Facts, Feelings, Thoughts, Opinions

While visiting Joe Huffman's blog, I lifted this excerpt because I felt it deserved more comment.

"While I think there is a fair amount of lying going on they don’t think of it as lying. They just don’t understand facts are independent of their feelings. If they feel something then, in their view of reality, it is true. I’ve had people flat out tell me this. I would point out that what someone was saying was in direct contradiction to verifiable facts. And I would get a response of something to the effect, “Well, it’s true to them and that is what matters.” -- Joe Huffman
There is also a very telling anecdote about liberal “research” in this same article:

In 2006 I was at a cocktail party in Arlington, VA, talking to a liberal journalist about his soon-to-be-released book on Iraq when John Lott joined us. John listened for a moment and then said to the author, 

“I’m curious. You say you just finished a book on the Iraq war. I always find it so hard to finish a book. I get so deep into the research I have a hard time stopping to write. I’m guessing you had a hard time leaving Iraq. There is so much to investigate and understand.”  

The author said, “I didn’t go to Iraq.”  

John paused with this quizzical look on his face before asking, “Oh, how did you do your research?”  

The author said, “I didn’t have to do much. I mean, I already know what I think.”

Feelings versus facts. It’s a type of mental disorder.—Joe]

The article quoted above can be found at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/frankminiter/2014/09/25/how-bloombergs-million-dollar-desire-for-gun-control-is-backfiring/

What is so revealing in that last statement by the unnamed liberal author is how he thinks about research.  To him, research isn't about gathering facts and using logic to come to a realistic and logical conclusion on a matter.  To him, research is only necessary to confirm what he already thinks, or more specifically, his opinion.  And because he feels he is a member of the anointed visionary class, he owes it to the unwashed masses (which really means anyone who doesn't already think the way he does), to share his enlightened opinion.

Too much about living in 21st century America allows for this kind of lack of rational thought.  Many decades ago when there were no "social safety nets," failure to think logically and act accordingly could get you killed or end up suffering very bad consequences.

Now the modern world is populated by too many people  (dare I say about half of the population) who have raised the right to an opinion to some kind of sacrosanct status.

Oh, but wait!  That's not entirely true when I really think about it.  On closer examination, only opinions that are politically fashionable to the left that are respected, or damn near worshipped.  I use the phrase politically fashionable because there isn't a damn thing correct about "political correctness."  Political Correctness, in all it's verbal forms, is Orwellian newspeak for the highly intolerant soft tyranny of the statists.

Very soon, the unsustainable economic situation in this country is going to collapse, and when it does, modern liberal thinkers will be forced, dragged kicking and screaming, to the reality that all of their wishful but totally incorrect feelings, thoughts, and opinions on how to create a utopian society is all just crap.

That degree in political science, women's studies, international relations, art history, public administration, urban and regional planning, environmental studies or applied sociology, is going to be about as useful to you as a degree in typewriter repair.  It is not going to help you know how to grow or preserve food, to hunt and field dress an animal, take care of domestic animals, make fire without a lighter or matches, find or purify water, or build a shelter.

The last thing to note about the liberal author's final statement above is the subtle arrogance. An arrogance that even he doesn't seem to recognize.  "I mean, I already know what I think,” pretty much tells you that he doesn't think that any more thought needs to be given to the subject.  For a leftist who has made up his mind, facts are inconvenient and sometimes downright confusing.  I guess you could also attribute his statement to over-confidence.

 

 

The low-or-no-information voter never wants to be bothered with questions of epistemology.  The next time a leftist is defending a socialist idea or attacking a tried-and-true conservative one, just ask the question: "What if you're totally wrong?"

 

Remember the pseudo-genius evil character from Princess Bride?  You'll probably hear the answer: "Inconceivable!"



Chemical Pesticides

Probably the biggest problem with using chemical pesticides is that most of them don't just kill the bad bugs that we want dead.  They often kill beneficial insects as well.  Then there is the issue of secondary and tertiary bad effects to other forms of life.

Let's say you want to kill this one bug that has shown up to dine on your precious lettuce, so you get out some bug spray.  You kill the nasty little goblin that was munching on your romaine, but the same spray you used also killed the ground beetle who would have eaten the cutworms below the soil.  This is just one example.  The same insecticide that you use to kill bad insects also kills green lacewings and honey bees.  I'm not saying that I wouldn't break out some Sevin dust and sprinkle a little just around the base of all my lettuce plants if I discovered that cutworms seemed to be all over the yard, because I definitely would.  But I would seriously think about it.

Back in 1982, an entomologist from Cornell University, by the name of David Pimentel started a study to examine the hidden costs of using man-made pesticides, and found that indirect costs ran as high as $8 billion a year by causing the deaths of honeybees, birds, fish, and even domestic animals.  His results were published in The Way We Grow, in 1993.

Right now, much of the world is beginning to panic over the loss of many bee populations.  Some of the newer insecticides that were developed to have less residues and are thus thought to be safer, are actually causing more poisoning of honeybees.  This actually comes from the law of unintended consequences.  For example; smokers buying low tar cigarettes and then smoking twice as many to get enough nicotine in their system.   Or, people driving more dangerously because they have seat belts and air bags.  You may find that amazing, but it's true.

Those who farm on the commercial scale are under a lot of pressure.  No one who has experienced a bad infestation of worms or beetles eating their crops can deny that the fear of such damage is real.  The problem is compounded by the companies who are legitimately in business making the pesticides that we sometimes need, but who also will use that fear to sell more of their product.  Most all commercial farmers just grow one or two crops.  Some grow multiple crops and also livestock of various sorts, but most commercial level farmers specialize because that's how the industry has developed over the years.  From this development has grown a loss of understanding of the big symbiotic picture of the relationship of all the creatures in a large biological or ecological system.  If all you grow is acres and acres of corn, then all you are going to care about is which chemicals treat for the bugs and fungi that attack corn.  The beekeeper and the trout farm operator downwind and downstream from you might not be your biggest concern.  I'm sure there are plenty of farmers who really do care about their neighbor, but it only takes a few who are only thinking of their own farms to cause a lot of damage.

There are many other great things written on the subject of "wholistic" farming; doing the opposite of highly specialized farming.  This would be too far afield for our subject in this post, but it is well worth looking into.

For now, let's look at some of the most used and widely available insecticides and how they work.

Sevin dust has been around since the sixties.  Sevin is the trade name of the chemical carbaryl.  It is technically a cholinesterase inhibitor, which means that it interferes with the breaking down of acetylcholine a neurotransmitter that exists in pretty much every animal in the animal kingdom.  But the simple way of looking at it is that it's a nerve poison.  It kills insects.  All insects.  Honeybees and butterflies.  It kills crustaceans in the water.  The reason it is preferred for food crops is because vertebrates can more rapidly detoxify and eliminate it from the body and it doesn't store up in fat cells and doesn't get secreted in milk (if cows ingest some of it).  But it is still toxic in large enough amounts and is also considered a carcinogen.

Malathion is also a cholinesterase inhibitor but is much more dangerous because it not only does not break down more easily as carbaryl does, but in the human body it metabolizes into a substance called malaoxon which is substantially more toxic.  Symptoms of exposure to this type of compound include cholinesterase inhibition, miosis, frontal headache, increased bronchial secretion, nausea, vomiting, sweating, abdominal cramps, diarrhea, lacrimation, increased salivation, bradycardia, cyanosis and muscular twitching of the eyelids, tongue, face and neck, possibly progressing to convulsions. Other symptoms include hyperemia of the conjunctiva, dimness of vision, rhinorrhea, bronchoconstriction, cough, fasciculation, anorexia, incontinence, eye changes, weakness, dyspnea, bronchospasm, hypotension or hypertension due to asphyxia, restlessness, anxiety, dizziness, drowsiness, tremor, ataxia, depression, confusion, neuropathy (rare), coma and death from depression of respiratory or cardiovascular systems. Exposure to this type of compound may result in giddiness, nervousness, blurred vision, discomfort (tightness) in chest, papilledema, muscular weakness, loss of reflexes, loss of sphincter control, cardiac arrhythmias, various degrees of heart block and cardiac arrest. It may also result in spasm of accommodation, aching pain in and about the eye, nystagmus, delayed distal axonopathy and parethesias and paralysis of limbs. A decrease in blood pressure may occur. Respiratory failure may also occur.

How do you like that list?

Diazinon works the same way as Sevin and malathion; cholinesterase inhibition.  It's only advantage is faster breakdown, but it was banned from use on golf courses and sod farms in 1988 by the EPA because of damage to bird populations.

Pyrethrin is the organic extract from the seed cases of the chrysanthemum, also commonly called mums.  Interestingly enough, the substance is also essentially a nerve poison, but it behaves completely differently from the cholinesterase inhibitors.  This chemical affects the sodium ion flow out of the nerve cells, essentially causing a rapid fire or "short-circuiting" effect in the insect.  While this means that it could potentially do this in humans or other mammals it would take tremendous amounts of it to do so.  Pyrethrins rapidly disintegrate into inert ingredients when exposed to sunlight and air.  This means that they don't last long and can't build up.  But for all of its advantages, it will still kill other beneficial insects.  Kenya produces about seventy percent of the world supply of pyrethrum from flowers grown by small scale farmers.  Wow.  Something beneficial has come out of Kenya.  Not enough to offset their worst export by far, but we can be thankful for something.

Another problem with reaching first for the sprayer is the fact that insects, as well as many small life forms, have an incredible ability to adapt to life-threatening changes in their environment.  The bugs that somehow survive an attack with chemical pesticides will pass on the genetic information to the next generation, creating a whole new set of problems.  We then have to change chemicals to something that might now kill other beneficial species that we never intended to kill.

It cannot be over-emphasized that the destruction of bees and other pollinating insects puts the food supply in much greater danger than losing even half the crops of a given species in a given year.  When entire bee colonies get wiped out, entire crops of multiple types can and do fail.  There really is no comparison.  Add to this the fact that now we may be finding out that Monsanto's GMO crops may be killing the bees in other ways.  I can't describe how evil I think genetically modified foods are.

Ultimately, wouldn't it make more sense to encourage a balance of good, or predatory insects and animals to avoid using chemicals altogether? If we do have to resort to man-made chemicals, are we using the absolute minimum that we can get away with?  Is this a situation where it would make sense to just "spot" treat the affected area?   We have to remember that what we do on our own property often doesn't just effect us.  The consequences can ripple out from us.  Will it be like a pebble in a pond or tsunami?

My lovely wife, Twyla, writes for Enota Mountain Retreat, and you can go check out that blog.  Most of this post will be edited for publishing over there.

More on The Dehydrator

I previously posted about building a dehydrator/incubator here.  Turns out I didn't need to use it as an incubator because one of the hens went broody, and so now we have two new baby chicks.

Even yesterday, I placed a thermometer inside the box with just the acrylic cover on it, and the sun got the inside temperature up to over 120° F, even with the cool wind blowing around.  But until yesterday, I hadn't yet made the screen frames to make the box useful as a dehydrator.   That's what this post is all about.

Step one was to take several old scrap boards of 3/4" thickness and cut them into the pieces for the frames.  Precision cuts were not that important, so I simply used my left forefinger at the leading edge of the footplate on my DeWalt circular saw. (I hate when people don't use the proper names for tools, but that's the subject for another post.)  Now, I'm a firm believer in safety, and I like to wear gloves to prevent splinters.  Make sure that something like what you see in the first picture doesn't happen to you.

Anyway, trying to be efficient, I cut and assembled the first prototype frame and put it in the box to check my measurements and comfort in insertion and removal, and then I cut all the rest of the wood for the number of frames that I would assemble.  All of the long pieces are 20" and all the short pieces are 14".  More on that later.

 I had bought the 1/4" square hole screen at the same time that I bought the panel of foamboard.  I'm a little proud of myself for having calculated in my head to within a single square foot of how much screen I would need.  A 48" x 60" roll of screen (4' x 5') was just enough to make the 9 frames that comfortably fit in the box. I used angled tin snips to easily cut through the screen.  Then I realized that I wanted to fold over the short edges of the screens where they would be exposed to handling, thus preventing scratches.  This is most easily done before stapling the screen to the long members of the frames.

The gloves are really important for comfort here. Using one of the cut boards as a "brake" to start the fold, you crease the screen along the edge of the board as you see in the picture.  Once you've done this down the entire edge, then you can complete the fold without the board.

I used a standard manual staple gun to fasten the screens onto the long boards, trying to get each staple to straddle two strands of wire.  The staples were more than 1/2" deep, so I needed to tap them a little with a hammer to make them tight. This would be important when fastening the long boards over the short boards. You want the screen finish to be nice and taught.  In order to make sure of that, I didn't just drill my pilot holes straight down through the corners of the boards, but rather I drilled the holes at a slight angle, so that when the  screws drew tight, they would also pull the screen a little tighter.

It may look like I'm drilling straight down in the picture, but I'm not.  I used weather proof deck screws to fasten all the corners together.   The opening of the box is 24" x 16" x 16" deep.  So, I wanted the frames to use the most space but still be easy to move in and out of the box.  So the frames needed to be  20" x 14".  That gives me two inches of gap on each end of the short ends of the box and an inch on each side of the long sides of the box.  By overlapping the long boards on top of the short boards, a gap of about 1½" is created between each screen, which should allow sufficient air circulation between layers of food being dehydrated.  You can see the horizontal gaps well with the frames stacked out of the box.

This work on the frames took about four hours, and that's because I was figuring it out and making decisions as I went along.  Such is the nature of prototyping and pattern making.  I will also admit that I have yet to discover what the effect will be with 9 fully loaded screens of food inside the box.  I'm sure that the temperature will not get as high as it would with the empty box, what with the absorption of heat by the food itself.  I may have to put spacers between the frames and decrease the number.  It could also be that the temperature will simply rise much slower but still get up to a rather high level.  I will have to monitor it carefully and I'm sure that I can adjust the temperature by how much of an air gap under the clear acrylic sheet on top.  I'm chomping at the bit for Sunday, so I can slice up some apples and start the test drive. Can't do it today because it's Shabbat.  But I will try to remember to come back to this and let you know about the results.

Moxie did not appear too impressed seeing the finished products in the box.  She is too interested playing the grand protector of the chicken realm.

She proved herself quite well yesterday as Twyla reports over at Green Acres.

Spice of Life

I like bold flavors.  One of the greatest gifts HaShem gives us is the immense variety of food. Do you ever stop to think about how many different foods humans eat compared to the animal kingdom? The sheer variety of all the single foods we can eat is one thing, but then think about all the amazing combinations with herbs and spices. The permutations are nearly infinite.  Then think about all the animals who have very little variety in their diets; or none at all.  Imagine being a Koala bear and eating nothing but eucalyptus leaves all of your life.

As if that were not enough, we humans aren't satisfied with taste alone, we have to make things pleasing to the eye as well.  Think about all the celebrations you've been to.  Every social activity that people engage in HAS to involve food. It's almost like a universal, immutable law, like gravity. Births, weddings, and yes, even funerals or wakes involve food.

But, back to the bold flavor thing. I dislike - er, I strongly dislike bland food. I like flavors that tend to jump up and slap my taste buds. As a kid I always wondered why deviled eggs were called that. What's so "devilish" about these things. Then I discovered cooking around age ten and I've been grateful for the knowledge ever since.  It never gets boring.

Today's post is about chili. Nope. Not the often incorrectly made, terribly abused stew that is misnamed. I'm talking about the basic genus of fruit from the nightshade family, everything in the genus Capsicum.  Believe it or not, "chili" includes everything from bell pepper to scotch bonnet or habañeros; jalapeño, poblano, chipotle, cayenne, etc.  All are chilis.  I like all of them. Aside from the heat, they each have their own distinctive flavor.

Two Jalapeños and a Cuke

I only grew five varieties this summer, actually they are still producing fruit. It will be interesting to see how long they go. I have banana pepper, bell pepper, jalapeño, mild cayenne, and Thai. I think the banana peppers are done but I'm not sure. They didn't get planted in the straw bales and they struggled to produce only 6 fruits.  The two jalapeños produced somewhere around 120 and are still loaded with fruit. The same goes for two cayenne plants and two Thai chili plants.  The bell pepper struggled because I didn't stake them as well as I should have and they were attacked by some insects.  This is because the bell pepper produces zero amount of the compound capsaicin (the pronunciation varies; "cap-sigh-a-sin" or "cap-say-shin"), which is the stuff that creates the burning sensation.

In the second photo are two jalapeños. Yes, the middle one really is a jalapeño; not a miniature bell. That's why I took the pic. One of the great things about growing your own, is that, like the bell pepper, you can let them ripen on the bush to that glorious red color, and thus you let the natural sugars develop that give it a sweet flavor and mellow out that pungent nightshade flavor.  The same goes for bell pepper. Green and red bell pepper are the exact same pepper. Red bells in the store cost so much more because it takes them a while to ripen on the bush. It doesn't take them long to get up to picking size, but it does take a while for them to turn red.  If you pick them after they've turned about halfway, they will typically continue to ripen on the counter at room temperature.

How hot a chili is depends on the amount of capsaicin in it's flesh. The relative "hotness" of chili is measured by the Scoville Scale. If you went to that link, you've read that some of the hottest peppers of common use can be as high as 200,000 to 300,000 units.  There are some peppers in India that go over the one million unit mark. The mild cayenne that I'm growing hits around 5,000 to 8,000 units. Jalapeños are anywhere from 20,000 to 40,000. The Thai chilis that I have are somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000.

Open Jalapeño showing the pith

Depending on the size and type of pepper, you can remove some of the heat. Jalapeño works best for this example. Most of the active ingredient, capsaicin, resides in the pith or "placental" material inside the pepper where the seeds are borne.  By removing most of this white, or lighter colored material, you can cut way down on how much burn you'll get.  When I make "poppers" for a snack, I shave out all that material plus the seeds, and fill the halves with cheese and let them simmer in a covered cast iron skillet for about 30 minutes.  Yummy!  Twyla and I keep a box of latex surgical gloves under the kitchen sink for all kinds of reasons besides the obvious medical ones, but one of the most important reasons is for when we want to cook using any hot peppers.  Usually we just wear one glove and are careful to only handle the pepper with that hand.  Even then, if you are using a really hot pepper and handling it a lot or chopping it really fine, the capsaicin can seep enough through the glove to still be a problem.

Thai chilis drying for storage.  HOT!

Of course, chilis and the active ingredient capsaicin is highly medicinal.  It is a tonic for the circulatory system. It is the finest expectorant you can use.  It is highly anti-microbial/antibiotic. It is anti-fungal and anti-parisitic. It is very good for the stomach and has even been used as part of the treatment for ulcers. Contrary to common belief, most indigestion is not due to spicy food, but is, in fact, due to a failure to produce HCl in the stomach.  Antacids typically do more harm than good.  So does drinking too much liquid during a meal.  Far too many Americans consume bovine milk and it's one of the worst things an adult can consume.  But that's material for another post.

We do love our spicy food.  Not just the chilis but horseradish and other types as well.  I would hate to have to eat sushi without my wonderful wasabi paste.  Twyla makes the most delicious spicy/sweet sauce for meats called "Jezebel Sauce"  It's a real treat. The main ingredient is horseradish.

Happy cooking!

When Being Dense is Good

Have you ever stopped to really consider that the modern convenience of refrigeration is REALLY modern.  I mean, it has only existed since the early 1950s? Somebody figured out that the Second Law of Thermodynamics meant that it was possible to figure out a way to use chemistry and modern machinery to make heat flow  in such a way to cool things down, even in a tropical environment.  Amazing.

But modern, or should I say "post modern" man has become so irresponsible and lazy that he just takes this modern convenience for granted.


I'm pretty sure that anybody reading this has experienced a power failure and has had the experience of losing food and having to clean up the mess of thawed out freezers and refrigerators. Imagine the cleanup in New Orleans after Katrina.  Sorry for that mental image, but I've got a point to make.

What if refrigeration wasn't just temporarily gone for a few days? What if you were pretty sure that it was gone for the indefinite future?

Canned tomatoes and pickles

That's what we are planning on.  We still freeze stuff.  But we "can" a lot of stuff.  I put the word can in quotes because I have no idea how many people might come to this site and not understand this archaic term.  It's funny because the home, or do-it-yourself process doesn't involve cans, but rather jars.

Anything you see or buy in the grocery store that comes in a can, you can "can" yourself. (Why do I suddenly have this image of kicking legs and ruffle skirts?)  We haven't done it yet, but one of the next things we will can is chicken.

Left hand

Two things I need to type out at this point:  I just came back from a seminar about butchering animals.  I hurt myself pretty badly yesterday around noon. I was cutting up my spent tomato vines and other plants and in a rush I snipped my pinkie.  Okay, I really snipped my pinkie.  OKAY.  It's darned lucky I didn't hit the bone.  Picture to follow.  Shut up.  You know you want to see it.  It's a good thing there was a nurse in the house. She had me bandaged up and back to work in about 15 minutes.

So I'm sitting here trying to type and I've got duct tape on my left pinkie and it is seriously slowing me down.  Normally I can just type my thoughts, but this is like having a stroke or something.  It's taking forever to get the words out.  Now I know how stroke victims feel.

UPDATE:  Now I'm back to typing okay, but before I go back to doing any more gardening, I will have to bundle up the finger again.  So, where were we? Ah, the canning thing. I have to admit right here that Twyla is the one doing the canning.  I might help out with some of the prep work, like peeling and slicing, but she's the one who pays attention to the recipes and the time in the hot water bath. I chose to write about canning today because I went to a seminar last night at the church on butchering domestic and game animals, and the subject came up in passing when the risks of contamination were talked about.

Life is full of risks, but they are manageable when one uses caution and that rare thing called "common sense."  Sure, there is a possibility that you could get botulism poisoning from canned goods, even from store bought, factory produced food, but there are warning signs.  It wasn't that long ago that I opened a national brand can of tomato sauce and it turned out to be under pressure.  "DANGER!" I threw that can away.  Just use your head.

sliced for drying on silicone silpat

Canning is one of the safest and easiest ways to preserve your own food for long term storage.  With rare exceptions, most bad bacteria and other microbes that can harm you will easily die when exposed to temperatures of 140° - 160° F. Canning involves immersing the food and container in boiling water for anywhere from 20 to 45 minutes.  As the jars and lids cool down and you hear that distinctive pop as the vacuum sucks the lid down tight, you know you've got a good, airtight seal.

Apples, Tomatoes dehydrated

Another method of preserving food that takes up a lot less space is dehydration. For example; tomatoes are about 90% water, and it's the existence of that water that provides a medium for the microbes to rapidly decompose the fruit. Remove almost all that water and the remaining acid and other protective components will make the food last longer.  Vacuum pack the product and it will last for years.

Volume wise, this method is great because of how much food can be packed in such a small area. The jar of tomatoes you see on the right is approximately a dozen, and they are not even tightly packed.  I could add almost a dozen more and re-vacuum pack the jar.  There are more than a dozen apples in the other jar.  All the nutrition is there with no added chemicals or artificial preservatives.  These were done just using the gentle heat of the pilot light in the oven, since we have propane for the stove and oven and central heat.  And while the tomato is not really "sun-dried" I dare anyone to tell me they can taste the difference.

dehydrated tomatoes

Since we only have a couple of silicone silpats, another way to lay out fruits and veggies for drying without sticking, is to crumple a sheet of aluminum foil and then flatten it out, then swab it with a vegetable oil.  You don't want to cut the tomatoes too thin. You will be amazed how a slice of tomato nearly a quarter inch thick will shrink down to a paper thin piece.  My next project is to create a dehydrating box out of some relatively cheap materials.  I plan on taking step-by-step photographs of the process, in case anyone would like to duplicate it.

Another thing you should know is that there are lots of things that don't really even need refrigeration.  Chances are that everybody reading this has mayonnaise, mustard and ketchup in their fridge.  None of those things need to be in there.  Seriously. Did you know that even eggs can go two to three weeks in just moderately cool temperatures.

Stay tuned.