Crazy cake

So yesterday I made my very first fat-free, sugar-free cake (and recipe-free, may I add). Okay, so it was more like a pumpkin bread. Anyway, it turned out pretty good, although I regret not adding any honey or apple-juice concentrate, because prune juice just doesn't make things sweet enough for my liking. Of course, that means it might be sweet enough for any normal person--you're talking about a woman who has been known to add 2 and 1/2 sugar packets to a diner-sized cup of coffee. But the cake is fluffy and tender and yummy, just as a good cake or quick bread ought to be, and boy is it yummy with the (sooo not sugar-free) frosting I plopped on top. It's the best of both worlds this way.

And of course, since it's sugar-free and fat-free, I didn't feel guilty about eating a big chunk for breakfast.

Bye-bye, SCSC ...

So, I'm re-reading one of my all-time favorite books (The God Particle, Lederman), and realized I hadn't heard anything about the super-colliding superconductor in a long time. So I looked it up.

Did you know they're just letting it rot away in the desert? ? ? ?

I mean, they never finished it. They never got the money, they threw their hands up in the air and they just left everything to turn into dust down there.

I am so worked up about this that I used a comma splice in that last sentence.

I know that some day, people will get their heads out of their asses about big science--big important science, like astrophysics and particle physics, not craptastic money-making environmental-trashing schemes like fricking genetic engineering. I know that someday, someone will say: let's get a bunch of money and smash atoms until we finally have some experimental proof that support GUTS. Or at least find the Higgs boson.

See, this is the kind of science that is important. It's not important because it leads to technological breakthroughs (which it does), but because it is the research that feeds the human soul. It represents humanity's great journey through the eons, a journey with but one end: to understand the universe, its beginnings and our place within it. Particle accelerators are not a tribute to the hubris of humankind, but a testiment to our desperate need to touch the miracles of God. The miracles get smaller and smaller the more we keep looking. Bosons and photons and gluons and quarks are truly miraculous.

Big science is like big operas, big orchestras and haute couture. People see all them as a waste of money, economic idiocies, and the toys of the privileged class. But anyone who witnesses them in action is awed.

We need awe. We need it desperately. And I wish with all my heart that we could move out of this period of puritanical, money-grubbing, soul-sucking thought--and get back to more human (and more godly) endeavors.

New Alchemy & Frustration

I started addressing this on my myspace blog, but that's my dumbied down blog. This is my more insightful page. Not that many of my insights have really been that great, for the most part, but what the heck, a girl's got to have standards.

ANYWAY, I've been reading a lot of great stuff about sustainable development, and the changes we need to make in our economy and the way we design communities and the way we think about resources. And our needs. It's great. Since Jarusha gave me this cookbook (The More-With-Less Cookbook--check it out), I've really been thinking about the expenses behind the littlest things we do.

It started with food, obviously. Basic expenditure was just the first step; then I read more, and I started thinking about the moral expenses behind my meals. That was when I decided I was definitely going veg, and I was going to seriously work to get rid of my use of dairy and egg products. I feel really great about that move. All the energies of my body are happier, and I feel less clogged up and depressed. Also, I know that what I'm eating is using a much smaller footprint than my old one.

Lately, still on the level of food, I've started thinking about the energy and waste behind the processed foods in my life. Not just convenience foods like frozen pizza, but other, more subtly processed things: soy milk; bread; sugar; maple syrup. Just about everything we eat, unless it's a fresh vegetable or fruit, is pretty highly processed. And there's a lot of waste involved. You definitely notice how much energy food takes when you start making more of your own stuff from scratch.

Hmmn, hold that thought. The kid is waking.

slackah!

See? I'm so busy slacking, I can't even be bothered to capitalize the title of this blog entry.

I haven't updating this blog very often lately because I have been so busy getting crazy with myspace. It can be a little ... time consuming ... but it has proved worthwhile, because I am reconnecting with my brother Jak. He is not having a good time in Lemoore, CA, and I really feel for him. Still, it's only for a few months, and then they will probably send him to sea.

I am working on the *3rd* reconceptualization of my little novel. I've been sitting on the second draft, not quite willing to commit to finish the fix (I needed to re-enter all the changes from the last half of the book after my ancient computer ATE them), and I was finally able to put my finger on the vague feeling of wrong which has troubled me for a very long time. So I'm completely revisiting the story and I'm really excited about it. Hooray!

Also cool and noteworthy: I am cutting out the pieces for a skirt I patterned myself and I finished a painting (which actually looks like a person). Oh yes: I've also been making my own breads, seitan from scratch, and my own rice milk. Whew! Good times this summer!