Michael Cox

Christopher Weeks wrote:My only beef with that infographic is the false dichotomy between fermenting and pickling. To my experience pickles are preserved vegetables and in my house they're fermented, though I'm obviously aware that vinegar pickling exists.

Michael Cox wrote:Personally, I dislike measurements for ingredients...

Haha! I saw this and got jazzed because that's just how I feel -- I don't measure anything. But then the rest of the paragraph is all about how to be even more precise in one's measurements. Different strokes I suppose. :)

I teach maths, and am an engineer by training. If I'm aiming for a 2% salt concentration by weight then why on earth would I measure something like salt by "cups"? I find the concept genuinely baffling.

The scales live on the kitchen surface so using them is easy. And every batch has come out perfect, where as the unmeasured batches were all over the place.

The infographic for saurkraut was particularly bad... it mixed oz, litres, lbs and teaspoons... and still required kitchen scales!

I also love adding a few caraway seeds to my saurkraut. If you haven't previously tried it, give it a whirl.

I've always got a jar of saurkraut on the go at home. I'm the only one who eats it though, so a jar lasts me a long time.

I use a 2-litre jar with an airlock lid for the fermentation process. Buying a dedicated lid was a definite improvement over the various improvised arrangements I had previously, as I now get zero discolouration of the upper surface.

Personally, I dislike measurements for ingredients like salt in cups/tablespoons etc... There is way too much variability in terms of how dense your salt actually is. A tablespoon of sea salt flakes is quite different to a tablespoon of fine table salt. Instead, I aim for a salt concentration by weight.  I chop up whatever ingredients I am using and weigh them. I typically do about 2kg of cabbage at a time. Then I do 2% of that weight as salt.  eg if I end up with 1876g of cabbage I will weigh out 37g of whatever salt I am using (2% of the weight). Add it to a mixing bowl with the chopped cabbage and (with clean hands) vigorously mix it together, aiming to bruise the cabbage a bit. Transfer to the fermentation jar and add the glass weight to hold it down. If I need a bit more liquid then I mix up some salt water at the same concentration (20g salt to 1000ml of water) and top up as needed.

Before I got accurate scales, I was sort of guessing and had some batches that were way too salty.

As others have already said, organic matter and active root systems will be your friend in this project. I have two thought that might be useful.

1) Comfrey - It looks like your soil does a good job of holding moisture for long periods. My observations are that comfrey thrives in damp soils and produces far more growth than in dry soils. The difference I see between the comfrey I planted in my dry chalk soils at home, vrs my in-laws clay/silt garden with a high water table is amazing. The soil beneath their comfrey is black with organic matter, stays moist but not pooling, and the fruit trees around it a thriving. It gets slashed a couple of times per year and the leafy material left to break down where it falls.

2) This one is more climate dependent - vetiver grass.
It's a tall clumping grass that sends down deep DEEP root systems. The soil around the roots builds organic matter and opens pathways for water to drain down into the deeper soil levels. Again, the leafy material should be cut back each year to a couple of inches high, and forms great mulch. It is particularly well suited for sloping ground because hedges planted on contour stop surface flows of water and soil erosion, and the deep roots stabilise unstable ground. Two caveats are that it doesn't like shade, and can't tolerate deep winter freezes (shallow frosts are apparently fine).

Nice work! this is exactly the kind of effort that brought us so many of the modern species that we depend on - the efforts of the old school naturalists to get out in nature, to pay attention, and to collect interesting specimens.

I'm not currently placed to be able to join in on such a project - not least because I don't live in the US and shipping seeds can be problematic. I do hope you find some more people to get involved with you, and maybe get some more collected lines to increase the genetic diversity of your collection.

There is an excellent book that covers the thorny issues related to finding fair taxation schemes.

A Fine Mess

It is a surprisingly enjoyable read, covers how we ended up with the crazy taxation systems we currently have, and what we might do about them. I can't remember if road tax specifically was covered, but it is comparable to many other issues in there.

It's been a long time since I have read it, but one of the principles that comes up repeatedly is that taxation should be a low rate, spread over a wide base.

Every time an exemption is made - no matter how "fair" it appears (eg electric vehicles don't pay fuel tax) - the end result is that the tax burden of spread over few people, so the rates have to go up. As go up more people are driven to lobby for exemptions so the base is narrowed further and the rates rise... eventually the whole system collapses as the rates become so high on so few people as to be unsustainable.

The book looks primarily at the US, which has a particularly messy taxation system, but the lessons learned are universal.

There is a genuine practical question around this that all governments will need to get to grips with. The move towards vehicles being electric is happening and will continue to happen without government mandate because they are the most cost effective option for the vast majority of cases. That might take longer in the US as I believe that your fuel prices tend to be lower on the whole than say Europe, but it will come.

Most governments have used a combination of fuel taxes and vehicle taxes to pay the upkeep of the roads, and generally electric vehicles apply as much wear-and-tear to the road network as petrol vehicles. So how will roads be maintained as the proportion of electric vehicles continues to increase?

Paying for road through taxing the fuel used makes sense - fuel use is in proportion to the miles driven, and thus to the wear your vehicle does to the road. It also incentivises good practices like selecting more fuel efficient vehicles and driving more economically. With electric vehicles it is harder to make that link between consumption of fuel and taxation. In the most extreme case you may be charging your car entirely from your own solar cells for example, and so not participate in a fueling system that can be taxed... but still making use of the roads.

So when looking at a question like this, I would push it back to the person and say "What do you think is a fair way for you to contribute to the road system you are making use of?"

At that point we can talk practicalities - like should it be through a vehicle tax? based on mileage (what about if my vehicle is used on my own land most of the time, and a small % on the national roads?)? Should every car have a permanent GPS tracker that monitors milage on the road system and sends you a monthly tax bill, effectively turning every road into a pay-per-use toll road (this one has surprising advantages - you could eg display the toll rate in real time, and it could vary based on time of day to encourage people to avoid periods of high traffic or certain sections of the road system). There is no clean answer. Any proposal will have downsides and make someone unhappy. But a solution is needed.

We said a last goodbye to our beloved elderly dog last week. He was over 14 years old and had a wonderful life with us. He was our first pet, and first thing we committed to as a couple when we were newly married. We are all, obviously absolutely devastated. I've got two rather fragile boys at home now, and my wife is in pieces. He was put to sleep at home following heart failure.

We are slowly pulling ourselves back together, but so many pieces of our daily lives revolved around him. Cat was invariably the one who fed him - the first morning she came downstairs and he wasn't waiting to be let out.  He used to get to lick out leftovers from our plates (especially my fussy 7yo) - day 2 I found my 7yo had put down his plate like normal without thinking about it.

It sucks.

But on the other side, it also helps us remember how wonderful the people around us are. I've had so many hugs from friends at work over the past week. People stopping by my classroom to check on me. A mate changed his plans so we could steal an hour together in the day. Not all the hugs have been helpful - making me cry 10 seconds before I need to walk in and teach maths to a room full of 13 years old is not ideal - but every one has been welcome and appreciated.

I've been trying to do my best helping the boys navigate their feelings. 7yo was trying to be brave, pull himself together and not think about it... we had a heart to heart cuddled up on the sofa and I had to tell him that he is allowed to be sad, and allowed to cry if he needs.

We made it out of the house on Sunday together and had a gentle evening with friends. It felt like a first step towards being normal again.

I don't know where I'm going with this. I'm rambling. Just keep being wonderful people to each other. I needed it this week, and it really helped.

I'm a union rep at work. A lot of what I do in that role involves negotiation of some sort.

I would argue that I have become pretty good at it, and had some substantial wins as a result, largely because I approach matters in a very reasonable way. Try to understand what both sides want to achieve, and cut the emotion out of the situation. It also helps to be really really well prepared.

If you can't justify to yourself that what you are asking for is reasonable then you won't be able to convince anyone else either. Conversely, if the otherside is being unreasonable than shining light on that goes a long way to strengthening your position.

I'd also add that big wins follow more easily after smaller ones. In a long term relationship (friends, spouse, family, employer etc...) you have many opportunities to practice the process of negotiation so that both sides get comfortable with how it works. Then when bigger issues come up that need Negotiation (with a big N) you have been through the dance before.

Edit: Looks like my attempt at sarcasm landed badly. I was trying to highlight that such a plan would both be unwelcome by the Canadians and - for any hope at a stable union in the longer term - would depend on appropriate representation. The consequences of such a proposal would reduce the proportion of votes that the republicans receive.

Trump’s proposal would be hugely damaging to his own party’s interests if there were ever a circumstance where it came to pass.

Clearly therefore Trump does not actually want to fold Canada into the USA - he has some other agenda, and is using this political posturing to apply pressure.


As an outsider to this situation it all just looks terribly silly.

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Jay Angler wrote:For anyone who has been following US politics, Mr. Trump seems to think Canada should be the 51 State.

I think it's a great idea. Obviously Canada would need appropriate representation in Government, so it wouldn't be the 51st state... more like states 51 through 63 (10 existing provinces and 3 territories). I wonder how favourably the citizens of those 13 new states would feel towards Trump and the Republican Party?

(Hint - a population that has been reluctantly annexed by the Republicans, and already leans considerably more left than the general population of the USA is unlikely to be supportive of the Republicans. The end result would be the Republicans as they are now never seeing power again.)