Most people know that after oil, coffee is the most highly traded commodity on the planet. The insatiable demand for the other “black gold” from coffee shops in America, to the swanky coffee houses in Europe is the impetus for massive deforestation projects by the leading global coffee producers seeking more agricultural land for their coffee plantations. As if that weren’t enough, one study said it takes up 200 liters of water to produce just a single cup of latte when you consider cultivating, harvesting, transporting, and producing the final cup of coffee. Lastly, there’s the heaps of paper and plastic products used with coffee (cups, filters, napkins, plastic tops, stirrers, etc.) that are discarded by the millions every single day.

So no doubt, coffee consumption takes a major toll on the environment. And since most people won’t just give up their coffee habit altogether (not that they should), here are a few relatively easy ways to reduce the toll of your coffee addiction on the environment.

Try to Drink Less

Since it takes so much water to make just one cup when you consider everything it takes to make, a good first step is to try to simply reduce how much coffee you drink per day.

Drink Local

To reduce the amount of carbon produced by shipping coffee halfway around the world, try buying coffee that has traveled the shortest distance to reach you. If you live in the North America, South American beans are an obvious first choice.

Go Organic

Organic coffee is grown without toxic chemicals, and is grown in such a way that protects sensitive ecosystems and the birds that live within them. Most of these toxic chemicals are produced in factories that spew toxins into the environment themselves, so you’re killing birds with one stone by going organic.

Avoid Corporate Coffee

Big coffee brands mass produce coffee, and do not think twice about cutting down trees to create large coffee plantations. Besides, the actual farmers who harvest the actual beans get very little in return for their work.

Opt For Fair Trade Coffee

If you’re going organic, and avoiding corporate coffee, buying fair trade coffee just makes sense. Rainforest Alliance and Transfair coffees not only ensure fair living wages for coffee farmers, they take into account environmental standards in their certification process.

Re-Use a Mug

This one is a no-brainer. But it’s easier if you invest in a really cool mug that you will want to use over and over again; eliminating the need for plastic or Styrofoam cups.

Eliminate the Coffee Stirrer

Rather than mixing sugar and cream with a plastic spoon or stirrer, try pouring them into an empty cup. Then gently pour your hot coffee on top, letting the heat naturally dissolve the sugar and mix the cream. It takes some practice. Alternatively, you could just use a regular spoon.

Use a Quality Filter

To help reduce the amount of paper you use when drinking coffee, it’s a good idea to get a reusable gold coffee filter; not only will it help the environment, but it will improve the taste of your coffee. If you still want to use paper filters, look for unbleached, biodegradable ones.

Compost The Coffee Grounds

If you’re a green thumb, you’ll love this tip (if you don’t already know it). The next time you brew a hot pot of coffee, rather than chucking out the used coffee grounds, toss them in your compost heap, or directly into your garden. The heavy nitrogen content in the coffee is a powerful fertilizer.

Keep Away Pesky Felines

Instead of using harsh chemicals in your garden to keep away unwanted pests like ants and neighborhood cats, sprinkle coffee grounds and orange peels in your garden. The nitrogen in the coffee burns ants’ legs and is better for the environment than using harmful chemicals. Cats don’t like the smell of coffee either.

There you have it, 10 easy ways to reduce the impact of coffee on the environment. What other creative uses for coffee can you think of?

Image Credit

Coffee Stain courtesy of Flickr user roger.karlsson published under the CC license.
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Outsourcing is one of those terms that carries great connotation with many people. Simply put, outsourcing is when you transfer work or a duty to someone else in exchange for money. Typically, outsourcing evokes images of large corporations migrating their Help Desks and IT support from the US to another country. I do not think that is the only instance of outsourcing in American culture, albeit the most recognizable one. Outsourcing in that fashion has arguably been detrimental to the economy and jobs market, and it is no wonder that outsourcing other activities comes at a price as well.

Outsourcing Food Preparations and Processing

Never before has a culture been as far out of touch with the food they consume as Americans are today. Children grow up thinking that meat comes from a plastic package and cannot make anything but the faintest connection between the animal the meat comes from and the product that winds up on the dinner table. Pre-packaged foods are stuffed full of byproducts from foods that extend shelf life, enhance flavor, add addictive properties, and generally make the item more of a food-like substance than real, actual food. These are merely symptoms of a broader problem. We have outsourced the responsibility of our food sourcing, contents, and preparation to private industry. Private industry concerns itself solely with increasing earnings and stock price, so inevitably the cheapest route that will sell the most is the one that will be employed – this isn’t compatible with feeding your population with healthy foods.

Americans have outsourced home cooking and tried to reduce the number of trips to acquire food all in an effort to migrate people’s time from domestic activities to work. In order to support this paradigm shift, food scientists and corporations have been developing foods that will last longer and result in a finished meal quicker than ever before in human history. Unfortunately, these advances are at the cost of our health and well-being. We are consuming chemically altered substances that our body simply does not know how to metabolize resulting in obesity and myriad illnesses such as heart disease and diabetes.

It must also not be overlooked that the very nature of our economy is to require corporations to incrementally increase profits year over year. Given that our population does not grow as  a percentage very much in a given year, food corporations are trying to make people eat more in an effort to produce higher earnings for Wall Street. This means reducing expenses and increased revenue when there simply isn’t any room for those changes. In order to reduce expenses food corporations infuse their products with ever-cheaper food byproducts in increasing proportions so that the end product costs less. Then, they are adding chemicals specifically to make you eat more in order to drive up volumes.

Outsourcing Care of the Elderly and Other Family Members

There once was a time when Americans, much like our European friends, lived in extended family groups that took care of one another. When Grandpa or Grandma got sick, one of their children would take care of them in their own home unless the illness was incredibly debilitating and hospice inevitable. Today, we are continually extending life expectancy but pushing our elderly further and further away from working society. Our elders are spending their artificially extended lives in long term care facilities at great expense just so the working age population does not have to get involved in their care.

It used to be that our elders were revered members of the community, people who passed down knowledge and tradition. Simply their presence was a stabilizing factor, one which imparted wisdom and tempered the fire inherent to youth. We have lost touch with the benefits of having our elders close to us and instead have chosen a path that is helping our country on its way to bankruptcy.

Once an elderly person’s personal assets have been fully liquidated to finance the cost of a long term care facility, the government must step in to pay for the rest. If someone were to be unfortunate enough to wind up spending a decade or more in a long term care facility and their personal assets were unable to pay for anything beyond the first two years, the US government is stuck with the bill for the remaining eight years. I understand that it is a bit more complicated than that, but essentially that is what happens. This is an enormous expense to the government and society, in the cash that must be paid and the loss of these individuals from their proper place in society-with their families.

Outsourcing Child Care for the Sake of Career or Money

It is commonplace today for a working couple’s children to be raised in child care while the parents go to work. The reasons are many, but in the end there is no excuse for outsourcing the care of your child to strangers. Financial reasons and pursuit of career are inadequate reasons for not raising your own child. The cost of child care is generally so expensive that in many cases it completely offsets the income made by one of the parents. Regarding career pursuits: well, if you absolutely have to climb the ladder, then perhaps family isn’t your top priority and you are not quite ready to have a child. If family isn’t top of your list to the extent that you are willing to give up corporate ladder-climbing for awhile, then you really aren’t in a position to have a child.

The costs of this are many and cut deep. It isn’t popular to discuss, but children raised in child care rather than by their parents (primarily) are usually not top-performers in school, are not as involved in extracurricular activities, and therefore do not go on to higher education or achieve the heights they might have if one of their parents was around during their childhood. They tend to get into trouble more often. The list goes on and on, and none of the things on it are positive.

Correcting Our Culture Can Help Save Our Country

These are just a few examples of domestic outsourcing that I came up with in a few minutes’ time. If we were to change our food industry, from the way the foods are grown and raised all the way to how it reaches our dinner plates, we could reduce health care costs significantly. Our health care system wouldn’t be as strained for resources or as expensive because less people would require treatment for illnesses brought on by poor diet. If we were to stop shipping off our elderly to long term care facilities unless absolutely necessary, we could reduce the budget strain on Medicare, thereby reducing health care costs as a whole. We would also benefit from their wisdom, and, as it relates to outsourcing child care, it is a possible solution for the dual-income family to rely on their elderly relatives to assist in raising children. At least they are family. Correcting these three instances of domestic outsourcing can put us a long way on the path to fixing our near-bankrupted nation while repairing some societal damage such as reinforcement of family values and stabilizing the family unit, thereby increasing the likelihood of our children’s success and decreasing societal ills like crime and poverty.
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A week has passed since we implemented what turned out to be phase one of our soil quality action plan. This weekend we remeasured the nutrient levels in our vegetable garden’s soil and determined that the plot was not ready to plant. Luckily, mother nature brought us some colder weather at the start of this week that would not have been advantageous for our seeds, so that makes me feel a little better about our preparations.

What Went Wrong with the Soil Quality Action Plan?

I did not expect us to get everything right on the first try with this vegetable garden experiment. This is one of those things that I am sure we will struggle with all year. In retrospect, I believe that we should have removed more of the natural soil and replaced it with a greater volume of the purchased garden soil. Our natural soil is rocky and still has a fair amount of root matter from previous plant inhabitants. We also did not do the best job fertilizing the plot. We used one box of fertilizer to cover an area that should have taken a box and a half. Additionally, we did not water the vegetable garden plot after fertilizing because of anticipated rain in the weather forecast that never materialized.

Implementing Soil Quality Action Plan Phase Two

In order to address our poor soil quality, we decided to repeat some steps from our first soil quality action plan. We raked out the vegetable garden again to remove even more root and plant matter from the weeds that used to dominate this particular environ. Next, we put down another box of fertilizer and turned it into the soil. I took special care to ensure that I was mixing the fertilizer into the soil at an appropriate depth (about five inches). We did not water the vegetable garden after fertilizing because rain was coming in later that evening. If we do not get adequate rain by mid-week, I will be sure to go out and water the vegetable garden soil to make sure that the fertilizer is thoroughly mixed and diffusing its nutrients to the soil.

Next Steps in Fertilizing and Planting the Vegetable Garden

Now that we have turned the soil and fertilized multiple times, I am hoping that the soil nutrient level will be adequate when we test it again this weekend. If the soil is fertile then we will begin planting the seeds. We have started some of our plants in a mini-greenhouse starter kit, so those small plants will require slightly warmer soil to be put in the ground. But for now, we can focus on getting the seeds in the vegetable garden if the soil is fertile from our second phase of soil quality action plan tactics.

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Cardio exercises can help you lose weight. This is true and known by many people. What many people wonder about is which are the best cardio exercises for weight loss and how much exactly you need to workout in order to get good results. In this post I will give you an overview on what you need to do in order to get the best results from your cardio training.

First let’s start with some basic information about weight loss. Weight loss is about one simple thing: you need to consume fewer calories (through food and drinks) and burn more calories (through exercise and physical activity). Once this deficit is about 3500 calories you will lose 1 pound. So, all you need to do is make sure that you constantly generate this calorie deficit through your diet and exercise schedule.

Why is cardio important for weight loss?

What many people don’t appreciate enough is the importance of cardio exercises in losing weight and your overall health. With cardio exercises you accelerate your heart rate and you force your body to utilize fat reserves to cope with the extra requirement for energy. So at the same time you are burning calories and fat. Cardio exercises are generally easy to perform and can be done by both beginners and experienced under any conditions and situations.

Best cardio exercises

The best cardio exercises for weight loss are those you do on a regular basis and by following a very simple trick. The trick to get the best results from your cardio exercises is to continuously increase the duration and intensity of the exercise. In other words this means that you need to put your body under pressure so that your heart rate is high and your breathing is faster. This combination will help you lose more calories from each session. If you do the same exercises over and over again without increasing the intensity and duration your body will get used to them and the results will diminish over time.

Another important factor to consider is your physical abilities and preferences. People have different abilities and not all of them can do all type of exercises with the same ease. While you should force your body to the limits you should not overdo it because this may create other more important health problems. There are plenty of cardio exercises to choose from that can match your abilities. You should select exercises that you can do and like. Your goal is not to get bored easily but to get some good results through a long term plan. In general cardio exercises are classified into:

Non – impact exercises: swimming, cycling, and elliptical training
Low – impact exercises: Walking, Treadmill training, jogging.
High – impact exercises: Running, jumping, jump rope
Full – impact exercises: skiing, climbing, rowing

Having said that, we can now look at the average number of calories you can lose from different types of cardio exercises. The average is based on 30 minute sessions.

Swimming: 200 calories (moderate pace)
Walking: 100 calories per mile
Cycling: 285 calories (moderate pace)
Rowing: 200 calories
Climbing: 300 calories
Running: 365 calories (10 minutes /mile)
Basketball: 300 calories
Ice skating: 250 calories

The higher the effort needed to perform the exercises the more calories you will lose.

How much should I exercise?

If you are a beginner you should start with easy to moderate intensity exercises 2-3 times per week (30 minute sessions). As you gain more experience and strength you can increase that to 4-5 times per week (60 minute sessions). For even better weight loss results you can combine your cardio exercises with strength training exercises (weight lifting) and a balanced diet.

CAUTION: It is always advisable to get the opinion of your doctor before attempting any form of exercise and intense physical activity.

The bottom line is that cardio exercises are great for your health and weight loss efforts. The best cardio exercises are the ones you can do for a long time without getting bored. Consistency is the key for your success. Any cardio exercise you select can give you good results if you do it regularly and consistently. Lay out your long term weight loss plan and stick to it. Good luck!

Image Credit

Jogging image courtesy of Flickr user The U.S. Army published under the CC license.
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At this time I would like to introduce Nuclear Fissionary to the world of the Internet!

Some Back-story

Since the inception of Babeled, Jack Gamble has been hard at work writing countless posts about nuclear energy and its potential and already realized benefits. Jack has brought growing expertise, industry know-how, and a personal ferocity to his unwavering support of nuclear energy. It is no secret that he is passionate about his goal for further establishing the nuclear option as a clean, safe, and reliable form of energy.

We support Jack in this goal and it is exactly why we are branching out; long in need of a niché, many of the Babelers will be hard at work maintaining our latest initiative. Jack Gamble will be serving as the subject matter expert, Jason Morgan will be analyzing the economic impact of the industry, and I will be designing and maintaining the site on an ongoing basis.

The Purpose of Nuclear Fissionary

Our goal is to rise quickly through the ranks of the Nuclear Website niché should we prove ourselves a worthy source. We aim to turn Nuclear Fissionary into a bustling hub of accurate, honest, and timely nuclear information. We wish to cultivate an avid and thriving community of supporters, dissenters, and contributors. We welcome everyone who is willing to be fair and polite to one another. We encourage disagreements but we will not tolerate personal attacks.

Some links of Interest

• Subscribe to the RSS Feed
• @Fissionary Twitter account
• Sign up for automatic e-mail updates
• Nuclear Resources

What does this mean for Babeled?

Only improvement we hope. Nothing will change here other than that we will slowly start linking over the archived nuclear posts from this site to Nuclear Fissionary. I will setup redirects that will automatically take you to the new site should you happen to click on one of those links while surfing Babeled.

Obviously we will no longer be posting nuclear related posts on this site as all the new material will now move to NuFi. That said everything else will proceed business as usual. Random posts about random things by all of us.

Well that’s it for now, please check out our site and tell us what you think. Thanks everyone!
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Existing Plant Growth Removal

You must first remove all of the grass, weeds, bushes, etc that may be growing in the area where you want to plant your vegetable garden. Unfortunately, there really is no technology to make this process much easier on your back. You just need to get in there with shovels, rakes and gloves and start removing all of the unwanted plants. Make sure that you don’t try to take it easy and not get all of the roots out because this will only cause you more work in the end. It’s harder to pull weeds when you are stepping delicately around all of the tiny little crops you don’t want to kill with your boots.

Tilling and Turning the Soil

Some people believe that they can simply rent a tiller and start tilling the soil regardless of existing weeds and grass. This is a bad idea because the tiller probably isn’t going to get the roots of the weeds and it also spreads the plant matter (including their seeds) under and over the garden area. You want to remove the weeds and grass, not simply cut them and then spread their seed potential across your entire garden. Once you have removed all of the existing plants, then you can rent the tiller (or do it the old fashioned way with a shovel) and turn the soil. Also, be sure that you level off your garden area – you don’t want a vegetable garden that isn’t level because of drainage and erosion problems that will ensue.

Test the Soil’s pH and Nutrient Levels Before Adding Fertilizer, Top Soil, or Compost

It’s easy to become overly excited after the intense labor of removing existing vegetative growth and leveling the garden plot and simply put down some fertilizer, top soil, and compost without ascertaining the current quality of the soil. Get a pH and nutrient tester-we purchased a reusable tester that can gauge both pH and nutrient levels for $10 at Home Depot-and follow the directions for use in your vegetable garden plot.

This will help you to determine whether you need to alter your soil’s pH to bring it to neutral. You will also need to know how nutrient rich the soil is so that you can decide what type of fertilizer, if any, is needed. The important nutrients to look for are nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium. Also be sure to check the optimal nutrient levels for your plants to thrive the best because this will have an impact on the fertilizer you decide to utilize. Our plot’s pH was measured solid neutral pH but slightly below the optimal nutrient range.

Implement a Soil Quality Action Plan

You can ensure the vegetable garden plot is ready to accept seeds or small plants by adding the proper balance of nutrients, water, and potentially pH adjusting materials. Determining the proper combination of these items and the materials you choose to fulfill these requirements is very important. Fertilizing can be done in many different ways and has differing philosophies regarding natural and chemical fertilizers.

Our soil quality action plan consisted of getting a natural 5-10-10 fertilizer. This means the fertilizer has 5% nitrogen, 10% phosphorous, and 10% potassium. There are a vast array of different fertilizers available, so be sure to research what your needs are before setting out to shop. We needed an all-around nutrient enhancer, but not too potent because our soil was just barely below the optimal nutrient range. We also got something called garden soil to mix in our top layer of soil in the vegetable garden plot. Garden soil is a mixture of top soil, compost, and other organic matter that is a rich, black, fertile material. This garden soil was mixed with the appropriate amount of fertilizer and mixed into the top several inches of soil.

Next weekend we will remeasure the nutrient levels and decide whether or not to plant. March 6th is our last frost date so we can put all of these plants in the ground as long as the soil is ready.

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One of the difficulties with beginning work on a first time vegetable garden is settling on an area that is ideal for the garden to flourish. Considerations must include the amount of sunlight, size, accessibility, and current condition of the plot. You also must consider if you want to select crops based on a predetermined plot or if you want to use preselected crops as another factor for determining the perfect garden location. It can be done either way, but make sure crop selection and plot choice are compatible.

Understanding the Needs of the Plants in Your Garden

The design phase requires that you know what crops you intend to plant. Each plant has different requirements that must be taken into consideration when designing the layout of your vegetable garden, so this is not something that can be done without knowing exactly what crops and how much of each you want to plant. Raised bed and single row plants usually run in long, narrow spaces. The width of the space in between rows for these planting styles is different for each type of plant, so be sure to research the ideal space needed for your crop choices. Vine-based crops like pumpkins and squash do better in wider, more square-like plots so that the plants can spread out along the ground. Root-type crops such as carrots and potatoes need raised beds, which are similar to single row planting but the soil is built up about six to ten inches above the normal ground level so there is soft soil for the plant to grow down into without meeting much resistance. Wide area plots are gaining popularity over single rows because it naturally defends against weeds by using the density of crop growth to not allow nutrients or space for weeds to take root.

Allocating Space in the Vegetable Garden

In our vegetable garden we are going to grow squash in a separate area from the rest of the crops and use a wide plot style. The mixed summer lettuces are going to be grown in a wide plot area since they are all similar plants with basically the same needs, and this should help minimize weeding effort in the lettuce area. The remaining crops will be planted in single rows, with the carrots requiring raised bed single rows. The various crops require differing amounts of space in between each plant, resulting in the need to make a more detailed plan of the area for each crop. Some crops require a trellis for supporting the plants, such as the peas. Below is a more detailed design of the pea plot area that shows the spacing between rows of plants and the distance between plants within a row. The thirty inch width by eight feet wide plot area will allow for the planting of four rows of six plants per row-a total of 24 pea plants. You will notice that we will have a trellis for the peas as this will help guide and support the pea plants during their development.

A detailed plan for each of the plot areas seen in the total vegetable garden layout should be completed so you know exactly how many of each vegetable to plant and how much space to leave in between rows and plants within a row. Having this thought out and on paper in advance will speed up the planting process and make it less vulnerable to miscalculation and other errors.

Retaining Walls, Fences, and Irrigation

The vegetable garden in your area may be as simple as a rectangular dirt space carved into the middle of a grassy field, but there are certain structures that can solve problems and help control the garden area. We needed to add an erosion barrier in front of our vegetable garden because there is an existing brick patio surface several inches lower than the garden surface. In order to prevent erosion of the vegetable garden’s soil onto the brick patio surface we screwed two eight foot long landscaping boards together and put it into position creating a barrier between the two different ground levels. We also located our vegetable garden in a section of the yard that was already fenced off on three sides. Having a fence is nice because it can help keep some poachers out and also creates a barrier between the vegetable garden and the rest of your yard. Finally, be sure to design some type of irrigation system. It can be as fancy as an underground sprinkler system or as simple as a rain catcher and a bucket.
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Research Vegetable Gardening Before You Start

It is extremely important to do your homework before starting any work on the vegetable garden if you want to be successful. My wife found an excellent site, Weekend Gardner, that provides a wealth of knowledge on gardening. There are so many factors to consider that a novice such as myself would never have conceived of without reading up on the subject. Here are some key take-aways that I think you need to research and consider for beginning a vegetable garden in your yard.

• Learn your hardiness grow zone so that when you are looking at seeds you can tell which will be successful in your area
• Keep a journal
• Decide how much space you want/need
• Pick where in the life cycle you want to start (seeds or young plants)
• Choose what plants you want to grow
• Measure and draw up a plan for your garden
• Soil preparation techniques for the plants you want to grow (level plots, raised beds)
• Planting styles (wide plots, single row)
• Staking out and fertilizing your plot
• Composting

You Need to Get a Little Dirty Preparing Your Vegetable Garden

Part of gardening is getting dirty. We had to start with a huge mess of an area in our yard. It has a great location and is already fenced off from the rest of the yard, but it was badly overgrown with grass, bushes, rogue blackberry bushes, killer vines, and hidden rocks and bricks. Before we get into what types of plants that we chose to grow in our vegetable garden, you will notice that our particular plot needed to be addressed immediately because the last frost in our area was only three weeks away. Regardless of raised beds, wide plots or single rows, we needed to get the area to at least be a patch of dirt instead of a jumble of weeds.

Grow Vegetables and Herbs that will Be Successful in Your Hardiness Grow Zone

Our hardiness grow zone turned out to be a nine, so we are fortunate enough to be able to grow just about anything in our area, as long as the plot gets enough sunlight. We noticed that our particular plot may have a little issue with sunlight being blocked in the afternoon by a tree. Given this slight sunshine blocker, we decided to shy away from things that require full sun to be successful. We also tried throwing in a few that may not work out, but it’s an experiment so you don’t really learn anything unless you have some failures. Our portfolio of seeds includes basil, parsley, squash, peppermint, broccoli, carrots, peas, arugula, and mixed lettuces. These plants will force us to learn several types of growing methods, which is ultimately one of the goals of this vegetable and herb garden project.

Designing Your Vegetable and Herb Garden Layout

It is important to draw up a plan for your garden before you start planting anything to ensure you have enough space to accommodate your chosen crops. Certain plants require raised beds, such as carrots and potatoes, so you will want to make sure that you have adequate space to build the raised beds and ensure that they are far enough apart from each other to accommodate the plants. Some plants, such as squash and other vine-type crops, require an area that is wide as opposed to long, narrow single-row crops such as peas or broccoli. Be sure to take into account what the needs of each plant are that you intend to grow and draw up a plan that utilizes your plot most effectively. Also, do not forget to include a walkway of some sort so that you can get into areas to weed and maintain the garden.

This is just the beginning of our journey to create a functioning vegetable and herb garden. I will be writing updates to this, further expanding on some of the concepts summarized in this article. Hopefully I will have good news to report on things that work well, and also some lessons learned the hard way and what you can do to avoid or minimize the damage from our mistakes.

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