The Binary Circumstance

I recently had the opportunity to see Al Gore’s documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I highly recommend it.

The data and the before and after pictures were all very effective in communicating the point of the movie which is that we are entering a “period of consequences” when we will see rapid changes in the environment due to global warming. Watching the movie, it is hard to escape considering the possibility that the human race could easily go the way of the dinosaurs if we don’t pay more attention to how our actions are impacting the temperature of the planet and consequently other forms of life that share it.

While Al Gore is straighforward and convincing in communicating his message, I found him self-congratulatory at times. When the movie was about him it was less interesting than when it was about the changes that have taken place recently in the environment.

The fact is that the universe doesn’t place a high value on human life. We are no more valuable to nature than any other species which is to say we have zero value to universe.

We can be disposed of through extinction very quickly and the process of evolution will go on without us, creating new species of life that are better adapted to the environment that we abused to the point of killing ourselves.

Remember that over 99% of the species that have ever lived on the planet are now extinct. Humans could easily join that majority.

I had dinner with a friend at Seattle’s Restaurant Zoe this evening. Wow! What a delightful and delicious place that is.

It’s pretty pricey and we would not have been there if it wasn’t for the Twenty-five for $25 program that takes place throughout November in Seattle.

Everything we had was excellent and the staff was friendly and attentive. Scott Staples, the owner, goes around and visits the tables to make sure everything is fine. Even though it’s a high-end restaurant in Belltown, it still felt informal, fun, vibrant and like we were eating at a friend’s house.

Even though the portions looked small on the plate, we both left there feeling stuffed.

Even if we’d had to pay full price, it’s one of the few expensive places I’ve been to that I actually thought was worth it.

Here are some other reviews.

If you’ve ever split logs or tree rounds with a splitting maul, you know just how hard it is. Every time I’ve done it, I wonder how the pioneers ever built their log cabins and then heated them with wood.

I don’t use wood as a primary source of heat, but many people around here do. When burned properly it’s very clean in terms of emissions and inexpensive. If there’s a lot of smoke coming out of somebody’s chimney, it’s not being burned properly.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to split some wood rounds with a couple of other guys using an electric hydraulic log splitter. We split two large piles of rounds into firewood in two hours without breaking a sweat. That project would have literally taken me weeks to do manually and there would have been plenty of sweat and sore muscles to go with it.

Even this small 7-ton hydraulic splitter cut through some very big rounds like a warm knife through butter.

It’s a great three-person job, with two people to load the rounds and catch the pieces as they drop off and one person to operate the levers.

Howstuffworks explains how they work and Amazon.com has many different models available from manual models starting around $100 up much more high-powered log splitters that cost thousands.

I’ve never used a manual model but they looks interesting because they are so inexpensive and they don’t have a motor to wear out or break. The electric model we used was remarkably quiet. The bigger models are mostly gas powered and will make much more noise but are more powerful.

Also see how hydraulics work to understand how you can get tons of pressure with so little effort.

Last night I checked out Happy Hour at Casuelita’s Caribbean Cafe in Belltown with a friend.

We ordered four of the appetizer plates and a couple of Jamaican beers and it made one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. Everything we had was delicious. I particularly liked the St. Croix prawns which were lightly covered in coconut and served in a pool of a delicious fruit and spice sauce. We also had plantains and Jamaican Patties which were also excellent.

All the plates came with a salad on them and each salad was taste-coordinated with the appetizer.

Seattle Weekly reviews it here.

But don’t go to Casuelita’s. It is already very popular and I don’t want to have to compete with you for a space next time I go back.