Thought for a Friday
“A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.” – Samuel Butler
Hawk, our adult Americana chicken. Photo by Angela Morris.
Sept. brings electric car-charging stations to Austin
Austin says car-charging stations will be ready by September, reports the Austin American-Statesman.
As part of a long-term strategy to displace gasoline-fueled cars, Austin Energy announced on Wednesday that a network of 103 electric-vehicle charging stations would be up and running by September.
The federally funded chargers, such as one at the H-E-B store on Brodie Lane , will be scattered around town, along with the station already in place at the downtown Whole Foods. Austin Energy executives hope the nascent network will help convince potential buyers of electric cars that a trip around town wouldn’t leave them stranded.
Our super-duper fizzy-water machine
Aaron and I splurged recently and purchased a SodaStream soda maker. I have to admit I learned about this device through an ad on my own blog … They got me!
Photo by Angela Morris
We’re completely enthralled with our soda maker and we’ve been drinking sparkling water nonstop since we bought it. You fill up the bottle with water, screw it into the machine, and press a button that inserts CO2 into the water. Afterwards, you can add flavor syrups to create real soda–Something we haven’t done yet.
We decided to splurge and buy our SodaStream after I did some research about the cost. We had been buying Topo Chico and club soda from the grocery store. We drank it so fast that we were spending a pretty penny keeping our stockpile up. We bought our SodaStream for about $90 at Sears, which seems like a lot of money. There were much cheaper soda makers on the market, but I decided to go with SodaStream because its CO2 canister will carbonate 60 liters of water; when it’s expired, you simply get it refilled (green). The other soda makers use small CO2 canisters that carbonate only one liter per use (wasteful). Over the long-term, I figured out, the SodaStream will actually save us money we would be spending on CO2. It definitely saves us money compared to buying sparkling water at the grocery store (and cuts down on garbage).
We have been so well hydrated since we bought this!
Photo by Angela Morris
Costliest drought
Photo by Scott Liddell on morgueFile
The drought in Texas is affecting ranchers like never before, reports the Austin American-Statesman.
The current drought is likely to be the costliest in a 12-month span, said David Anderson, a livestock economist with the Texas A&M University’s Agrilife Extension Service. In May, Agrilife reported losses statewide at $1.2 billion. Anderson said an August report will likely tally the cost at three to four times that. The cost of the current drought may be even twice that of the previous most costly drought, which cost $4.1 billion in 2006.
It sounds really terrible.
Also, check out the photos in this Washington Post blog post about the drought.
Harvard healthy-eating pyramid
I’ve always tried to eat healthy according to the USDA’s food pyramid. Aaron has tried telling me he doesn’t think the food pyramid represents the peak of a healthful diet, but I didn’t listen much. But the other day he sent me the link to a nutrition guide from Harvard’s School of Public Health. The introduction explains why Harvard chose to create the guide to replace the USDA pyramid:
Tragically, the information embodied in this pyramid didn’t point the way to healthy eating. Why not? Its blueprint was based on shaky scientific evidence, and it barely changed over the years to reflect major advances in our understanding of the connection between diet and health.
Harvard created its own, new guide creatively titled the “Healthy Eating Pyramid” (ha) which is supposed to put “into perspective, the wealth of research conducted during the last 15 years that has reshaped the definition of healthy eating.”
It seems like the Harvard folks have problems with several specific guidelines in the USDA’s pyramid: Harvard says people should not get half their grains as refined starches; people should gravitate away from red meat towards protein sources like beans, poultry and fish; and people shouldn’t have three servings of dairy per day.
There’s also an emphasis that having fats is okay, as long as they are healthy fats.
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