• 15:58 UEA climate change hacked e-mails: tried to upload to RealClimate.org: www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/

The thing that boggles me is that the hackers (thieves) tried to upload the stolen emails on a site where some other climate researchers blog. I'm not at all surprised by the fuss Glenn Beck and such are making. Are they forgetting that just maybe we aren't supposed to steal info? Admittedly, maybe greater transparency into the statistical process and grumpy personalities might be useful. But... maybe not. I generally grok the math, but then, I spent some time in grad school messing with this stuff, and goodness knows I'm rusty. And a lot of folks aren't as numerate as might be useful to them... **grumble**

In which a title is almost as long as a post...

• 11:36 *http://www.southernstudies.org/2009/09/verizon-faces-boycott-threat-for-sponsoring-west-virginia-rally-against-climate-action.html
  There are ways to write to Verizon W also. It just boggles my mind that people are insistent climate change is a hoax and the evidence has been slowly, steadily, accumulating for decades. I'm not saying any one particular model/set of predictions is right. I'm just saying that there's significant existing evidence of change in the past century(based on my reading of the journals, mostly in the 1990s and intermittently in the '00s; I tend to not rely on the news media/press release versions), and definite increasing understanding of interconnections and synergistic feedback, and what we seem to understand at the moment leads to some pretty serious outcomes (even the "mild" ones), even when we change our choices and lighten our individual, corporate, and aggregate effects.
• 20:52 I made curryish stir fry (butter, onion, celery, chicken, peanut oil, garlic, cashews) & M said (unprompted), "Mmm, delicious!" **pleased!**
  I'm not a very confident cook. I don't enjoy cooking meat (one of the reasons is the ecological costs I'm causing without necessarily bearing). However, that aside, apparently I am occasionally competent at both. Yay!

Picked up in the Midd Co-op a magazine called What is Enlightenment?, last October's issue. A bit heavy in the "we're so enlightenedly cool we can hardly stand ourselves; Let Us Show You the WAY" in a NeoBuddhist kind of way, but cheerful and some interesting ideas.

One article with interesting places to poke and jump from (and this is really especially for raven_albion since I've torn out the hardcopy pages and am sending them to Dad) is
"A Brighter Shade of Green: Rebooting Environmentalism for the 21st Century" by Ross Robertson [HTML]

The PDF version has the sidebars and the advertisements. I recommend the sidebars, actually if you feel like downloading about 10 pages of colorful stuff.

Share and enjoy...

Spent some time this early a.m. checking out
http://www.eredux.com/ -- looks at some energy consumption stats and demographics, both in the US and world wide. Vermont's a serious slacker on the public transport stuff (as of 2002 data) but was doing well in terms of not putting out CO₂. It doesn't sure CO₂ adjusted per capita, though, so our low impact is more likely due to fewer people in the state rather than actions by those people.

http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics --lists the usual objections to global warming/anthropogenic global warming, and arguments against. Not enough of the counterpoints have links to scientific articles -- for that matter, neither do the objections, which is less surprising, but there is some research behind some of the objections. However, the site may be a really useful resource.

http://www.realclimate.org/ -- this one also has an LJ feed (http://realclimate.livejournal.com). This a blog that examines and discusses some of the detailed science of climate change. Some of the articles are very well done (by which I mean very clearly phrased and lacking utterly in snark). Some read a little hand-wavy, which might be the difficulty in explaining a topic, and might be a writer. Added it to my friends list.

This was all more or less via another article on my flist, from worldchanging: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007016.html

Time to feed the dog, get on with the kid and work bits of the day.

My car -- a 1996 Subaru Legacy Outback wagon -- needs a minimum of $1100 work. It's trade-in/sale value is somewhere between $500 and $1500 (yeah, right). It has 212,000 miles on it.

Why don't I want another Legacy Outback? They've got room, AWD, reliability (well, if you don't keep them as long as I do), there are tons around, and really, it seems to be more car for the money than the Toyota Matrix, which I do want, despite it having some things I'm concerned about (its AWD has issues and is in fact not being manufactured in the recent models) in general, and the specific ones we can find as well (generally too high a price, also various odd things like silly larger wheel size or sucky customer service or automatic transmissions).

We've been looking at and driving cars a LOT this week, not to mention calling around to see what's available, reading/researching online.... We were out from 10-5 today, just car shopping... yargh... what a way to spend my hubby's vacation...

In my daydreams? A Toyota Prius with AWD. But there ain't no sich thing (and I don't want, let alone could afford, a Toyota Hybrid Highlander)...

In our this-is-reasonable price range? A '00 Subaru Forester. *sigh*

I've talked (er, test-driven) myself out of the incredibly charming and wonderfully efficient Nissan Versa. It's just... there's just too much snow for me in that car. (My hubby would probably be fine, but a) I drive more hills more often, and b) he's a better driver.) Well, and it's new (read: too much money by, oh, maybe a factor of 2).

I just don't want anything bigger than the Outback, or less efficient; apparently I want something that drives as comfortably (to me) as will last as long, while being smaller, more efficient, more reliable/durable, and cheaper. And the Impreza is too small for the dog (who is, admittedly, 10½, and a Berner), at least, as long as I have the car seat too.

I just want a good car that fits what I schlepp and how/where I drive (dirt and/or hills) for something less than I make a year (OK, so I'm not working much, but...). How come that seems to be too much to ask?

Heeeelllllppp...

Mom sent me an article from the March 2001 edition of LE magazine, Vegetables Without Vitamins.

[N]utritionist, Alex Jack ... compared recently published nutrient values with an old USDA handbook he had lying around. Some of the differences in vitamin and mineral content were enormous-a 50% drop in the amount of calcium in broccoli, for example. Watercress down 88% in iron content; cauliflower down 40% in vitamin C content-all since 1975.

I don't have any comfirmation of this in any way. Just thought it was interesting. Wonder how it's related to the taste of vegetables? In my experience, standard supermarket (Hannaford's, Shaw's) veggies & fruits don't taste as good as (more expensive, often organic) veggies from the local co-op & farmstands. Some of this may be my more discriminating palate; some of this is surely the difference between untravelled local crops and imported from Israel & Spain etc. crops.

Curious.

Anyway, logged on for other reasons entirely, of course, but just interesting...