What is vegan sugar?

Iris asked me why we buy the two pound bag of organic vegan sugar that costs the same as a five pound bag of regular sugar. And isn't all sugar vegan?

She was too small to remember, but we took a vacation to Australia in 2003. On the shuttle from the Cairns airport to our hotel, we drove past many sugar cane fields. A blur of a fast-moving animal caught my eye as it crossed the road and ran into the sugar cane.

I asked the driver what kind of animal lives in the cane. He replied that quite a few animals live in the cane fields.

Then we passed some cane that had been cut by a mechanical harvester.

"What happens to the animals when the cane is cut?"

"They become animal by-catch."

I told him that I just went off sugar.

Then he said that there were more reasons to go off sugar. He told us about all the chemicals that are sprayed on the sugar cane. Then the cane is cut, crushed, and the juices collected--chemicals, animal by-catch and all*.

Vegan sugar is made from hand-cut sugar cane, which gives the animals a chance to get away.

We've been buying organic vegan sugar ever since. The cost is revenue-neutral because I was looking for an excuse to cut down on our sugar intake anyway.

* In theory, the animal blood and guts are removed in the sugar refining steps. Our family does not eat vegan, but we didn't like the idea of "regular" sugar after we learned how it is made.

Household Sewing

This was some of the most boring sewing I did all year. But it was necessary.

Ten years ago, we bought a bag of rags from Home Depot, sharing half with my MIL. The rags have worn down over the years and some have ripped to shreds. The absurdity of buying rags hit me. Rather than buy another bag, I asked my MIL if she had any old towels lying about.

Sure enough, she gave me three towels that had endured bleach accidents. (A reason why I don't bleach my laundry.) A few minutes with my rotary cutter and serger, and I had a stack of 10 rags.

The mop cover for the hardwood floor thingy was a bit more difficult. The HD replacement covers are too small for the mop that the hardwood floor installer left us. After struggling with covers that didn't fit, I decided to make my own to measure. The elastic was rather tricky and I broke a needle while stretching the elastic to fit the cloth. In the end, I had to resort to a combination of stretching the elastic and pushing the fabric through with an awl. It's done and a pile of stuff left the sewing room floor.

Why do I have so much stuff on the sewing room floor? Because when you make stuff from castoffs, like these three skirts and the little girls' blouse from 3 old sport-shirts, one old t-shirt and factory remnants, then people take give you more refashioning materials.

• The gray skirts were blogged about in Hello Goth!.
• The four-tiered skirt pattern was first introduced in Blue.
• The pink hoodie was first seen in Two kits.
• I haven't blogged about the little girl's skirt and blouse yet, but I made them back in January 2011. Notice that she put ultra-secret notes in the working pocket at the skirt hem.
  

I didn't make my t-shirt or sweater, but all the other clothes were made by me with cast-off materials. Well, I bought new thread and elastic.

It gets better, the gifted version

Bad Dad and I were wondering if it is time for a It Gets Better campaign for gifted kids.

I was talking with a reporter about my finding that super-high-test score districts are less likely than average to advance their kids in math. He wondered how I stumbled upon that finding. Why had I bothered to look at the data in that way?

The short answer is that it is because I care. But I care for a reason that was not immediately obvious to him. I better spell it out really clearly.

It's not about bragging rights about whose child is more advanced.

It's about the child who is sitting in math class, thinking she just might not be cut out for math because she will tear her hair out if she has to sit through another fracking demonstration of long division.

It's about the child who gets sent to the principal's office for reading a book in math class (and being told to go back to the classroom to apologize).

It's about the child who quickly turns over her 100% test grade so that the other kids don't see it--lest she get beat up in the school yard over that.

It's about the child that got beaten up in the school yard anyway, while the other kids watched, and then took turns kicking her once she was pulled down to the ground.

It's about the kid who looked to the teacher across the school yard for a rescue, and watched the teacher walk away instead.

It's about me.

I'm here today to tell you that, if they ever let you go beyond long division and fractions, it gets better.

You'll learn that rational numbers are a field under addition, negation and multiplication but integers are not. Integers are merely a ring because they lack the inverse under multiplication. And every system of algebra opens up a different universe of possibilities.

And the special algebra of infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces will open up the world of quantum mechanics to you. And, once you gain entree into that world, you will see how the quantum world manifests itself in the macro world all around you.

Who knows? You might even learn about general relativity and make relativistic corrections for satellite-to-satellite communications.

You might even work at a place alongside 850 other PhD-holding rocket scientists, marry one of them, raise a family and take fantastic trips (with the MIT alumni travel program).