karlslittlesoapbox

07 August 2006

Enjoying the View

Last Sabbath was such a tremendous blessing. Friday night found us all together with no sermon to prepare, no Sabbath School lessons to ready for the next morning. We watched the wonderful evening program from the ASi Convention on 3ABN. We talked, we laughed, we read, we sang. Beautiful. Sabbath morning was so relaxing. No running around like crazy people to get out the door. The stress level was obviously, wonderfully much reduced from the norm that used to be. After a simple hot dog lunch, we had great interaction with the kids and each other. Usually we dropped exhausted into naps Sabbath afternoon because of the stress of getting ready for the "day of rest." Now, it truly is restful. Every week, every day our decision to step back is confirmed. We'd almost forgotten how wonderful it could be. Thank you, Lord.

04 August 2006

Stepping Back

I have not posted here on for oh, so long. Life has been so deperately busy. Now, my wife and I (and our kids) have decided that for our sanity and the strength of our family, we must take a step back from the rat race of life, take a breath, and regroup. We're deciding that if we are going to do it, we are going to do it together. I've become so weary with the kids with Daddy and Mommy somewhere else or vice versa or some of the kids with one of us and the rest with the other. We've become tired of a life that sometimes has us communicating more on IM or by reading each others blogs than we do face to face. This new journey has just begun, but already we can notice a difference. During the past year, we both held multiple offices at our church. This year, we declined any positions and, actually, have moved our memberships to a different church where we can be as much or as little involved as we feel we are able to be. Pray for us in this persuit. If you and your family have made similar decisions and changes, please let me know the result.

02 June 2006

Spring in the Ozarks

I just love spring. Here in the Ozarks today is especially glorious. We've had a few days of rain that washes everything clean. Then, within the last few hours, the clouds have broken up, the cool breeze has increased and I want nothing more than to get out my hammock and sleep outside. The fresh air, the peace and country livin' out here is so nice. I appreciate it more every day. I have such a tendency to get so bogged down with work and church and home that I have forget to just slow down and enjoy life. Burnout has come knocking often in the last few years. I praise God for the divine fire extinguisher of beautiful weather and a slower pace.

21 April 2006

Meat-Eaters Aiding Global Warming?


Ok, I saw this news story recently from ABC News an I just had to share it. Yet one more reason to be a vegetarian.

K




New Research Suggests What You Eat as Important as What You Drive

April 19, 2006 -- Your personal impact on global warming may be influenced as much by what you eat as by what you drive.

That surprising conclusion comes from a couple of scientists who have taken an unusual look at the production of greenhouse gases from an angle that not many folks have even thought about. Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, assistant professors of geophysics at the University of Chicago, have found that our consumption of red meat may be as bad for the planet as it is for our bodies.

If you want to help lower greenhouse gas emissions, they conclude in a report to be published in the journal Earth Interactions, become a vegetarian.

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that both researchers are vegetarians, although they admit to cheating a little with an occasional sardine. They say their conclusions are backed up by hard data.

Eshel and Martin collected that data from a wide range of sources, and they examined the amount of fossil-fuel energy — and thus the level of production of greenhouse gases — required for five different diets. The vegetarian diet turned out to be the most energy efficient, followed by poultry, and what they call the "mean American diet," which consists of a little bit of everything.

There was a surprising tie for last place. In terms of energy required for harvesting and processing, fish and red meat ended up in a "virtual tie," but that's just in terms of energy consumed. When you toss in all those other factors, such as bovine flatulence and gas released by manure, red meat comes in dead last. Fish remains in fourth place, some distance behind poultry and the mean American diet, chiefly because the type of fish preferred by Americans requires a lot of energy to catch.

Eating Red Meat Like Driving an SUV?

Can changing your diet really have much of an impact?

"It is comparable to the difference between driving an SUV and driving a reasonable sedan," said Eshel, who drives a Honda Civic, and only when he has to.

Eshel, who grew up on a farm, has always been interested in ecology and the impact we have on the planet. He got into this research, he says, because "now that I'm a professor of geophysics, I have tools in my tool kit that I can apply much more quantitatively and rigorously to evaluate what we do."

It's probably safe to say that both he and Martin figured the vegetarian diet would come out on top, but demonstrating that wasn't easy.

The first hurdle, Eshel says, was coming up "with those semirealistic diets." We don't all eat the same way, of course, so how do you figure out the accumulative impact of our widely varied diets?

The researchers began with data from the U.S. Department of Energy that quantifies the "food disappearance" rate.

"What they are referring to is the rate at which food disappears from supermarket shelves," Eshel said. On the basis of that data, they were able to construct the five semirealistic diets.

Then they collected data from a wide range of sources, mostly available to anyone on the Internet, concerning the amount of energy required to grow, harvest and prepare the foods that make up those five diets.

The centerpiece is the "mean American diet." About 72 percent of the calories from that diet are plant-based.

"Of course, most of it is tomatoes and ketchup and potatoes and french fries, but none the less it is plant-based," Eshel said.

Of the remaining 28 percent, about half comes from meat, and the rest from dairy and eggs.

When they looked at only carbon dioxide emissions associated directly with energy consumption, they came up with the vegetarian diet far less damaging to the planet than the others.

However, the researchers admit that their findings can't be considered exact. Take fish, for instance.

"The seafood portion of American diets is heavily skewed toward what is called charismatic predator fish," Eshel said, which are harder to catch. "Sword, shark and tuna and so on require long-distance ocean journeys, and those efforts are not efficient. They require a lot of labor and a lot of fossil fuel."

Switching from red meat to fish won't necessarily help the planet, unless you can develop a taste for anchovies, which prefer to remain closer to shore and travel in large schools that can be easily caught and harvested.

Considering the fact that so much of our energy goes into such areas as transportation, is it realistic to think of lowering greenhouse gases by changing the typical American diet?

The researchers insist it is. The United States, Eshel says, accounts for about 28 percent of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions.

"The U.S. has five sectors of the economy that are large emitters," he said. "Those are transportation, industrial, commercial, residential and agriculture."

Energy used in agriculture has grown substantially in recent years, he says, and now stands at around 18 percent or 19 percent of the nation's energy use.

The researchers say their findings show that at least 6 percent of that use comes from the production of foods that are not energy efficient, like cattle and the food to feed them. Considering that the "mean American diet is responsible for an additional ton-and-a-half of greenhouse gas emissions a year from each of us," the savings could be substantial.

"It's a huge deal," Eshel said.

So do these two vegetarians want us to give up our hamburgers and tuna and eat cauliflower?

"I hate to sound preachy," Eshel said, but it wouldn't hurt to give a little.

"I say eat whatever works for you, but just keep in mind that the less animal-based food you eat, and the more you replace those calories with plant-based food, the better off you are, in terms of your health as well as your contributions to the health of the planet."


HERE'S THE LINK TO THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=1856817&page=1

04 April 2006

I Recommend - BROWSER

When you get ready to surf the internet superhighway, what does your vehicle look like? If you have not already done so, I recommend that you switch to Firefox by Mozilla. It works faster, is more stable and is more secure than any other browser. IE (Internet Explorer) is good, but has major security problems. Netscape is nice and secure but it is a behemoth in size. There is so much to it that it takes a large amount of system resources. Firefox has the security and speed of Netscape in a nice small package. Head over to www.mozilla.com and get the best.

31 March 2006

Incredible Pictures from Space


One of the things I absolutely love is to look at all of the incredible pictures taken by terrestrial and space-based telescopes (Hubble). Around Christmas I put together a DVD with a bunch of these images and put the music Gloria by John Rutter in the background. It was, I must say, inspiring. (If any of you have high-speed internet and would like a wmv or avi of it, let me know.) The image above struck me the most. The image of power behind the unintentional image of the cross. The fact that apex of the X is on the cross. As in a treasure map, X truly does mark the spot where the treasure is found. Lastly, the fact that the cross and what happened there are bigger than all of space and are the central focus of all that has ever been and all that ever will be. Even if you don't believe in Jesus as the savior of the world, it still should be a powerful image to you. Enjoy!!

Don't Blame Me

If you miss the day, don't blame me. You should read my blog more regularly. Course, if you are a parent, aunt, uncle or have ever been a babysitter you should already know. It is THIS SUNDAY, April 2. What is this famous day that, supposedly we should all know? It is the national Peanut Butter and Jelly Day. That's right, PB&J Day. If you missed it already, hey you are forgiven. As punishment, go make yourself a sandwich and enjoy.

Oh, how long have I known about this? About 6 hours as of when I am writing this. Guess I have some major punishment in store. Course, the thought of 35 sandwiches is quite overwhelming. Guess I'll have to pay my debt - you guessed it - one bite at a time.

Now, you go have a great day and practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.

29 March 2006

Springtime

Spring is here in the Ozarks. The trees are starting to leaf out. The flowers are blooming everywhere and the bees are beginning to make honey again. Cool! I wish I could bottle it all up and send it to you. And yet, with all this beauty and loveliness, I can't help but long ever more for Heaven and an earth re-created. An earth with no disease, no stinging wasps (which are also out in abundance), no IRS, no sadness, no war, no misunderstandings, no anger, no exhaustion, no pollution causing vehicles, no cigarettes or any other drugs, no splinters, no poison ivy, no ticks, no misquitos, no deadlines except for the wonderful weekly Sabbath.

I know that some will not agree with this, but what I see in all of the natural disasters and strange weather patterns is that God is allowing this world to get less and less appealing so I will be more and more ready for the return of Jesus. The tsunami in Asia, earthquake in Pakistan, Katrina-Rita, a record number of days with no rain in Phoenix, record snows, flooding in places around the world, talk of a new dustbowl in the midwest, record numbers of tornados, extreme amounts of rain in Hawaii, etc., etc., etc. The severe weather has NEVER been so widespread and in such quick succession.

Jesus IS coming soon. I can hardly wait.

No More Polls

Your voices have been heard. No more polls - though I find them extremely interesting.

Karl