tingilinde

someone with great grid neurons

amazing coordination in juggling (via the NY Times)

happy anniversary sukie

Happy anniversary Sukie!

bikes and freeways

This is just frightening (thanks for the link Greg)

Maybe when gas hits $10 a gallon there will be few enough cars on the road that bikes will be more practical.

will china crash and burn

A few of us were talking about issues with China's growth and I remember Elizabeth Economy's article in Foreign Affairs last Fall...

Summary: China's environmental woes are mounting, and the country is fast becoming one of the leading polluters in the world. The situation continues to deteriorate because even when Beijing sets ambitious targets to protect the environment, local officials generally ignore them, preferring to concentrate on further advancing economic growth. Really improving the environment in China will require revolutionary bottom-up political and economic reforms.

Elizabeth C. Economy is C. V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenges to China's Future.

for the vets (a bit late)

Jim, Sukie and I were talking about war songs.

Roughly every three days my noon walk takes me through the grounds of a VA hospital -- Priscilla Herdman's version of The Band Played Waltzing Matilda often comes to mind. (available on iTMS and Amazon)

Jim noted a YouTube version

martian parachute image cleaned up

even better - details here

tv and fertility rates in developing countries

People rarely talk about lowering fertility rates as a mechanism to limit global warming, but it can be a huge driver..

so perhaps care needs to be given to designing tv programs (pdf)

Soap Operas and Fertility: Evidence from Brazil*

Eliana La Ferrara Bocconi University and IGIER
Alberto Chong Inter-American Development Bank
Suzanne Duryea Inter-American Development Bank

This version: March 2008

Abstract
What are the effects of television, and of role models portrayed in TV programs, on individual behavior? We focus on fertility choices in Brazil, a country where soap operas (novelas) portray families that are much smaller than in reality. We exploit differences in the timing of entry into different markets of Rede Globo, the network that has an effective monopoly on novelas production in this country. Using Census data for the period 1970-1991, we find that women living in areas covered by the Globo signal have significantly lower fertility. The effect is strongest for women of lower socioeconomic status and for women in the central and late phases of their fertility cycle, consistent with stopping behavior. The result is robust to placebo treatments and does not appear to be driven by selection in Globo entry. Finally, we provide suggestive evidence that novelas, and not just television, affected individual choices. First, people living in areas covered by the signal were more likely to name their children after novela characters. Second, entry of a network that relied on imported shows did not have a significant impact on fertility.

(a tip of the hat to Sara)

cholesterol level too low?

This is just frightening

somehow I can't put it in the food category

getting juiced without electricity

the mind just wobbles

(thanks for the link Sara)

pesto for jessica's birthday

Today is Jessica's birthday and we are having a similar meal to celebrate since she is in a different part of the country. Part of the meal is pesto on curly pasta. Since Jessica is vegan, here is the recipe Sukie created for the occasion (very good btw!)

Outside the Margins Pesto

8 oz of button mushrooms broken small and cooked well with 2 small minced onions, extra virgin olive oil, a little water and a good bit of golden sherry

About 1/2 to 2/3 of that will go into the pesto and you can use the rest as is or with some extra black pepper and some parsley added, or with fresh peas, or...

For the pesto itself: use the food processor to process fully:

that portion of the cooked mushroom combo
4 chopped cloves of garlic
about 1 and 1/2 cups of shelled pecans
salt and pepper to taste
a generous amount (I had to had more as it was processing.) of a flavorful oil such as Sciabica's Hillside 7 Estate Pressing
I guess about a 1/2 cup to 2/3 of a cup of very flavorful basil leaves
I guess about a cup to a cup and a half of Italian Parsley leaves

And when processed fully that gets you our Outside the Margins Pesto!