Wind, Sand and Stars - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
 Saint-Exupéry is most famous for his Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), but he wrote some other exceptional books such as Wind, Stand and Stars and Flight to Arras.
He was a French aviator who was born in 1900 and disappeared in 1944 during the second world war. Aviation was in its infancy during the first world war and the purpose of airplanes were just being explored. Saint-Ex loved flying and became an airmail pilot, delivering mail from Paris over the Pyrenees across the Mediterranean and the Sahara, flying across the South Atlantic and then over the South American continent, over the Andes to Chile. An extraordinary feat in an open cockpit.
Wind, Sand and Stars recounts some of those adventures. Staint-Ex was a philosopher and wrote with the passion of a lover. He dives into the souls of the people he describes. One of the tales about his friend Guillaumet who crashed in the Andes includes the line, "What serves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it." Guillaumet was afraid that if he didn't manage to reach an obvious location, his body wouldn't be found and his wife wouldn't get his insurance and so he continued to move forward, step by step through the frigid air.
This is not a major work, but it is beautifully written and reflects a world getting used to the beginnings of technologies - airplanes, automobiles, radio, telephone. The world confronted these changes with wars and economic upheavals, and Saint-Exupéry reflected the turbulence of those times superbly. |
Gas Cooktops
People love gas stoves. But they're not good for health in homes. When things burn, lots of pollutants and particulates get emitted into the air. I have been told that chefs like them because they provide greater control of the heat on the pot. And since they are associated with fine cooking and great chefs, they get installed in high end homes, sporting six or eight burners.
That may be true and I would be the first to tell you that I am not a chef, but induction stoves provide extraordinary control as well and they are a whole lot better for the environment.
Gas stoves produce large amount of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) that is not good for the chef. According to the American Lung Association, NO2 "causes a range of harmful effects on the lungs including:
- Increased inflammation of the airways;
- Worsened cough and wheezing;
- Reduced lung function;
- Increased asthma attacks; and
- Greater likelihood of emergency department and hospital admissions.
New research warns that NO2 is likely to be a cause of asthma in children."
I want to say that there is something organic and living about the dancing flames of a gas stove and the shiny, smooth, glass surface of an induction stove is clinical and sterile. But any time we can get fire out of the house from cigarettes to gas stoves to gas furnaces, the better the air quality will be and the healthier the occupants.
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