For your listening pleasure. Hopefully.
3.31.2008
3.29.2008
Barbeque??
I'd also like to recommend the GI Joe PSAs that tackle the important and too often overlooked issues of -- How to stop a nose bleed, Call fire department from outside, Have an ump ref your baseball games, and Don't hide in a fridge.
3.23.2008
Proof
Will, I found undeniable proof of your demonic zombie-like state that night. Paloma, please correct the post below.
3.20.2008
Game night anyone??
Global Energy Network
World peace through sharing electrons
R. Buckminster Fuller, a brilliant engineer, designer, and philosopher who lived from 1895–1983, is best known as the inventor of the geodesic dome. More recently, a spherical carbon isotope whose molecules resemble the dome was named Buckminsterfullerene, or “Bucky ball” for short. The dome was certainly an important invention, illustrating Fuller’s intensely logical mode of inquiry: How can basic geometric principles be employed to enclose the maximum amount of space with the minimum amount of weight and materials? His solution, a clever arrangement of interlocking triangles, was elegant and beautiful. And yet, it’s unfortunate that many consider this Fuller’s claim to fame. Geodesic domes—once thought to be a trendy and futuristic design for homes and public buildings—are now seen as rather passé, a quaint artifact of outdated aesthetic sensibilities, like tail fins on cars and beehive hairdos. By inference, their inventor is sometimes regarded as a wacky innovator who was perhaps out of touch with reality.
But Fuller’s career involved a great deal more than domes. It is quite true that some of the ideas he investigated were wacky and out of touch with reality—but only because they were based on logic and common sense, which have always been unstylish. Fuller’s work included a great many inventions and architectural innovations, a distortion-free map of the world called the Fuller Projection, dozens of books, and tireless efforts to solve basic human problems such as shelter, transportation, and food distribution. His proposed solutions to many serious problems can be shown mathematically or statistically to be workable, but very few of them have made their way into actual use. Fuller assumed that humans would always choose the most efficient and economical solution to a problem if they were shown logically what it is; he did not, however, count on the reality that hard facts are seldom a motivating factor—especially at the level of national and international politics. Such has been the case with one of Fuller’s most ambitious ideas, that of interconnecting the world’s electrical energy grids.
The World Game
In order to explain what a global energy network means and why it is such a good idea, I should take a step back and describe the World Game. Buckminster Fuller devised the World Game as a thought experiment intended to be carried out by a group of people. Before the game begins, information about all the world’s resources—both physical and metaphysical (by which he meant knowledge and skills)—is entered into a computer, along with data on human survival needs. Teams then work together, using this information to create a simulation of how the resources could be manipulated in such a way as to “make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, and without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” In other words, participants are supposed to find a way for all the world’s people to have food, shelter, safety, and even happiness, with only the resources actually available and with no harm to the environment or other people.
As a learning exercise, the World Game is both effective and entertaining, and has been used countless times over the last several decades by universities, corporations, and informal groups. It teaches principles of economics, management, and even sociology. But what’s most striking about this simulation of the world is the result it consistently produces. Based on the findings of the World Game, Fuller determined that the world’s resources are sufficiently vast that every single person on Earth can live comfortably—with adequate amounts of food, personal space, and leisure. The catch, of course, is that the resources would need to be distributed and managed in a way that is at odds with reality. As long as small numbers of wealthy, powerful people insist on remaining disproportionately wealthy and powerful at everyone else’s expense, the idealized solutions of the World Game will be difficult to achieve.
More Power To You
Be that as it may, one of the specific insights of the World Game involves electricity. Most people would probably say that food, water, medical care, and shelter are far more urgent human needs than electricity. But Fuller believed that the universal availability of affordable electricity was the main thing separating the western world from so-called developing nations. He reasoned that electricity can make the production of food and safe water much easier, and facilitate health care, transportation, and communication. In addition, electricity makes possible a level of economic development that can address these basic issues indirectly.
Even though two billion people currently do not have access to electricity, the world’s power plants have more than enough capacity to supply the entire planet’s needs. The problem, according to Fuller, is that they’re just not used efficiently. A given generator will produce a relatively constant amount of electricity, whether that power is used or not. If demand dips, the extra power goes to waste—and the power company loses potential profits. This effect is especially apparent at different times of the day—when it’s daytime in one area and electrical demand is high, it’s night somewhere else and demand is low. The solution to this imbalance is well known and has been used successfully for decades: interconnecting power grids from different areas. Thanks to technology that allows electricity to be transmitted over distances as far as 4,300 miles (7,000km), electricity can be shared across time zones or even seasons. So all across North America and Europe, local and regional suppliers have made arrangements with each other to balance the load. This results in more consistent availability of power, lower and more uniform costs, and a reduction in the number of generating plants needed. (It has also famously resulted in some widespread blackouts, but these could have been prevented with updated equipment and better monitoring procedures.)
Getting Their Wires Crossed
Unfortunately, the parts of the world that would benefit most from sharing electricity can’t do so. If rural northern Africa, say, could share power with western Europe, electricity would become more pervasive in Africa and less expensive on both continents. Taken to its logical conclusion, a completely interconnected global electrical grid would improve the quality of life for nearly everyone, while providing essential development infrastructure (and an additional source of revenue) for the places that need it most. It would also benefit the environment, reduce hunger, and foster international cooperation and goodwill. That may sound idealistic, and it is. But the barriers to such a system are not technological, merely political and ideological.
In order for any two nations to agree to interconnect their power grids, they need the political will to invest money in the infrastructure, which can be hard to come by when limited budgets are strained to meet needs that seem more pressing. But it also requires a degree of mutual trust. If one nation relies on another’s electricity—even if only a portion of the time—they need to feel comfortable that it won’t suddenly disappear due to hostilities or political disagreements. In addition, nations whose governments tightly control utilities would effectively lose some of that control. Even a significant cost savings is a weak motivator when political power is at risk.
GENI and the Magic Lamp
Even so, numerous people are working earnestly to make the vision of a universal energy grid a reality. Global Energy Network Institute, or GENI, is a nonprofit organization based in San Diego. Their mission is to educate the public about the idea of a global energy grid and work with governments, utilities, and international organizations to encourage its adoption. The work is slow, unglamorous, and often thankless. But the lesson of the World Game—that science and common sense can ultimately make the world a better place—is hard to ignore. Even if the global energy network became a reality, that would be only a small step toward winning the game, but it’s an important one. In a time when it’s fashionable to talk about a wired world as being one where everyone has a cell phone or internet access, it’s worth remembering that the electrons that power those gadgets all need to come from somewhere. —Joe Kissell
World peace through sharing electrons
R. Buckminster Fuller, a brilliant engineer, designer, and philosopher who lived from 1895–1983, is best known as the inventor of the geodesic dome. More recently, a spherical carbon isotope whose molecules resemble the dome was named Buckminsterfullerene, or “Bucky ball” for short. The dome was certainly an important invention, illustrating Fuller’s intensely logical mode of inquiry: How can basic geometric principles be employed to enclose the maximum amount of space with the minimum amount of weight and materials? His solution, a clever arrangement of interlocking triangles, was elegant and beautiful. And yet, it’s unfortunate that many consider this Fuller’s claim to fame. Geodesic domes—once thought to be a trendy and futuristic design for homes and public buildings—are now seen as rather passé, a quaint artifact of outdated aesthetic sensibilities, like tail fins on cars and beehive hairdos. By inference, their inventor is sometimes regarded as a wacky innovator who was perhaps out of touch with reality.
But Fuller’s career involved a great deal more than domes. It is quite true that some of the ideas he investigated were wacky and out of touch with reality—but only because they were based on logic and common sense, which have always been unstylish. Fuller’s work included a great many inventions and architectural innovations, a distortion-free map of the world called the Fuller Projection, dozens of books, and tireless efforts to solve basic human problems such as shelter, transportation, and food distribution. His proposed solutions to many serious problems can be shown mathematically or statistically to be workable, but very few of them have made their way into actual use. Fuller assumed that humans would always choose the most efficient and economical solution to a problem if they were shown logically what it is; he did not, however, count on the reality that hard facts are seldom a motivating factor—especially at the level of national and international politics. Such has been the case with one of Fuller’s most ambitious ideas, that of interconnecting the world’s electrical energy grids.
The World Game
In order to explain what a global energy network means and why it is such a good idea, I should take a step back and describe the World Game. Buckminster Fuller devised the World Game as a thought experiment intended to be carried out by a group of people. Before the game begins, information about all the world’s resources—both physical and metaphysical (by which he meant knowledge and skills)—is entered into a computer, along with data on human survival needs. Teams then work together, using this information to create a simulation of how the resources could be manipulated in such a way as to “make the world work for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, and without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” In other words, participants are supposed to find a way for all the world’s people to have food, shelter, safety, and even happiness, with only the resources actually available and with no harm to the environment or other people.
As a learning exercise, the World Game is both effective and entertaining, and has been used countless times over the last several decades by universities, corporations, and informal groups. It teaches principles of economics, management, and even sociology. But what’s most striking about this simulation of the world is the result it consistently produces. Based on the findings of the World Game, Fuller determined that the world’s resources are sufficiently vast that every single person on Earth can live comfortably—with adequate amounts of food, personal space, and leisure. The catch, of course, is that the resources would need to be distributed and managed in a way that is at odds with reality. As long as small numbers of wealthy, powerful people insist on remaining disproportionately wealthy and powerful at everyone else’s expense, the idealized solutions of the World Game will be difficult to achieve.
More Power To You
Be that as it may, one of the specific insights of the World Game involves electricity. Most people would probably say that food, water, medical care, and shelter are far more urgent human needs than electricity. But Fuller believed that the universal availability of affordable electricity was the main thing separating the western world from so-called developing nations. He reasoned that electricity can make the production of food and safe water much easier, and facilitate health care, transportation, and communication. In addition, electricity makes possible a level of economic development that can address these basic issues indirectly.
Even though two billion people currently do not have access to electricity, the world’s power plants have more than enough capacity to supply the entire planet’s needs. The problem, according to Fuller, is that they’re just not used efficiently. A given generator will produce a relatively constant amount of electricity, whether that power is used or not. If demand dips, the extra power goes to waste—and the power company loses potential profits. This effect is especially apparent at different times of the day—when it’s daytime in one area and electrical demand is high, it’s night somewhere else and demand is low. The solution to this imbalance is well known and has been used successfully for decades: interconnecting power grids from different areas. Thanks to technology that allows electricity to be transmitted over distances as far as 4,300 miles (7,000km), electricity can be shared across time zones or even seasons. So all across North America and Europe, local and regional suppliers have made arrangements with each other to balance the load. This results in more consistent availability of power, lower and more uniform costs, and a reduction in the number of generating plants needed. (It has also famously resulted in some widespread blackouts, but these could have been prevented with updated equipment and better monitoring procedures.)
Getting Their Wires Crossed
Unfortunately, the parts of the world that would benefit most from sharing electricity can’t do so. If rural northern Africa, say, could share power with western Europe, electricity would become more pervasive in Africa and less expensive on both continents. Taken to its logical conclusion, a completely interconnected global electrical grid would improve the quality of life for nearly everyone, while providing essential development infrastructure (and an additional source of revenue) for the places that need it most. It would also benefit the environment, reduce hunger, and foster international cooperation and goodwill. That may sound idealistic, and it is. But the barriers to such a system are not technological, merely political and ideological.
In order for any two nations to agree to interconnect their power grids, they need the political will to invest money in the infrastructure, which can be hard to come by when limited budgets are strained to meet needs that seem more pressing. But it also requires a degree of mutual trust. If one nation relies on another’s electricity—even if only a portion of the time—they need to feel comfortable that it won’t suddenly disappear due to hostilities or political disagreements. In addition, nations whose governments tightly control utilities would effectively lose some of that control. Even a significant cost savings is a weak motivator when political power is at risk.
GENI and the Magic Lamp
Even so, numerous people are working earnestly to make the vision of a universal energy grid a reality. Global Energy Network Institute, or GENI, is a nonprofit organization based in San Diego. Their mission is to educate the public about the idea of a global energy grid and work with governments, utilities, and international organizations to encourage its adoption. The work is slow, unglamorous, and often thankless. But the lesson of the World Game—that science and common sense can ultimately make the world a better place—is hard to ignore. Even if the global energy network became a reality, that would be only a small step toward winning the game, but it’s an important one. In a time when it’s fashionable to talk about a wired world as being one where everyone has a cell phone or internet access, it’s worth remembering that the electrons that power those gadgets all need to come from somewhere. —Joe Kissell
3.17.2008
3.05.2008
I am happier than you are.
And it's not just because I am smarter, better looking, more atheletic, etc. By simply posting this message, I have increased my mental health. I know this because of research done by the good people at Swinburne University of Technolgy. This link explains it all. Blog away.
Also, did anyone see this video? Funny, but sad if the little guy was alive at the time. I think it's a fake.
Also, did anyone see this video? Funny, but sad if the little guy was alive at the time. I think it's a fake.
3.03.2008
For Stephen
The Cheese Course
Recipe for a civilized meal
I recently stumbled upon the rather disturbing statistic that more than half the cheese consumed in the United States is American cheese. Yes, I know, this is tautologically true in that anything made in America is, ipso facto, American—but I’m talking about the particular dairy product that goes by the name “American cheese.” For readers outside North America, let me explain what this is. By law, American cheese must be labeled as a “pasteurized process cheese product” or words to that effect. To make it, manufacturers start with some innocent mild cheddar cheese, shred it up, heat it, mix it with water and emulsifiers, add some food coloring, and form it into a block—or, more often, individually plastic-wrapped slices. The net result is a shiny, rubbery substance that looks, from a distance, somewhat like cheese. When it’s melted it even tastes approximately like melted cheese. In fact this is the major selling point for American cheese: it melts very smoothly without separating, making it easier to cook with than cheddar or most other varieties of cheese.
Why do I find it disturbing that Americans eat so much American cheese? It’s because American cheese was responsible for turning me off to cheese all through my childhood. When I was a youngster, if you had asked me whether I liked cheese, I would have given an unambiguous “no”—I had tried it once or twice and was quite certain it belonged in the “yucky” list right along with leafy green vegetables. And yet, as my parents were quick to point out, my favorite dish was macaroni and cheese. This seeming contradiction was due to the fact that the only cheese I’d ever tried in its unmelted form was American (or its close cousin Velveeta). The texture, flavor, and aroma of American cheese—though all rather bland—struck me as utterly gross, and if that’s what cheese was, I wanted no part of it unless it was sufficiently doctored to hide its true nature. Only much later did I discover that what I’d been calling cheese all my life would have been barely recognizable as such in most of the world.
Course of Study
By the time I was in college, I had begun to reconcile with cheese, going so far as to put cubed mozzarella or cheddar on my salads, or munching cheese-topped crackers at parties. Then I began reading stories about life in France and encountered the curious notion of a cheese course—a commonplace part of a meal consisting, apparently, of nothing but cheese. I thought this was very strange and slightly troubling, but the idea gradually grew on me. I started sampling unfamiliar varieties of cheese such as Brie and chèvre, and shockingly enough, I didn’t hate them. Now that I’ve been to France a couple of times, I find myself wondering how I spent so many years routinely eating cheese-less meals. It just doesn’t seem civilized.
In most parts of France, a traditional meal includes, at the very least, an entrée (what North Americans would call an appetizer), a main dish, and a cheese course—the latter either before, or in lieu of, dessert. Depending on where you go, what the local specialties are, and other seemingly random variables such as the phase of the moon, a cheese course may consist of anything from a single small round of cheese to a plate with three or four varieties—or even a large cart with dozens of selections from which you can choose whatever suits your tastes.
The cheese course is not a phenomenon limited to restaurants, either. Some friends we stayed with in France for a couple days offered us half a dozen choices with dinner, which is not at all uncommon. We asked if this phenomenon was only applicable to afternoon and evening meals in France, since we hadn’t been offered any cheese for breakfast. According to one of our friends, “Cheese at breakfast would be considered *anathema.” But that’s just in France—in other European countries, cheese is appropriate for any meal, though not necessarily served as a separate course.
Coming to America
Adding cheese courses to meals you serve at home is quite easy, as long as you do a bit of planning. There are plenty of books and Web sites that offer advice on selecting from among the many hundreds of cheeses produced in various parts of the world (not to mention recommended wines to accompany them), but it doesn’t have to be that complicated. It’s an art, not a science. Pick out two or three cheeses that look interesting, put them on a plate, and voilà! When selecting cheeses, the best results can be obtained by visiting a cheese shop, where someone knowledgeable can help you to make an appropriate choice. My advice: avoid anything that’s shrink-wrapped and focus on cheeses that look as though some human may have been involved in their production. Contrary to popular wisdom, you generally don’t need special implements or utensils if you don’t already have them.
I’m happy to say that my relationship with cheese has improved a great deal over the years. I’m blessed to have two fine cheese shops within walking distance of my home in San Francisco—nothing special in Europe, perhaps, but a rare find in North America. As with wines, I’m no connoisseur, but I have developed enough basic cheese knowledge to tell what I like. Words like “Asiago” and “Camembert” now describe meaningful categories for me, just as “Bordeaux” and “Cabernet” do. Alas, the category “pasteurized process cheese product” has also taken on new meaning, one I try not to think about too often.
* Ana what? Yeah, I had to look that word up.
Main Entry: anath·e·ma
Pronunciation: \ə-ˈna-thə-mə\
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Latin anathemat-, anathema, from Greek, thing devoted to evil, curse, from anatithenai to set up, dedicate, from ana- + tithenai to place, set — more at do
Date: 1526
1 a: one that is cursed by ecclesiastical authority b: someone or something intensely disliked or loathed —usually used as a predicate nominative
Recipe for a civilized meal
I recently stumbled upon the rather disturbing statistic that more than half the cheese consumed in the United States is American cheese. Yes, I know, this is tautologically true in that anything made in America is, ipso facto, American—but I’m talking about the particular dairy product that goes by the name “American cheese.” For readers outside North America, let me explain what this is. By law, American cheese must be labeled as a “pasteurized process cheese product” or words to that effect. To make it, manufacturers start with some innocent mild cheddar cheese, shred it up, heat it, mix it with water and emulsifiers, add some food coloring, and form it into a block—or, more often, individually plastic-wrapped slices. The net result is a shiny, rubbery substance that looks, from a distance, somewhat like cheese. When it’s melted it even tastes approximately like melted cheese. In fact this is the major selling point for American cheese: it melts very smoothly without separating, making it easier to cook with than cheddar or most other varieties of cheese.
Why do I find it disturbing that Americans eat so much American cheese? It’s because American cheese was responsible for turning me off to cheese all through my childhood. When I was a youngster, if you had asked me whether I liked cheese, I would have given an unambiguous “no”—I had tried it once or twice and was quite certain it belonged in the “yucky” list right along with leafy green vegetables. And yet, as my parents were quick to point out, my favorite dish was macaroni and cheese. This seeming contradiction was due to the fact that the only cheese I’d ever tried in its unmelted form was American (or its close cousin Velveeta). The texture, flavor, and aroma of American cheese—though all rather bland—struck me as utterly gross, and if that’s what cheese was, I wanted no part of it unless it was sufficiently doctored to hide its true nature. Only much later did I discover that what I’d been calling cheese all my life would have been barely recognizable as such in most of the world.
Course of Study
By the time I was in college, I had begun to reconcile with cheese, going so far as to put cubed mozzarella or cheddar on my salads, or munching cheese-topped crackers at parties. Then I began reading stories about life in France and encountered the curious notion of a cheese course—a commonplace part of a meal consisting, apparently, of nothing but cheese. I thought this was very strange and slightly troubling, but the idea gradually grew on me. I started sampling unfamiliar varieties of cheese such as Brie and chèvre, and shockingly enough, I didn’t hate them. Now that I’ve been to France a couple of times, I find myself wondering how I spent so many years routinely eating cheese-less meals. It just doesn’t seem civilized.
In most parts of France, a traditional meal includes, at the very least, an entrée (what North Americans would call an appetizer), a main dish, and a cheese course—the latter either before, or in lieu of, dessert. Depending on where you go, what the local specialties are, and other seemingly random variables such as the phase of the moon, a cheese course may consist of anything from a single small round of cheese to a plate with three or four varieties—or even a large cart with dozens of selections from which you can choose whatever suits your tastes.
The cheese course is not a phenomenon limited to restaurants, either. Some friends we stayed with in France for a couple days offered us half a dozen choices with dinner, which is not at all uncommon. We asked if this phenomenon was only applicable to afternoon and evening meals in France, since we hadn’t been offered any cheese for breakfast. According to one of our friends, “Cheese at breakfast would be considered *anathema.” But that’s just in France—in other European countries, cheese is appropriate for any meal, though not necessarily served as a separate course.
Coming to America
Adding cheese courses to meals you serve at home is quite easy, as long as you do a bit of planning. There are plenty of books and Web sites that offer advice on selecting from among the many hundreds of cheeses produced in various parts of the world (not to mention recommended wines to accompany them), but it doesn’t have to be that complicated. It’s an art, not a science. Pick out two or three cheeses that look interesting, put them on a plate, and voilà! When selecting cheeses, the best results can be obtained by visiting a cheese shop, where someone knowledgeable can help you to make an appropriate choice. My advice: avoid anything that’s shrink-wrapped and focus on cheeses that look as though some human may have been involved in their production. Contrary to popular wisdom, you generally don’t need special implements or utensils if you don’t already have them.
I’m happy to say that my relationship with cheese has improved a great deal over the years. I’m blessed to have two fine cheese shops within walking distance of my home in San Francisco—nothing special in Europe, perhaps, but a rare find in North America. As with wines, I’m no connoisseur, but I have developed enough basic cheese knowledge to tell what I like. Words like “Asiago” and “Camembert” now describe meaningful categories for me, just as “Bordeaux” and “Cabernet” do. Alas, the category “pasteurized process cheese product” has also taken on new meaning, one I try not to think about too often.
* Ana what? Yeah, I had to look that word up.
Main Entry: anath·e·ma
Pronunciation: \ə-ˈna-thə-mə\
Function: noun
Etymology: Late Latin anathemat-, anathema, from Greek, thing devoted to evil, curse, from anatithenai to set up, dedicate, from ana- + tithenai to place, set — more at do
Date: 1526
1 a: one that is cursed by ecclesiastical authority b: someone or something intensely disliked or loathed —usually used as a predicate nominative
In case you've wondered . . .
And who hasn't?
The yuccas comprise the genus Yucca of 40-50 species of perennials, shrubs, and trees in the agave family Agavaceae, notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal clusters of white or whitish flowers. They are native to the hot and dry parts of North America, Central America, and the West Indies.
Yuccas have a very specialized pollination system, being pollinated by the yucca moth; the insect purposefully transfers the pollen from the stamens of one plant to the stigma of another, and at the same time lays an egg in the flower; the moth larva then eats some of the developing seeds, but far from all.
Yuccas are widely grown as ornamental plants in gardens. Many yuccas also bear edible parts, including fruits, seeds, flowers, flowering stems, and more rarely roots, but use of these is sufficiently limited that references to yucca as food more often than not stem from confusion with the similarly spelled but botanically unrelated yuca.
Dried yucca wood has the lowest ignition temperature of any other wood, making it one of the more desirable woods for fire-starting.
The "yucca flower" is the state flower of New Mexico.
The cassava, manioc, casava, or yuca (Manihot esculenta) is a woody shrub of the Euphorbiaceae (spurge family) native to South America that is extensively cultivated as an annual crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root, a major source of carbohydrates. Indeed, cassava is the third largest source of carbohydrates for human food in the world, with Africa its largest center of production.[1]
The yuccas comprise the genus Yucca of 40-50 species of perennials, shrubs, and trees in the agave family Agavaceae, notable for their rosettes of evergreen, tough, sword-shaped leaves and large terminal clusters of white or whitish flowers. They are native to the hot and dry parts of North America, Central America, and the West Indies.
Yuccas have a very specialized pollination system, being pollinated by the yucca moth; the insect purposefully transfers the pollen from the stamens of one plant to the stigma of another, and at the same time lays an egg in the flower; the moth larva then eats some of the developing seeds, but far from all.
Yuccas are widely grown as ornamental plants in gardens. Many yuccas also bear edible parts, including fruits, seeds, flowers, flowering stems, and more rarely roots, but use of these is sufficiently limited that references to yucca as food more often than not stem from confusion with the similarly spelled but botanically unrelated yuca.
Dried yucca wood has the lowest ignition temperature of any other wood, making it one of the more desirable woods for fire-starting.
The "yucca flower" is the state flower of New Mexico.
The cassava, manioc, casava, or yuca (Manihot esculenta) is a woody shrub of the Euphorbiaceae (spurge family) native to South America that is extensively cultivated as an annual crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root, a major source of carbohydrates. Indeed, cassava is the third largest source of carbohydrates for human food in the world, with Africa its largest center of production.[1]
3.01.2008
Seriously folks.
You need to live in Austin. And I am here to remind you why.
Icy fresh.
This place is especially cool when you don't get ticketed.
You like the night life baby.
Also, living here will make you happy, even more beautiful, eternally young, wealthy beyond measure, and you'll probably drive an awesome car too.
And these kids rock.
More to come.
Icy fresh.
This place is especially cool when you don't get ticketed.
You like the night life baby.Also, living here will make you happy, even more beautiful, eternally young, wealthy beyond measure, and you'll probably drive an awesome car too.
And these kids rock.
More to come.
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