United States military’s dependence on Chinese rare earths, and has just ordered a study of potential alternatives.
Here in Guyun Village, a small community in southeastern China fringed by lush bamboo groves and banana trees, the environmental damage can be seen in the red-brown scars of barren clay that run down narrow valleys and the dead lands below, where emerald rice fields once grew.
I was reading NPR today and found an article about a food program initiative on educating youngins about health. As you may know, Michelle Obama has made childrens’ nutritional health one of her top priorities and is therefore invited the Share Our Strength program to peruse the white house winter gardens and to get a kitchen lesson from the White House Chef (the bald cat). Check out “Kids Taste A Sweeter Veggie, White House Style” via the NPR webpage.
I learned all sorts of ninjarish facts, for instance how spinach tastes sweeter when grown at colder temperatures. In short, I really liked the article.
Apparently, there are a whole bunch of greens that can be grown in colder (all the way down to freezing-ass) temperatures with the help of a cold-frame (pictured below) and a little patience. The fact that the First L. is down for this ish is ICE COLD. That’s good, I mean, like… it’s awesome. One of the best articles I read today was about winter gardening in Colorado. I’m not going to go into detail here but, checkachecka check it out!
Three vignettes from Copenhagen show that personal responses to the conference might be the greatest cultural happenings around.
This is part two of a GOOD mini-series by the Canary Project’s Ed Morris on the cultural happenings surrounding COP15.
I.
I am running through the crowd with the French artist Thierry Geoffroy. He is saying (in a deep French accent): “Zee, it is getting dark. They are closing in. They are going to kill us all. This is the plan. But then we keep going and we move around a corner and Geoffroy is saying. Ah, but you see, now it is more calm. We have come to a different part. All that has past.”
Such was my experience of the mass protest in Copenhagen this past Saturday. Estimates vary widely as to how many marched. Fox News says 25,000; the organizers say 100,000; and the police say 60,000. There were arrests of 968 (this number appears exact).
In the media centers and on the street, more intense interest has been paid to the possibility of violence than any particular detail of the negotiations. This is understandable. In addition to our seemingly innate tendency to be fascinated and compelled by images of violence, there is the fact that the expression of violence is the one real thing happening here.
“Violence, when not in the hands of the law, threatens [the state] not by the ends that [the violence] may pursue but by its mere existence outside the law,” writes Walter Benjamin. “By what function violence can with reason seem so threatening to law and be so feared by it, must be especially evident where its application, even in the present legal system, is still permissible.”
The example that Benjamin gives to illustrate this point in “A Critique of Violence” is the worker’s strike – the state allows it to happen, despite its violent nature, because the power of the massed workers is sufficiently dangerous. The strike, like the protest, is violent regardless of whether it employs overt violence as a particular technique because it opposes order and the interests that constitute the state. Of course, even protests and strikes can go too far in the eyes of the state and claim a level of violence that the state cannot abide without losing authority. Protest, in both its permitted and non-permitted forms (both of which, by Benjamin’s definition, are essentially violent) is the most available and most direct negotiating tool for the 6 billion people not inside the Bella Center.
II.
Four people from different parts of the world arrive at Lykkesholms Alle 7C. They are greeted by a Danish family: husband, wife, and three boys, the youngest a baby. Also in the home are three women from Peru – two dressed in traditional highland clothing, one in jeans?and a camera crew of two people. After some small talk and a little getting to know each other, people take seats around a coffee table, others on the floor, some on chairs and a sofa. The camera crew remains standing. The children come in and out. The older of the Peruvian women asks for a photo from each person. She places the photos (given in the form of IDs) on some yellow flowers in the middle of the table, then gives each person a yellow candle. Each person writes his or her name and also his or her wishes for the next year directly onto the candle. The woman then lights each candle, muttering various incantations. She sprinkles sugar over the flowers and the photos and the candles. And then we sit and wait for each flame to burn down the wax entirely. Where we were rushing before, we are not rushing now. It is just the 14 of us in the room and the early northern darkness that presses against the window becomes a hypnotic abyss.
III.
A dinner of about 25 people in a home near the center of town: home-cooked food, arrangements of dried flowers on the table, and several bottles of wine. Many at the dinner are involved in one form or another with a labor-intensive intervention project that is calculated to have an effect on the media coverage of COP15. The dinner is a break in the preparatory work for this intervention. Again there is a camera crew filming the event. At some point, people start giving speeches. This has been planned, which surprises me, because everything leading up to it has seemed so casual. The first speech is by a scientist, who gives a long hymn to Tycho Brahe and the scientific process (truth above ideology, and so forth). He is followed by an art student talking about the power of images, who in turn is followed by a business professor on the topic of learning not to be frightened by the facts of a new world, who is followed by an artist and activist on the need to avoid the grips of institutions. Then the planned speeches end and one woman stands up and proposes that the fundamental problem with comprehending climate change is our inability to come to terms with death. She then speaks about a friend, Brad Will, who was recently shot dead during a protest. She gathers herself and sings a song the she and Will used to sing together. ??My karma is to good for you to worry ’bout the crazies / I love everybody and there’s nothing that I own??
I almost didn’t stay for the dinner. I said that I needed to go get some work done, that I was writing a blog about cultural response to the conference. The host said, “This is culture.”
So, I sometimes wonder how these climate change skeptics have any legs to stand on, considering that glaciers are literally falling every day into the damned ocean, like Madd Maxx and the Thunderdome. Remember back in the 80’s and 90’s when DuPont made the hole in the ozone layer, by itself? Well, many conservation efforts were sparked from that alone, including a national debate on everything from preserving whale environments to stopping forest fires (am I exaggerating the national outrage?). At least, that’s how it it was when I was a kid and watching Nickelodeon with Linda Ellersby. The point is that conservation of wildlife in arctic regions is now almost an afterthought, considering that the very ice that sustains these species is disappearing rapidly.
Now, I can agree with anybody who doesn’t think the cuteness of a polar bear is a reason to care about the environment, but, my ninjas, we’re talking about the safety of the entire planet now. Even if you’re a skeptic about whether global warming is man-made or fake, newsflash, YOU SHOULD STILL BE SCARED. It’s not like natural disasters are going to somehow distinguish between democrats and republicans. If you STILL disagree, let me say that there is ample evidence that the glaciers are melting. It doesn’t take a bartender to know what happens when you put a bunch of ice into a cup full of liquid. So, tell your friends to CUT THE SHIT, and let’s do something about this.
The point of this post was to highlight National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen, but, as you can see, I went on a bit of a rant. Paul grew up in an Inuit community, which probably explains why he primarily focuses on the Canadian Arctic for his subject matter. I posted this article just because it strikes me as awesome when somebody loves something so much that they dedicate their entire life to it, like a ninja to destruction and rebuilding.
Besides, it also bears to mention that Paul is a certifiable badass. He’s crashed small planes in the arctic and survived. The ninja lies out in the freakin blizzard, just for FUN. Seriously. Go read the article.
I used to own some birds, and they do in fact have bowel issues, in that they will just poop anywhere and everywhere. I’m pretty sure these bastards can and will poop mid-flight (click here for important info on said subject). That said, it’s probably good fertilizer, thus justifying the post. By the way, this is from Denmark, apparently.
I was flipping through the channels the other week- that’s a lie-my home TV is just usually on PBS- and I saw this “Botany of Desire” program. It’s based on a book by Michael Pollan (he should win an aptonym), the dude who wrote The Omnivore’s Dilemma amongst other titles, which are all highly recommended reads, for those of you who need to be told to read a book now and then.
The Botany of Desire mainly deals with four plants [canibus, tulip, potato, and apple] and how they’ve domesticated humankind over their existence. Even more than that, Botany is an exploration into how animals and plants coexist, enable, and even manipulate each other on a macro scale.
Anyway, I was excited to watch this program, and not just because it passed the time on the stationary bike (or because of the orange and green nuggies in the preview). I think you’ll like it if you give it a few minutes of attention. Don’t ya just love PBS? Support them, my ninjas, please.
the magnitude of stresses that our oceans are feeling is overwhelming. here is yet another story of marine depletion & it's repercussions. and i hate to hate on tejas once again...but. a great NYT op-ed by Paul Greenberg.
Radiation contamination from Cold War era uranium mining continues to threaten the health of the Navajo Nation, via NYTimes.
--07.30.2009--
Our Hackable Grid
In the past week, there's been a good deal of publicity about security holes in the Smart Grid, making it a potential hacker's playground...
--04.08.2009--
In Spain, Water Is a New Battleground
Swaths of southeast Spain are steadily turning into desert, a process spurred on by global warming and poorly planned development...This year, farmers are fighting developers over water rights. They are fighting one another over who gets to water their crops. And in a sign of their mounting desperation, they are buying and selling water like gold on a rapidly growing black market, mostly from illegal wells. [nytimes.com]
--06.08.2008--
kick gas may 12-18
May is National Bike Month and here in Massachusetts we’re doing our part to celebrate this great event with Bay State Bike Week, May 12th -18th, 2008. It’s your chance to join thousands of other bikers across the country by doing something for the environment and having a great time while you’re at it. It’s a win/win proposition. [BayStateBikeWeek]
--04.28.2008--
geo-engineering
Sulphate injections are one of several "geo-engineering" solutions to climate change being discussed by scientists[...]But one potential drawback is that sulphates provide a surface on which chlorine gases in polar clouds can become activated, causing chemical reactions that lead to the destruction of ozone molecules. Yeah, this sounds like a great idea... [BBC News]
--04.28.2008--
operation arc of fire
This is Operation Arc of Fire, the Brazilian government’s tough campaign to deter illegal destruction of the Amazon forest. It is intended to send a message that the government is serious about protecting the world’s largest remaining rain forest, but so far it has stirred controversy for its militaristic approach to saving trees, and the initial results have been less than promising. [NYTimes]
--04.19.2008--
nuclear mess
Cleanup of nuclear weapons sites is behind schedule and over budget, audit shows, but DOE cuts program.
The audit shows that the cost to clean up extensive radioactive and hazardous waste contamination is likely to be as high as $305 billion, more than $50 billion higher than the Administration's earlier estimate. It also may take until 2062 to finish the job—more than 20 years longer than original estimates. Yet this year's cleanup budget proposal is $5.5 billion, the lowest level in the last 15 years for the huge cleanup program. [read the entire article via C&EN]
--04.16.2008--
the second plug
Some ideas on the future of EV cars in the US - and across the globe - from The Cost of Energy.