Individual and Community

So my wife and I were having a discussion — Is a Soybean A Vegatable?

Vegetables in a market

Vegetable is a nutritional and culinary term denoting any part of a plant that is commonly consumed by humans as food, but is not regarded as a culinary grain, fruit, nut, herb, or spice.

These include leaf vegetables (e.g. lettuce), stem vegetables (asparagus), root vegetables (carrot) and flower vegetables (broccoli), and botanical fruits such as green beans, cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins, tomatoes, avocados, capsicums, et cetera, as well as fleshy, immature seeds such as those of peas or beans.

Vegetable is not a botanical term and so there is no contradiction in a plant part being a fruit botanically and being considered a vegetable.

In general, vegetables are thought of as being eaten in the main course, not as dessert or breakfast (with some exceptions, such as rhubarb).

Commercial production of vegetables is a branch of horticulture called olericulture.

Vegetable is also used as a literary term for any plant: vegetable matter, vegetable kingdom.

From wikipedia.

1994 - Sept. 07, 2005

Max

My cat Max was run over by a car last night. Max is the black cat on the right. She liked sleeping, watching TV, bossing our other cat around, and generally being the center of attention.

Max and Me when we just moved in to our house in Iowa.

Max lived in a lot of places with us:

• Charlottesville, Virginia
• Malvern, Pennsylvania
• Fairborn, Ohio
• Yellow Springs, Ohio
• Mt. Vernon, Iowa

Max’s grave in our back yard.

Bye little buddy.

Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame, now has a show on FX ‘30 days’. In the movie Super Size Me, he ate nothing but McDonalds for 30 days, and tracked his weight gain and the effects on his health.

30 Days (large Flash-based site) has an episode that features 2 normal every day people from New York who go to live in an eco-village in Missouri for 30 days. They have to account for their energy usage, and learn to live off of the land in a more environmentally sensible manner. They are in for the shock of their lives!

I built the grain bin apartment that the visitors lived in! Humped my butt for 90 days buidling that thing — lots of other people helped as well, to be fair.

Looks like the episode “Off-The-Grid” will be the 5th Episode of “30 Days”. No air date yet.

Morgan’s Blog - non- Flash, easier to read/access.

POST Episode Update

At first, “Off the Grid” seems to lack anyone for the audience to sympathize with. The conspicuous consumers come across as spoiled bullies, while their eco-friendly counterparts seem too whiny and fanatical. As the episode progresses, though, we find ourselves rooting for both groups. These episodes work because they show how positive interaction between diverse groups can help to change hearts and minds. source: http://www.tvdvdreviews.com/30days1.html

Long hours at computers may cause blood clots
By Anand Parthasarathy

The Hindu Online edition of India’s National Newspaper
Friday, Jan 31, 2003

Sitting before a computer all day can cause blood clots similar to deep
vein thrombosis (right) afflicting some long-haul airline passengers.
(Photo: University of California, San Diego)

Bangalore Jan. 30. - If your work or life-style demands that you spend long hours in front of a computer, change it. Doctors have found that the activity could cause blood clots in the unmoving lower limbs, then travel upwards into the lungs with possible fatal consequences. The effect is chillingly similar to what is now known as “economy class syndrome” medically known as deep vein thrombosis (DVT) that has led to the death of a few airline passengers who spent 12-16 hours cooped up in the cramped economy class seats of long-haul airlines.

In this month’s issue of the European Respiratory Journal, a team of New Zealand-based doctors led by Richard Beasley, reports on the case of a 32-year-old patient developing a life-threatening blood clot because he spent over 12 hours a day seated at his personal computer, rarely standing up in between. Initially he merely suffered from swollen feet, a common experience with middle-aged persons doing sedentary tasks. However, the condition persisted and he lost consciousness after developing breathing trouble. Doctors saved him by administering blood-thinning drugs.
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