Wednesday, July 2, 2014
The Stress of Ageing
How do I knock off thirty years from my age?
Faust, the protagonist in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s famous play, poses this question to Mephistopheles in the chapter Hexenküche (Witches’ kitchen). Mephistopheles provides some pretty good advice – considering that he is the devil and this fictitious exchange takes place in the dark Middle Ages: (...)
Here is the paraphrased essence of the devil’s advice: Seek out a life of moderation, stop being lazy, exercise regularly by ploughing the field and avoid unhealthy foods!
How does the great scholar and scientist Faust respond to these commonsense suggestions?
Thanks, but no thanks. Faust does not like manual labor and is quite happy with his current lifestyle, so he instead opts for plan B – a magic youth potion. (...)
Faust, the protagonist in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s famous play, poses this question to Mephistopheles in the chapter Hexenküche (Witches’ kitchen). Mephistopheles provides some pretty good advice – considering that he is the devil and this fictitious exchange takes place in the dark Middle Ages: (...)
Here is the paraphrased essence of the devil’s advice: Seek out a life of moderation, stop being lazy, exercise regularly by ploughing the field and avoid unhealthy foods!
How does the great scholar and scientist Faust respond to these commonsense suggestions?
Thanks, but no thanks. Faust does not like manual labor and is quite happy with his current lifestyle, so he instead opts for plan B – a magic youth potion. (...)
At the 64th Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting, Elizabeth Blackburn reviewed the history of how she and her colleagues identified the role of telomeres and telomerase in the cellular aging process, but also presented newer data of how measuring the length of telomeres in a blood sample can predict one’s propensity for longevity and health. It makes intuitive and theoretical sense that having long telomeres would be a good thing but it is nice to have real-world data collected from thousands of humans confirming that this is indeed the case. A prospective study collected blood samples and measured the mean telomere length of white blood cells in 787 participants and followed them for 10 years to see who would develop cancer. Telomere length was inversely correlated with likelihood of developing cancer and dying from cancer. The individuals in the shortest telomere group were three times more likely to develop cancer than the longest telomere group within the ten year observation period! A similar correlation between long telomeres and less disease also exists for cardiovascular disease.
Dr. Blackburn was quick to point out that these correlations do not necessarily mean that there is a direct cause and effect relationship. In fact, increasing telomerase levels ought to lengthen telomeres but in the case of cancer, too much telomerase can be just as bad as too little telomeres. Too much telomerase can help confer immortality onto cancer cells and actually increase the likelihood of cancer, whereas too little telomerase can also increase cancer by depleting the healthy regenerative potential of the body. To reduce the risk of cancer we need an ideal level of telomerase, with not a whole lot of room for error. This clarifies that “telomerase shots” are not the magical anti-aging potion that Faust and so many other humans have sought throughout history.
Why is that telomere lengths are such good predictors of longevity, but too much telomerase can be bad for you? The answer is probably that telomere lengths measured in the white blood cells reflect a broad range of factors, such as our genetic makeup but also the history of a cell. Some of us may be lucky because we are genetically endowed with a slightly higher telomerase activity or longer telomeres, but the environment also plays a major role in regulating telomeres. If our cells are exposed to a lot of stress and injury – even at a young age – then they are forced to divide more often and shorten their telomeres. The telomere length measurements which predict health and longevity are snapshots taken at a certain point in time and cannot distinguish between inherited traits which confer the gift of longer telomeres to some and the lack environmental stressors which may have allowed cells to maintain long telomeres.
by Jalees Rehman, Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings | Read more:
Image: Tiziano Vecellio: Three Ages of Man
Dr. Blackburn was quick to point out that these correlations do not necessarily mean that there is a direct cause and effect relationship. In fact, increasing telomerase levels ought to lengthen telomeres but in the case of cancer, too much telomerase can be just as bad as too little telomeres. Too much telomerase can help confer immortality onto cancer cells and actually increase the likelihood of cancer, whereas too little telomerase can also increase cancer by depleting the healthy regenerative potential of the body. To reduce the risk of cancer we need an ideal level of telomerase, with not a whole lot of room for error. This clarifies that “telomerase shots” are not the magical anti-aging potion that Faust and so many other humans have sought throughout history.
Why is that telomere lengths are such good predictors of longevity, but too much telomerase can be bad for you? The answer is probably that telomere lengths measured in the white blood cells reflect a broad range of factors, such as our genetic makeup but also the history of a cell. Some of us may be lucky because we are genetically endowed with a slightly higher telomerase activity or longer telomeres, but the environment also plays a major role in regulating telomeres. If our cells are exposed to a lot of stress and injury – even at a young age – then they are forced to divide more often and shorten their telomeres. The telomere length measurements which predict health and longevity are snapshots taken at a certain point in time and cannot distinguish between inherited traits which confer the gift of longer telomeres to some and the lack environmental stressors which may have allowed cells to maintain long telomeres.
by Jalees Rehman, Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings | Read more:
Image: Tiziano Vecellio: Three Ages of Man
Stoop Stories
My black friends call it Baldamore, Harm City or Bodymore Murderland. My white friends call it Balti-mo, Charm City or Smalltimore while falling in love with the quaint pubs, trendy cafés and distinctive little shops. I just call it home.
We all love Baltimore, Maryland. It’s one of those places that people never leave – literally. I know people, blacks and whites, who have been residents for 30-plus years and haven’t even been as north as Philly or as south as DC.
Baltimore is one of the few major metropolitan cities with a small-town feel. (...)
I went to all-black schools, lived in an all-black neighbourhood, and had almost no interactions with whites other than teachers and housing police until college, where I got my first introduction to the other Baltimore.
My SAT scores and grades were exceptional for an east Baltimore kid. This gained me acceptance into schools I probably wouldn’t have been admitted to if I weren’t a ghetto kid. Thirsty for a new experience, I wanted to go to an out-of-state college. But my plans were derailed when, months before my high-school graduation in 2000, my brother Bip and my close friend DI were murdered. I became severely depressed and rejected the idea of school.
Most of my family and friends came around in effort to get me back on track. My best friend Dre hit my crib everyday.
I met Dre way back in the nineties. His mom sucked dick for crack until she became too hideous to touch. Then she caught AIDS and died.
Dre’s my age. He had so many holes in his shoes that his feet were bruised. I started giving him clothes that I didn’t want, and he stayed with us most nights. We became brothers.
At 13, Dre started hustling drugs for Bip and never looked back. He loved his job. Dre was organised, he recruited, and he outworked everyone else on the corner. Like a little Bip, Dre beat the sun to work every morning: 4am every day in the blistering cold, with fist full of loose vials. His workload tripled after Bip passed, but he called everyday.
‘D, how you holdin’ up, shorty?’ said Dre.
‘I don’t even know. Man, I been in this house for weeks,’ I replied.
‘Naw, nigga, get out. Get a cut, nigga, go do some shit! Least you still alive!’
‘You right,’ I said as I sat on the edge of my bed. ‘Wet floor’ signs were needed for my tears.
‘What the fuck, Yo, you cry everyday?’ Dre said.
‘Naw, well no, shit. I dunno.’
‘Yo anyway, I’m gonna murder dat nigga that popped Bip. Ricky Black, bitch ass. So go live, nigga, get some new clothes, pussy or sumthin’.’
I picked my head up for the first time in days. I didn’t know my brother even had static with Ricky Black. They played ball together a week before Bip died. But it didn’t matter if Dre killed Ricky, or I did, because someone would eventually.
Murder made Dre smile theatrically; he leapt from his seat. ‘Nigga, I keep the ratchet on me,’ he said, lifting his sweatshirt to show me the gun gleaming on his waist.
I told him he was crazy, but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t commit that murder – I’m not a killer. Or am I? I am capable of hate, and I am a direct product of this culture of retaliation – a culture that won’t let me sleep, eat or rest until I know that Bip’s killer is dead.
‘Be careful,’ I said.
‘You should think about school, D,’ said Dre on his way out the door. ‘Bip would like that.’
He was right. My brother always wanted me to attend college: I owed Bip that.
I decided to stay in state to be close to family, so I attended Loyola University, a local school on the edge of the city.
I always thought college would be like that TV show, A Different World. Dimed-out Whitney Gilberts and Denise Huxtables hanging by my dorm – young, pure and making a difference. I’d be in Jordans and Jordan jerseys or Cosby sweaters like Ron Johnson and Dwayne Wayne, getting As and living that black intellectual life on a beautiful campus. No row homes, hood-rats, housing police or gunshots: just pizza, good girls and opportunity. I could even graduate and be ‘The Dude Who Saves the Hood!’ (...)
I wore six braids straight back like the basketball player Allen Iverson, real Gucci sweat suits, and a $15,000 mixture of mine and Bip’s old jewellery. The other students looked at me like I was an alien. I’d walk up on a student and clearly say: ‘Excuse me, where is the book store?’ And they’d look back with a twisted face, like: ‘I don’t understand you. What are you saying?’ And I had this dance with multiple students every day until I mastered my ‘Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ voice.
by D Watkins, Aeon | Read more:
Image: Stacey Watkins
We all love Baltimore, Maryland. It’s one of those places that people never leave – literally. I know people, blacks and whites, who have been residents for 30-plus years and haven’t even been as north as Philly or as south as DC.
Baltimore is one of the few major metropolitan cities with a small-town feel. (...)I went to all-black schools, lived in an all-black neighbourhood, and had almost no interactions with whites other than teachers and housing police until college, where I got my first introduction to the other Baltimore.
My SAT scores and grades were exceptional for an east Baltimore kid. This gained me acceptance into schools I probably wouldn’t have been admitted to if I weren’t a ghetto kid. Thirsty for a new experience, I wanted to go to an out-of-state college. But my plans were derailed when, months before my high-school graduation in 2000, my brother Bip and my close friend DI were murdered. I became severely depressed and rejected the idea of school.
Most of my family and friends came around in effort to get me back on track. My best friend Dre hit my crib everyday.
I met Dre way back in the nineties. His mom sucked dick for crack until she became too hideous to touch. Then she caught AIDS and died.
Dre’s my age. He had so many holes in his shoes that his feet were bruised. I started giving him clothes that I didn’t want, and he stayed with us most nights. We became brothers.
At 13, Dre started hustling drugs for Bip and never looked back. He loved his job. Dre was organised, he recruited, and he outworked everyone else on the corner. Like a little Bip, Dre beat the sun to work every morning: 4am every day in the blistering cold, with fist full of loose vials. His workload tripled after Bip passed, but he called everyday.
‘D, how you holdin’ up, shorty?’ said Dre.
‘I don’t even know. Man, I been in this house for weeks,’ I replied.
‘Naw, nigga, get out. Get a cut, nigga, go do some shit! Least you still alive!’
‘You right,’ I said as I sat on the edge of my bed. ‘Wet floor’ signs were needed for my tears.
‘What the fuck, Yo, you cry everyday?’ Dre said.
‘Naw, well no, shit. I dunno.’
‘Yo anyway, I’m gonna murder dat nigga that popped Bip. Ricky Black, bitch ass. So go live, nigga, get some new clothes, pussy or sumthin’.’
I picked my head up for the first time in days. I didn’t know my brother even had static with Ricky Black. They played ball together a week before Bip died. But it didn’t matter if Dre killed Ricky, or I did, because someone would eventually.
Murder made Dre smile theatrically; he leapt from his seat. ‘Nigga, I keep the ratchet on me,’ he said, lifting his sweatshirt to show me the gun gleaming on his waist.
I told him he was crazy, but I didn’t care. I wouldn’t commit that murder – I’m not a killer. Or am I? I am capable of hate, and I am a direct product of this culture of retaliation – a culture that won’t let me sleep, eat or rest until I know that Bip’s killer is dead.
‘Be careful,’ I said.
‘You should think about school, D,’ said Dre on his way out the door. ‘Bip would like that.’
He was right. My brother always wanted me to attend college: I owed Bip that.
I decided to stay in state to be close to family, so I attended Loyola University, a local school on the edge of the city.
I always thought college would be like that TV show, A Different World. Dimed-out Whitney Gilberts and Denise Huxtables hanging by my dorm – young, pure and making a difference. I’d be in Jordans and Jordan jerseys or Cosby sweaters like Ron Johnson and Dwayne Wayne, getting As and living that black intellectual life on a beautiful campus. No row homes, hood-rats, housing police or gunshots: just pizza, good girls and opportunity. I could even graduate and be ‘The Dude Who Saves the Hood!’ (...)
I wore six braids straight back like the basketball player Allen Iverson, real Gucci sweat suits, and a $15,000 mixture of mine and Bip’s old jewellery. The other students looked at me like I was an alien. I’d walk up on a student and clearly say: ‘Excuse me, where is the book store?’ And they’d look back with a twisted face, like: ‘I don’t understand you. What are you saying?’ And I had this dance with multiple students every day until I mastered my ‘Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’ voice.
by D Watkins, Aeon | Read more:
Image: Stacey Watkins
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Hippie Roots & The Perennial Subculture
In 1906 Bill Pester first set foot on American soil having left Saxony, Germany that same year at age 19 to avoid military service. With his long hair, beard and lebensreform background he wasted no time in heading to California to begin his new life.
He settled in majestic Palm Canyon in the San Jacinto Mountains near Palm Springs California and built himself a palm hut by the flowing stream and palm grove.
Bill spent his time exploring the desert canyons, caves and waterfalls, but was also an avid reader and writer. He earned some of his living making walking sticks from palm blossom stalks, selling postcards with lebensreform health tips, and charging people 10 cents to look through his telescope while he gave lectures on astronomy.
He made his own sandals, had a wonderful collection of Indian pottery and artifacts, played slide guitar, lived on raw fruits and vegetables and managed to spend most of his time naked under the California sunshine.
During the time when Bill lived near Palm Springs he was on Cahuilla Indian land, with permission from the local tribe who had great admiration for him. His name even appeared on the 1920 census with the Indians, and in 1995 An American Indian woman Millie Fischer published a small booklet about Palm Canyon that included a chapter on Pester.
The many photos of Pester clearly reveal the strong link between the 19th century German reformers and the flower children of the 1960’s…long hair and beards, bare feet or sandals, guitars, love of nature, draft dodger, living simple and an aversion to rigid political structure. Undoubtedly Bill Pester introduced a new human type to California and was a mentor for many of the American Nature Boys.
In 1914 another German immigrant, Professor Arnold Ehret arrived in California. The philosophy he preached had a powerful influence on various aspects of American culture. Ehret advocated fasting, raw foods, nude sun bathing and letting your hair and beard grow un-trimmed. His "Rational Fasting" (1914) and "Mucus-less Diet"(1922) were literary standbys within hippie circles in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 1960’s.
The husband and wife team of John and Vera Richter first opened their Raw-Foods cafeteria the "Eutropheon" in 1917, and during it’s lifetime it hosted thousands of customers and taught many people how to prepare such raw treats as sun-dried bread, salads, dressings, soups, beverages and many other healthy alternatives to the typical Los Angeles cuisine of the 1920’s-1940’s.
John’s powerful lectures were attended by many young health enthusiasts, who later went on to become well known health teachers and authors, and Vera’s recipe book was the precursor to many of the modern Live-Food recipe books.
Some of the young employees of the Eutropheon were Americans who had adopted the German Naturmensch and Lebensreform image and philosophy, wearing their hair and beards long and feeding exclusively on raw fruits and vegetables. The "Nature Boys" came from all over America but usually ended up in southern California. Some of the familiar ones were Gypsy Jean, eden ahbez, Maximilian Sikinger, Bob Wallace, Emile Zimmerman, Gypsy Boots, Buddy Rose, Fred Bushnoff and Conrad. This was decades before the Beats or Hippies and their influence was very substantial. In "On The Road" Kerouac noted that while passing through Los Angeles in the summer of 1947 he saw"an occasional Nature Boy saint in beard and sandals".
But in the spring of 1948 eden ahbez became an internationally recognized personality when his song "Nature Boy" was recorded by Nat King Cole. Photos and story of eden and his wife Anna appeared in Life, Time and Newsweek magazines that year.
Born in Brooklyn New York, April 15, 1908 "ahbez" had walked across America 4 times, hopped freight trains and lived in a cave in Tahquitz Canyon before he penned his #1 hit tune, which was on the hit parade for 15 weeks.
The song itself was part autobiographical but was also a nod to his German mentor Bill Pester who was 23 years his senior and had been a Nature Boy for decades when eden encountered him in the Coachella Valley of southern California.
Another one of the Nature Boys, Maximillian Sikinger was born in Augsberg Germany in 1913 and spent most of his childhood and youth living wild in the environs of various European cities. Through his wanderings, personal contacts and outdoor living he developed a keen interest in various aspects of natural healing; nutrition, water cure, fasting, sitz baths, deep breathing and sunshine.
Max left Europe in 1935 at age 22, arrived in America then eventually made his way west to California where he traveled with the Nature Boys who valued his introspective and philosophical ideas very highly. Maximillian’s world travels and rugged background had given him deep insight into many of life’s puzzles.
But the one Nature Boy to pass the torch from the old era (circa 1930’s-40’s)…into the 1960’s hippie generation was Gypsy Boots.
Born in San Francisco in 1916 to Russian Jewish parents "Boots" grew up in the San Francisco area where he quit school at an early age to travel and live a life close to nature. He met Maximillian on the beach at Kelley’s Cove in 1935 and it was then that his life began to change. Boots noted in his autobiography: "It was with Max that I first experimented with fasting and special diets, and also learned much about yoga".
In the 1940’s Boots lived wild in Tahquitz Canyon with all of the Nature Boys, bathing in the cool mountain water, eating fruits and vegetables, sleeping on rocks or in caves, hiking and selling produce in Palm Springs.
In 1953 he married Lois Bloemker, settled near Griffith Park in Los Angeles and had 3 sons. In 1958 he opened his "Health Hut" in Hollywood, which was a big hit, and shortly thereafter began his career as a serious health teacher and example of optimum living.
In the early 1960’s he appeared on the Steve Allen show over 25 times to an audience of some 25 million households. Steve Allen had originally started the "Tonight" show, then began his own show featuring guests like Elvis Presley, Jack Kerouac, Frank Zappa and the psychedelic band Blue Cheer.
When the Beatles and Rolling Stones arrived in Los Angeles in the mid 1960’s their "pudding basin" hairstyles seemed tame when compared to a local rock band "The Seeds" who wore shoulder length hair, thanks to the influence of Gypsy Boots and his ilk. "Seeds" singer Sky Saxon, a vegetarian, had invented a new type of music…."Flower Punk". Even Jimi Hendrix had a front row seat to a Seeds concert, and the Doors played second bill on a Seeds tour.
When the Love-In’s began in Griffith Park in 1966 some of the Flower Children who were stoned on Owsley acid looked up in the big trees to see Gypsy Boots swinging and climbing from branch to limb, then exclaiming "what’s that guy on…. I’d sure like to have a hit of that!" But Boots "high" was always induced from his sun-charged foods like figs and grapes, as well as his fitness regime.
by Gordon Kennedy & Kody Ryan, Hippie.com | Read more:
Images: Palm Springs Art Museum and Gypsy Boots
He settled in majestic Palm Canyon in the San Jacinto Mountains near Palm Springs California and built himself a palm hut by the flowing stream and palm grove.Bill spent his time exploring the desert canyons, caves and waterfalls, but was also an avid reader and writer. He earned some of his living making walking sticks from palm blossom stalks, selling postcards with lebensreform health tips, and charging people 10 cents to look through his telescope while he gave lectures on astronomy.
He made his own sandals, had a wonderful collection of Indian pottery and artifacts, played slide guitar, lived on raw fruits and vegetables and managed to spend most of his time naked under the California sunshine.
During the time when Bill lived near Palm Springs he was on Cahuilla Indian land, with permission from the local tribe who had great admiration for him. His name even appeared on the 1920 census with the Indians, and in 1995 An American Indian woman Millie Fischer published a small booklet about Palm Canyon that included a chapter on Pester.
The many photos of Pester clearly reveal the strong link between the 19th century German reformers and the flower children of the 1960’s…long hair and beards, bare feet or sandals, guitars, love of nature, draft dodger, living simple and an aversion to rigid political structure. Undoubtedly Bill Pester introduced a new human type to California and was a mentor for many of the American Nature Boys.
In 1914 another German immigrant, Professor Arnold Ehret arrived in California. The philosophy he preached had a powerful influence on various aspects of American culture. Ehret advocated fasting, raw foods, nude sun bathing and letting your hair and beard grow un-trimmed. His "Rational Fasting" (1914) and "Mucus-less Diet"(1922) were literary standbys within hippie circles in San Francisco and Los Angeles in the 1960’s.
The husband and wife team of John and Vera Richter first opened their Raw-Foods cafeteria the "Eutropheon" in 1917, and during it’s lifetime it hosted thousands of customers and taught many people how to prepare such raw treats as sun-dried bread, salads, dressings, soups, beverages and many other healthy alternatives to the typical Los Angeles cuisine of the 1920’s-1940’s.
John’s powerful lectures were attended by many young health enthusiasts, who later went on to become well known health teachers and authors, and Vera’s recipe book was the precursor to many of the modern Live-Food recipe books.
But in the spring of 1948 eden ahbez became an internationally recognized personality when his song "Nature Boy" was recorded by Nat King Cole. Photos and story of eden and his wife Anna appeared in Life, Time and Newsweek magazines that year.
Born in Brooklyn New York, April 15, 1908 "ahbez" had walked across America 4 times, hopped freight trains and lived in a cave in Tahquitz Canyon before he penned his #1 hit tune, which was on the hit parade for 15 weeks.
The song itself was part autobiographical but was also a nod to his German mentor Bill Pester who was 23 years his senior and had been a Nature Boy for decades when eden encountered him in the Coachella Valley of southern California.
Another one of the Nature Boys, Maximillian Sikinger was born in Augsberg Germany in 1913 and spent most of his childhood and youth living wild in the environs of various European cities. Through his wanderings, personal contacts and outdoor living he developed a keen interest in various aspects of natural healing; nutrition, water cure, fasting, sitz baths, deep breathing and sunshine.
Max left Europe in 1935 at age 22, arrived in America then eventually made his way west to California where he traveled with the Nature Boys who valued his introspective and philosophical ideas very highly. Maximillian’s world travels and rugged background had given him deep insight into many of life’s puzzles.
But the one Nature Boy to pass the torch from the old era (circa 1930’s-40’s)…into the 1960’s hippie generation was Gypsy Boots.
Born in San Francisco in 1916 to Russian Jewish parents "Boots" grew up in the San Francisco area where he quit school at an early age to travel and live a life close to nature. He met Maximillian on the beach at Kelley’s Cove in 1935 and it was then that his life began to change. Boots noted in his autobiography: "It was with Max that I first experimented with fasting and special diets, and also learned much about yoga".
In the 1940’s Boots lived wild in Tahquitz Canyon with all of the Nature Boys, bathing in the cool mountain water, eating fruits and vegetables, sleeping on rocks or in caves, hiking and selling produce in Palm Springs.
In 1953 he married Lois Bloemker, settled near Griffith Park in Los Angeles and had 3 sons. In 1958 he opened his "Health Hut" in Hollywood, which was a big hit, and shortly thereafter began his career as a serious health teacher and example of optimum living.
In the early 1960’s he appeared on the Steve Allen show over 25 times to an audience of some 25 million households. Steve Allen had originally started the "Tonight" show, then began his own show featuring guests like Elvis Presley, Jack Kerouac, Frank Zappa and the psychedelic band Blue Cheer.
When the Beatles and Rolling Stones arrived in Los Angeles in the mid 1960’s their "pudding basin" hairstyles seemed tame when compared to a local rock band "The Seeds" who wore shoulder length hair, thanks to the influence of Gypsy Boots and his ilk. "Seeds" singer Sky Saxon, a vegetarian, had invented a new type of music…."Flower Punk". Even Jimi Hendrix had a front row seat to a Seeds concert, and the Doors played second bill on a Seeds tour.
When the Love-In’s began in Griffith Park in 1966 some of the Flower Children who were stoned on Owsley acid looked up in the big trees to see Gypsy Boots swinging and climbing from branch to limb, then exclaiming "what’s that guy on…. I’d sure like to have a hit of that!" But Boots "high" was always induced from his sun-charged foods like figs and grapes, as well as his fitness regime.
by Gordon Kennedy & Kody Ryan, Hippie.com | Read more:
Images: Palm Springs Art Museum and Gypsy Boots
Monday, June 30, 2014
Ernest Hemingway’s Summer Camping Recipes
With regard to writing, Ernest Hemingway was a man of simple tastes. Were I to employ a metaphor, I’d describe Hem as the kind of guy who’d prefer an unadorned plum from William Carlos Williams’ icebox to Makini Howell’s Pesto Plum Pizza with Balsamic Arugula.Don’t mistake that metaphor for real life, however. Judging by his 1920Toronto Star how-to on maximizing comfort on camping vacations, he would not have stood for charred weenies and marshmallows on a stick. Rather, a little cookery know-how was something for a man to be proud of:
“…a frying pan is a most necessary thing to any trip, but you also need the old stew kettle and the folding reflector baker.”Clearly, the man did not trust readers to independently seek out such sources as The Perry Ladies’ Cookbook of 1920 for instructions. Instead, he painstakingly details his method for successful preparation of Trout Wrapped in Bacon, including his preferred brands of vegetable shortening.
Would your mouth water less if I tell you that literary food blog Paper and Salt has updated Hem’s trout recipe à la Emeril Lagasse, omitting the Crisco and tossing in a few fresh herbs? No campfire required. You can get ‘er done in the broiler:
Bacon-Wrapped Trout: (adapted from Emeril Lagasse)
2 (10-ounce) whole trout, cleaned and gutted
1/2 cup cornmeal
Salt and ground pepper, to taste
8 sprigs fresh thyme
1 lemon, sliced
6 slices bacon
Fresh parsley, for garnish
1. Preheat broiler and set oven rack 4 to 6 inches from heat. With a paper towel, pat trout dry inside and out. Dredge outside of each fish in cornmeal, then season cavity with salt and pepper. Place 4 sprigs of thyme and 2 lemon slices inside each fish.
2. Wrap 3 bacon slices around the middle of each fish, so that the edges overlap slightly. Line a roasting pan with aluminum foil, and place fish on pan. Broil until bacon is crisp, about 5 minutes. With a spatula, carefully flip fish over and cook another 5 minutes, until flesh is firm.by Ayun Halliday, Open Culture | Read more:
Image:Chowstalker
The Bait-And-Switch Behind Today’s Hobby Lobby Decision
For many years, the Supreme Court struck a careful balance between protecting religious liberty and maintaining the rule of law in a pluralistic society. Religious people enjoy a robust right to practice their own faith and to act according to the dictates of their own conscience, but they could not wield religious liberty claims as a sword to cut away the legal rights of others. This was especially true in the business context. As the Supreme Court held in United States v. Lee, “[w]hen followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity.”
With Monday’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, however, this careful balance has been upended. Employers who object to birth control on religious grounds may now refuse to comply with federal rules requiring them to include contraceptive care in their health plans. The rights of the employer now trump the rights of the employee.
To achieve this outcome, Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion on behalf of a bare majority of the Court engages in a kind of legalistic bait-and-switch. It takes a law Congress enacted to serve one limited purpose, and expands that law to suit Hobby Lobby’s much more expansive purpose.
In its 1963 decision in Sherbert v. Verner, the Court announced that laws that impose an “incidental burden on the free exercise of [a person of faith's] religion” may only be applied to them if the law is “justified by a ‘compelling state interest in the regulation of a subject within the State’s constitutional power to regulate.’” As anyone who has studied constitutional law will immediately recognize, this “compelling state interest” framework is the language judges use when the wish to invoke a test known as “strict scrutiny” — the highest test that exists under American constitutional law. Typically, laws that are subjected to strict scrutiny fare very badly. Strict scrutiny is the constitutional standard used to evaluate laws that discriminate on the basis of race, for example, and it only permits laws to be enforced when they further a compelling government interest and when they use the least restrictive means of doing so.
It soon became clear, however, that when the Court considered religious liberty claims it was actually engaged in something much less rigorous than strict scrutiny. As Professor Adam Winkler documented, courts uphold less than one-third of all laws they subject to strict scrutiny — yet they rejected 59 percent of the claims brought by plaintiffs claiming religious liberty. A different study reached even starker results — determining that nearly 88 percent of religious liberty plaintiffs lost under the standard announced in Sherbert.
The most likely explanation for this fact is that Sherbert and its progeny were careful to maintain the balance between religious liberty and third parties’ rights. InSherbert itself, the justices emphasized that they were siding with a plaintiff who claimed a religious liberty right not to work on Saturday because “the recognition of the appellant’s right” did not “serve to abridge any other person’s religious liberties.” Less than a decade later, in a case called Wisconsin v. Yoder, the Court once again emphasized that it was exempting an Amish family from a law making school attendance mandatory because it did not perceive any harms to third parties. “This case,” the Court explained, “is not one in which any harm to the physical or mental health of the child or to the public safety, peace, order, or welfare has been demonstrated or may be properly inferred.”
Ten years after that, the Court decided the Lee case, with its proclamation that a business owner’s own religious views “are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others” engaged in a similar business. Allowing an employer to ignore a law protecting its employees, the Court explained “operates to impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees.”
In 1990, however, the Court briefly narrowed the protections offered to people who object to laws on religious grounds in an opinion authored by Justice Antonin Scalia. This unpopular decision inspired the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which formed the basis of Hobby Lobby’s legal claim. Yet, the purpose of RFRA was not to change the longstanding balance between religious liberty and the rights of third parties. Rather, it was to restore the many decades of religious liberty law that began with the Sherbert opinion. Indeed, RFRA explicitly states that its purpose is to “restore the compelling interest test as set forth in Sherbert v. Verner [] and Wisconsin v. Yoder [].”
Justice Alito’s opinion, however, tosses this explicit statement of congressional purpose aside, although he offers little explanation for why he is justified in doing so. His best effort is a reference to a 2000 law that amended one of RFRA’s definition of an “exercise of religion” to take out an explicit reference to the First Amendment. According to Alito, the purpose of this amendment was “an obvious effort to effect a complete separation from First Amendment case law” as laid out by cases like Sherbert and Yoder. Yet, it is difficult to square this interpretation with the fact that the RFRA statute still provides that its purpose is to “restore the compelling interest test as set forth” in Sherbert and Yoder.
The upshot of Alito’s opinion is that, for the first time in American history, people with religious objections to the law will be able to ignore many laws with impunity unless the government’s decision to enforce the law overcomes a very high legal bar that few laws survive. The full implications of Hobby Lobby, however, may not be known for years. When cases like Sherbert, Yoder and Lee were still good law at the federal level, plaintiffs alleging religious liberty alleged that they could engage in race discrimination and discrimination against women, and they also claimed immunity to paying Social Security taxes and the minimum wage. Though the Supreme Court probably isn’t ready to revisit these cases, religious business owners are likely to find many other regulations they can now object to on religious grounds. And all of these objections will come to court with vigorous tailwind.
With Monday’s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, however, this careful balance has been upended. Employers who object to birth control on religious grounds may now refuse to comply with federal rules requiring them to include contraceptive care in their health plans. The rights of the employer now trump the rights of the employee.
To achieve this outcome, Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion on behalf of a bare majority of the Court engages in a kind of legalistic bait-and-switch. It takes a law Congress enacted to serve one limited purpose, and expands that law to suit Hobby Lobby’s much more expansive purpose.In its 1963 decision in Sherbert v. Verner, the Court announced that laws that impose an “incidental burden on the free exercise of [a person of faith's] religion” may only be applied to them if the law is “justified by a ‘compelling state interest in the regulation of a subject within the State’s constitutional power to regulate.’” As anyone who has studied constitutional law will immediately recognize, this “compelling state interest” framework is the language judges use when the wish to invoke a test known as “strict scrutiny” — the highest test that exists under American constitutional law. Typically, laws that are subjected to strict scrutiny fare very badly. Strict scrutiny is the constitutional standard used to evaluate laws that discriminate on the basis of race, for example, and it only permits laws to be enforced when they further a compelling government interest and when they use the least restrictive means of doing so.
It soon became clear, however, that when the Court considered religious liberty claims it was actually engaged in something much less rigorous than strict scrutiny. As Professor Adam Winkler documented, courts uphold less than one-third of all laws they subject to strict scrutiny — yet they rejected 59 percent of the claims brought by plaintiffs claiming religious liberty. A different study reached even starker results — determining that nearly 88 percent of religious liberty plaintiffs lost under the standard announced in Sherbert.
The most likely explanation for this fact is that Sherbert and its progeny were careful to maintain the balance between religious liberty and third parties’ rights. InSherbert itself, the justices emphasized that they were siding with a plaintiff who claimed a religious liberty right not to work on Saturday because “the recognition of the appellant’s right” did not “serve to abridge any other person’s religious liberties.” Less than a decade later, in a case called Wisconsin v. Yoder, the Court once again emphasized that it was exempting an Amish family from a law making school attendance mandatory because it did not perceive any harms to third parties. “This case,” the Court explained, “is not one in which any harm to the physical or mental health of the child or to the public safety, peace, order, or welfare has been demonstrated or may be properly inferred.”
Ten years after that, the Court decided the Lee case, with its proclamation that a business owner’s own religious views “are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others” engaged in a similar business. Allowing an employer to ignore a law protecting its employees, the Court explained “operates to impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees.”
In 1990, however, the Court briefly narrowed the protections offered to people who object to laws on religious grounds in an opinion authored by Justice Antonin Scalia. This unpopular decision inspired the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which formed the basis of Hobby Lobby’s legal claim. Yet, the purpose of RFRA was not to change the longstanding balance between religious liberty and the rights of third parties. Rather, it was to restore the many decades of religious liberty law that began with the Sherbert opinion. Indeed, RFRA explicitly states that its purpose is to “restore the compelling interest test as set forth in Sherbert v. Verner [] and Wisconsin v. Yoder [].”
Justice Alito’s opinion, however, tosses this explicit statement of congressional purpose aside, although he offers little explanation for why he is justified in doing so. His best effort is a reference to a 2000 law that amended one of RFRA’s definition of an “exercise of religion” to take out an explicit reference to the First Amendment. According to Alito, the purpose of this amendment was “an obvious effort to effect a complete separation from First Amendment case law” as laid out by cases like Sherbert and Yoder. Yet, it is difficult to square this interpretation with the fact that the RFRA statute still provides that its purpose is to “restore the compelling interest test as set forth” in Sherbert and Yoder.
The upshot of Alito’s opinion is that, for the first time in American history, people with religious objections to the law will be able to ignore many laws with impunity unless the government’s decision to enforce the law overcomes a very high legal bar that few laws survive. The full implications of Hobby Lobby, however, may not be known for years. When cases like Sherbert, Yoder and Lee were still good law at the federal level, plaintiffs alleging religious liberty alleged that they could engage in race discrimination and discrimination against women, and they also claimed immunity to paying Social Security taxes and the minimum wage. Though the Supreme Court probably isn’t ready to revisit these cases, religious business owners are likely to find many other regulations they can now object to on religious grounds. And all of these objections will come to court with vigorous tailwind.
by Jan Millhiser, Think Progress | Read more:
Image: Sy Mukuherjee
The 'Internet's Own Boy' Free on Internet Archive
by Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing | Read more:
Video: Internet Archive
I Would Reunite 4 U: Prince’s Private Paisley Park Concert for Apollonia
[ed. Prince shreds.]
Eye want 2 tell U a story. Once upon a time in the land of Sinaplenty, there lived a Prince named Prince, who was always looking 4 his princess. Then he met a beautiful girl named Patricia Apollonia Kotero and cast her as the lead in his 1984 movie, Purple Rain. He dubbed her simply “Apollonia,” and after the departure of Denise “Vanity” Matthews, he assigned the remaining members of Vanity 6 (Susan Moonsie and Brenda Bennett) to be Apollonia’s backup singers in a new group called Apollonia 6.
Despite their intense connection on the silver screen in Purple Rain, Prince and Apollonia never had a romantic relationship in real life. Kotero was married, but her relationship status was kept a secret in order to better sell her image as a vixen. In addition to rumors about her relationship with Prince, the tabloids also linked Apollonia to Lorenzo Lamas and David Lee Roth. Prince had intended to give Apollonia 6 songs including “Manic Monday,” “Take Me With U,” and “The Glamorous Life” but soon realized that Apollonia was not a very good technical singer. She also hadn’t planned on being a Prince girl for all that long, and she did not intend to stay with Apollonia 6 after her contractual obligations to make an album and do Purple Rain were completed. Prince wrote all the songs on the group’s lone album but credited them to the group’s members, attributing the lead single, “Sex Shooter,” to Kotero herself.
But this was all long ago. Many years (30) have passed since Prince convinced Apollonia to purify herself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. But some of us have held a torch for Prince and Apollonia all of these years. The hot, purple chemistry they had in Purple Rain was just 2 iconic. And for those some of us, on Saturday night, our dreams came true. Prince took Apollonia home 2 his kingdom of Paisley Park in Minnesota for the first time.
Paisley Park Studios, named after a song on 1985’s Around the World in a Day and Prince’s (now defunct) Paisley Park Records label, is a mysterious, magical $10 million complex that only a select few get to enter, and only by invitation from Prince. Essentially it is the Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory of funk. What is known about Paisley Park is that it has a Granite Room and a Wood Room that provide different acoustics for recording, and a complete soundstage that Prince used to shoot much of Purple Rain follow-up Graffiti Bridge. Prince still rehearses all of his tours on the Paisley Park soundstage, and its also been used as a practice space by the Beastie Boys, the Bee Gees, Neil Young, Kool & The Gang, and the Muppets. Paisley Park also contains “The Vault,” where Prince stores everything he has ever made, including B-sides, outtakes, and jam sessions he deemed 2 b 2 funky 4 human ears.
by Molly Lambert, Grantland | Read more:
Image: YouTube
Stash Pad
The buyer, an Italian, was in town for a week, with a million or so dollars to spend. We met one Sunday morning at 20 Pine, a Financial District condo building. She wore a red scarf, jangly jewelry, and a pair of lime-green sunglasses perched atop her curly hair, and she told me she would prefer to remain anonymous. Working through a shell company, she was looking to anchor some of her wealth in an advantageous port: New York City.
The building’s lobby, designed in leathery tones by Armani, swirled with polylingual property talk. As the Italian and I waited for her broker, an Asian man sitting on a couch next to us asked, “You see the apartment?” But he didn’t wait for an answer, leaping up to join a handful of women speaking a foreign language heading toward the elevators.
After a few minutes, a fashionably stubbled young man swung through 20 Pine’s revolving door: Santo Rosabianca, a broker with Wire International Realty. The firm, run by Rosabianca’s brother Luigi, an attorney, specializes in catering to overseas investors. A first-generation American, Santo greeted the buyer with kisses and briefed her in Italian. She was searching for a property that would generate substantial rental income. “Wall Street is not my favorite place,” she told me. “But he says it is very good for rent.”
Like several other buildings she was being shown, 20 Pine was developed at the height of the real-estate bubble. After the crash of 2008, it became an emblematic disaster, with the developers selling units in bulk at desperation prices, until opportunistic foreigners swooped in with cash offers. The salvage deals are long gone, but 20 Pine retains its international appeal. The one-bedroom the Italian was looking at, on the 27th floor, had a view of the Woolworth Building, sleek finishes, a bachelor-size kitchen, and access to an exclusive terrace reserved for upper-floor residents. It was first purchased by an investment banker in early 2008 for $1.3 million, was resold in 2011 for $850,000, and was now back on the market for close to its prerecession price. Rosabianca told the Italian it would rent for more than $4,000 a month, enough to assure a healthy cash flow while its value appreciated. “There’s really no safer way to get that kind of return,” he said, “than in New York City real estate.”
This is not exactly true—there’s plenty of risk in real estate, as the original crop of purchasers at 20 Pine discovered—but that hardly dampens the enthusiasm of foreign buyers, who have become an overpowering force in New York’s real-estate market. According to data compiled by the firm PropertyShark, since 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors. Similarly, the firm Corcoran Sunshine, which markets luxury buildings, estimates that 35 percent of its sales since 2013 have been to international buyers, half from Asia, with the remainder roughly evenly split among Latin America, Europe, and the rest of the world. “The global elite,” says developer Michael Stern, “is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.” (...)
And so New Yorkers with garden-variety affluence—the kind of buyers who require mortgages—are facing disheartening price wars as they compete for scarce inventory with investors who may seldom even turn on a light switch. The Census Bureau estimates that 30 percent of all apartments in the quadrant from 49th to 70th Streets between Fifth and Park are vacant at least ten months a year.
To cater to the tastes of their transient residents, developers are designing their projects with features like hotel-style services. And the new economy has spawned new service businesses, like XL Real Property Management, which takes care of all the niggling details—repairs, insurance, condo fees—for absentee buyers. “I feel like foreign investors have gotten a bad rap,” says Dylan Pichulik, XL’s boyish chief executive, who recently took me to see a $15,000-a-month rental at the Gretsch, a condo building in Williamsburg, which he oversees for a Russian owner. “Because, you know, They’re evil, they’re coming in to buy all our real estate. But it’s a major driver of the market right now.”
Even those with less reflexively hostile reactions to foreign buying competition might still wonder:Who are these people? An entire industry of brokers, lawyers, and tight-lipped advisers exists largely to keep anyone from discovering the answer. This is because, while New York real estate has significant drawbacks as an asset—it’s illiquid and costly to manage—it has a major selling point in its relative opacity. With a little creative corporate structuring, the ownership of a New York property can be made as untraceable as a numbered bank account. And that makes the city an island haven for those who want to stash cash in an increasingly monitored global financial system. “With everything that is going on in Switzerland in terms of transparency, people are being forced to pay taxes on their capital that they used to hold there,” says Rodrigo Nino, the president of the Prodigy Network. “Real estate is a great alternative.”
Those on the New York end of the transaction often don’t know—or don’t care to find out—the exact derivation of foreign money involved in these transactions. “Sometimes they come in with wires,” says Luigi Rosabianca. “Sometimes they come in with suitcases.” Most of the time, the motivation behind this movement of cash, and buyers’ desire for privacy, is legitimate, but sometimes it’s not. An inquiry by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a Washington-based nonprofit, has uncovered numerous cases in which New York real estate figured in foreign financial- and political-corruption scandals. “It’s something that is never discussed, but it’s the elephant in the room,” says Rosabianca. “Real estate is a wonderful way to cleanse money. Once you buy real estate, the derivation of that cash is forgotten.”
The building’s lobby, designed in leathery tones by Armani, swirled with polylingual property talk. As the Italian and I waited for her broker, an Asian man sitting on a couch next to us asked, “You see the apartment?” But he didn’t wait for an answer, leaping up to join a handful of women speaking a foreign language heading toward the elevators.
After a few minutes, a fashionably stubbled young man swung through 20 Pine’s revolving door: Santo Rosabianca, a broker with Wire International Realty. The firm, run by Rosabianca’s brother Luigi, an attorney, specializes in catering to overseas investors. A first-generation American, Santo greeted the buyer with kisses and briefed her in Italian. She was searching for a property that would generate substantial rental income. “Wall Street is not my favorite place,” she told me. “But he says it is very good for rent.”
Like several other buildings she was being shown, 20 Pine was developed at the height of the real-estate bubble. After the crash of 2008, it became an emblematic disaster, with the developers selling units in bulk at desperation prices, until opportunistic foreigners swooped in with cash offers. The salvage deals are long gone, but 20 Pine retains its international appeal. The one-bedroom the Italian was looking at, on the 27th floor, had a view of the Woolworth Building, sleek finishes, a bachelor-size kitchen, and access to an exclusive terrace reserved for upper-floor residents. It was first purchased by an investment banker in early 2008 for $1.3 million, was resold in 2011 for $850,000, and was now back on the market for close to its prerecession price. Rosabianca told the Italian it would rent for more than $4,000 a month, enough to assure a healthy cash flow while its value appreciated. “There’s really no safer way to get that kind of return,” he said, “than in New York City real estate.”This is not exactly true—there’s plenty of risk in real estate, as the original crop of purchasers at 20 Pine discovered—but that hardly dampens the enthusiasm of foreign buyers, who have become an overpowering force in New York’s real-estate market. According to data compiled by the firm PropertyShark, since 2008, roughly 30 percent of condo sales in large-scale Manhattan developments have been to purchasers who either listed an overseas address or bought through an entity like a limited-liability corporation, a tactic rarely employed by local homebuyers but favored by foreign investors. Similarly, the firm Corcoran Sunshine, which markets luxury buildings, estimates that 35 percent of its sales since 2013 have been to international buyers, half from Asia, with the remainder roughly evenly split among Latin America, Europe, and the rest of the world. “The global elite,” says developer Michael Stern, “is basically looking for a safe-deposit box.” (...)
And so New Yorkers with garden-variety affluence—the kind of buyers who require mortgages—are facing disheartening price wars as they compete for scarce inventory with investors who may seldom even turn on a light switch. The Census Bureau estimates that 30 percent of all apartments in the quadrant from 49th to 70th Streets between Fifth and Park are vacant at least ten months a year.
To cater to the tastes of their transient residents, developers are designing their projects with features like hotel-style services. And the new economy has spawned new service businesses, like XL Real Property Management, which takes care of all the niggling details—repairs, insurance, condo fees—for absentee buyers. “I feel like foreign investors have gotten a bad rap,” says Dylan Pichulik, XL’s boyish chief executive, who recently took me to see a $15,000-a-month rental at the Gretsch, a condo building in Williamsburg, which he oversees for a Russian owner. “Because, you know, They’re evil, they’re coming in to buy all our real estate. But it’s a major driver of the market right now.”
Even those with less reflexively hostile reactions to foreign buying competition might still wonder:Who are these people? An entire industry of brokers, lawyers, and tight-lipped advisers exists largely to keep anyone from discovering the answer. This is because, while New York real estate has significant drawbacks as an asset—it’s illiquid and costly to manage—it has a major selling point in its relative opacity. With a little creative corporate structuring, the ownership of a New York property can be made as untraceable as a numbered bank account. And that makes the city an island haven for those who want to stash cash in an increasingly monitored global financial system. “With everything that is going on in Switzerland in terms of transparency, people are being forced to pay taxes on their capital that they used to hold there,” says Rodrigo Nino, the president of the Prodigy Network. “Real estate is a great alternative.”
Those on the New York end of the transaction often don’t know—or don’t care to find out—the exact derivation of foreign money involved in these transactions. “Sometimes they come in with wires,” says Luigi Rosabianca. “Sometimes they come in with suitcases.” Most of the time, the motivation behind this movement of cash, and buyers’ desire for privacy, is legitimate, but sometimes it’s not. An inquiry by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a Washington-based nonprofit, has uncovered numerous cases in which New York real estate figured in foreign financial- and political-corruption scandals. “It’s something that is never discussed, but it’s the elephant in the room,” says Rosabianca. “Real estate is a wonderful way to cleanse money. Once you buy real estate, the derivation of that cash is forgotten.”
by Andrew Rice, NY Magazine | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Sunday, June 29, 2014
The Rise of the Personal Power Plant
At first glance, downtown Fort Collins, Colorado, looks like a sweet anachronism. Beautifully preserved 19th-century buildings beckon from leafy streets. A restored trolley car ding-dings its way along Mountain Avenue. It’s safe and spotless, vibrant and unrushed.
And yet this quaint district is ground zero for one of the most ambitious energy agendas of any municipality in the United States. Fort Collins, population 150 000, is trying to do something that no other community of its size has ever done: transform its downtown into a net-zero-energy district, meaning it will consume no more energy in a given year than it generates. And the city as a whole is aiming to reduce its carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2030, on the way to being carbon neutral by midcentury. To make all that happen, engineers there are preparing to aggressively deploy an array of advanced energy technologies, including combined-cycle gas turbines to replace aging coal-fired plants, as well as rooftop solar photovoltaics, community-supported solar gardens, wind turbines, thermal and electricity storage, microgrids, and energy-efficiency schemes.
It’s an audacious plan. But for Fort Collins Utilities, the local electric company, the less daring options were unacceptable. Like utilities all over the world, it is grappling with the dissolution of the traditional regulated-monopoly model of electricity production, with its single, centralized decision maker. The costs of solar and wind electricity generation have fallen to the point that countless consumers in many countries now produce their own electricity, often (but not always) with the blessing of regulators and policymakers. (...)
Customers are paying dearly for those upgrades: Electricity rates in Germany have doubled since 2002, to about 40 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s more than four times the price of electricity in Illinois. Many other countries are now learning from these experiences, Kroposki adds, “to make sure that solar and wind systems integrate with the grid in ways that help overall system stability.”
And yet this quaint district is ground zero for one of the most ambitious energy agendas of any municipality in the United States. Fort Collins, population 150 000, is trying to do something that no other community of its size has ever done: transform its downtown into a net-zero-energy district, meaning it will consume no more energy in a given year than it generates. And the city as a whole is aiming to reduce its carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2030, on the way to being carbon neutral by midcentury. To make all that happen, engineers there are preparing to aggressively deploy an array of advanced energy technologies, including combined-cycle gas turbines to replace aging coal-fired plants, as well as rooftop solar photovoltaics, community-supported solar gardens, wind turbines, thermal and electricity storage, microgrids, and energy-efficiency schemes.
It’s an audacious plan. But for Fort Collins Utilities, the local electric company, the less daring options were unacceptable. Like utilities all over the world, it is grappling with the dissolution of the traditional regulated-monopoly model of electricity production, with its single, centralized decision maker. The costs of solar and wind electricity generation have fallen to the point that countless consumers in many countries now produce their own electricity, often (but not always) with the blessing of regulators and policymakers. (...)
The electricity industry is undergoing the same sort of fundamental change that has already transformed telecommunications and computing, says Clark Gellings, a fellow at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), in Palo Alto, Calif. Recall the heyday of the telephone landline, when a monopoly provided reliable service, with few bells and no whistles. Today, a multitude of telecom providers offer more wired and wireless options and services than most people, frankly, care to contemplate. Computers, similarly, used to mean giant mainframes accessed via remote terminals. But when CPUs and memory became cheap enough and powerful enough, people could own their own computers, access and exchange information via the Internet, and leverage the power of distributed computation in the cloud.
Gellings envisions an analogue for electricity that he calls the ElectriNet: a highly interconnected and interactive network of power systems that also combines telecommunications, the Internet, and e-commerce. (Gellings first unveiled the then-heretical notion of electricity customers managing their own usage—a concept he called “demand-side load management”—in the December 1981 issue of IEEE Spectrum.) Such a network will allow traditional utilities to intelligently connect with individual households, service providers, and as yet unforeseen electricity players, fostering the billions of daily electricity “transactions” that will take place between generators and consumers. Smart appliances in the home will be able to respond to changes in electricity prices automatically by, for instance, turning themselves off or on as prices rise or fall. The ElectriNet will also allow for home security, data and communication services, and the like. [Listen to a podcast interview with Gellings on the future of the power grid.]
In addition, Gellings says, advanced sensors deployed throughout the network will let grid operators visualize the power system in real time, a key capability for detecting faults, physical attacks, and cyberattacks and for preventing or at least mitigating outages.
While distributed generation is already taking hold in many places, Gellings notes, “we have to move toward a truly integrated power system. That’s a system that makes the best use of distributed and central resources—because central power generation is not going to go away, although it may change in shape and form.” [For more on the undesirability of grid defection, see the sidebar, “The Slow Death of the Grid.”]
A highly intelligent and agile network that can handle the myriad transactions taking place among hundreds of thousands or even millions of individual energy producers and consumers isn’t just desirable, say experts. It has to happen, because the alternative would be grim.
Just ask the Germans. Generous subsidies, called feed-in tariffs, for renewable energy resulted in the country adding 30 gigawatts of solar and 30 gigawatts of wind power in just a few years. On a bright breezy day at noon, renewables can account for more than half of Germany’s generated electricity.
“That sounds like a good thing, but to the utility, it looked like a huge negative load,” notes Benjamin Kroposki, director of energy systems integration at theNational Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. When a large amount of renewable power is being generated, the output of conventional central power plants is correspondingly reduced to keep the system balanced. But if a local outage or a voltage spike or some other grid disturbance occurs, protective circuitry quickly shuts down the photovoltaics’ inverters. (Inverters are semiconductor-based systems that convert the direct current from the solar cells to alternating current.) And that in turn can lead to cascading systemwide instabilities.
“If you lose 30 gigawatts in just 10 cycles”—two-tenths of a second, that is—“you can’t ramp up conventional generators quickly enough to compensate,” Kroposki notes. So the Germans had to spend the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars on smarter inverters and communication links that would allow the PV arrays to automatically ride through any disturbances rather than simply shut down.
Gellings envisions an analogue for electricity that he calls the ElectriNet: a highly interconnected and interactive network of power systems that also combines telecommunications, the Internet, and e-commerce. (Gellings first unveiled the then-heretical notion of electricity customers managing their own usage—a concept he called “demand-side load management”—in the December 1981 issue of IEEE Spectrum.) Such a network will allow traditional utilities to intelligently connect with individual households, service providers, and as yet unforeseen electricity players, fostering the billions of daily electricity “transactions” that will take place between generators and consumers. Smart appliances in the home will be able to respond to changes in electricity prices automatically by, for instance, turning themselves off or on as prices rise or fall. The ElectriNet will also allow for home security, data and communication services, and the like. [Listen to a podcast interview with Gellings on the future of the power grid.]
In addition, Gellings says, advanced sensors deployed throughout the network will let grid operators visualize the power system in real time, a key capability for detecting faults, physical attacks, and cyberattacks and for preventing or at least mitigating outages.
While distributed generation is already taking hold in many places, Gellings notes, “we have to move toward a truly integrated power system. That’s a system that makes the best use of distributed and central resources—because central power generation is not going to go away, although it may change in shape and form.” [For more on the undesirability of grid defection, see the sidebar, “The Slow Death of the Grid.”]
A highly intelligent and agile network that can handle the myriad transactions taking place among hundreds of thousands or even millions of individual energy producers and consumers isn’t just desirable, say experts. It has to happen, because the alternative would be grim.
Just ask the Germans. Generous subsidies, called feed-in tariffs, for renewable energy resulted in the country adding 30 gigawatts of solar and 30 gigawatts of wind power in just a few years. On a bright breezy day at noon, renewables can account for more than half of Germany’s generated electricity.
“That sounds like a good thing, but to the utility, it looked like a huge negative load,” notes Benjamin Kroposki, director of energy systems integration at theNational Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo. When a large amount of renewable power is being generated, the output of conventional central power plants is correspondingly reduced to keep the system balanced. But if a local outage or a voltage spike or some other grid disturbance occurs, protective circuitry quickly shuts down the photovoltaics’ inverters. (Inverters are semiconductor-based systems that convert the direct current from the solar cells to alternating current.) And that in turn can lead to cascading systemwide instabilities.
“If you lose 30 gigawatts in just 10 cycles”—two-tenths of a second, that is—“you can’t ramp up conventional generators quickly enough to compensate,” Kroposki notes. So the Germans had to spend the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars on smarter inverters and communication links that would allow the PV arrays to automatically ride through any disturbances rather than simply shut down.
Customers are paying dearly for those upgrades: Electricity rates in Germany have doubled since 2002, to about 40 U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. That’s more than four times the price of electricity in Illinois. Many other countries are now learning from these experiences, Kroposki adds, “to make sure that solar and wind systems integrate with the grid in ways that help overall system stability.”
by Jean Kumagai, IEEE Spectrum | Read more:
Image: New Belgium Brewing
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Saturday, June 28, 2014
The Disconnect
Few things are less welcome today than protracted solitude—a life style that, for many people, has the taint of loserdom and brings to mind such characters as Ted Kaczynski and Shrek. Does aloneness deserve a less untoward image? Aside from monastic seclusion, which is just another way of being together, it is hard to come up with a solitary life that doesn’t invite pity, or an enviable loner who’s not cheating the rules. (Even Henry David Thoreau, for all his bluster about solitude, ambled regularly into Concord for his mother’s cooking and the local bars.) Meanwhile, the culture’s data pool is filled with evidence of virtuous togetherness. “The Brady Bunch.” The March on Washington. The Yankees, in 2009. Alone, we’re told, is where you end up when these enterprises go south.
And yet the reputation of modern solitude is puzzling, because the traits enabling a solitary life—financial stability, spiritual autonomy, the wherewithal to buy more dishwashing detergent when the box runs out—are those our culture prizes. Plus, recent demographic shifts suggest that aloneness, far from fading out in our connected age, is on its way in. In 1950, four million people in this country lived alone. These days, there are almost eight times as many, thirty-one million. Americans are getting married later than ever (the average age of first marriage for men is twenty-eight), and bailing on domestic life with alacrity (half of modern unions are expected to end in divorce). Today, more than fifty per cent of U.S. residents are single, nearly a third of all households have just one resident, and five million adults younger than thirty-five live alone. This may or may not prove a useful thing to know on certain Saturday nights.
Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University, has spent the past several years studying aloneness, and in his new book, “Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone” (Penguin), he approaches his subject as someone baffled by these recent trends. Klinenberg’s initial encounter with the growing ranks of singletons, he explains, came while researching his first book, about the Chicago heat wave of 1995. During that crisis, hundreds of people living alone died, not just because of the heat but because their solitary lives left them without a support network. “Silently, and invisibly, they had developed what one city investigator who worked with them regularly called ‘a secret society of people who live and die alone,’ ” Klinenberg writes.
“Going Solo” is his attempt to see how this secret society fares outside the crucible of natural disaster. For seven years, Klinenberg and his research team interviewed more than three hundred people living alone, plus many of the caretakers, planners, and designers who help make that solitary life possible. Their sample included single people in everything from halfway hotels to elder-care facilities, and drew on fieldwork conducted primarily in seven cities: Austin, Texas; Chicago; Los Angeles; New York; San Francisco; Washington, D.C.; and Stockholm.
The results were surprising. Klinenberg’s data suggested that single living was not a social aberration but an inevitable outgrowth of mainstream liberal values. Women’s liberation, widespread urbanization, communications technology, and increased longevity—these four trends lend our era its cultural contours, and each gives rise to solo living. Women facing less pressure to stick to child care and housework can pursue careers, marry and conceive when they please, and divorce if they’re unhappy. The “communications revolution” that began with the telephone and continues with Facebook helps dissolve the boundary between social life and isolation. Urban culture caters heavily to autonomous singles, both in its social diversity and in its amenities: gyms, coffee shops, food deliveries, laundromats, and the like ease solo subsistence. Age, thanks to the uneven advances of modern medicine, makes loners of people who have not previously lived by themselves. By 2000, sixty-two per cent of the widowed elderly were living by themselves, a figure that’s unlikely to fall anytime soon.
What turns this shift from demographic accounting to a social question is the pursuit-of-happiness factor: as a rule, do people live alone because they want to or because they have to?
by Nathan Heller, New Yorker | Read more:
Image:Jean-Francois Martin
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