botwerks

if you’re physical about your cooking this is the only way to make brussel sprouts.

tools

• cast iron frying pan (what? you don’t have one of these? WTF is wrong with you? go get one and come back when you’ve come to your senses)
• tongs
• stovetop capable of getting that frying pan really hot

ingredients

• brussel sprouts – 1-3 lbs.
• kosher salt
• pepper
• chili powder
• onion sliced – 1 large
• garlic sliced (4 cloves)
• walnuts
• olive oil
• dijon mustard (optional)

instructions

1. clean and halve the brussel sprouts. halving them is important
2. get that frying pan hot, like really frickin’ hot, but not so hot that your oil smokes
3. pour in enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the frying pan
4. put a layer of brussel sprouts in the pan, cut face down
5. let the brussel sprouts sear
6. liberally salt and pepper the sprouts while cooking
7. add onions and garlic
8. let onions soften and start to scorch
9. add walnuts
10. toss the whole concoction with a few passes of chili powder
11. if stuff falls out of the frying pan, STFU and eat it.
12. when the mixture has reached the appropriate level of badass sear remove from heat and serve with dijon mustard on the side
13. evaluate offers of baby-daddy-hood from consumers of these sprouts

additional notes

i will acknowledge that it is indeed possible to improve upon this recipe through the judicious application of bacon. however, bacon use is widely regarded as cheating.

this is possibly the best reasoning i’ve seen someone use to argue for the use of android - Scripting News: Why I use Android.  personally, i find the OS and the devices running it to be something of a petri dish and for and element in my life that i depend on, as much as my phone, i’m not quite to the point where i’m willing to tolerate the nature of the OS and its corresponding apps marketplace.

however, there’s a need to have a competitive counter to iOS and something that’s open source provides a strong rationale.  the ability to manage and sandbox the phone in the same manner as a PC is still in its infancy.  i simply don’t have the confidence in the android marketplace right now in terms of device and app validation.  i’m left to puzzle it out as a consumer and most consumers simply aren’t there, or in my case, willing to invest the time to vet applications and their operation.

right now, i’m at a place in my life where i need things to work so i can focus on the problems at hand.  i lack the time to hack together the dependencies to make my phone workflow as seamless as i imagine you can get with android; nevermind working through the diagnostics to resolve conflicts.  you won’t see me ragging on android, i find it a compelling alternative, but i’m not willing to make that tradeoff at this point.

Warming Arctic Permafrost Fuels Climate Change Worries - ny times article about research taking place in alaska around massive methane bubbles.  for those deniers who haven’t been paying attention to the dangers associated with various gases, you might not think that CO2 is that big a deal (i’m looking at you michele bachmann) but methane is some particularly nasty stuff.  feedback loops are a real bitch.

check out the research that russian scientists are doing on this front as well.

this book was a birthday present from my folks this year and i’ve finally got around to sinking my teeth into it.  i really should have prioritized it in the reading queue since it’s proven to be a most illuminating read.  over the past few years i’ve been doing a surprising amount of reading on the topic of climate change, sustainability and energy economics.  the majority of this reading has been polemics on either side of the topic or pretty academic in nature.  this book is a nerds approach to the personal application of various energy technologies and their mapping to ones personal energy consumption.  if you’re at all interested on the topic of the viability of a wide range of sustainable energy mechanisms this is probably the definitive source.  if you’re inclined there’s plenty of technical detail in here for the folks that really want to get into an analysis of the relative performance or applicability one energy technology vs. another.

the narrative throughout the book is a look at what your personal energy utilization is (skewed towards the behaviors of a UK reader) and then layers a range of sustainable energy technologies against this energy use and shows how much of each technology would be required to address your energy use.  the scenarios are readily digestible and if you’re genuinely interested in the viability of living a sustainable lifestyle or getting an understanding where you should be pushing for technological development in either the market or regulatory space i can’t recommend this book enough.

increasingly i’m of the opinion that folks who want to wax poetic from one end of the spectrum or another without having done some personal research on the topic should really just STFU.  if you’re really concerned about global warming / climate change and you think we need to take dramatic steps to halt our carbon consumption and exhalation, then you need to be prepared to think long and hard about where you stand on topics like nuclear energy (classic or novel new designs) and how to make some serious modifications in your lifestyle.  if you don’t think that global warming / climate change is human influenced, well, you’re suffering from other problems and i suspect you don’t do a whole lot of thinking for yourself so this is kind of pointless.

if you’re interested in the tl;dr summary…

this stuff is hard.  really, really hard, there are no easy answers and ones ability to make effective personal changes in their lifestyle has limited impact.  sure, you can put a turbine on your roof, but the impact is negligible.  PV on the roof top is a good thing if you’re in the right area, etc..  still, there’s a lot of retooling that needs to be done, and that’s going to chew up carbon.  in a stroke of, go check my math, brilliance, all the content is online. (http://www.withouthotair.com) go check the facts, go check out the analysis, run the numbers for yourself.  more books should do this.  particularly those on contentious topics.

p229 – has a rather handy chart that outlines individual actions which can have a rather profound impact on your personal energy footprint.  going vegetarian has some notable bonus points other than the health benefits.