In a lot of other Internet forums people are asking the question, why don’t we stop subsidizing sweeteners before we start taxing them?

Sweeteners are really everywhere, and the first step is to stop promoting them and provide some meaningful alternatives.

Sometimes it’s really amazing how overwhelmingly sweet processed foods are, and how hard it can be to find alternatives!

Thanks for your comment.

Every time I try to say something about the climate or environment in Australia I get in trouble. I’ve never been there, and the impression I get is everything is totally different from here in Amsterdam. A good person to ask might be Kate at Vegetable Vegabond who’s an experienced gardener who actually lives in Australia.

I think in general, while cockroaches might be a useful part of the process and you might have to tolerate them a bit, you also need to do everything you can to discourage them. Certainly if I found an overwhelming cockroach problem in my compost, I would stop making it.

I doubt it’s a case of you feeding them with your kitchen waste, but rather you might be attracting them with a nice place to live. If making compost in the ground means you have less of a problem than with a bin, I would consider going back to this. You might also experiment a bit with putting it in the sun or shade, or maybe a wet or dry place. You might try an open vs closed bin.

If you suspect some item in particular might be causing the problem, you might want to discard this instead of composting it. In particular, you want to avoid putting cooked or processed foods into your compost, especially meats. You should really only compost vegetable, fruit and garden waste.

If you have a large enough yard, you probably want to move the compost as far away from your house and neighbors as you can.

If you look into it, you might find the true source of the cockroaches is really something else, and they are just using your compost as a place to live. For example, maybe a nearby building is infested? Maybe something can be done about that?

In the end it probably comes down to what you, and maybe your neighbors can tolerate.

I hope this helps!

I want to make it clear I take your comment very seriously. I write this blog for the people who read it. When people are unhappy with something, I want to fix it. The fact you took the time to leave a comment like this shows you care enough to be taken seriously.

I do think you’re exaggerating a little bit. Truly tragic? Quality and credibility? It’s only a Blogroll! I would agree that what’s there now is inadequate, but I hope people who read this blog see other parts of it as important too, for example my posts…

If there’s any part of this blog I lose sleep over, it’s the Blogroll. It’s unimportant and important at the same time. It’s what’s not in the blogroll, that’s just as important as what is. It’s probably the reason why a lot of blogs these days don’t have blogrolls any more.

Google and other search engines are slow to respond to changes. In addition, not very much information about SEO is made public, so it’s always a lot of trial and error. Once I figure out what I can get away with, I’ll be able to do much more in terms of a better quality and more credible blogroll. It’s just going to take some time.

In the end the goal is to make everyone happy. You, Google and everyone else who wants to see particular things listed in my Blogroll. I surely won’t be able to make everyone happy, but I’m going to try!

As the blogroll evolves over time, please keep letting me know what you think!

Also, if you’re someone who got dropped from the blogroll, or have specific ideas about what should be in it, please let me know. It might not make things any better, but at the very least if I dropped you, I can tell you why and maybe together we can find a solution.

In the meantime, have you seen the links page? All or most of what used to be in my blogroll are on this page.