Traditional discipline is “done well” when the child is rendered mute and motionless as a paralytic, obeying the will of the parent or teacher. The child obeys out of fear. A well disciplined child, on the other hand, though free to do as he likes, chooses actions agreeable to himself and to the community. Obedience comes from a deep respect for his parents, teacher, and for the other children. Discipline, for Maria, is not a fact but a way. There is only one rule to obey, be respectful of everyone and everything. The parent and teacher are to help the child by giving examples of proper social relations. They are to show how to properly interrupt someone who is busy or how to tell someone to move out of their way. To tell a child “no” without instructing how to properly accomplish their goals is to frustrate the child. A child does not inherently know what it means to be kind or respectful, he must be shown.

Due to the typical Tyler style of cooking and knowing that I will always be modifying this recipe (along with every other “recipe” I try) I should put a disclaimer in here about following the portions… I payed more attention to the ingredients then I did to the measurements…. and I didn’t write it down… And we all know about the typical Acorn memory…  so modify with impudence!

Rib Sauce (all measurements seemed for a baby back size rack of ribs)

Ketchup, Tomato Paste or 1/2 ketchup and 1/2 tomato paste – 1 cup
Worcestershire Sauce – 1/2 cup? (questionable memory on this measurement… I would maybe add more but I can’t remember! no surprise there)
Soy Sauce – 1/2 cup (less sodium style Soy Sauce to make it less salty)
Honey – 1/2 cup (If you want some caramelization use sugar for it caramelizes better on the grill.. however the honey is less sweet which I prefer)
Tabasco Sauce – add to taste
Salt and Pepper – Add to taste (with the Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce you probably don’t need much salt)
Herbs – Add to taste
Onions and red peppers – Thinly sliced and diced – however much you want

A couple modifications/ ingredients I’m considering adding  when I try these
Whiskey – however much I pour in
Garlic - however many cloves I add

Cooking

I never did ask exactly how she cooked them. It looked like she cooked them in the oven for awhile and then tossed them on the grill.. Seeing as this is a sauced rib recipe I would cook them however you normally cook sauced ribs. I believe Sage boils the ribs for a while first… which I’m not a huge fan of seeing as that removes all the fun of tearing the meat of the bones (something about the meat just falling off with little to no work seems wrong to me!)

http://www.saintbartlett.com/

The New Food Pessimism

Full Article:

This LRB article by Jeremy Harding articulates an increasing fear that food markets will not operate smoothly over the next decade or two. He gives some major reasons (only partially reproduced here) to be pessimistic:

The first is the nature and extent of population growth: we are six billion now and by 2030 we’ll be eight billion…

The second is ‘the nutrition transition’: generations that once lived on grains, pulses and legumes have been replaced by more prosperous people with a taste for meat and dairy. Crops like maize which once fed many of us directly now feed fewer of us indirectly, via a costly diversion from which they emerge in the value-added form of meat. Global production of food – all food – will have to increase by 50 per cent over the next 20 years to cater for two billion extra people and cope with the rising demand for meat.

The third factor is energy: the industrial production of food is sure to become more expensive as fuel costs rise. It takes 160 litres of oil to produce a tonne of maize in the US; natural gas accounts for at least three-quarters of the cost of making nitrogen fertiliser; freight, too, depends on fuel.

Land is the fourth. The amount of the world’s land given over to agriculture continues to grow (in the UK, roughly 70 per cent of land is agricultural), but in per capita terms it’s shrinking. As with oil, it’s possible to envisage ‘peak food’ (the point of maximum production, followed by decline), ‘peak phosphorus’, i.e. the high point in the use of phosphate fertiliser (one estimate puts it at 2035), and, as the FAO suggests in its diplomatic way, ‘peak land’: the point at which the total area of the world’s most productive land begins to diminish (soil exhaustion, climate change) and marginal land comes up for reassessment.

[Fifth] Alternative fuels are reducing the amount of land available for growing food.

The Julian Simon-savvy crowd that reads MR might not be so impressed, but I wouldn’t write off these worries so quickly. On the list, #1 and #2 do not impress me per se, but they do require that market mechanisms of adjustment be allowed to operate. Note that agriculture and land markets are highly regulated around the world and that you don’t have to read this as a story of market failure. As for #3, most energy is mispriced today. Keeping it cheap means growing pressure on that externality, while taxing it means a solid whack to a lot of food markets. #5 stems from bad government policies. Another problem, mentioned later by Harding, is that very often water for agriculture is subsidized and unsustainably so. Keeping water cheap means growing pressure on that externality, while removing the subsidies (which I favor) means a solid whack to a lot of food markets, at least in the short run. The world as a whole is consuming its capital of aquifers and the like and engaging in short-term thinking by refusing to let the price of water rise as it ought to. Internalizing all the relevant externalities, and increasing sustainable long-run production, would in fact mean big “tax” hikes on growing food today.

There is also a critical scale at which fertilizer run-off and erosion externalities start to matter at a level beyond which we are accustomed to seeing.

I believe these factors mean a stronger case for agricultural free trade, rather than “localism,” yet at the same time removing the subsidies for sprawl. Yet so far the people worried most about these issues are often the ones with the least economically informed answers. It would be a mistake to, say, mock Paul Ehrlich’s earlier doom-saying predictions and ignore these problems altogether.

It is time for a much needed break. And maybe I can get back to all the other things I used to love in life. Like cooking, tinkering, reading, and writing. As for the later, let me wet your appetite by saying that I’ve been thinking a lot about debt and risk on the bus in the mornings. There’s this book called “Black Swan” I hope to pick up soon. It is very much in the “Small is Beautiful” thread but with a twist. It’s written by a Statistician. Also, I need to say a few words about parenting, though I think I can learn a lot from those here.

Peace be with you.