Hudson Bay Bread

I remember eating this stuff every day for lunch with a thick spackling of military-grade peanut butter at Sommers Canoe Base when I was a Scout.   After paddling and portaging all morning through the Boundary Waters in Minnesota/Canada, it was the Best. Lunch. Evar.

 

I didn't even know it had a name.  I kinda figured that it was some Army surplus thing.  Mostly because it was served with acronym-laden green plastic pouches of peanut butter.

 

I forget why I originally entered it, but I found a note to myself in my PDA to check out recipes for Hudson Bay Bread.  The serendipitous first link from the Google search referenced not just what I was looking for, but was from the place where I ate it.

 

Other takeaways from that trip:

1) Having to carry everything in our canoes (or on our backs when portaging) resulted in lots of one-pot meals for dinners.  This was not an attractive prospect for a picky eater.  With the wonderful incentive of "eat or go hungry" I learned that I can choke down most anything that I don't like -- as long as I can douse it with salt.

 

2) My Army surplus wide-brimmed hat.  Such a great hat.  So many ugly, wife-consternating sweat stains.

 

 

Gloomy damn lies

Whenever I hear someone making suspicious claims, it's easy to ask for the numbers that back those claims.  But even when numbers are produced, it's still worth asking after the hidden assumptions beneath the statistics.

As an example, this nice article by Virginia Postrel* about gloomy claims that our standard of living is stagnant:

Nowadays, candid and intelligent people--not to mention partisans--tell us that the average American's standard of living has barely budged in decades. Supposedly only the rich are living better, while everyone else stagnates or falls behind.

And today's gloom peddlers can claim to have scientific data on their side. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median real income of a full-time working male rose only 4% between 1981 and 2001, from $44,000 to $45,900 in today's dollars.
[...]
Do we want to know how much money it would take the typical American to buy today what the typical American bought 20 years ago? If so, what about all those things that didn't exist back then--not just iPods and mobile phones but everyday items like wrinkle-free pants, effective sunscreens, prewashed salads-in-a-bag or comfy hotel beds?

*You may need to use BugMeNot to get to the full article.

Hail Satan!

This is so out of date, but...

On 6/6/06 my blog received its 666th visit.

I shit you not.

Boldly going.

This optimism, more than any correct guesses about wireless telephony, police use of Tasers, or the shape of 21st-century neoconservatism, was the dangerous message of Star Trek. The dystopian science fiction of the late '60s and early '70s (to which Star Trek was a rare exception) shares something with contemporary hysteria over stem cell research. Both claim to fear that the advance of science will hurt us, but their real fear is that it won't hurt us. Because if human life really is getting better, then maybe you've wasted your life fearing the unknown, clinging to useless traditions, missing out on better things ahead.

 

From "Happy 40th Birthday, Star Trek - Why Captain Kirk's story is the story of America" in Reason.