Pre-Thanksgiving Weekend of Food

This weekend was filled with food, apparently in preparation for Thanksgiving weekend. I took pictures of pretty much everything I ate all weekend long. I'll include recipes (and proper names for the Indian Dishes Thanks Asha!) soon enough.

 First, on Friday night, Sheila and I made some Butternut Squash Apple Soup and Whole Wheat Irish Soda Bread. Two of Sheila's friends came over, and we made some bubble tea and watched My Neighbor Totoro. Awesome movie. Even if he is the angel of death.

 On Saturday, Sheila came over and we joined forces with Mr. Yeasty McNoodlyeyes (pictured above) to make a loaf of Mushroom-Onion Focaccia, two loaves of Cherry-Chocolate Bread, and a Quinoa-Walnut Loaf for Friendsgiving later that night.

 Sheila prepares to squish onions and mushrooms into her bread. Can you see the fear in her eyes?

Here's the disturbing pre-bake Cherry-Chocolate Bread. It looks...alive. It only tried to crawl away once.

 Like a surgeon, I sliced the Chocolate-Cherry, trying not to slice to deep.

 

I failed. I thought I killed the loaf on the left. 

 

But it still turned out okay. 

 

Especially when it was sliced and toasted.

 Sheila pokes the Focaccia, just like the recipe told her to.

 Things smelled so good that a neighborhood squirrel started to chew on a nearby cow skull.

 The Foccaccia came out of the oven a perfect golden brown.

Friendgiving was hosted at Lauren and Matt's house on Saturday night. The food was awesome. The company was delightful.

 Here's a plate from Friendsgiving. Moving clockwise from the left, there's the Focaccia, stuffing, the Quinoa loaf with Mushroom Gravy, some stuffed pasta, more quinoa, some greens, and a garbanzo bean salad.

The next day, Becky and Chris hosted an Indian food afternoon meal masterminded by Asha.

 For appetizers, we had some bhel puri a sort of puffed rice salad.

 Followed by poha (beaten rice, potatoes, veggies, and spices).

 The main course was jasmine rice, daal (lentils), baingan ka bharta (a spicy eggplant dish), curry naan, and some garlic and coriander naan. For dessert, there was khubani ha meetha (apricot-prune mixture with cream and almonds).

And here is Zoe, commanding me to put away my camera.

Population Growth, Part 1

[I've been working on this post for awhile, and have been holding off because the ideas weren't complete. But if I keep doing that, I'll never post it. So here's the first part:]

This stuff has been mulling around in my head awhile, and it’s good to get it coherent and organized. Last weekend I watched all seven of [Hans Rosling’s TED Talks] on statistics, population growth, child mortality, and poverty. The man is a doctor, researcher, and statistician and has some wondrous and uplifting insights that I think everyone should watch. I also went to a presentation last week regarding the release of Laurie Mazur’s new book A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice, and the Environmental Challenge. The rest of this post is an amalgam of everything I’ve been watching and reading recently. My research deals heavily in making emission projections out until 2050 or 2100, and population growth introduces large and complicated sets of uncertainties into these projections. So I’m going to start first with the big picture of expected population growth and wealth distribution, delve into some of the causes and effects of this growth, and then finish up with some priorities and goals.

Big Picture

First, I’d like to use Hans Rosling’s system for examining the current and future global population by splitting the people on this planet into 4 bins (Note: not the “developed” and “developing” world bins, which Rosling fights very hard to point out is a misnomer and is damaging to dialogue and understanding). The bins are categorized by the aspirations of different groups of people. The first deals with the bottom 1-2 billion people who are fighting for food and shoes. They are fighting for survival, and aren’t able to think much beyond that. The second bin deals with the poor countries and people that are no longer fighting for survival. Instead, they’re aspiring to get bicycles. They are more able to help themselves given the right tools and freedoms. The third bin is filled with the emerging economies, or the people that are striving for cars. These are countries like India and China that are showing tremendous growth. The final bin is the “developed” or “western” people, who strive for vacations in faraway places with the use of airplanes. These bins are, of course, broad-stroke characterizations. Each nation has a distribution of wealth within its boundaries, but for the global picture, we have to make some broad stroke generalizations.

The following figure summarizes the past, present, and projected future of our planet in regards to population. There are a range of projections, but it almost certain (“nothing but a nuclear war like we’ve never seen” will stop an additional 2 billion people by 2050” – Hans Rosling) that there will be around 9 billion people by 2050 (the ranges go from 7 – 11 billion, depending on the assumptions and sources) and it is quite possible that there will be 12 billion people by 2100. There are huge events or developments that can change these projections, but this is a good, robust, possible baseline to think about. I’ve broken the figure up into 5 time periods: 1850, 1950, 2010, 2050, and 2100. For the future projections, I’ve split the distributions into bad, average, and good scenarios. I’ve also split the populations into the four bins described above. I’ve used “1,000,000,000” as the bin sizes to represent 1 billion people, but another way to look at it is to imagine each “0” representing approximately one hundred million people. The red zeros are approximate numbers for the population of the United States. (Click on the picture to make it bigger, it seems to be having formatting problems).

Obviously, the best-case scenarios are the ones where no one is fighting for survival (food and shoes bin) and the worst-case scenarios have many people struggling for survival. I was born and live comfortably within the richest bin. My income as a graduate student puts me in the top 10% of global income. There are approximately 500,000,000 people that make more money than be, but 6,200,000,000 people that make less money than me. I have absolutely nothing to complain about, and the rest of my life promises to be quite cushy. The questions that bother me are: Does my lifestyle subjugate or detract from other peoples’ opportunities? How can I help the most people? Who can and should I help? What can I do? Where can I go? Should I move to Haiti and help there? Should I stay here at Cornell and work on big-picture ideas that could possibly impact a larger number of people? I have had tremendous opportunities, and I’d hate to squander them.

For now, I'll close with an excellent quote:

“We did not cause the crisis we face – unless you count us guilty at birth – but if the crisis is solved, it’ll have to be in large part through the leadership of people born in my generation [Generation X, 1960-1980]. Out historic call is to save the planet during peak population.

I am optimistic that we can do this. We have a rising network of brilliant and dedicated world-changing leaders. We live, despite the financial crisis, at a moment of great wealth. We have the motive, means, and opportunity.

None of this is to say that Generation X will do it along. In particular, if you’re young today, you have a huge choice to make: This transition will be unfolding during your entire career, and the role you choose to play in making it happen will be vitally important to your life, the planet, and the future. You too are called…

Contemplating the journey beyond peak population, and the duty we have to lead it – well, it can weigh on you. I find it useful to remember that by changing the world today, we’re building a better future beyond the crisis, that we work not only on our own behalf but for children who will not be born within our lifetimes, and their children, and theirs – that we’ll make great ancestors.

But I also find it helpful to remember that these are our lives, and this is our adventure; and though times are tough and the planet demands our hard work, it also needs people who are happy, healthy, and creatively energetic. The world needs our best-lived lives, not our martyrdom.” (Alex Steffen, excerpted from “A Pivotal Moment”)

Proposals and Science with Kids

I'm working on an EPA STAR proposal, which would give me at least 3 years worth of funding for a project of my choosing. They are notoriously difficult to get, so I'm not expecting much. But I've never really worked on proposals that this is great practice for...well...likely the rest of my life.

I've been working now for three weeks on this proposal, and it's changed at least three times. It started as a simple proposal to look at climate and chemistry differences in the northeastern US between 2010 and 2050. It was a very general idea, and I quickly learned that it had been asked and modeled before many times. So it then switched to a finer analysis: looking at the relative contributions to air quality in the northeastern US from different sources (transportation, industry, and biogenic emissions) both within the northeastern US and from other nations and continents. And once again, a little research showed that this had already been done, and the results were not that interesting.

At this point I had read, in varying levels of completeness, 10 - 20 papers on climate, chemistry, and the US. After showing the newest draft to Peter, he told me that he had purposely been giving me no direction. He wanted me to try and find something unique on my own. He then told me that it is a very difficult task. It takes years to get familiar with the literature, with what has been done and what has not been done, and what might possibly make a decent topic. But he wanted me to try and get it, to see how hard it is and the level of literature review and revisions that are necessary.

I was a little frustrated (so many squandered hours), but also very accepting; he had done this before several times with different topics. I had struggled for nearly 2 months to figure out how to change code within the climate model with nearly no guidance from Peter. At the end of the 2 months, I had learned and acquired a great deal of knowledge and understanding, and that's something that he could never have told or taught me directly.

We then talked about what he thought would be a good topic. There have been severe and deadly heat waves in Europe and Moscow in recent years, and there are no (or at least very few) studies that have tried and predict the likelihood and severity of heat waves and mortality here in the US, particularly in the northeastern US. He pointed me to a few papers and I've read another 10 papers or so, and now have a nice draft. It needs to be about 4,000 words before I'm done, and I'll post it here after it's submitted (I don't want anyone stealing my ideas (ha! the odds of that happening are slim to none) ). It needs to be done by November 5th.

In other news, last weekend I participated in a Science from the Slope booth down at Ithaca's Apple Festival. I played with dry ice and kids for 2 hours, and had a great time. I'll be volunteering at the Sciencenter next weekend, and hopefully that'll get the volunteer with kids and science ball really rolling. I'm looking forward to it. Here's a picture from the event last weekend:

Fall Break Weekend and Good Friends

This post has nothing to do with my work. But this blog isn't just about my work, it's about my life.

My excellent friends Toni and Mike came down this weekend. And we were busy! We ran (twice), climbed at Noyes, hiked the Abbot Loop trail, met Ashley and Ed an Northstar, cooked Stuffed Butternut Squash, backed delicious pumpkin bars, grilled sweet potato pancakes, talked, chatted, hung out, enjoyed each others' company, went to the Farmer's Market, explored the Friends of the Library crazy book sale, ordered and ate delicious Sticky Rice takeout, watched Unbreakable, got moderately tipsy and played games, and had a wonderful weekend.

These pictures are the highlights. The weekend went waaaaay to fast.

Me, Toni, and Mike up at the lookout in Abbot Loop.

Mike carving out the local butternut squash. He takes his work very seriously.

The fruits (or vegetables and grains) of our labor: rice, apple, orange, and spice stuffed butternut and acorn squash with walnuts and quinoa.

Toni showing off the pumpkin bars (recipe at the end of this post), Southern Tier's PumpKing beer, and, of course, a Great Lakes Brewery shirt.

And me, playing games and having fun.

And here is the pumpkin bar recipe (from one of Toni's friends) (We also added the remaining walnuts and some chocolate chips):

•4 eggs

•1 2/3 cups granulated sugar

•1 cup vegetable oil

•15-ounce can pumpkin

•2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

•2 teaspoons baking powder

•2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

•1 teaspoon salt

•1 teaspoon baking soda

**1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
**1/2 tsp ground ginger
**These are not part of the original recipe but I add them; amount is approximate.

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Using an electric mixer at medium speed, combine the eggs, sugar, oil and pumpkin
until light and fluffy.
Stir together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and baking soda. Add the dry
ingredients to the pumpkin mixture and mix at low speed until thoroughly combined and
the batter is smooth.
Spread the batter into a greased 15 by 10-inch baking pan*. Bake for 22 minutes. Test
for doneness. Continue baking until done.
*Note: If necessary, use a 9x13-inch pan and bake for 30 minutes.
Let cool completely.

Dust with powdered sugar if you like.

Enjoy!