My favorite president. ;-)

My favorite Franklin story is about how he would enter the constitutional convention in a sedan chair carried by four prisoners from the Walnut Street jail in Philadelphia. Hardly the humble man of the people some people think he was.

*promote *quality history

One grating mistake: nogal (pl nogales) means "walnut tree", not walnut. Nuez (pl nueces) means walnut, although it has been applied to pecans in the new world.

walnut all the little droplets mess with the 'lecrics?

Actually you said it's no where near time to panic. You also said the people of Kiribati are going to be washed away by a tsunami (but it never happened before in all the times they've been hit by tsunami) and not overwhelmed by sea rise (which IS what's happened to them).


You are just wrong about Texas producing more than California, we're number two in cattle production and ....
Food Facts
California has been the number one food and agricultural producer in the United States for more than 50 consecutive years.
More than half the nation's fruit, nuts, and vegetables come from here.
California is the nation's number one dairy state.
California's leading commodity is milk and cream. Grapes are second.
California's leading export crop is almonds.
Nationally, products exclusively grown (99% or more) in California include almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwifruit, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins, clovers, and walnuts.
From 70 to 80% of all ripe olives are grown in California.
California is the nation's leading producer of strawberries, averaging 1.4 billion pounds of strawberries or 83% of the country's total fresh and frozen strawberry production. Approximately 12% of the crop is exported to Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Japan primarily. The value of the California strawberry crop is approximately $700 million with related employment of more than 48,000 people.
California produces 25% of the nation's onions and 43% of the nation's green onions.
and if that's not enough to convince you ...
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/2182/what-percent-of-food-comes-from-california

It is never 1 to 1 guns VS farmers in the situations you are talking about. The food gets stolen, sold, and eaten. It is not stolen and allowed to rot. If production were simple, ie not requiring extra water and fertilizer, everyone who's hungry would farm, and there would be 'bush taca' (wild food) to gather and eat. You can't make a living stealing from subsistence farmers, you go hungry between farms that way.

I call BS, the tech to replace oil and coal and gas exist today. You mentioned one. They are universally agreed on (by energy companies) who have made solar farms, nuclear, wind, etc.

Ahhhh. So now you see why it's time to panic...adaptation of the tech takes time, time that we don't have to waste. If it takes 50 years to stop adding greenhouse gasses, we need to see where that leaves your children's children. Adaptation of new tech is going to happen while we are restricting consumption...it's been that way for decades (see 'car mileage requirements') so it HAS happened in the past, and is happening today...without wars.

If no one panics and no one acts, that's where we'll be if we're lucky. Those figures you linked assume we will stop rising the level of CO2 we add daily and/or keep it below a certain level...an assumption I think is wrong and ignores reality.

Um, well, yeah, 78% less glacier doesn't mean 78% less runoff, it means far more than 78% less, because of glacial dams, evaporation, and upstream use it means probably NO runoff downstream. 22% of the already scarce water won't feed India. Period.
I think those numbers are small, and it's likely that there will be less than 22% of glaciers left in 100 years, but even those numbers leave billions without water or food. That's far worse than any group ever starved by 'men with guns'.

Would be nice for a combined event, like where you swim 5 miles, bust some walnuts with your head, then bike 20 miles, then more walnuts

Someone at work brought these chocolate chip cookies in today. I asked her to email me the recipe since they were really good. So here you go...

Chocolate Chip Cookies
(makes 6 dozen cookies)

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 (3.4 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
4 eggs
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
4 cups semisweet chocolate chips
2 cups chopped walnuts (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, then set aside.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the instant pudding mix powder until blended. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Blend in the flour mixture. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts. Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets covered in parchment paper. Refrigerate dough between batches so the dough doesn't become too soft before baking.

3. Bake for approximately 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Could be more or less depending on your oven. Edges should be golden brown.

To me, P. Tampanensis tasted like walnuts with a rainbow laser aftertaste whatever that means. That's just what my tongue conveyed to me. In my experience these came on stronger, sooner with a faster peak, but with a faster fall off as well. Definitely felt like a mushroom trip. An overall great time (and at times seemingly too great to the point of wanting to turn it down a bit) for just a simple "biological specimen: not for human consumption." as the envelope it was delivered it cleared stated. Hahaha wink wink nudge wink nudge nudge wink nudge wink wink wink nudge nudge wink nudge wink nudge wink wink nudge wink nudge wink wink..wink wink nudge. If you catch my drift.

For a guy who won't eat walnuts, I don't trust this guy's sense of taste.
Not that I want to try durian.

I like walnuts, except for when you get a "bad" one. Not sure what happens to it (maybe the oil contained inside goes off) but ooooh, those are funky.

Grape Nuts, with walnuts and little honey. Good eats!

I'm right there with him. Walnuts are nasty.

Almonds - sure. Cashews - why not. Peanuts - naturally. Pistachios - one of my favs.

But walnuts - sick.

>> ^TheFreak:

Sounds like he's suffering from some sort of Food Aversion to walnuts. Maybe ate them when he was sick.


My list is 1) cheesecake and 2) ceaser salad. Not because I ate them when I was sick, but I ate so much of them and then got sick.

Sounds like he's suffering from some sort of Food Aversion to walnuts. Maybe ate them when he was sick.

Oh man, that walnut confection looks amazing. Andrew Zimmerman can keep all the deep fried dicks, I'll take that.

Found a video that may interest you:



>> ^Ryjkyj:
>> ^Doc_M:
Yeah, but that's a bit of a cop-out. "Nobody's got a fucking clue" is kinda lame and certainly offers no hope. Come on. I mean, what do you look forward to?

I look forward to watching my son grow up. And I look forward to a beer with my friends every once in a while. Sometimes I even imagine myself contributing something positive to society, and that people might look back at my life and say: there was a cool fellow. But the jury's still way out on that.
But as to the afterlife, I do have hope. I hope there will be something, that we are all eternal. And I abhor the Buddhist idea of reincarnation because if I am reincarnated, but I don't remember myself, then what's the point? Some people tell me "oh, but you sort of remember parts of yourself." Well, that's not good enough for me. I need to remember most of myself if I'm going to consider that I'm still me. One percent just doesn't cut it.
And I've talked to past-life regression folks who say they can remind you of who you were through hypnosis, but you know the problem with those guys?: Everyone is always Marie Antoinette or the fucking King of England. Nobody is ever Pavle the shit-boy, who was an asshole to everyone they met, who's life was totally uninteresting and who died from unchecked walnut-sliver poisoning. I guarantee you that as many people as you talk to who remember their past lives, not one of them was ever a child with fetal alcohol syndrome who's favorite thing to do was eat butt-crack lint.
But at least those people are somewhat creative. I was raised in the Lutheran church. There was a lot of encouragement to think for myself and very little pressure to just say I believed. And I did believe, for a long time. But the more I went to church, the more I kept thinking to myself that everyone is afraid of dying. Even the people who say that they're going to heaven are afraid of dying. I think if the amount of people who say they believe in heaven actually believed they were going there, the world would be a much nicer place.
But it's not a very nice place is it? No. And I think that one of the reasons it's not is that a long time ago, people figured out a way to exploit the fears of others through religion. It's nice that we can all agree on something that makes us a little happier. But when all is said and done, it doesn't really work too well does it? Everyone is still scared of dying, and every religion thinks that somebody else's religion is the cause of earthquakes, etc, etc... So if you're still going to be scared of things that aren't God, what the hell is the point?
And I think a lot of great things came from religion. Early on, the priests of various groups were often the sole repository of knowledge and the leaders of the advancements in science. But all that is long gone. These days it's all about controlling people.
I don't believe that there's nothing, because that would mean I knew something about what happens after you die; but I'm also not an agnostic who believes that "god is nature" or "god is the universe", and even though sometimes I wish there was an answer to the questions that I ask the sky when I have nowhere else to turn, I am forced to come to the conclusion that I am completely and totally ignorant in the ways of the universe and our purpose here on Earth.
But I certainly hope that this isn't it. And I certainly hope that if there is a god, that it will respect the conclusions that I've come to through the faculties it's granted me.
Maybe Shiny is right. But if I agreed to his terms simply to play it safe, god would know I was lying. And I just can't believe in a god who would encourage me to lie to save my soul.

>> ^Doc_M:

Yeah, but that's a bit of a cop-out. "Nobody's got a fucking clue" is kinda lame and certainly offers no hope. Come on. I mean, what do you look forward to?


I look forward to watching my son grow up. And I look forward to a beer with my friends every once in a while. Sometimes I even imagine myself contributing something positive to society, and that people might look back at my life and say: there was a cool fellow. But the jury's still way out on that.

But as to the afterlife, I do have hope. I hope there will be something, that we are all eternal. And I abhor the Buddhist idea of reincarnation because if I am reincarnated, but I don't remember myself, then what's the point? Some people tell me "oh, but you sort of remember parts of yourself." Well, that's not good enough for me. I need to remember most of myself if I'm going to consider that I'm still me. One percent just doesn't cut it.

And I've talked to past-life regression folks who say they can remind you of who you were through hypnosis, but you know the problem with those guys?: Everyone is always Marie Antoinette or the fucking King of England. Nobody is ever Pavle the shit-boy, who was an asshole to everyone they met, who's life was totally uninteresting and who died from unchecked walnut-sliver poisoning. I guarantee you that as many people as you talk to who remember their past lives, not one of them was ever a child with fetal alcohol syndrome who's favorite thing to do was eat butt-crack lint.

But at least those people are somewhat creative. I was raised in the Lutheran church. There was a lot of encouragement to think for myself and very little pressure to just say I believed. And I did believe, for a long time. But the more I went to church, the more I kept thinking to myself that everyone is afraid of dying. Even the people who say that they're going to heaven are afraid of dying. I think if the amount of people who say they believe in heaven actually believed they were going there, the world would be a much nicer place.

But it's not a very nice place is it? No. And I think that one of the reasons it's not is that a long time ago, people figured out a way to exploit the fears of others through religion. It's nice that we can all agree on something that makes us a little happier. But when all is said and done, it doesn't really work too well does it? Everyone is still scared of dying, and every religion thinks that somebody else's religion is the cause of earthquakes, etc, etc... So if you're still going to be scared of things that aren't God, what the hell is the point?

And I think a lot of great things came from religion. Early on, the priests of various groups were often the sole repository of knowledge and the leaders of the advancements in science. But all that is long gone. These days it's all about controlling people.

I don't believe that there's nothing, because that would mean I knew something about what happens after you die; but I'm also not an agnostic who believes that "god is nature" or "god is the universe", and even though sometimes I wish there was an answer to the questions that I ask the sky when I have nowhere else to turn, I am forced to come to the conclusion that I am completely and totally ignorant in the ways of the universe and our purpose here on Earth.

But I certainly hope that this isn't it. And I certainly hope that if there is a god, that it will respect the conclusions that I've come to through the faculties it's granted me.

Maybe Shiny is right. But if I agreed to his terms simply to play it safe, god would know I was lying. And I just can't believe in a god who would encourage me to lie to save my soul.