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07 Nov 2009 01:47
November 6. And while I'm on the subject of eating, Brett sends this link about author Paul Rudnick, who is thin and healthy despite decades of eating almost nothing but refined carbs. I hope no one is thinking, "Woo-hoo! Nothing but donuts for me now." The lesson here is that you should not base your diet on what's good for some other person, but pay attention and learn what's good for you.
November 6. A reader wonders why I eat Ezekiel cereal instead of making granola. Because it's sprouted, and I think ideally we should eat only grains that have been sprouted or fermented. My usual breakfast is whole white wheat (red wheat is too expensive now), soaked, sprouted, and boiled, with dates. But I like Ezekiel for variation and as a road food. Maybe in the future someone will start sprouting and drying large amounts of grain and selling it in bulk, as they do now with rolled, flaked, and puffed grains.
November 6. Today, two Oil Drum links. Many of us are familiar with EROEI, or energy returned on energy invested: a barrel of oil isn't worth much if we have to burn nine tenths of a barrel to extract and refine it. Now Ugo Bardi considers energy returned on water invested. You can see from the comments that this is an extremely complex subject that needs a lot more research. And here's a nice overview of "our coming lower-resource future", What Lower Consumption Means. But there's something missing, even from the comments. I did a ctrl-f for "tech", and everyone who talks about technology is either saying we'll go back to the 1800's, or that technological innovation will enable us to continue civilization as we know it. What about civilization as we don't know it? I expect many parts of our tech system to die out, while others continue to... I don't want to say "advance", but they will continue to deal wild cards. My best guess is that we're headed for a steampunk future, something like Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun or Philip Reeve's Hungry City Chronicles, a mix of industrial scraps, low tech, high tech, and post-mechanistic paradigm tech, or "magic".
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