One Day in Belgium

The United States had a historic cycling day on the Continent at the World Cyclocross championships, held at Hooglede-Gits, Belgium. First, Katie Compton took the silver medal in the women’s race, and Jonathan Page followed with a silver in the men’s race. An American has never medaled. Page’s result is even more impressive given the […]

Squalls

Listen, the snow is falling over town… Bands of snow squalls had been coming and going all day. While the pine trees across the road were collecting snow, the roads were still wet. Then, at around 5:00pm, after my nose had been buried in a bug for an hour, I noticed I couldn’t see much […]

Technology and Hope

Recently, MIT’s Technology Review featured an article on the $100 laptop and the One Laptop per Child program. These projects are attempting to export hope in the form of education and limitless technology. While upon first glance these seem to be worthy goals, but they lose their luster a bit when thinking about their effects […]

Food (Again)

I’ve always liked that the folks at Hen Waller used their site as a bit of a recipe repository. I’ve done that a bit in the past here, so I thought I’d do again, by giving an overview of what we eat for dinner during the course of a normal week. At one time, before […]

Food

We sent in the deposit for our 2007 CSA share with Mildreds’ Daughters’ Urban Farm this morning. We’ve purchased a full share this year, given that we still had to supplement a bit with the half share last year. Additionally, half-shares this year will get a full share every two weeks, instead of a half […]

Kunstler on the State of Things

James Howard Kunstler has an essay in the latest edition of Orion entitled “Making Other Arrangements.” This is classic Kunstler (minus the expletives), outlining the problems facing the United States thanks to increasing energy scarcity. Kunstler, however, is not all fire and brimstone–he outlines how we can deal with the changes that may lie ahead, […]

And So Goes Pittsburgh

The Port Authority and Allegheny County have announced massives cuts in public transportation services for Pittsburgh. This, of course, has prompted wailing and gnashing of teeth, and much of the reaction is warranted. It is, however, important to realize that this is not the first time such cutbacks and rate hikes have been proposed. Generally, […]

Small Is Beautiful, Again

From Joseph Pearce’s introduction to the discussion of his book Small Is Still Beautiful: What do we mean by economics? Or, perhaps, what do we not mean by it? We do not mean ?economics? as it is defined in the Collins English Dictionary as being merely ?the social science concerned with the production and consumption […]