Springhole.net Blog

Today we picked up several reusable shopping bags.  They were about a dollar apiece - much better than the three dollar price that had been rumored.

After using these bags just once, I can’t think of many reasons I’d want to go back.  They hold more.  They’re sturdier.  the straps don’t dig into your hand the way plastic bag straps do.

In short, I highly recommend reusable bags, and not just because they’re reusable. 

On the final ten-mile stretch home, I couldn’t help but notice how many disposable plastic bags were out caught in weeds and fences.  There must have been one for each mile, probably more.  And this is a low-population area.

In 1957, Disney showcased an all-plastic ‘House of the Future’ sponsored by Monsanto. Stupid? Yeah. Of course, back then we knew it was only a matter of time before we were all living space-age lives just like the Jetsons. Oil shortages, the effect of plastics on the environment, and energy crises were the last things on peoples’ minds. We had something of an excuse.

But fifty years later, we know better. We know that plastic is harmful and unsustainable, and our early dreams of the future are too energy-intensive to be sustainable.

So what does Disney do? They make a new plastic House of the Future full of electronic gadgets even more stupid and pointless than the first.

No dreams of sustainability dancing through Disney’s head, oh, no. It’s all plastics and stupid electronic novelties. Pop-up faucets. LCD-display pictures hanging on the wall. LCD writing pads. An LCD dining table.

Disney, I am very, very disappointed in you.

Get a load of it here.

You probably weren’t aware that there are two Atkins diets going around - but there are! These two are:

The Atkins Diet: the original diet as created by Dr. Robert Atkins. The Atkins diet emphasizes whole foods and unrefined carbohydrates. In order to do the Atkins diet, one must read up on the research and guidelines as set by Dr. Atkins and his associates.

The OMGATKINS!!! Diet: An extreme variant of the Atkins diet, and a complete media darling. The OMGATKINS!!! diet emphasizes eating pounds of butter on top of 10-ounce steaks, gorging on sausages, and never, ever touching a carb other than what might be in your Ranch dressing. In order to follow OMGATKINS!!!, all one has to do is watch television, wait for a news broadcast condemning the poor misguided souls following it, and do exactly what they’re doing. Alternatively, one can learn the ways of OMGATKINS!!! by reading part of the book, or by learning about part of Atkins from a friend.

Remember, the next time you hear about someone following the “Atkins” diet by eating nothing but steak, sausages, and butter, this is not the Atkins diet.  Next time you hear a friend moan and complain that the Atkins diet just didn’t work for them because they couldn’t get enough carbs from their Tyson chicken breading, this is not Atkins.  This is the OMGATKINS!!! diet.

The Atkins diet just isn’t newsworthy enough, so the media will always focus on the OMGATKINS!!! diet to make an impact.  Unfortunately, the uneducated masses do not know enough to differentiate between the two.  But now you do.

FACT: Atkins does not mean that you gorge on huge amounts of meat.  There are many healthy fruits, vegetables, and grains.  Also, because proteins and fats are more satiating than carbohydrates, people get full sooner and longer on less food.

FACT: Those on Atkins often have lower triglycerides (in healthy levels, too!) than those on the standard American diet - even the ones that don’t skimp on the saturated fats!

FACT: Atkins is flexible!  Even vegetarians have successfully adapted the Atkins to their own needs.

Animal rights activists are at it again. Bolding mine.

Here is a summary of the four issues decided this week:

In Dallas, City Council voted 10-3 to pass an animal control ordinance requiring mandatory pet sterilization, expensive permits to own intact dogs and cats, mandatory microchipping and pet ownership limits. The ordinance also bans tethering of dogs and imposes strict requirements for keeping dogs outdoors. Home inspections also are authorized.

In California, the Senate Local Government Committee voted 3-2 to approve AB1634, which now will be sent to the Senate Appropriations Committee. If this committee approves, it will be sent to the legislature for a vote. This bill allows any person to act as a vigilante and report any dog owner for an unsubstantiated violation of any animal law. If any animal control officer agrees, the accused person will have a choice between paying a fine or sterilizing the animal. People who are accused of anything have no right to defend themselves or to appeal. An accusation is automatic guilt.

In Pennsylvania, the House Rules Committee voted Tuesday to approve HB2532, which is a de facto ban on tail docking, dewclaw removal and ear cropping. In the absence of proof that the procedure was performed by a veterinarian, the mere possession of a dog that has had one of those three procedures subjects an owner to a criminal citation for animal cruelty. This bill would destroy many rescue operations, dog shows, competitive events and field trials in Pennsylvania and result in the deaths of thousands of dogs. This bill now goes to the full House for a vote, and then to the Senate.

Also in Pennsylvania, the House Agriculture Committee approved amendments to the state dog and kennel law that fall short of changes that were promised to dog owner advocacy groups. The actual text of this legislation was not available at this writing, and a follow-up report will be issued when the revised legislation is available. This bill now goes to the full House for a vote, and then to the Senate.

Read the rest here.

Have you ever heard something along these lines?

Bill: So, where are you from?

Bob: I’m from England. You?

Bill: I’m American.

Bob: America sucks.

Bill: Well, it’s not perfect…

Bob: Your President is an idiot. Your people are fat and lazy. Your school system is the worst ever.

Or worse, have you ever done this to anyone? (Yes, this includes Americans who inform people from other countries that their country sucks.  Shame on you, too.) If so, this post is for you.

1. We know our country isn’t perfect.  We live in it, after all.
2. Our country does not have a monopoly on stupid people.
3. Our country does not have a monopoly on electing poor leaders.
4. Our country is not homogeneous.  What is common in one part of the country may be rare in another.  We are individuals, not drones.  Don’t stereotype based on what you hear in the news.
5. Your country isn’t perfect, either.

Thank you and good evening.

Cheese sauce = cheese + milk + mayonnaise.

The mayonnaise gets the cheese to break up and mix into the milk.  It stays fairly soft even when cold - in fact, it would make a good spread when cold.  Mixed with more milk, it can make a fine base for soup.  It also makes broccoli irresistible.  Mix with whatever seasonings you like.  Dill and basil is good.

Once upon a time I didn’t like dill - but that was because I never knew what it was good for.  I knew it was used in making dill pickles, but I didn’t like dill pickles that much.

Then one October my local newspaper happened to print a few local Romanian recipes (Transylvania and all that).  These caught my attention - they used an interesting blend of ingredients.

I spaced off this article for a few years until one day, out of wanting something else for dinner, I remembered the news article and decided to look up Romanian recipes online.  What I found didn’t disappoint: it taught me a new way to mix vegetables, as well as throwing a new spice into the mix: dill.

The first experiment I tried with a Romanian cooking palette was quite good, involving pork, broccoli, sour cream, celery, and the forementioned guest of honor, dill.  And it was good.

Finally, I had discovered a tasty use for dill.

Further discoveries over the years found new uses.  The Greeks use their dill alongside spices such as oregano, thyme, and basil.  Beef seasoned with these and placed in a wrap with green pepper and yogurt or sour cream is delicious.

My family would make dill-seasoned cheeseballs for Christmas, which I generally found disgusting: among its other ingredients are chopped green olives.  Both of these are strongly flavored and in my opinion, don’t work out together at all.  Last Christmas I took the dill ball another direction, using Romanian seasonings.  The result was an overall better balance of flavor: instead of the olives and dill competing with each other for the attention of the taste buds, the seasonings blended in harmony.

I had spent all these years thinking of dill as a loud, obnoxious seasoning.  Boy, was I wrong.  Leave it to American culture, I suppose, to take something that can be so elegant and lovely and make it so repulsive and obnoxious.

For the adventurous and/or curious among you, here is this site where I learned how the Romanians cook.

Eight rules I’ve learned, observed, and developed about diet and health over the years.

1: The human body is not built to a factory specification for our convenience. No single diet will ever work for each and every one of us.

2: Diet should not be a quasi-religion. The dogma should never come before your health or the health of others.

3: Almost everyone will benefit from removing as much refined flour and sugar from their diet as possible.

4: If we weren’t eating it before the first agricultural revolution ten thousand years ago, we probably don’t need to eat it now.

5: If traditional cultures ate it and thrived on it before being introduced to flour and sugar, it isn’t going to kill us now.

6: Most people still believe in the diet-heart/lipid hypothesis - but then again, we used to believe in bloodletting, which was just as scientific back in the day.

7: Any diet plan that cannot be followed for a lifetime is flawed.

8: Any diet that requires vitamin supplements or some rare and obscure food not eaten before the first agricultural revolution is flawed.

This article laid a few things out nicely…

But none of that makes eating vegetarian the optimal diet for everyone from an individual health perspective, at least not according to those in the trenches. Nor is it true that protein deficiencies among vegetarians who eat well never occur. The reality, according to nutritionists and those in clinical practice, is that some of us don’t assimilate plant-based proteins well, and that protein and other nutritional deficiencies do occur, even in those expertly mixing and balancing their plant-based protein sources.

Nor is the vegetarian food supply anywhere near as green as generally assumed—soy farming is a significant rainforest threat, grains make heavy use of fertilizers and pesticides and a bag of lettuce grown in a dry climate takes several hundred litres of water to produce, while a kilogram of rice might take as much as 5000 litres. None of which means we should stop eating any of those things.

Both of these are inconvenient truths for the idealistic veg*n. Some people just don’t thrive on veg*n diets no matter how hard they try. And one more fun fact about rice that the writer should have mentioned: rice paddies produce methane.

You may hear that vegetarians are free from problems such as cancer. Or are they?

Analyses of five other large studies have found no difference in death rates from cancer between vegetarians and non-vegetarians, and in fact much research has shown higher correlations between high carb intake and cancer mortality than between animal protein and cancer.

And another point that the idealistic veg*ns don’t want you to consider…

The curbing of dietary saturated fat by reducing our meat consumption simply isn’t doing what we’d hoped it would (though it has made the soy industry quite happy). And while many experience vibrant health on vegetarian diets, the contradiction of devoted vegetarians sometimes struggling with clogged arteries, thyroid disease, anemia, fatigue, chronic infections and weight management is something not to be ignored.

Unfortunately, idealistic veg*ns are only too happy to ignore these results and sweep them under the rug. Like it or not, there are overweight veg*ns - and people who put on weight because of their veg*n diets.

Idealistic veg*ns can keep humming with their fingers in their ears until the cows run wild in the streets, but it won’t change the fact that they’re playing a massive game of self-deception.

Check out the rest of the article.

CNN aired this piece of vegan propaganda.

Everyone knows that methane burping cows are like, the only source of meat in the entire world. So we all gotta, like, go vegan to stop the methane. Durrrr.

That is what is known as a false dichotomy: two options are presented when a valid third option exists.

Here, lemme put this into a logic chart:

Premise 2: Cows burp a lot of methane, which is bad for the environment.
Premise 2: Cows are made of meat.
Conclusion: We must stop eating meat.

Heck, not only is it an FD, but it’s also non-sequitur! It does not follow that because cows are made of meat we need to stop eating all meat. Most animals out there put off only tiny amounts of methane in comparison to cows. If it’s the methane you’re worried about, cut out the beef. Just don’t fall for a false dichotomy.

Just for the fun of it, let’s put this logic another way:

Premise 1: Polyester socks and vinyl shoes make my feet stink.
Premise 2: Polyester and vinyl are forms of plastic.
Conclusion: I must stop using anything made of plastic.

Doesn’t make so much sense now, does it?

Update: No, cows aren’t the only source of dairy, either.  There are also goats, sheep, and camels.  They wouldn’t work out to support the kind of dairy industry we have with cows, but they do exist and do provide an alternative - and superior product - to cow’s milk.  More expensive?  Yes.  But we still don’t have to give up meat and dairy entirely.