4 + 8 + 15 + 16 + 23 + 42 = 108

Posted May 14, 2008 3:54 PM by Aaron Bergman

You're welcome.

Posted May 14, 2008 4:16 PM by Xopher

Third!

Posted May 14, 2008 4:20 PM by Serge

This reminds me that I still want to read the 14th century Chinese epic The Water Margin, all about 108 reincarnated demon heroes called The Stars of Destiny. I wonder how an epic can effectively be about 108 people. I'm very fond of the bits of the story I know, and I enjoy the Suikoden games based roughly around the conceit.

I became aware of the number 108 during the Japanese New Year, when they ring the temple bells 108 times at midnight, enumerating either the sins of the world or the earthly desires, depending on who you ask and who is translating.

Posted May 14, 2008 4:21 PM by Leah Miller

For so many things, we thank you Xopher.

(and I am getting strange error messages Got an error: Bad ObjectDriver config: Connection error: Too many connections)

Posted May 14, 2008 4:32 PM by Terry Karney

I just find multiples of nine beautiful in their own right.

All thanks, too, to Xopher.

Posted May 14, 2008 4:39 PM by Fragano Ledgister

3^3 * 2^2 = 108. Nifty little number, that.

Somebody come up with interesting discourse that will run to 500 replies. The Dude is due any day now, and in practice that means lots of boredom. Espeically as he may well come late.

Though looking at the forecast, he may as well come in the next few days as we're supposed to have 100º temperatures, thank you very much. What's the good of avoiding being pregnant in the summer if the summer comes to you?

(This is what as known as "late pregnancy snarkiness." Tired, not sleeping well, weigh too bloody much, mouth tastes like cabbage crawled in and died, oh yes, this is the bit that's supposed to make us grateful for the pain that ends it.)

Posted May 14, 2008 4:42 PM by B. Durbin

"And so my will was moved by that Love which moves the sun and the other stars."

How many of you got all the way to the end?

Posted May 14, 2008 4:45 PM by Tony Zbaraschuk

Anyone who has not been where B Durbin is right now: imagine having a Christmas turkey strapped to your front while you suffer the effects of a hangover. You are allowed to imagine taking painkillers for the headache, but you still have the dragging feeling all the time. And the huge extra weight and bulk.

Got that?

Great, now hold still while I kick you right in the small of the back to induce backache.

Now you know what she's feeling.

Posted May 14, 2008 4:49 PM by abi

abi: Having a sympathetic flashback?

Posted May 14, 2008 4:54 PM by Terry Karney

Terry: I suspect a number of us are. Hang in there, B. Durbin!

Posted May 14, 2008 4:57 PM by Debbie

Terry @10:
Sympathetic in all senses of the word. It's a difficult time, physically.

And yes, I can almost see the jigsaw puzzle I was doing in January of 2004, of the Hagia Sofia in 1980's Istanbul.

Posted May 14, 2008 4:59 PM by abi

Thirteenth!

Posted May 14, 2008 5:02 PM by Michael Roberts

Ooh, weirdness. SciFi is showing Fahrenheit 451, and they just showed the scene where the Book Lady is burned with her books. As the flamethrower is turned on her, she recites, "nine times eleven is ninety-nine, nine times twelve is one hundred and eight..."

Posted May 14, 2008 5:06 PM by Debbie

B. Durbin, I don't know about interesting discourse, but I've been wondering
< lazyweb>
what would it be like, should the US (or world) slip into the Great Depression II? I mean, qualitatively like, what will it feel like? I've been poor before, but would it be like everyone being poor? Does it feel like the difference between rich and poor gets smaller, or does it feel bigger? Do many people freak out and commit suicide, or is that just newspaper-selling hype? Is making your own ketchup a hardship, or just a cognitive shock when you realize you can't afford it anymore?
</lazyweb>

I'm asking all this, because I know where to go to get doom and gloom financial scenarios, and stockpile rice and guns coping strategies, but you (plural) seem to be my best hope for insight on what people actually do, and how they actually think in chronic problem situations.

Should I skip describing the doom and gloom scenarios that make me want to ask the question?

Posted May 14, 2008 5:16 PM by don delny

don 15: Please skip them. We can find them if we need them. And we don't.

Posted May 14, 2008 5:31 PM by Xopher

The dodecahedron was the basis of a Rubik's Cube-like puzzle, called the Megaminx. There is also a 4-dimensional analogue of the dodecahedron, called the "120-cell" -- and someone just released a program to let you play with the 4D Megaminx.

Posted May 14, 2008 5:42 PM by Craig

This reminds me that I still want to read the 14th century Chinese epic The Water Margin, all about 108 reincarnated demon heroes called The Stars of Destiny. I wonder how an epic can effectively be about 108 people. I'm very fond of the bits of the story I know, and I enjoy the Suikoden games based roughly around the conceit.

I've only read bits of The Water Margin myself, but based on other experience I'd venture to guess that a lot of those 108 heroes will show up for a few scenes, then leave, without necessarily having any subplots involving them wrapped up.

Posted May 14, 2008 5:46 PM by Dan Blum

I share don@15's interest.

I know a few people who seem to be planning for a post-oil future of bucolic subsistence farms, which seems not entirely correct--cities have been economically useful before we started burning fossil fuels so I expect they'll continue to be useful after. But of course as a city-dweller with a brown thumb I have a vested interest in believing that.

Is there a macroeconomist in the house?

Posted May 14, 2008 5:47 PM by Seth Gordon

Nine is the number of my orisha = santo.

Important number in my life.

Love, C.

Posted May 14, 2008 5:49 PM by Constance Ash

Dan @ 18

The (probably) full-length translations I was looking at earlier today run four volumes each - lots of space for that many characters. (It shows up as The Water Margin or as The Three Kingdoms.)

Posted May 14, 2008 5:53 PM by P J Evans

The Water Margin/Outlaws of the Marsh has a very interesting structure. The story will follow one character for a while until he intersects with another, then goes off following the second character until he meets another, and so on, eventually looping back around to meet up with the earlier ones. It's quite effective, although it does drag a bit toward the end of the book.

The last time I read it I found myself laughing uncontrollably at the "Flowery Monk" passages. This book also contains the episode from which the Golden Lotus/Jin Ping Mei is spun off, which is another topic entirely.

Posted May 14, 2008 6:01 PM by y

Another version: Outlaws of the Marsh

Posted May 14, 2008 6:10 PM by P J Evans

Are margin and marsh, indeed, the same word?

Just like verge is actually a strip of grass on the edge of something.

"It was there on the marge of Lake LaBarge,
I cremated Sam McGee"
says a poem by Robert W. Service

Posted May 14, 2008 6:26 PM by Erik Nelson

Dammit, Jim, I'm an English techer, not a mathematician! 10-8-6-4-2 is the best I can do ...

On the other hands, friends:

I held my tongue the last time, being from New England, even if I wouldn't know football from Martian gaen-gai, but does anyone else think Arlen Specter's obsession with the Patriot's video taping scandal is a little nuts?

I mean, c'mon, three questions:

1) Is the filming of team signals and possible subsequent destruction of these tapes really more important and more deserving than, say, I don't know, the filming of the waterboarding and "possible" torture of US "detainees" and subsequent destruction of those tapes?

2) He's going to open an independent investigation because this scandal is equivalent to steroid use? So he's saying ALL teams, or at least many, have been doing it, and he wants to catch and punish all of them?

3) What is the deal here? Does it seem to anyone else like he maybe bet heavy on his team and lost, and now wants to get even or something?

Posted May 14, 2008 6:28 PM by pedantic peasant

*waves* at Seth Gordon, 19, who asked,
Is there a macroeconomist in the house?

Now, this is Making Light, so I'm assuming that any minute someone will chime in with...

ahem
I am the very model of a modern macro-economist,
I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral,
I know the sheiks of commerce, and I quote the shares historical
From Marathon to Standard Oil, in order categorical;
I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical,
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical,
About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news,
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse!
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse!

Posted May 14, 2008 6:39 PM by don delny

B. Durbin - You're scaring me. I'm still 6 weeks out, and while I am already experiencing waking every time I need to roll over because somehow I can't do that in my sleep anymore, the mouth that tastes like dead cabbage is a symptom I've not heard of before. (Yes, this is my first, why do you ask?)

Posted May 14, 2008 6:45 PM by EClaire

What would really suck about a Great Depression II is that in 2040 our grandkids would have to suffer through ten seasons of The Waltons: Generation Y.

Posted May 14, 2008 7:01 PM by Stefan Jones

EClaire @ 27... the mouth that tastes like dead cabbage

Ewwww...

Posted May 14, 2008 7:03 PM by Serge

abi @ 9 : Don't forget that the Thanksgiving turkey is also KICKING you at random intervals, sometimes hard enough to bruise ribs.

And there's a bocce ball resting on your bladder.

There is a reason I only have the one daughter.

Posted May 14, 2008 7:13 PM by Rikibeth

pedantic peasant #25: What kind of, ahem, techer are you?

Posted May 14, 2008 7:27 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Fragano @ 31

One who just completed a graduate class whose major papers all coincided with the reporting dates for classroom grades at work.

A side effect of which is apparently poor typing and partial blindness.

Posted May 14, 2008 7:37 PM by pedantic peasant

Addressing what it would feel like if everyone around me were also poor... well. Isn't that what fiction is for?

Of course, I'm thinking of children's literature right now, and while some books managed to give a fairly vivid picture of what daily life was like in the Great Depression, I'm not sure that those sources are going to help. The people in those books have an almost unrecognizable outlook, even though they're the age of my eldest uncles, or my grandparents.

For one thing, so many of them are actively religious. Most of the people around me are NOT, and the ones who are don't reflect the uncritical acceptance of religious frameworks that the people in the books do. That's a HUGE change.

And of course the Net. Even if I'm no longer able to afford access at my house, there's the public library, and cafes with wifi where, if I can afford a cup of coffee, I can get online, as long as this laptop keeps working. It's not the same experience as everyone sitting around the radio.

Travel might get harder.

Food -- so far I haven't been as heavily affected by rising food prices as some people I know. Cooking mostly vegetarian has insulated me. And I know how to cook even more economically than I do now.

Backyard container gardens might happen. I'm not very good at them, but I could read up and try to do better.

The CSA membership is DEFINITELY happening next season.

I hope not to be significantly unemployed -- I'm a baker, and it's my guess that while people will cut BACK on their luxury foods, there are still going to be people who buy a morning scone, and people will still have weddings, even if they're smaller.

I don't know. I really don't.

Posted May 14, 2008 7:38 PM by Rikibeth

Abi, I just bought a bunch of bookbinding supplies. I may make a mess of it, but you make it sound like so much fun.

Hmm - I can't relate that back to 108 in any way; I didn't spend quite that much. But I'm posting it anyway because I'm really excited!

Posted May 14, 2008 7:43 PM by Sarah

RE Great Depression II, I'm getting the same whiff of Fear for Sale that I sensed leading up to Y2K, and a few years ago when a Bird Flu pandemic was just around the corner, and a few years before that when an Ebola breakout was bound to happen.

Yes, we could be in for tough times, but they're not a) inevitable, b) inevitably worst case, and almost certainly not c) best addressed by stocking up on rice and guns.

Me, I've been buying lots of nonperishable food lately, as coupons and sales allow . . . to bring to the food bank.

Posted May 14, 2008 7:54 PM by Stefan Jones

pedantic peasant #32: Happens to all of us at some time or other. I just had to deal with a bad case of 'I didn't plagiarise, I just turned in the wrong paper'* to which my only response was to hang up the phone (having explained that I'd turned in the paperwork on the case to the appropriate dean and there was nothing I could do to recall it) after saying for the third time that I resented being told blatant lies.

*Lifted straight off the Stanford Philosophy web page on Aristotle. Google is a technology unknown to those over thirty, it seems.

Posted May 14, 2008 7:57 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Rikibeth #33: I take it by CSA you do not mean the Caribbean Studies Association.

My parents lived through the Depression (my father was ten in 1929, my mother, one) and its aftermath (Spain in the 1940s, especially after World War II was even worse off than during the the Depression). Penny pinching was first nature to them, and the stories of hardship they told were heartrending (granted, the stories my father told were of growing up in a British colony in the West Indies, so they were about endemic poverty made even worse by the Great Depression).

Posted May 14, 2008 8:02 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Fragano @ 36

Yeah,

The English department in my school is having a debate over appropriateness and accessability of Cliff and related Notes.

In the middle of this I have three students in mid-level classes turn in what are supposed to be analytical research papers, using on-line Spark Notes as a critical source.

On the plus side (sort of) at least they did cite them correctly ....

Posted May 14, 2008 8:04 PM by pedantic peasant

I grew up in a world filled with people for whom the Depression was the most real thing still in their lives, no matter how old they were / are / became, no matter World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, etc.

I was brought up to live as though we were in the Depression. It never let my older relatives go, any more than my mother ever was able to let it go either, despite her being of another generation.

These are people who stayed where they were, in the communities they were in -- this was mostly rural -- and were still there. And yes, religion was a very large part of it.

This is why I never have fit in anywhere except Cuba. I was brought up in a culture and perspective that the rest of the nation had moved beyond even a generation or two before I was born.

Love, C.

Posted May 14, 2008 8:08 PM by Constance Ash

pedantic peasant #38: Because copying is the same thing as thinking, of course... The worst case I've heard of was one at another institution where a student thought he'd be clever, and found what he thought was an obscure journal and copied almost a whole article for a term paper. He forgot to notice that the author of the article was the instructor of the course. What made it worse, said the instructor to me, was that he (the instructor that is) no longer took the position he had held when he wrote the article.

Posted May 14, 2008 8:13 PM by Fragano Ledgister

Fragano #37: Community Supported Agriculture. I've belonged to a CSA farm before, and I've enjoyed it -- I didn't sign up in time this year.

Posted May 14, 2008 8:40 PM by Rikibeth

My parents were born in the Depression; my wife's parents grew up during the Depression. It hit them in different ways-- in my side of the family, the economic downturn did in the family business; in my wife's family, the big hit was the Dust Bowl drought on their farm, where literally no rain fell for years at a time.

It had a big influence on the way our families managed their affairs, and a fair bit of that ethic was passed on to us. So we both have a natural tendency to want to save for harder times, to avoid unnecessary debt (and to pay off any debt we do incur as fast as we can), to limit our consumption, and to invest heavily in education for our kids. There are certainly countervailing tendencies on both our parts, but we still tend to be on the frugal side of the median in most areas.

So far, in part thanks to those practices, and in part thanks to fairly stable employment situations, we haven't been hit hard directly by the current economic turmoil. Though if stagflation settles in, as we've been seeing signs for in the short term at least, that'll hurt us along with everyone else. We remember the 1970s too.

One thing that's a bit chilling to us is that we're also seeing a replay of the Depression-era climate in some regions. My wife's mom reports that since last July, they've had less than 1.5 inches of rain on their farm (in Saskatchewan, not in an irrigated area). I really hope we don't see a repeat of that part of the 1930s as well.

Posted May 14, 2008 8:45 PM by John Mark Ockerbloom

The (probably) full-length translations I was looking at earlier today run four volumes each - lots of space for that many characters. (It shows up as The Water Margin or as The Three Kingdoms.)

Translations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms run to four volumes as well, but it has the structure (or lack of it) that I described. The Water Margin probably does not follow history even as closely as Romance (which is not too closely), which would help give it more structure.

Posted May 14, 2008 9:00 PM by Dan Blum

EClaire: I have a lot of friends who have had kids in the last two years, and only one other of them reports the strange taste syndrome. (I had been having difficulties with that the whole pregnancy, so if your mouth tastes fine, I wouldn't worry.)

Actually, I had one friend who couldn't brush her teeth for several months because the smell of toothpaste made her gag. Hmm.

And I hadn't realized until you pointed it out— I don't have a backache. Yay! (And I am laughing about the turkey idea, because it really does throw your balance off like that.)

On the whole "What would a Depression feel like?"— have you been poor? Or at least felt as though you're stuck in a situation? I would imagine a lot of people would feel that way, and have a low-level malaise.

However, if you have since managed to pull yourself out of that situation, and have developed better skills, I think you'd have a better mental outlook from the get-go. "I can fix this" is a better headspace than "I'm stuck." After all, I can look at my parents and realize that they both grew up in straitened circumstances, and that they did better by us kids, and if (for example) my mother could put up with oatmeal for breakfast day in and day out (and sometimes for other meals as well), I can bloody well figure out something to do.

(Yes, I've been poor, still getting out of the financial hole we dug at that point, BUT I was still in a better position than my parents. Worst came to worst, we could always count on them to feed us!)

Posted May 14, 2008 9:18 PM by B. Durbin

Re: Great Depression II.

I don't believe in it; there's no evidence that there'll be a crash that huge. Remember that part of the problem in the US economy during the Greate Depression was that the rest of the world (well, large parts of Europe, anyway) had already fallen into the toilet.* The world economy isn't as monolithic now as the Western economy was then.

Not to say we aren't going to have a lovely little recession here in the US. All the spin doctors are busy telling us things aren't as bad as we all feared, but they're not admitting that there are a couple of other shoes yet to drop, including about 2 million home foreclosures this year.

I can answer one of the questions about the Depression: the gap between rich and poor became greater. I know this because I once lived in a cottage on the estate of the man who supplied concrete for the construction of the Empire State Building, which was completed during the Depression. That estate was built using the profits of the sale; it's a bunch of acres on a hill just outside of Peekskill, N.Y. There'a a large main house, a carriage house, and the cottage, as well as garages, gardening sheds, etc. For several years the owner employed an artist who lived onsite to decorate the place; the garages and sheds for instance have pastoral scenes made of carved lead sheets applied to the doors and walls.

This at a time when the workers who were building the Empire State Building were working frantically for low wages to keep from joining their friends in the bread lines.

* "Anybody want a wheelbarrow full of Reichmarks?"
"Nah, tissues are better for blowing your nose."

Posted May 14, 2008 9:31 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Indeed, one of my contingency plans if the economy really tanks is to go Into Service, because there will certainly still be people who could use a live-in cook-housekeeper, and could afford to pay one who's willing to work for room, board, and a nominal weekly stipend.

Posted May 14, 2008 9:57 PM by Rikibeth

B. Durbin - oh good. Generally I think I've had it fairly easy throughout this whole experience, but that sounded so revolting that I was terrified that there were sneaky side effects waiting just around the corner. I'll stick to my 6 months of dizzy spells due to low blood pressure, thanks. Much easier to deal with.

Posted May 14, 2008 10:09 PM by EClaire

In the introduction, Xopher said:
"108° is the interior measurement of the angles in a regular pentagon." My partner Martin would like to point out that 108 degrees is the interior measurement of *one* angle of a regular pentagon.

Also, Craig @ 17 said:
"There is also a 4-dimensional analogue of the dodecahedron, called the "120-cell"
This kind of depends on how you define "4-dimensional analogue". Martin says there are 6 regular hyper-solids; he wonders how many of them have pentagonal symmetry.

From me, on all this Depression talk. Don't worry, they'll just put a bunch of Prozac in the water and everyone will be just fine.

On a more serious note, my Dad grew up during the Depression, and he taught me a lot about surviving on meager resources. I suspect those of us who can remember such knowledge, either from personal experience or transmission from elders, will have a lot to contribute to the ongoing discussion. For example, there is a reason some of us stockpile; that's how people used to get through the year. You grew food in the summer and bartered in the fall, and it lasted until the following fall.

Posted May 14, 2008 10:11 PM by Magenta Griffith

Can I just say, I finally ordered my copy of Gene Wolfe's (and Lisa Snellings-Clark's) Strange Birds, and I am all a-twitter waiting for it?

Posted May 14, 2008 10:15 PM by JimR

My father grew up on a farm (and later a dairy) during the Depression, and my mother's parents also had enough land for a small farm, although her father worked in the post office. One of my mother's aunts was the main source of income in her family; her husband lost his job and ended up a school janitor, but they had nearly an acre on which they raised vegetables and also ducks and chickens, selling the eggs (and maybe some of the birds) for additional money.

I suspect this had something to do with my father planting fruit trees everywhere we lived, and gardens in most of them.

Posted May 14, 2008 10:23 PM by P J Evans

There are 108 stitches in a baseball.

Re: Depression II: Already people in urban and suburban places are putting in what gardens they can for herbs & veg, raising chicken if zoning allows. Gas prices have already forced some small businesses in my hometown to close - furniture movers & a floral delivery business.

But I really think it would just encourage people to get creative, figure things out with their immediate community about how to share and barter.

Heck, maybe board games and Twister would come back as entertainment. Live music in the backyard.

I mean, Argentina went through a huge economic meltdown and - as an entire country - adopted a small-business barter system for an economy.

Posted May 14, 2008 10:25 PM by joyjoy

A garden in the backyard is one of the ways my parents managed to feed five kids. Salad all summer long. (I really LIKE salad.) The pity is that California decided about 30 years ago that a .15 acre lot is good, and they've been shrinking ever since. It's kind of hard to get a good garden going if you literally have no backyard because a previous owner decided they wanted a strip of patio.

Posted May 14, 2008 10:35 PM by B. Durbin

This may deserve its own posting -- don't want to hijack this thread -- but Barbara Bauer's legal snitfit against Wikipedia is getting some publicity, as the Wikimedia Foundation has apparently recently filed a motion to dismiss. This, of course, has served to further publicize the claims she finds so libelous, which strikes me as somewhat self-defeating.

Posted May 14, 2008 10:44 PM by Calton Bolick

Magenta 48: I meant the interior measurement of EACH of the angles in a regular pentagon.

Posted May 14, 2008 11:01 PM by Xopher

Rikibeth, #33, I was in Vienna (VA) yesterday* and stopped at a bakery where I usually love their stuff and there was one cinnamon roll and it didn't taste very good. They only had about half their regular items out, and instead of a display case, had made a series of chairs and tables for a "cafe."

Stefan, #35, our food bank was robbed! I just gave them money, they can buy directly from the manufacturers for less than I can buy from the store.

*Shiva has had trouble with his teeth for about a month and I was referred last week to a dental vet in Vienna and got an appointment yesterday. We were there seven hours (although I did go out to lunch and do a bit of shopping as long as I was that far in) and all his teeth are out. I have pain syringes to just squeeze into his mouth. He's drooling like crazy and is really mad at me. When Giorgio (RIP) got all his teeth out, he bounced right back. Shiva is moving slower.

Posted May 14, 2008 11:12 PM by Marilee

#42: "It had a big influence on the way our families managed their affairs, and a fair bit of that ethic was passed on to us."

Same here. My parents, born in '34 and '36, weren't big spenders when I was growing up, and I'm not now.

#55: Robbed the food bank? Cripes!

I write checks for food bank / second harvest / heifer project at the end of the year, but I buy and donate food often because the bargain hunting is a sort of game. Sublimated compulsive shopping, maybe? A couple of weeks back I bought ten boxes of Cheerios for under $.50 each. They're in my car now, waiting for a chance to run by the donation center. I budget for it and it does good.

Posted May 14, 2008 11:58 PM by Stefan Jones

#51: "Heck, maybe board games and Twister would come back as entertainment. Live music in the backyard."

One of my publishers claimed to love recessions because sales went up for games.

Along similar lines, I have hopes that a recession won't hurt my employers' line of work, supplying technology to cable companies. People who have some money will swap pricey travel for at-home movies and web surfing.

Live music . . . that would be cool. My aunt and her husband host house concerts. Jazz, mostly. Guests bring $10 and some finger food.

Posted May 15, 2008 12:07 AM by Stefan Jones

Donations to food banks can also be a part of your emergency preparation kit.

This works well if you find it difficult to organize extra foods to rotate in and out of your own pantry. (Tracking how much you have, having to replace bits and pieces of the emergency kit every week or two.)

Instead, buy long-lasting foods for donation, wait a few months, and then drop them off. Buy a new set just before donating the earlier set. Doing this means you have emergency foods at all times, but only have to think about it two or three times a year.

Posted May 15, 2008 12:14 AM by Kathryn from Sunnyvale

I remember the Great Depression well, and I can tell you that activities such as movies we're less frequent indulgences, and they cost much less than they do now. A dime would get you in the door and you brought a piece of Fleer's Double Bubble gum (1 cent) with you. (If you were six or seven) You could buy popcorn for a nickel or dime, I can't remember because I never could afford it. You could get a hamburger and a malt for 25 cents. Pork chops were four for a dollar, and our total grocery bill for a week was about $4 for a family of eight. Many people in our town did truck farming, and in the summer you really lived on fresh vegetables. So learn to garden and to mend clothing. I know that everyone is stocking up on rice, but don't forget pinto beans and large quantities of wheat flour.

Posted May 15, 2008 12:21 AM by BNDowell

Rikibeth @ 33: "Travel might get harder."

It will definitely get harder, won't it? If there is a GDII, there won't be droves of Okies heading to California--they won't be able to afford the gas.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:12 AM by heresiarch

#60: They'll have to brew corn into ethanol along the way.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:38 AM by Stefan Jones

B. Durbin @7:
Why not? Endless summer would appear to be on the way; then again, for some of us it's been September for over two decades....

abi @9:
Well, exceprt the klick is coming from the other side. Often literally. (Why yes, my sister and various nieces have complained a fair bit about their pregancies; why do you ask?)

Seth Gordon @19:
In such a scenario, the cities will survive, perhaps a bit shrunken. The suburbs, on the other hand, are toast: they will revert to farmland. (I grew up in a suburb which was still making that jump.)

Rikibeth @33:
CSA will be happening this year unless I land a job offer in .nz first. (How serious I am about that depends on my mood.)

And, aside to Fragano: "community supported agriculture", often called "farmshare". I was headed that way anyway, as I'm gradually dropping all the preprocessed crap from my diet and making more stuff from scratch; veggies from the local supermarket are expensive in small quantities and don't last long. And aren't local, when shipping costs are likely to increase considerably.

My own concession to stocking up: edamame. Otherwise, I've decided stocking up is the wrong answer: being able to grow it myself, or to do something I can barter(*) for others' produce, is better. It'll take time for that to ramp up, but I don't think any expected collapse will happen that quickly (unless our dear Emperor and his handlers find new ways to continue their economic rape far beyond any sane limit. If so, the dollar will already be completely worthless in the international market by then, so we have a benchmark.)

(*) the question being what a sysadmin on the wrong side of 40 can come up with in that area. I may have to fall back on stamina and become a laborer.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:39 AM by geekosaur

re cities, farms and depressions: The city predates oil/fossile fuels. The present model (sprawly places, with large commuting distances) however, is less feasible. Contraction would be likely to occur.

I was pondering how to build a milpas and how to design it for maximal water efficiency (I live in Los Angeles). I think, with some bentonite, and a carefully designed cistern, I can recycle the water (which would otherwise just leach away), but it would be a lot of work.

On the other hand, with a good system like that, an acre can probably support four people; so long as one has the seed to get it going the first year.

Maia has inheirited traits from her mother; which are traits she got from her parents. They were in their early marriage in the Depression (one of the amusements is that Jake bought Lorraine a platinum ring, and she got pitying looks from people who assumed that Jake hadn't been able to afford gold, and bought silver).

That was with Jake not out of work (he was a machinist). To their dying days they were terribly tight with money; even though they had two pensions and lot of Chevron stock.

Posted May 15, 2008 2:34 AM by Terry Karney

Sarah @34:
Abi, I just bought a bunch of bookbinding supplies. I may make a mess of it, but you make it sound like so much fun.

Oooh! What did you buy?

It is fun, though houseguests, Dutch studies, the Gooey Kablooey, work and getting our rented house ready to return to its owners* has kept me from binding for a month or so now.

I presume you've seen my instructional/confessional site, the Bookweb? It details, among other things, pretty much everything I did wrong in the first few years of binding (in the gallery section). So if you do make a mess, at least you know you're not alone!

Keep us posted how it goes, and feel free to email me if you have any questions.

Posted May 15, 2008 3:35 AM by abi

Stefan Jones @ 61: "They'll have to brew corn into ethanol along the way."

Hard to do when you can't afford the corn either.

Now if they could make ethanol from cellulose--different picture. Suddenly kudzu by the roadside is your best friend.

Posted May 15, 2008 3:44 AM by heresiarch

"CSA membership is happening next year", "I spent time working on a CSA farm and quite enjoyed it" - such phrases cause brainshear for those of us who read CSA as "Confederate States of America". I doubt things will get quite that bad...

Posted May 15, 2008 4:47 AM by ajay

66: I know.

In the UK, it seems a lot more people have taken up allotments or are planting vegetables rather than flowers.

Posted May 15, 2008 6:25 AM by Martin Wisse

It is now possible to get CGI models of the Democratic Party fronr runners.

I reckon it's about time to be extra wary of press photographs.

Posted May 15, 2008 6:49 AM by Dave Bell

Macroeconomics used to be a hobby of mine back in the '80s... Hey, SOMETHING had to balance out the excitement of D&D... Let's see how wrong I can get it...

Election year politics will keep the economy from tanking too bad no matter what oil prices do... Even if the Fed has to lop another 1/4 point off the Prime. At least until Christmas...

If the election doesn't bring some positive news about ending the war, consumer confidence will trash the Christmas glut-fest and in Spring '09 we'll see some significant rise in unemployment. When McCain wins in November (and Oh Dear God, Please Let Me Be MORE Wrong About Politics Than The Economy!!!), the war jitters will get really nasty, and the retail industry will give a loud fart, roll over and lapse into a coma that won't end until Summer...

Gas is NOT going down this year or next, so suck it up. There will be minor relief around election time when Bush cuts loose some of the Strategic Reserve to boost confidence (and steal votes), but the fall switch-over to home heating oil production will kill any price-drop... Expect $4.50 a gallon by this time next season, just before Memorial Day. The Chinese are willing to pay $175 a barrel for oil, so the moderate cutbacks we accomplish this year won't affect price enough to stop the price spiral...

If you still drive a Tahoe, invest in a case of Astroglide and bend over... Your safeword will be, "Fill 'Er Up!" although I submit that the choice may not be a wise one...

We still need several really Bad Things to happen to get so far as Great Depression II, and it will take a couple years for all the necessary shit to roll down hill, so it won't get that bad until at least 2010, and probably not then. I agree with the earlier comment that world-wide conditions are not bad enough to spark/sustain a true Depression... Don't look for significant growth until '11, minimum...

Now everyone, please kindly remember to forget I said all this unless it comes true, in which case you all have to send me a dollar...

Posted May 15, 2008 7:00 AM by Edward Oleander

More scariness on gender identity "cures" from Zucker and others, right down to how it's the mother's fault if her son is effeminate.

Posted May 15, 2008 7:38 AM by Susan

A German trend researcher, Horst Opaschowski, proposed "Ten Commandments for the 21st Century" (and here)*, among which were:

"-- Only buy things you really want. Make your personal well-being the main criterium for buying something.
-- Earn your quality of life. Support yourself -- both through work and good works. 'There is no good, except the good one does.'
-- Foster intensive family ties and encourage children to develop long-lasting relationships.
-- Weave yourself a reliable social network, so that you have friends and neighbors to stand by you all your life.
-- Help others, so that you can be in a position to obtain and accept help."

One could discuss the particulars of each item, and I kind of channel Marcus Aurelius reading this, but I was struck by the emphasis on encouraging people to live socially; i.e.,
with and for one another. With or without another Great Depression, it seems to me that a lot of issues that we already have can be ameliorated through people helping each other at a grass-roots level: elder care, education, saving energy, nutrition... and that the grass-roots networks could/should be promoted.

btw, I've been wondering, what's the state of food-coops in the US these days?

*My translation. Couldn't find another one.

Posted May 15, 2008 7:56 AM by Debbie

Well, it appears at least one business is booming in this economy. Making Light spammers ...

Posted May 15, 2008 8:16 AM by Jon Meltzer

Ajay #66: That was how I parsed it, too. Probably the result of too much Turtledove reading. Helpful hint: If a guy named Featherston wants to tell you the truth, it's time to get the hell out of the country. Trust me on this, especially if you're black.

Posted May 15, 2008 8:32 AM by albatross

About the state of the economy and how it could get worse...

Princess Leia: Put that thing away, you're gonna get us all killed!

Han Solo: Absolutely, Your Worship. Look, I had everything under control until you led us down here! Now it's not going to take them long to figure out what happened to us.

Princess Leia: It could be worse.

[Garbage creature growls]

Han Solo: It's worse.

Posted May 15, 2008 8:47 AM by Serge

Terry #63: Yeah, suburbs and exurbs seem like they're very dependent on cheap gas, just because they're built so that it's a massive pain in the a-- to walk anywhere. You don't know how grateful I am that we didn't buy a house 40+ miles away from my work a few years back, when the bubble made decent houses closer in very expensive. (Instead, we kept renting and wondered if I needed to look for a job someplace easier to live.)

Now, it's important to keep this in perspective. Gas prices have more than doubled since 2000, and this has caused some big problems. But it's not like either suburbs or exurbs have gone away. Instead, their inhabitants (esp. exurbs' inhabitants) just have a lot less disposable income to spend. Even if gas hits $10/gallon, it's not like the exurbs would instantly wither and die, though they might eventually do that. (More likely, the house prices will collapse, and over time, there will be a migration of people who can work remotely most of the time into these very nice, cheap houses 60 miles from the city, replacing people who are being clobbered by the gas prices to commute into work every day.)

By contrast, when the jobs go away, the neighborhoods really can die, but I'd expect exurbs to be rather less susceptible to this than most other neighborhoods, because all the people living there usually don't work for the same company or industry. (That's regional, of course.)

Over time, I expect that people with homes in the exurbs will adjust as best they can--buy a good efficient commuter car, carpool, flex their schedule or work from home if possible, find train or bus routes that get them some or all the way to work. Those all have costs, and not all are workable for everyone (if you're a pediatrician or a factory worker, you aren't going to be able to telecommute; if you live way out in the sticks, there's probably not a nearby bus route or train station), but there is some flexibility. From where I live, I could take a bus to work every day, at the cost of about an extra hour of my day.

Has anyone started doing a social networking kind of site for finding carpool partners? This would be really useful.

Posted May 15, 2008 8:48 AM by albatross

It's kind of hard to get a good garden going if you literally have no backyard because a previous owner decided they wanted a strip of patio.

My courtyard is about 8x10, which is large enough to get a respectable veggie patch in (with a few raised beds for the irises)...except it's a courtyard.

I guess I could rip up the concrete, though I'm a little wary of what might be in that dirt; my neighborhood used to be one of Pittsburgh's factory strips, and in fact there's a rather large one not four blocks away that's being torn down. Anyone know how you go about testing soil for bad chemicals?

Posted May 15, 2008 9:11 AM by Carrie S.

PJ @ #21--

Um, you do realize that The Water Margin AKA The Outlaws of the Marsh and Romance of the Three Kingdoms are two different novels, about two entirely different things? Because your post doesn't suggest that.

Both novels have had bits of them made into movies, and the whole things have been made into Chinese television series*, which the determined can probably trace down for themselves without my help. I was intrigued to see that Amazon has a Water Margin mah jong set available.

*As has The Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the other great traditional Chinese novels. It must be a real pain to do an adaptation of such complex books that every single person watching knows something about. Consider what we are like about movies-from-books and multiply to get a billion or so, each person with an opinion of their own.

There are two movies based on Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms coming out this year, one of which (Red Cliff, directed by John Woo) is supposed to be out just in time for the Olympics.

Posted May 15, 2008 9:26 AM by fidelio

Magenta@48: There is one convex regular 4D polytope built out of dodecahedra. It is the only one with pentagonal faces. There is another convex regular 4D polytope with the same symmetry group; just like the icosahedron has the same symmetry group as the dodecahedron.

The convex regular 4D polytopes are: the 5-cell (4-simplex, hyper-tetrahedron [snrk], self-dual), the 8-cell (tesseract, hypercube), the 16-cell (dual to the tesseract, tetrahedral cells), the 24-cell (sort of like a hyper-octahedron, octahedral cells, self-dual), the 120-cell above, and the 600-cell (sort of like a hyper-icosahedron, tetrahedral cells, dual to the 120-cell).

What's even more interesting are the non-convex regular 4D polytopes -- like star polygons in 2D, and stellated polyhedra in 3D. There are a bunch of them with the same symmetry group as the 120-cell, and some have dodecahedral cells.

Posted May 15, 2008 9:38 AM by Craig

Is a manual food processor worth the 25 bucks I'd pay for it? Or should I hold out for a food mill, because I'm trying to cook more soups? I can't find the latter in any of the neighbourhood stores I've tried (I've avoided Walmart). I figure that manual appliances are a better investment than electric ones, although they can be murder on the upper extremities.

Posted May 15, 2008 10:19 AM by Sajia Kabir

fidelio: thanks, I was wondering - that's one thing that is absolutely not clear on the bookstore sites.

Looks like I might want both ....

Posted May 15, 2008 10:43 AM by P J Evans

Sajia, try second-hand stores and such--I have a decent food mill I picked up for about five dollars at one several years ago--simple construction, breaks down easily for cleaning. It's just like the one my mother had for years and years and years, which, now that I look about online a bit, seems to be a Foley.

If a slow search through second-hand stores seems tedious, Google shows several online sources, including Target and Lehman's. OXO makes one; so does Sunbeam. Prices run from about $20 on up.

Beware of Williams-Sonoma; it will look lovely, and when you compare prices your self-respect will suffer if you paid theirs.

I Sajia, try second-hand stores and such--I have a decent food mill I picked up for about five dollars at one several years ago--simple construction, breaks down easily for cleaning. It's just like the one my mother had for years and years and years, which, now that I look about online a bit, seems to be a Foley.

If a slow search through second-hand stores seems tedious, Google shows several online sources, including Target and Lehman's. OXO makes one; so does Sunbeam. Prices run from about $20 on up.

Beware of Williams-Sonoma; it will look lovely, and when you compare prices your self-respect will suffer if you paid theirs.

I

Posted May 15, 2008 10:44 AM by fidelio

Oops.

That was supposed to end up

I love my food mill. It deals with things blenders and food processors can't do anything about, like seeds and peelings and stringy fibers. It runs entirely on renewable power sources, too, but if you're making a really large batch of applesauce or jam or tomato sauce, you'll want rest breaks.

Posted May 15, 2008 10:47 AM by fidelio

Oh, you do, PJ, you do.

Posted May 15, 2008 10:48 AM by fidelio

Depends on the mill. I have one, Maia's mother doesn't (but has a cereal mill) and we have a fruit juicer in the house (what it does for tomatoes... juices lbs in minutes, seeds and skins left behind).

Posted May 15, 2008 11:07 AM by Terry Karney

PJ @ #80:

My standard warning here: don't get the Brewitt-Taylor translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I haven't read the other one that is readily available, but I have to assume the translator has a better ear for English prose than Brewitt-Taylor. (About accuracy I can say nothing, as I don't read Chinese.)

Posted May 15, 2008 11:21 AM by Dan Blum

I've seen juicers like that, Terry, and they are amazing. The typical general food processor or blender, though, while good and useful tools, have some limits, which a pan-style food mill (as opposed to the sausage grinder sort) compensates for wonderfully.

Of course, a pan-style food mill has limits as well--it won't chop, slice, mix or knead, and as the last Good Bits are forced through, it can be very hard to turn the crank.

Posted May 15, 2008 11:24 AM by fidelio

susan @70 -- the shade of Bruno Bettelheim rears its ugly head. When I was an undergraduate, his theory of the origins of autism -- Mom's fault! -- was widely accepted. Now of course, we know that autism is a very complex biochemical and/or neurostructural disorder. The same is true of schizophrenia. And new information is coming out All. The. Time! on possible biological bases of "behavioral" disorders such as OCD. That's why I find Zucker's quote from the recent NPR interview particularly disturbing:

The therapists supporting a child's transition early, I have characterized them in a half serious way as liberal essentialists. On the surface, the approach comes across as very humanistic, liberal, accepting, tolerant of diversity. But I think the hidden assumption is that they believe the child's cross-gender identity is entirely caused by biological factors. That's why I call them essentialists. Liberals have always been critical of biological reductionism, but here they embrace it. I think that conceptual approach is astonishingly naive and simplistic, and I think it's wrong.

Posted May 15, 2008 11:28 AM by Debbie

Dan @ 85

Some of the reviewers were recommending the Moss translation. (One of the other versions is by Shapiro. I believe that's Outlaws.)
See, that's one reason why I love this place: other people know more about obscure stuff than I do.

(What had me looking at this yesterday was a catalog from a (remainder?) bookseller. So I went looking to learn more about it and here we are ....)

Posted May 15, 2008 11:30 AM by P J Evans

From a quick glance at the first pages of the Moss Roberts translation, it looks to be more readable than the Brewitt-Taylor translation.

Brewitt-Taylor went for a sort of faux-archaic feel, with stilted dialogue. (This may partly be due to the fact that he did this in the 1920s, as I recall.) While it might read better than Roberts' more prosaic translation for a bit, I found it rather wearying at length. Not to mention that his ear is not the best. Probably not everyone would find it jarring to have Cao Cao use the phrase "gang aft agley," but I do.

Posted May 15, 2008 12:06 PM by Dan Blum

Carrie S. @76: Don't rip up the pavement -- container gardening would be the way to go.

There are several lovely container garden systems available, I can personally recommend Earthbox (I'm growing alpine strawberries in one). We've got a new planter for tomatos -- the tomato plant goes in upside down, and you can plant other plants in the top (Plow & Hearth or Gardener's Supply catalogs). I'll report back on how well it works.

Rikibeth @33: We bought a half share in a local produce farm, and they had an open house last week. They've planted peas, beans, tomatos, strawberry, bok choy, and cabbage so far. They'll be delivering to our local farm market every Saturday starting May 24th.

Posted May 15, 2008 12:07 PM by Lori Coulson

I think people should be free to choose the gender they wish to live, or the gender they wish to engage in affectionate and sexual relations with, regardless of what is in their genes. It's like with the race thing; I don't care whether or not I share common ancestry with Ann Coulter, she still has an obligation either way to treat me with respect, just as I have an obligation as a moral being to refrain from giving her the punch in the face she thoroughly deserves.
I mean, we're sf/fantasy/horror fans, we're used in fiction to the idea of having sex and friendship with beings who by no stretch of science can be said to have common ancestry with us or fit into human patriarchal gender roles.
We treat others decently because we are capable of moral decisions, not because science, scholarship or religion decreed so.

Posted May 15, 2008 12:11 PM by Sajia Kabir

One of the local gardening experts who loves to container garden has also grown veggies in straw bales. I'll see if I can find more info on it...

Re: GDII - For years I've been stockpiling cross-stitch charts and kitting up some of them. I was doing it for my retirement, and because the cost of supplies has constantly increased. I store them in one of the cedar chests.

Between my embroidery, books, and DVDs, I should be able to keep myself entertained...

Posted May 15, 2008 12:15 PM by Lori Coulson

#88--PJ, which bookseller/catalog was this? Inquiring minds need to know because they suffer from the pleasant delusion they need more books...

Posted May 15, 2008 12:26 PM by fidelio

Sajia --

Much as it would be preferable otherwise, we're all stuck having common ancestry with Ann Coulter.

On the general issue of depressions --

Depressions are a side effect of running the economy as a machine for concentrating and preserving wealth. They're noticeable since 1850 mostly because there was this brief period of running the economy to promote the general welfare for the depression to contrast against.

My suspicion is that the US economy is not so much going to tank as fatally unravel; there will almost certainly be a new one, after, but predicting which one that will be strikes me as impossible. (Many forces attempting to remove the government's ability to regulate and to maximize immediate profit, few forces attempting to assert the value of regulation and to assure reliable profit over future time; that makes it likely that the economy in question won't survive.)

The two things I think are missing from the prior list of suggestions are tools and political action.

Critical tools should have backups and backups of the backups; if this isn't possible (the critical tool is a major capital investment like a milling machine, say) make sure you've got an on-hand stock of spares for anything you would expect to replace. For a writer, this means a couple years of printer ink or toner are a good thing to have on hand; for a home canner, that means having lots of little rubber sealing rings, and so on.

Tools for things you might need to start doing are another good candidate here; I got a 'every bike tool you'll need' pre-packaged toolbox from MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-Op) and while I don't by any means know how to use all of them I at least have all of them, and I might be very pleased at that in the future.

Anything that eases muscle powered transport—wheelbarrows, carts, bike paniers or trailers—is probably a good idea to have around, and to practise with now, while alternatives might be obtained. I don't expect the Toronto transit system to die unless things get very bad indeed, but I do expect (since I do this already) to have to use it to carry heavy and awkward things.

Political action, well, the primary question in a depression is the survival of government on the basis of the consent of the governed. That's doing really quite badly at the moment, and unless it is doing well, things do not improve for the the majority of the population. So insisting on the consent of the governed part and the general welfare part and the mechanism to secure general prosperity part in whatever way you can—there is no optimal way to do this; the essential things are the community with everyone else so insisting and insisting—is proably the best single thing anyone can do to respond to a depression.

Posted May 15, 2008 12:28 PM by Graydon

Debbie #87: Yeah, I remember my mom (who was a special ed teacher) commenting that the theories she got in school on causes of various mental illnesses implied that a lot of major problems (schizophrenia in particular, I think) were the result of horrible, cruel parenting. And that she and all her colleagues pretty much believed that, and thought very badly of people with schizophrenic kids for many years, all based on what she later came to see was BS.

One really important lesson from this kind of thing is how important it is for scientists to make it clear how certain they really are about stuff. Though it seems like there's a strong tendency to speak in maximally authoritative tones to justify research funding and policy prescriptions, and to strengthen the case against academic rivals/alternative schools of thought/etc.

One of my favorite unintentionally funny examples of this was Steve Pinker's pretty good book The Blank Slate. He spends a fair bit of that book pointing out places where psychologists in the past made blanket authoritative statements that were full of sh-t about all kinds of things, based on their models and ideology. He then spends a fair bit of the last quarter of the book making blanket authoritative statements about all kinds of things, based on his models and ideology. There appear to be no recognition of the irony there....

Posted May 15, 2008 12:31 PM by albatross

Here's info on straw bale gardening, and it has additional links as well:

Straw Bale Gardening

Posted May 15, 2008 12:37 PM by Lori Coulson

I thought the Earthbox mentioned by Lori Coulson at 90 looked interesting. The 40.00+ price tag was less interesting. I would love to try container gardening, but know myself well enough to know that I might not follow through after obtaining the materials. I have now found instructions to make a similar container oneself. Very tempting...

Posted May 15, 2008 12:49 PM by Jen B.

fidelio @ 93

The book was from UC Press; they have a two-volume (full) and a one-volume (abridged) version (both translated by Roberts).
The reviews were at Amazon (although I also looked at Powell's). (Amazon is selling Outlaws of the Marsh (5 vol) with the Roberts translation (4 vol) as a package deal. Um, $108.90 ... there's that number again.)
The catalog was Labyrinth, whose books are mostly from university presses.

I first ran across this in an anthology called Hero Tales from Many Lands (Alice Hazeltine), where it was the story called 'The Empty City'. (I recommend this anthology. The title is not an exaggeration.)

Posted May 15, 2008 12:49 PM by P J Evans

#98--Thanks! Because I need more sources for mine own particular kind of crack.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:00 PM by fidelio

The best translator of Romance of the Three Kingdoms that I've run into is Moss Roberts. He has both a full translation out, and a very readable one-volume condensed version that covers the major subplots.

Ear for English? Oh yes, he has that. My husband says he also preserves nuances from the Chinese original text very well. I'd quote -- but my copies are still stashed in a moving carton.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:04 PM by Sylvia Li

I was out working at my CSA yesterday, putting plants in the ground (we can work off part of our share). I also picked up a few veggies to go in the garden that the other half is working on - he gets to be in charge of growing foodstuffs while I do the herb garden. I'm doing a 'raised' bed psedo-medieval herb garden and concentrating on putting in herbs that I use constantly or ones that I use in cooking research*. While he and I are not self-sufficient, we are seriously working on cutting down on the amount we have to buy by canning, cooking, and bartering. It's a challenge, certainly, and I find myself calling one grandmother frequently and wishing the other still was capable of helping (my father's mother taught food preservation at CUNY in the 40s. I should pull out the recipe boxes when I'm home next...I could use some of them, I think.)

However, the USPS is our aid in barter. I have 12 bottles of sekanjabin (mint, raspberry, and blueberry) sitting in my basement, much more mint in the ground, some carboys of mead started, and a website full of jewelry. Shall we start the trading? ;)

*speaking of which, I've got fennel in this year. Suggestions of what to use it in/with would be appreciated.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:05 PM by Sisuile

Edward Oleander at #69
Macroeconomics used to be a hobby of mine back in the '80s... Hey, SOMETHING had to balance out the excitement of D&D...

well, aren't they sort of the same thing at times? You are pretending that obscure mathematical things in books are a realistic model of things, and often you are doing it for a bunch of people who feel they are entitled to have everything.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:20 PM by Erik Nelson

This just in .... the CA state supreme court has ruled that statutes banning same-sex marriage are unconstitutional!

Posted May 15, 2008 1:22 PM by P J Evans

Erik, you could DEFINITELY be on to something there! Lucky I wasn't drinking anything as I read that... Thanks!
:-)

Posted May 15, 2008 1:29 PM by Edward Oleander

Lori Coulson @90 -- We've got a new planter for tomatos -- the tomato plant goes in upside down, and you can plant other plants in the top.

I bet that will work pretty well. I've had good results growing cherry tomatoes as hanging plants, and had wanted to mention it earlier as a space-saving idea for balcony gardeners. Tomatoes are actually vines and want to creep, not stand up anyway.

albatross @95 -- I so agree about the humility. And that particularly impressed me about Diane Ehrensenf, the other interviewee in the NPR piece. She specifically addressed the need to be humble and careful about gender diagnoses.

As a therapist, at some point you have to make decisions and take actions, and there are pressures from many sides. But when and why is important. One of my practicum supervisors drove us all nuts with his 'hypothesis testing model.' We had to brainstorm EVERY POSSIBLE cause of the presenting problem (child/family clinic), then test those hypotheses and rule things out. We wanted to TREAT, the parents put a lot of pressure on us to DO SOMETHING, but Dr. W. stuck to his guns. Learned a heck of a lot from him. (Re: Pinker -- Heh. Why be humble when you're sure you're RIGHT??)

Sisuile @ 101 -- fennel seeds or bulbs? I've got a great recipe for Fennel Paysanne, which is probably actually reasonably old.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:31 PM by Debbie

I've seen juicers like that, Terry, and they are amazing. The typical general food processor or blender, though, while good and useful tools, have some limits, which a pan-style food mill (as opposed to the sausage grinder sort) compensates for wonderfully.

If I had to have one and one only, it'd be a blender. But I am very fond of soup and doing pureed soup in a blender is the easiest way to do it.

A food mill is next on the essential list, since it makes a *whole* bunch of things (like pumpkin pie) doable. I don't even want to *think* about what fun processing pumpkin pie filling from scratch would be without a food mill. Also, it makes good baby food.

A food processor is best at things I'm already very good at doing manually, and it isn't much faster than I am for my usual batch sizes. But... I've put in a good 15 years learning to chop quickly and efficiently, mix bread dough and the like. For someone who doesn't have the time or inclination to learn the physical skills, a food processor is a godsend. And for large batch cooking (more than 6 adults), the food processor outpaces me and the cleaning tax is no longer more trouble than it's worth.

Tools for things you might need to start doing are another good candidate here; I got a 'every bike tool you'll need' pre-packaged toolbox from MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-Op) and while I don't by any means know how to use all of them I at least have all of them, and I might be very pleased at that in the future.

Tools and instructions on how to use them are always a good idea. A bike repair book is less necessary these days since many bike mechanics have put up instructions for all sorts of tasks... but a hard copy backup is often useful.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:42 PM by Emily

"The Water Margin" got onto TV in the UK, in the late 70's. Many of the cast names, and some of the locations, look Japanese to me, but IMDB has it down as a Chinese production.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:49 PM by Dave Bell

I push the button every 108 minutes....

Posted May 15, 2008 1:50 PM by Janet Brennan Croft

Debbie @105: I've mentally christened the planter "Babylon" -- You fill the base with sand or water, put the support pillars in and place the planter box on top of the pillars.

Then you take your tomato plants and place them in the holes in the bottom of the box, so they're hanging upside down and add soil. We're planting bell peppers, herbs and marigolds in the top...

We'll be putting that together next weekend -- we just reached our frost-free date, and past experience has taught us not to set out tomato plants before Memorial Day. (Our CSA farm has set some of their tomatos out, but they've got them under row covers.)

Posted May 15, 2008 1:53 PM by Lori Coulson

Thoughts on the last few weeks of pregnancy. My favourite memories are of losing my balance at a farmers market and starting to run forward. Unfortunately, my belly threw me way off balance and I started to charge a sweater stand. I just couldn't pull myself upright and stop. The guy at the sweater stand looked terrified and my husband was standing behind me open mouthed. I remember thinking something along the lines of: "I'm carrying a carton of eggs right now, I have to stop." I pulled myself upright at the last minute. I don't know who was more relieved.

Regarding the Great Depression II. I grew up rural and poor and my Mother grew up on the proverbial dirt farm. I canned, made jam, baked bread and helped my Mother with the garden from as early as I can remember. She supported four kids on her own after my father left, with two jobs. But that huge garden made a big difference.

I think what people would experience in this case is mainly much more work, of all types. But I don't honestly think we would replicate the 1930's. If a depression did occur I think it would have a very different feel and flavour. It might be better to look at a city like Mexico city to see what we would encounter.

Posted May 15, 2008 1:56 PM by Noelle

#107 Dave Bell--IIRC, the 1970s was a joint Japanese-Chinese project; the Chinese did another television series based on The Water Margin in the late 1990s.

Posted May 15, 2008 2:09 PM by fidelio

P J Evans (103):
This just in .... the CA state supreme court has ruled that statutes banning same-sex marriage are unconstitutional!
You beat by two minutes for the announcement, so I went and looked at the decision, it is remanded back to the appellate court for the actual action, I'm not sure how long that takes.

48 States to go*!

*Plus other US entities with self rule.

Posted May 15, 2008 2:12 PM by John Houghton

Speaking of herbs, we have a huge clump of tarragon growing in a pot; it's doing far better than we thought it would (it's almost as happy as the rosemary in the front yard), and we just don't know what to do with so much of it. Are there recipes that use a lot of tarragon, or that we might like so much we'll make them all the time?

Posted May 15, 2008 2:15 PM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

Eric #102: So, we seem to have missed our saving throw against cost-push inflation, but made the save against financial system collapse, at least for the time being. Though I have to say, I'm not too crazy about the addition of the Oil Dictator NPCs, even though it probably is good for game balance.

General Question: Does anyone have a good link for how much people can adjust their lives based on energy prices at fairly low cost? I'm sure there will be diminishing returns at some point, but it sure seems like a family with two SUVs in the garage and an 120 mile round trip, 5-day-a-week commute has a lot of savings available. Frex, if you changed cars and went from 20 MPG to 30 MPG, you'd save 10 gallons per week[1][2]. If you carpooled or flexed out your schedule so you were only driving in half the days, you'd save another 10 gallons per week.

Similarly, stuff like planning trips to the store a bit can decrease your gasoline usage some, though I'm not sure how much. Insulation, lowering the thermostat, turning off lights, all that stuff surely helps, but I'm curious how much of the slack it can take up?

I think it's a mistake to assume that a big recession is going to be uniform. Some industries and some regions are likely to take a bigger hit than others, because all the specific parts going into the recession hit different places differently. For example, a lot of homeowners in bubble-affected places like Montgomery County, Maryland got clobbered by the fall of their house prices, often after they'd taken out second mortgages for good or bad reasons. There are a lot of bank-owned properties around here. This didn't hit mid-Missouri nearly so hard, because they didn't have the massive rise in housing prices that led to people taking out huge mortgages on them. On the other hand, a meltdown of farming will affect mid-Missouri in ways that the DC area will barely notice. And all kinds of stuff works like this--a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration, a tradewar with China, or a major shift in government spending on social programs[3] will have radically different effects in mid-Missouri, the DC area, and the Pacific Northwest.

I think something similarly non-uniform is happening with respect to inflation right now. Around here, housing prices have dropped, but fuel has gotten more expensive. One effect of this is that the tradeoff between bigger houses far away and smaller houses nearer to work has shifted, in a way you'd never expect by just thinking in terms of inflation.

[1] This is the kind of change you