The Green Filter

Art, Culture as Making the Change

2009-04-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

Related to my post from yesterday, and the idea that some people have turned away from the ecological problems we face, preferring to live in the moment, I've been meaning to talk more about the current state of the "public consciousness" so to speak. It seems to me, that even in this "turning away" there is a potentially very positive force, even if it's not an active drive towards solutions. Getting people to realize how the world works and how that functioning and those processes diminish our quality of life and our communities is half the battle. Changing how people think, in other words, is a good starting point. I wouldn't say it automatically results in change (for a deeper discussion of this, see Meyer's Political Nature) or change in the "right" direction, but it seems ultimately very necessary to cause a change in worldviews to put into practice the vast lifestyle changes that are required to deal with the issues we're facing.

Understanding the disconnect between what is good for the economy and what is good for humanity can be as simple as conveying the cycle of processed food and pharmaceuticals to bad health and more pharmaceuticals and treatments and therapies and products to improve appearance and so on. All this injects money into the economy, but you have to wonder if it wouldn't be better if we kept most of that money in our pockets and ate healthier food, exercised and led less stressful lives. But imagine how the economy would contract in the pharmaceutical, processed food and beauty industries. There is a lot of money, and jobs, invested in the current system. The desire for change needs to reach far and wide, and also deep, if it's to get us where we need to go.

On that note, this post signifies my vote of support for a new project, Dark Mountain, just lifting off to try to spur such a cultural change through art. It seems to me there's already probably plenty of potential out there, along with art and cultural objects, tangible and intangible, for this kind of cultural shift. I was amused when I came across Tiesto's Elements of Life tour videos and listened to the opening "message." The crowd cheers after hearing how technology has reached the point where it's causing people to "grow apart, rather than coming together." The voice goes on, telling us that we must "traverse the force" to get back to the "essence of life."All the while you see the crowd with their phones and cameras stretched out overhead to capture whatever is there to be captured in the dark crowd, overcast by lights, waiting for the DJ to come on stage and light the place up with music that is about as technological as it gets as far as its "elements."

But look at the size of the crowd. The "environmentalist" in me imagines they left a lot of garbage behind, even as I'm sure there's got to be a way to get from A - the message of coming together and "the true meaning of our existence" - to B: a better world. I think there's a lot of support for something better, we just haven't figured out how to get there yet, or what we're trading all our "stuff" in for. People need to be convinced we're getting something better, that's worth the change, that it's not really a "sacrifice." I'm already convinced it's not, but I'm realistic that it's not going to be easy or straightforward to transition and that far more people need to see the benefits. I'm sure there's a ton of this kind of expression of discontent in popular culture, if people look.

Oceans Update: Overfishing and the Problem of Plastic

2009-04-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

Hopefully I'll be able to post more regularly soon, but in the meantime I thought I'd offer an update on some issues I've already covered.

A couple years ago I read a book by Carl Safina that opened the door to how big an impact human activity is having on the oceans and marine life. Around the same time a major, and majorly depressing, report was released on the state of global fisheries, suggesting most would collapse by 2048 based on current activities and behaviour. Here's an update on the situation.

Callum Roberts, a professor of marine conservation at the University of York lays out the situation. The big news is fairly straightforward. There has been a big movement to have fisheries assessed and certified sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council. This has changed the approach to regulation of fisheries, especially in countries and regions where there has been a lot of certification done. More importantly, as Carl Safina emphasized as being a major problem in the past, when regulators and fishing interests meet to set quotas, there's now increasing pressure to base them on science, rather than on what voters or the fishing industry wants. For decades quotas have been set much higher than what scientists have said was necessary for sustainability, and thus the major(ly depressing) report on the imminent collapse of fisheries.

The other big development has been a new drive towards protecting large sections of the ocean to function as breeding grounds for marine life, which would spur recovery. Coral reefs are often specifically protected for this reason, preventing bottom trawling nets from harming the reefs and also creating a hub for breeding. This is actually one of the areas where the previous American administration did a good job, getting a series of marine protected areas (MPAs) put in place, which now make up a third of MPAs globally. Roberts argues that quotas need to be put to rest, since they only lead to twice as much dead or injured marine life being thrown overboard as is landed. Rather, 30% of the oceans should be protected to allow for stocks to recover. A great deal of recovery could be accomplished in as little as 20 years.

But in other oceans news, there is the plastic problem. Plastic is a serious environmental and health issue that still isn't getting enough attention. The damage it causes is possibly most apparent in the oceans, where huge plastic garbage patches exist in areas where currents and winds are favourable for such agglomerations. Sea birds and ocean life eat or are entangled in plastic objects and die at a rate of a million a year for sea birds and 100,000 a year for marine mammals. Then there's the fact that plastic's biodegrading involves breaking into smaller and smaller pieces, so that in certain places in the ocean these pieces are more abundant than plankton and on certain beaches they make up a high proportion of the "sand". It seems likely that people, like birds, fish, whales and wildlife on land as well, are ingesting plastic to a certain extent. Plastic in water bodies also tends to attract other toxic chemicals, so that when it's ingested, it often has a toxic punch - aside from anything inherent in the chemicals contained in the plastic itself - that can accumulate and be magnified up the food chain.

In case you're thinking that a lot of the plastic in the ocean comes from refuse from ships or broken ship containers of shoes and toothbrushes, it's believed that 80% of it actually comes from plastic discarded on land, much of it as pellets before it has even had the chance to be made into useful products. The bottom line for most of us is to cut down on using disposable plastic shopping bags by using reusable ones, and to avoid drinking bottled water. Together these two are the worst of the plastic problem, and the easiest to cut back.

This article gives a fairly good history of the discovery of the problem and the history of plastic. It concludes with a commentary on a project led by David de Rothschild, which aims to raise awareness about the issue by sailing a specially designed, low environmental impact boat made entirely of recycled plastic to the plastic garbage patch and a bunch of other plastic "hot spots" in the Pacific, including certain islands and beaches. Mother Jones also recently did a piece that explains the potential, the usefulness and the problems of plastic.

Rothschild picks up on a major theme in the public mind lately, which is that the environmental problems seem so great to many people that they've essentially resigned themselves to just enjoying their own lives while "it lasts". Like him, I understand the pull in this, but I don't think it's an either-or situation. People need to do both. We can't completely absolve ourselves or our political and corporate leaders of responsibility by just "enjoying the moment". So much of the modern lifestyle, aside from any effects it's having on "the environment" and "nature", has impinged on an individual's ability to "enjoy the moment" anyhow, that sitting and putting up with it seems pretty defeatist and maybe just simply lazy and uninspired. But, that's another post. I'll end by saying that enjoying what you've got can also mean enjoying causing and effecting change, and it might be a higher and more lasting level of enjoyment at that.

Chemicals, Birth Defects, The Future

2009-04-18T16:29:00.000-07:00

It's entirely possible I've posted about this study before, but it bears repeating:

Probably one of the most important investigators in this area is a man named Michael Skinner who has shown us that the capacity that pesticides have to alter our lives has been grossly underestimated. In his model a pregnant rat is exposed for just a brief period in the very first phase of pregnancy to one pesticide. Keep in mind that there are no children in America who are exposed to just one pesticide. The average child is exposed to 300 chemicals at the time of conception. But in his model with just one pesticide all the rat babies when they were born did not have any birth defects at all. They looked perfectly normal. That's really important to think about because had the experiment ended there, it would have been declared a safe exposure, not associated with any harm. As he likes to point out, thanks to some inquiring minds he was allowed to keep his experiment going long enough to see how these rats turned out as adults. And there he found that ninety percent of the males were afflicted by a whole host of disorders that we would refer to as adult disorders, adult diseases. They included conditions like low sperm count and infertility, immune disorders, kidney and prostate problems, cancer, high cholesterol and a shortened life span. And if that sounds bad, it's really not as bad as the rest of the experiment. Because the rest of the experiment showed that this condition could be transferred to all subsequent generations without any further exposure. So if one pesticide could do this, imagine what might be happening in our society.

This quote is from Dr. Paul Winchester, a neonatologist who is warning people that it birth defects are much more common in babies conceived in the spring due to the higher concentrations of pesticides in the environment at that time of year. Pesticides are one group of chemicals, but there are many others in our food supply, cosmetics and environment that we have essentially no idea whatsoever what the long term effects might be, especially considering the sheer number of chemicals interacting. The likelihood for harm that accumulates over time seems high.

Update: Here's another example, phthalates are being linked to obesity. Phthalates are used in a lot of products, making it easy for them to be absorbed or even ingested. Note that the article says:

They have raised concerns as possible carcinogens for more than a decade, but attention over their role in obesity is relatively recent.

Ask yourself why they're still being put into products and what happens when a chemical like this is banned or comes to the widespread attention of the public. (Generally they replace it with another chemical. It's a bit like whack a mole, except, every year we might ban a tiny percentage of chemicals compared to the new ones coming on the market all the time.)

There seems to be more articles like this one everyday. With food additives, as one example, a lot, or even all, of the things chemicals are used for, are superficial or just to ultimately create profit. Consider how new flavors of processed foods are made, and you might start to comprehend how money is created in labs, potentially at the cost of the long-term health of the population at large. The argument for a lot of chemicals has to do with convenience. It's hard to make a decision about whether the convenience is worth it when we don't know the long term cost of that convenience.

And on a vaguely related note, Kim Stanley Robinson talks about the future as related to climate change. What he's saying applies to other environmental threats as well though, such as the unknown impacts of chemicals, biotechnology - specifically transgenic biotechnology -, resource depletion, pollution and degradation at large. It would be nice if the rhetoric of "your children and grandchildren" would be set aside. I'm not sure if it's a nod to the fact that people in their 50s essentially still have so much power, or if it's just a failure to note that harmful effects, possibly catastrophic ones, will likely be felt within this century, but it gets annoying. I'm not anywhere near 50 though, and have no children. It's me I'm worried about, and you should be too, even if you're 50. People need to think more holistically about social justice and the environment, security and safety, and they need to think nearer term. The more complex a system becomes, the more possibilities for (unpredictable) problems there are and the more risk. It's never been more complex than the globalized, highly technologized, increasingly "man-made" (artificial) world we're living in now.

New Bill Introduced (Again) to Limit Antibiotic Use in Livestock

2009-03-27T06:19:00.000-07:00

I've posted a few times about the problem with widespread antibiotic use by people, but also by livestock producers. In fact, livestock is estimated to be getting 70% of the antibiotics given out in the U.S. The concern you hear about most commonly in the media is that this contributes to antibiotic resistant superbugs like MRSA. The problems you hear less about are those caused by the antibiotics getting into the environment and food supply and the health issues this can cause for the human population as well as for wildlife, and possibly even for plants. Even plants are taking in antibiotics through the water supply or through treated sewage spread on crops as fertilizer. The problem with antibiotics in food or in water for people, never mind for plants and wild or domesticated animals, is that it upsets the natural ecological balance inside the body so that all sorts of bacteria, including good bacteria, are destroyed. Some of these bacteria keep other types of organisms under control, for example certain types of fungus. There are also possible, probable effects caused by the interaction of antibiotics with other pharmaceuticals and chemicals we're taking in. Contemporary people are getting a much wider array of "inputs" than you would have seen even a hundred years ago. The least the government can do is stop factory farmers from giving antibiotics to animals before they are actually needed to treat disease. Currently the drugs are given mainly to prevent disease in the unsanitary, crowded conditions of many of these "farms," and also to promote growth.

Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York is introducing a new bill to do just that, and it's apparently the fourth time the bill has been introduced, on an issue that's been on the radar since at least 1980 according to Slaughter. But of course, factory farmers are trying to stop the bill from passing. Don't be fooled by the headline, food safety is already at risk because of factory farm operations, with the vast amount of manure and their runoff getting into water supplies and contaminating produce, never mind the health of the animals where most of our meat is actually coming from. What is true is that more animals dying because of declining antibiotic use would drive the cost of food up, assuming more animals will in fact die because of this law, and not that they would build up their own resistance to disease and perhaps be healthier overall, considering the effect overuse of antibiotics has in people might be similar for animals. It would possibly force these farms to give these animals more space and cleaner living conditions so that they don't get sick so frequently. There may end up being fewer animals produced overall and the cost of meat would probably go up. But, if you're a green or health-conscious person, you probably already know that we're eating too much meat and not enough plants anyhow, for our health and for the environment (particularly for reducing climate change). If you're in the United States and you'd like to see this bill pass on only its fourth attempt, now's the time to start being vocal about it.

Cap and Trade: Revenue and Individual Impact

2009-03-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

Although I'm way past due for a new post, I still don't really have the time to add anything significant. In the meantime, there's this segment on greenhouse gases cap and trade in the United States from Living on Earth's show this week:

STAVINS: Well there's tremendous support within private industry for the cap and trade approach in general because they see regulation coming and it's the lowest cost approach for them. There is not widespread support for the auctioning of the allowances, because when the allowances are auctioned it means private industry pays not only to their control costs, but they also pay for the right to emit.
GELLERMAN: Well the Obama administration is literally banking on this money. How much money are we talking about?
STAVINS: Well the Obama administration in its recent budget projected that they would obtain revenues on the order of 750 to 800 billion dollars over a period of close to a decade from the auction of the allowances, from selling the allowances to private industry.
GELLERMAN: Would I be able to buy one of these allowances?
STAVINS: Well, that's interesting because under the way at least the previous statutes had been written for the SO2 allowance trading program, whether or not you are regulated by the program – in that case an electricity generator – you can buy an allowance. And, in fact, under the SO2 allowance trading program you can go to the EPA website and see this – a substantial number of the purchases of allowances have been by student groups. And they take that allowance, and you know what they do with it? They tear it up. And something remarkable happens when an individual citizen buys an allowance in cap and trade program and tears it up or hides it. They have actually made more stringent the overall cap that was enacted by the Senate, the House of Representatives and signed by the President.
GELLERMAN: Because they've reduced the number of shares.
STAVINS: That's right. That's right. And it's remarkable. I mean, frankly, I don't know of any other public policy in any sphere where an individual citizen through their actions can actually render more stringent a policy enacted by the Congress.
GELLERMAN: So, can it reduce the greenhouse gas? It may work in the marketplace, buying and selling, but will it actually reduce greenhouse gases?
STAVINS: If the cap is set to bring down the level of CO2 and or other greenhouse gases over time, then as long as monitoring and enforcement is working, then it will definitely work. And our experience with these programs is that they work. Compliance with the acid rain the SO2 allowance trading program is about 99.9 percent.

My grain of salt would be that SO2 wasn't quite as interwoven throughout the economy as greenhouse gas emissions. This will be an enormous undertaking, which is why it's taken so long to even get to this stage of serious consideration.

Chemical Feminization and Whales Lost in a Noise Cocktail

2008-12-11T11:45:00.000-08:00

On the personal front I haven't been feeling well for a couple of weeks, but I finally saw a piece of news that irritated me enough - actually more the way it was presented - that I felt compelled to post.

Recently there's growing concern that common chemicals, pesticides, have a serious impact on reproductive health. These chemicals can mimic estrogen and cause obvious feminization in various species and most likely, in high enough quantities, have a seriously detrimental effect on human male fertility. I may have posted at one point about how fertility levels were found to be much lower in rural areas due to relatively high levels of pesticides in the environment. I've also read about areas, towns, neighbourhoods that are surrounded by various types of chemical facilities or chemical-using operations where the sex ratio of babies is heavily skewed towards girls. The implications of this are probably pretty obvious, over time, at least. As someone close to me - someone not exactly the typical stereotype of the environmentalist - said, "We're going extinct!" So I was somewhat annoyed when I saw this Fox News video about a new study on this problem. I don't know if it's because it's coming from Fox News, a station not known for being very environmentally aware, or if it's because it's become a habit not to raise alarm and always put a positive spin on things that really should just be allowed to remain what they are: negative - but I was sort of irritated by the smiling scientist at the end and all her reassurances. Polar bears and alligators aren't exactly small animals, so I'm not real sure whether her talk about dosage is particularly realistic. Not only that, but animals don't apply or handle full strength pesticides right out of the container. This is not a subject where reassurance is what's needed.

The other story that caught my interest, weeks ago now, is one about whales. If you follow environmental news, you've probably heard about the fight over sonar between those interested in whale conservation and welfare and the military. There's a couple of theories about why sonar causes beaching and death in whales, especially new, more powerful sonar. One theory is that the whales dive too deep and too fast to try to avoid the sonar and this causes pressure sickness (just like in human divers) and internal hemorrhaging. Another theory is that the sonar simply causes the hemorrhaging on its own. I'm not really feeling up to doing a bunch of research to track down the specific science, but there is a lot of information available online. Sonar's only part of the problem though. Noise pollution from ships and seismic work are also making it difficult for whales to communicate, find food and connect with mates. The blue whale's "acoustic range" is said to have been cut back 90%. In an article by the Associated Press on the topic, the effect was described as being like a cocktail party where everyone's speaking at once, so everyone keeps raising the volume of their own voice until eventually it's almost impossible to hear one another. This is what marine life is having to deal with everyday, all day, their whole lives, and many of them need their sense of hearing just to navigate. From an ethical standpoint, what humanity is inflicting on these wide-ranging species is probably far worse than we're even able to imagine, their very existence threatened by it, never mind that it's just plain inconsiderate and inhumane.

The trouble is, while it's nice that some scientists and conservation groups are coming forward to try to restrain the military's use of the worst types of sonar and to try to cut back on ship traffic and enact restrictions, this is a situation where cooperation and mutual agreement and restraint are required. The American military isn't going to agree to stop using sonar or restrict its use if other countries don't do the same. And even if they agree publicly, it's pretty hard to enforce this kind of thing. The same sort of problems come up for ship traffic and seismic work. The bottom line is that the only way to get people to universally recognize the harm these activities cause and then limit them is to change the way people think about these activities and install a strong moral aspect in the common consciousness. And clearly that is possible, because it's been done before. Some of us already think it's wrong to eat much seafood if you live in a landlocked place, no matter how often doctors urge us to.

Since I realize it's one thing to just decide too much shipping, sonar and seismic activity is bad for marine life and another to stop or severely curtail those activities, I'll offer some fanciful and less fanciful ideas about solutions. First, less shipping could be accomplished and probably will happen somewhat naturally as the global economy contracts and relocalizes because of increased energy costs. There simply won't be as much product moving and it probably won't be moving as far, especially the heavy, low value, low density stuff. As for sonar and seismic, go back to the drawing board. The same goes for ship's motors, in fact. Dream big, in other words. Creates more jobs for R&D and then implementation if quieter motors or less energy intensive ships (smaller motors, less sound pollution) and different technology for the military becomes de rigueur or simply regulation. Maybe we could create a whale conservation economy, sort of like one based on green building and energy efficiency. Or we could just stop doing war and learn to cooperate, and then there'd be no need for military sonar and all those endlessly patrolling ships and subs. That's about as fanciful as it gets.

15% Say Not Parents' Responsibility to Teach Kids About Nutrition

2008-11-21T17:28:00.000-08:00

Another survey has come out to illustrate how bizarre and removed from the natural world we've become as a culture. A recent British survey found confusion about what constitutes fruit and vegetables, with people not only thinking foods that aren't fruit and veg are, but also 5% not recognizing oranges or bananas as fruit. Worst of all, in my opinion, is that 15% of parents don't think it's their responsibility to teach their children about nutrition.

They believed grandparents, teachers, doctors and celebrity chefs were better qualified to do so.

To me this might be an indicator that our society has become a little too specialized. If parents aren't teaching their children about nutrition (what do they think is their responsibility after they've successfully passed their genetic material on?), it might be because they don't feel like they know much about it themselves. Which begs the question, who's teaching them about it? Don't expect advice to come from your doctor. Since most adults don't have teachers and probably don't spend a whole lot of time watching cooking shows, I'm left to conclude these adults (15% of those surveyed) probably care even less about their own nutrition than their children's. Considering Britain's tax-payer-funded medical system, the general population will probably be footing part of the bill when this segment of the population's ignorance comes home to roost in the form of diabetes, heart problems and quite possibly even cancer, just to name the big ones.

How dysfunctional are we that some of us have come to think it's okay if we know nothing about one of the basic essentials of life, food? I guess as long as you go to your job at the office, factory, shop, school and pay your bills, it doesn't much matter if you're systematically poisoning or nutritionally starving yourself and your children due to ignorance.

Prescriptions vs. Lifestyle for Health

2008-11-03T06:01:00.000-08:00

A lot of people make their way to these pages looking for health information. Over the years I've become steadily more critical of the current way of doing medicine, and I keep hearing more and more stories of other people completely dissatisfied with their doctors, to the point of basically trying to treat themselves. A lot of this comes down to doctors' lack of time, but it's probably also related to the tendency to just keep treating symptoms or diseases with prescriptions, rather than looking at causes. Eventually it gets to the point where you're wondering why you've even bothered to go to the doctor at all, and that's not a good place to be, especially when there really is a serious disease involved.

Most of my personal experimenting has had to do with trying to improve the appearance of my skin, whether it's eczema or acne. In all my trips to family doctors and dermatologists, I don't recall hearing a whole lot or anything at all about diet, exercise or circulation. So for those of you who've found yourselves here because you're similarly frustrated by treatment that really isn't treating the cause of the problem and keeps adding more complications (check out some of the effects of long-term antibiotic and topical steroid use, or maybe you're just sick of your clothes and pillowcases being bleached out by all the peroxide creams you're putting on your skin for acne, or just plain sick of having to spend day after day treating your skin with creams, washes and pills), keeping in mind I haven't spent many, many years obtaining a medical or nutrition degree or practicing medicine, but only a bit of frustrated reading and trial and error on myself over time (a decade or so), here's what I've learned:

Diet

Allergies or Food Intolerance - If you've had acne or eczema for a long time (years, into adulthood) and no treatment seems to work, it might be a good idea to get yourself tested for food allergies (or other allergies). Wheat, milk, soy and other foods can have a serious effect on the body of someone who's allergic or intolerant. Never mind the appearance of one's skin, it can lead to feeling chronically tired and all sorts of other symptoms because the body's constantly under attack. (Think about all the foods the average westerner eats that contain milk or wheat alone.)

Nutritional Deficiency - At the most basic level, various vitamin deficiencies can cause skin problems, or just plain unhealthy appearance. (And the condition of one's skin is only the most obvious indicator of one's health.) So make sure you're getting all the nutrients you need in your diet, and it's better to get them from whole foods than a vitamin pill (but there's nothing wrong with supplementing with a multivitamin, as long as overdoses are avoided - even vitamins can be toxic at some point). My general recommendation would be that your diet should consist mostly of fruits and vegetables, and meat, eggs and milk products (in that order). Grains are important for bulk and also probably helpful in preventing stomach upset (I sort of think of the stomach as a pretty acidic place and fruits, vegetables and animal products as great nutritionally, but not that great for providing a buffer against that wealth of acid - that's what grains (and potatoes) are for), but I don't eat a whole lot of them, since I don't seem to react to wheat well, and it's in most foods that could be described as convenient. (cookies, muffins and pastries at the coffee shop, pasta, pizza, most kinds of alcohol outside of wine might have it). That's an actual shot of my fridge, and I'll eat pretty much all of that produce within the week, by myself. I don't know how I could do that if I ate a lot of convenience foods. Although, I'm not a very big person, so it makes it all the harder to get all the nutrients I need in an amount of food equal to my appetite and weight. I somewhat relate to that that multi-vitamin commercial with the woman running and simultaneously being given a steady stream of foods from every food group to eat. But it's a lot easier if you cut out all the garbage and maybe the grains are fairly adjustable based on the energy requirements of each particular person.

There's also a couple of other things I'm not so sure about, but might be worthy of note:

Antibiotics in food - Antibiotics are pretty ubiquitous in our diet now, not just in meat and milk and eggs (from feeding them to livestock to prevent sickness in crowded conditions), but also in plants and drinking water, because the meds stay in the environment after they've passed through people or animals. Antibiotics are increasingly being looked at for their impact on beneficial bacteria in the body. It's useful (and possibly a bit disgusting, depending on your perspective) to think of the human body as like an ecosystem, its own biological environment, with competing organisms throughout. Antibiotics might kill bacteria that help ward off other types of bacteria or viruses or other types of organisms. Which leads me to:

Yeast - In alternative health there's a lot of talk about overgrowth of yeast due to ingestion of antibiotics and our sugar rich diets helping yeast to thrive and causing a whole slew of symptoms (including acne and eczema). Bacteria would generally keep it in check, but if you've been taking antibiotics for months or years for acne, or just off and on for various conditions, there might be a bit of an imbalance. My doctor reassured me that as soon as you get off the antibiotics, those good bacteria will come back. But I'm not convinced. I recently read a book, The Truth About Food, which did some amateur experimenting with probiotics (those good bacteria that are all the rage, for example, in yogurts to improve digestion, but also useful for other things, like checking yeast growth, depending on the specific type of bacteria) and prebiotics (foods and food products that promote the expansion of already existing colonies of bacteria within the body). What they found was that probiotic foods and pills aren't particularly useful at increasing the levels of the bacteria in the body, probably because most of the bacteria don't survive the trip through the acidic stomach. Prebiotics, on the other hand, had a much greater impact. You can search prebiotic foods for a list, but basically, you need to eat a pretty healthy diet of fruits and vegetables and fiber to get a lot of prebiotic foods in, not chips and crackers and things that are highly processed. Basically, when my doctor told me that the bacteria would bounce back after antibiotic use ceased, I couldn't help but think how the modern highly processed, sugar-filled (promotes yeast growth), nutrient poor diet delayed this process. Obviously, if you think yeast might be a problem for you, you also have to avoid foods that contain yeast, and for women, birth control pills might be causing problems too. But also,

Acidic and Alkaline Food - There is also some alternative health information out there that talks about maintaining a balance of acidic and alkaline foods in the diet for good health and yeast control.

Exercise and Circulation
So diet is important to maintain proper function throughout the body. But there's one other problem. If a person's circulation is poor, the blood is not able to, simply put, carry the good stuff to the body's cells and the bad stuff away as well as it would if the circulation was better. Two points started me thinking in this direction. First, I always wondered why acne seems to occur on the face, neck, back and chest, areas above the heart. Second, at one point in my life I had really clear skin, bookended by periods of steady acne (and I'm not sure how important this section is for eczema, but it makes sense that it would also improve things, as long as sweat and heat isn't causing irritation). So I wondered why. At first I thought it was diet, because where I was living there wasn't a lot of processed foods and I was eating more produce, but I'd improved my diet and continued to have problems. At this point I already knew that eating well didn't necessarily mean the body would get the full payoff unless circulation was good. I realized I'd been doing a lot of exercise and yoga during my clear skin period. And then I thought to myself: Could it be as simple as all those inversions, increased blood flow to the face during these sessions resulting in clear skin day to day? I Googled around a bit, and I've found some people claiming that yoga cured all their ills, even preventing wrinkles and grey hair. I don't know about that, but I do wonder if just doing a few prolonged forward bend poses a few times a day might increase blood flow just enough to restore proper function and prevent acne. Cardiovascular exercise (as simple as walking or as vigorous as running for a few minutes) will also improve circulation and crank up the body's function and speed up the release of "toxins" through sweat, likely leading to an improvement in skin's appearance.

Conclusion

To sum up, if you're at your wit's end on how to get clear skin or get rid of eczema, improve your diet and look for food allergies or triggers (keeping a food diary recording food intake and physical reactions - complete with photos of skin's changing appearance, if you're really keen - will help figure out what might be the problem, or just asking your doctor to do allergy or intolerance testing) and improve circulation through cardio exercise and yoga or forward bends. If you want to isolate which behaviours are having the impact, make sure you don't do it all at once. i.e. Do yoga, but don't make an abnormal effort to eat healthy, or eat healthy, but don't do yoga. Or only do cardio exercise and eat the same and forget yoga and forward bends. I would give everything at least a couple of weeks of trial before forming an opinion.

I only wish I were joking, or at least that my family doctor had recommended these things about 10 years ago. From this perspective, it makes sense that cultures closer to the historical norm (poor or "underdeveloped" countries with few processed foods, lots of exercise, few or no antibiotics, not a lot of sugar) have pretty well no incidence of acne.

I'd be really interested to hear from anybody who tries this out or any other comments. And I'd be even more interested if somebody would do or has done a proper study of all these ideas together.

Sunday Mash-Up: Financial Crisis, Energy, Climate Change

2008-10-19T14:27:00.000-07:00

I'm having a quiet Sunday catching up on the news. Here's what I've found so far:

The financial crisis: the lobbying that got in the way of preventing it from getting this far. Three years ago a group of Republicans signed a letter stating:

"If effective regulatory reform legislation ... is not enacted this year, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system and the economy as a whole."

At the start, Republicans were in favour of the legislation, while Democrats were against. The mortgage giant Freddie Mac employed a firm to lobby several Republicans to change their minds so that the legislation would be defeated. Why is it that no one at Freddie Mac realized things would come to this? Things will probably get ugly for these foresightless executives now, as scapegoats are sought and governments grasp at anything to help them maintain their popularity as the economy seizes up. The lobbyist said plainly that the if the legislation went through, it might hurt the housing boom. Wasn't it obvious that a housing boom powered by shaky mortgages given to people who can barely make ends meet, a boom that was responsible for such a disproportionate much money and credit circulating in the economy, might not be the best thing to encourage anyway? Meanwhile, factories in China are shutting in staggering numbers, particularly toy factories.

"Labor costs have gone up 70 to 100 percent in the last three or four years. But these guys have not been able to raise their prices because Toys "R" Us, Home Depot and Wal-Mart are saying no price increase. How is that possible?"

For years, there were too many factories competing to win bids
from foreign buyers demanding prices that were often unrealistically low. The winners were American and European consumers, who enjoyed rock-bottom prices.

But many factories were scrimping on materials and stiffing their suppliers just to survive, Xie said. The financial crisis will be the final culling factor that forces many wobbly factories to go belly up and end an unsustainable situation, he added.
Already, China's toy industry is hurting. The official Xinhua News Agency reported this week that 3,631 toy exporters —
52.7 percent of the industry's enterprises — went out of business in 2008. The causes: higher production costs, wage increases for workers and the rising value of the yuan, the report said.

Go check out Kunstler's blog if you want someone to imagine for you where this all leads. China seems to see these factory closures as working with their plan to move these simpler industries inland while concentrating the most modern, high tech manufacturing on the coasts. The truth is clearly that the global economy has become so complex, that nobody really can say where this will all end or how it all played out even once it's played out.

Another unsustainable situation quite possibly: According to executive director of the Saskatchewan Trucking Association, more than 90% of the products sold in Saskatchewan are moved by truck. This is causing problems now, heading into Christmas, because three oil refineries in the region are shut down (2) or running at reduced capacity (1) and there's a diesel shortage. Just another reason why we should be using rail more and trucks less. I've got a career trucker and a career railroader in my immediate family (the railroading actually goes back a couple generations), so I know the impact of what I'm saying, and still it must be said. Rail requires diesel too, but the nature of rail (running coast to coast and across national and provincial borders) means the rail companies have more options to deal with problems like this, whereas localized trucking companies or contract truckers are a lot more limited in what they can do to deal with the situation. Everywhere most of our economy has moved away from localized production and more and more towards using trucks to transport goods long distances. Just-in-time delivery until trucks can't get diesel, I guess. As long as it's not grocery store shelves going empty...

Finally, less than a week after the Canadian federal election, our Prime Minister is promising $100 million to poor nations to help them deal with climate change. I wonder when that Green Plan is going to be implemented? I assume Harper has only adaptation in mind for this donation. It's pretty entertaining to read the comments, which seem to swing from "There is no climate change, what a waste of money," to "Why is Harper donated this paltry sum while doing nothing about our high per capita greenhouse gas emissions?"

Images: Source (WalmartMoncton), Source (CN Train)

Dion and the Liberals

2008-10-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

I'm not a Liberal, but apparently there's a bit of a grassroots campaign to try to stop the onslaught against Dion within the party. This disgusting rush to blame their leader for the party's poor showing in the election is misguided at best, and just makes people like me (admittedly, there are probably few) less likely to support the party. As I listened to the higher ups in the party talk about how badly they'd done while blaming Dion for this, all I could think was how arrogant and comfortable this party had become. The Liberals are a bit washed out at this point, at least in my view. To me, and again, maybe I'm part of a very small minority, it seems like a lot of people are still not over the whole sponsorship scandal or simply not over the long years of Liberal rule. The party leaders seem to think it's all Dion's fault that the other parties did better while the Liberals' seats were drained away. Personally, I like Dion better than I like his party. I've sometimes thought his policies might be a little too far left, a little too bold for the Liberals, like the Green Shift plan. All I can say to the Liberals who want to blame their leader or gain the leadership for themselves, get over yourselves. Dion may not have been that popular this election with many, but this rush to blame him for the entire loss of seats is not endearing, especially to those voters who chose to vote further left rather than further right, when they decided not to go with the Liberals. I'm sure the ones who swayed Conservative are loving it. I talked with a conservative friend a couple nights ago, and she related how she "couldn't stand" Dion and how someone whose English is worse than the French President's shouldn't be leading an English speaking country. (She also called Jack Layton a sleazy car salesman. I didn't hear much about policies, but about an apparent fear in her conservative family that the Liberals would win power. I confess I found this all a bit mysterious, even though I might be sort of fiscally conservative. Still, the government is the only one who can and would be willing to spend money to stimulate the economy in times of recession, which we appear to be in. No wonder the Conservatives called an election, possibly an illegal one, now. They might not be so popular if people start losing their jobs and are at the mercy of the government for assistance.)

But it's probably already too late, since Dion has already apparently called a press conference, presumably to announce his resignation as leader of the Liberals. Hopefully he's not put off politics altogether. At least he had the courage to try to promote and implement the sort of policy that climate change activists (anyone heard of Al Gore?) have been calling for, even if most Canadians, especially in the west, didn't seem to get it, or the merits of this plan over the Conservative one (no one talked about the Conservative plan at all, it was as if nobody even knew it existed, much less what it was). The election happened too fast. I suspect if the Liberals had worked harder in the west to get the word out about how the Green Shift actually compared to the Conservative green plan, things might have been somewhat different. Then again, some people obviously couldn't get past Dion's poor English, and that's something he might not be able to improve in a usable time frame to gain the kind of support he seems to need from the general population in order to quiet his angry, eager-to-blame party.

*Image source

Site Access Problems

2008-10-16T18:30:00.001-07:00

People visiting the site yesterday may have found themselves looking at a "parked" ad page. The website's domain was transferred and I still haven't got everything worked out. If you type in http://thegreenfilter.com, you're probably going to still have problems accessing the site for a while. There's a couple of issues I'm having with my internet connection which makes fixing the problems with the website more difficult. So, for now, if you're trying to access the page directly, make sure you type in www.thegreenfilter.com.

Canada Votes: Did You?

2008-10-14T10:51:00.001-07:00

I happen to be at home on this federal election day. I voted relatively early this morning, anticipating that I'd have to work today, but Mother Nature has decided I'll have the day off. I walked six blocks in the rain and the whole transaction took about five minutes once I got there. It's funny how I've never seen a line for voting in any of the provincial, municipal or federal elections I've taken part in. I couldn't help but wonder how the weather would affect the vote. How far are the poor, the car-less going to walk in the rain, even from a bus stop, without fancy rain gear?

And then there's the strategizing. I live in a city, but my district is lumped in with a huge rural area. A lot of times the rural areas vote Conservative (though some farmers may try something different with the Canadian Wheat Board issue). Even in my own somewhat poor area of the city, I see a lot of Conservative signs. So this swayed my own vote. I don't want the Conservatives to win, I confess. I can live with a minority Conservative government, but if they got a majority, it might be disastrous. I admit I was torn by the idea that left wing parties tend to spend more money on programs (though Conservatives seem just as good at running up debt in the long term, if not better) at a time when the world economy is likely to contract. At the same time, if you don't have a government in power that will spend money in times of recession, things can get really ugly. I haven't seen a single Liberal sign in my neighbourhood, or in the province, for that matter, not that I'm the best observer. I actually believe in their leader, but the party itself, I'm not so sure about.

As for the Greens, I watched the debate with Elizabeth May. I was really quite happy she was there. It was pretty entertaining to hear her calling Harper on his statements from off-screen and when it was her turn to talk. She was the only one who seemed to bring new and surprising points out, and probably at least partly because she wasn't just there to sell herself and her party, but to shake things up and get her voice heard. I related to her most of all. Dion looked nervous or uncomfortable speaking English and trying to get past his image as an intellectual who can't speak plainly. Harper made me uncomfortable when he smiled a smile that didn't even nearly reach his eyes. And Layton sounds like some 1950s salesman every time I hear him speak. They were all alternately entertaining, frightening and painfully awkward to watch, except May. I so badly wanted to vote Green. Proportional representation would be wonderful.

I checked in with CBC this morning, and one of the top stories was about how the election rules have changed in terms of how voters must produce certain types of identification and have a proper street address. The homeless are obviously out, but many Aboriginals also don't have a standard street address, living on reserve. It's likely only in the coming days we'll find out how badly this disenfranchised people as stories come out of being turned away and being unable or unwilling to make a second attempt to vote after obtaining proper verification of identity according to the current rules.

All in all, voting on a rainy Tuesday after the Thanksgiving weekend was not a pleasing prospect when I woke up this morning still feeling tired after all that turkey, travel and even a wedding in amongst all the catching up with relatives. I wonder how many won't bother to fill out a ballot at all.

"Screwed": Ask the Farmer Edition

2008-10-07T08:47:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday I heard a farmer talking on a political commentary show, a call-in. They were primarily discussing the Canadian Wheat Board and "rural issues," mostly meaning farming issues. One farmer called in to complain about ducks, "specifically geese" "polluting" his crops and then how he suffers for it when he tries to sell his grain. I was already sort of amused at this point by his use of the word "polluting," but I suppose that's maybe the older use of the word, before what many of us think of as real pollution came along. So the show's moderator asked, "And what do you think the federal government should do about that?" To which the caller responded, "Exterminate them, or make all the wildlife organizations pay for the damage," again, to paraphrase. I thought this was laugh out loud funny. As if the existence of geese is because of wildlife organizations. Let's just chop out parts of the ecosystem and see how well that goes for the people who rely on natural systems, i.e. farmers. Monsanto will keep you in cash as the natural systems fall apart, right? Meanwhile, complain about the "gouging" going on for natural gas-infused fertilizers. We are in so much trouble. Then again, a lot of the farmers that called in had a pretty good grip on the reality, politically, agriculturally and economically. But some comments are just too funny to ignore, and they pretty well speak for themselves.

Incidentally, my work site is next to a farmer's field, and I've talked to the guy who comes into work on the field in his big spaceship sprayer, more than once. I don't see as many bugs around my work site as I'd expect. I'd say they're doing a pretty good job of exterminating them. I also see farmers regularly at my job, and I saw one with what looked like Parkinson's one day, which is a disease that's been somewhat linked to pesticide use. I also know farm families mysteriously awash in disease, different ones in single families, and many rural couples who have fertility problems. Don't worry, we'll get those geese, while we're already poisoning ourselves and emptying our soil of the life that makes it productive and functioning.

Letterman on how "screwed" we are

2008-10-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

Honestly, deep down, how many climate change activists feel like this, at least sometimes? He even gets peak oil in there a little bit, and people seem to know what he's talking about! But, like he said, sometimes you have to wonder if it's "too late."

Someone else who asks what a job contributes

2008-09-30T20:15:00.000-07:00

I like to read the "popular" news stories on Yahoo!'s news portal. If it interests the rest of the population, it'll probably interest me more than what's been picked as the "Top Stories." With the record breaking financial fallout going on in the United States, it's maybe not surprising people clicked en masse on a story about a broker turned monk. Many voices have pointed out that the promise of the "service economy" is an empty one, but mostly nobody's been listening to those voices. The monk says what's happening in the United States now might make people pay attention:

Mishkov says the crash should also help correct a dangerous global trend of an excessive outflow of labor to the service sectors, by people attracted by high pay and an easy life.

"Milk is not produced by computers, bread doesn't come from a good company PR. It is necessary to plow, sow and harvest before that," says the monk.

There's a bunch of other really great quotes in the article, so it's worth checking out.

I've finally got my hands on The Long Emergency by Kunstler. As I read through the history of the Middle East and oil, I couldn't help but think that it's all so ridiculous, like a big game. Rationally, what we're doing doesn't make any sense. People expect that oil will never run out, and we're wasting energy shipping stuff all over the world. At the very least we should have kept food local, so that we'd have a modicum of protection, and people wouldn't go hungry when food prices go up and they can't afford the imports that have displaced their own local food systems, the ones that couldn't keep in a globalized market with unevenly "free" trade. So many people lose their lives and so many resources go to waste and our cultures clash so uncomfortably and we must interfere in each other's business simply because we decided that globalism was better than localism economically, resource-wise, and because we couldn't hold our populations steady to within the locally supportable threshold. Once the cheap energy is gone, the bottom falls out. North America, which has perhaps fallen victim to this "service economy" business more than any other region, is going to suffer a great deal when we have to learn how to produce our own food and goods at home again (Europe has protected its traditional food systems better, at least).

One More Quote From A Free Life by Ha Jin: Wasted Human Labor vs. Wasted Fossil Energy

2008-09-27T19:00:00.000-07:00

I've finished A Free Life now, but before I set it aside, I have to record one more passage that's so interesting a contrast of cultures, a wealthy and technologically advanced culture versus a poorer and more technologically simple one:

Pulling up on the roadside, Nan stepped out of his car and sat down on the grass to watch a combine reaping corn. The sight touched him as he remembered that in middle school the students of his grade had once gone to the countryside to help the peasants gather in crops. After all the ears of corn in a field had been plucked off by hand the previous day, each of his grade-mates took charge of a row and sickled down the plants, which the villagers would peel and use the skins to weave mats. How tedious and backbreaking that work was! Within two hours most of them began to complain of backaches and had blisters on their hands, yet they had to continue for a whole day to finish cutting that field of corn plants. By comparison, here the combines shredded the stalks and left them in the fields to fertilize the soil. Furthermore, a regular-size field here, much larger than those in China, could be harvested by two people in just a few hours. As Nan was observing the rolling machines and remembering how human labor had been wasted back in China, tears welled in his eyes and blurred his vision.

There's a lot in this quote that's fascinating. A lot of people in rich countries assume this kind of hand labor is tedious and backbreaking without ever experiencing it. Technology and cheap energy have made it possible for most of the population to move off the land and escape it. At the same time, many farmers have been forced out of the industry because they couldn't or didn't want to compete as operations got bigger and bigger, and food cheaper and cheaper (also because of globalization and "free" trade). Young people who are attracted to farming generally see it as a dead end and too expensive to get into. The character in A Free Life sees these big farm machines as a positive, but they cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy and have completely changed the game so that only a few can afford to play. Nan also thinks of wasted human labor, but I couldn't help but think how reading this sort of personal account of how hard this work is to do by hand, and how many people it requires emphasizes just how valuable the energy is that goes into making and powering these machines. People complain more and more about how expensive it is to put gas in their cars, but really, how much we will mourn when (hopefully only an unlikely possibility) there's not enough gas for farm machinery (and agricultural chemicals that make single species, large scale farming so productive or possible at all, year after year) and we all have to move back onto agricultural land and sweat and break our backs once again just to eat.

From a more personalized standpoint, I can't help but think how producing food is never a waste of human labor, well, except maybe fast food. (Although he actually is talking specifically about cutting down the corn to make mats, not food, in this case.) Ask yourself what are the jobs that pay the most in our society, and then ask yourself what they're really contributing and if the salary or wage is appropriate. How many people do those jobs serve? Do they make a positive, identifiable contribution to society? Or do they actually take away from society, whittling away at our future, our habitat? It's far from clear cut. Some high paid jobs are so harmful that they probably should not exist at all. As others have argued before, it makes more sense in some cases to pay people to stay home.

I'll be looking to see if I can get my hands on the author's other novels.

Canadian Election: Dion's Wife Janine Krieber on Dion's Image

2008-09-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

I still haven't made a clear decision about the election (I won't be voting Conservative though), but I do agree with a lot of what Dion's wife said at a recent stop in Saskatoon. I find the portrayal of Dion in the media and by the Conservative Party (I don't know if the others are as guilty) as being anti-intellectual. I once heard a conservative talk radio host saying something to the tune of Dion doesn't understand politics or his place on the political spectrum. The guy is a political scientist by trade, so I felt as if there was a conscious attempt to really portray Dion as stupid and to really steal his experience and actual bio from him. Krieber said the media has tried to pass Dion off as "disconnected from reality," "impossible to understand" and sequestered in "an ivory tower."

These specific ideas about Dion are all true, but to get to the core of the issue, I think there's something more base at work. I have to agree with one person's comment that there's a strong whiff of "anti-intellectualism" in the air whenever Dion's name comes up. Anybody who's ever heard phrases like "book smart" (as opposed to street smart) or heard people accused of being "stupid" or "stupid at life" because they're intelligent, raise your hand. I was unfortunately a really intelligent but introverted and depressed kid, so I really resent the treatment of Dion in the media, and this wave of attempts to portray him as not only "out of touch," but just plain stupid. It seems as animalistic as fear, mistrust or mistreatment of those that are different. It's cloaked in the idea that he's from Quebec and doesn't know anything about the rest of the country, as if that makes him any different from most of the rest of our political leaders over the years. It's amplified by his heavy accent when he speaks English, and his sometimes academic way of speaking. At times I can't help but agree with Krieber in that he is actually more explicit and careful in saying what he means. This is part of the problem. He needs to make more broad statements so that, and I hate to say it, your average Joe can understand him. His quiet anger in Parliament isn't enough. He needs to just make broad statements about how he feels about the country instead of trying to win on technical merit. Unfortunately technical merit doesn't seem to be breaking through the cloud of misinformation and image manipulation. The media's and the Conservative Party's portrayal of him is working, judging by the comments I hear from people on the Prairies. I don't even agree with most of Harper's policies, but I grudgingly agree with certain statements of his. He is really adept at saying exactly what people are thinking, no matter their place on the political spectrum. So far, Dion's not been able to do that very well.

And I keep hearing how the Green Shift will be bad for the west. Harper's plan could be worse, because it effects energy producers directly by forcing them to cut emissions to specific targets and pay a penalty per unit if they don't. This could mean they cut production where it fails to make economic sense because they can't meet their targets. The Green Shift will tax greenhouse gas producing energy, period. This means if you buy less gas or energy from coal or natural gas, you spend less. And in the meantime you pay less income tax. This is the by now old idea that you tax what's bad, pollution, not what's good, productivity in the form of work and income. Dion is no worse for the west than Harper, and he's certainly not stupid, out of touch or dispassionate. He just hasn't figured out how to show it yet. Unfortunately time's running out.

Modern Diet Farther and Farther from Nature, and Health

2008-09-24T19:29:00.000-07:00

Adding more evidence to indicate that people are getting more and more removed from the natural world, healthy eating and any concept of exactly what food is made up of or how it's made, comes a new study out of the UK that shows 11-13 year old "tweens" often don't recognize common vegetables as common as carrots, celery, potatoes and cucumbers. I certainly don't blame the kids or their parents, having grown up knowing and eating these vegetables but few others. Zucchini, other types of squash, eggplant, green onions, kiwis, bell peppers, lemons, blueberries, raspberries, broccoli, cabbage, kale and garlic are just some of the types of produce I can safely say I basically never saw my parents eat and have learned to eat and cook with myself, with a little help from friends here and there.

If you're eating foods closer to their natural state, a lot of fruit, vegetables, grains and nuts, you're going to be eating less sugar, which is something I've recently become more and more concerned about. I'm in my mid-20s and only within the last couple of years have I realized how bad my diet was for most of my life. I recently looked up the recommended daily allowance for sugar, as in refined or added sugars, and it's a mere 40 grams per 2,000 calories. I have no doubt that most days of my life up until the last couple years I exceeded this amount. Lately I've resorted to a diet very thin on sugar for health reasons, and I wonder if at some point in the future society will look back on these past few decades of processed foods and be horrified at the damage we were doing to our bodies just by eating too much sugar (never mind all the other problems of the modern diet). To give you an idea of just how easy it is to exceed 40 grams in a day, I was horrified to find that a packaged yogurt smoothie product I bought to up my probiotic intake contained 26 grams of sugar. Adding one tablespoon of maple syrup to my oatmeal would then put me over my daily allowance (and some believe there should be a daily sugar allowance of zero). Forget chocolate, ice cream, cakes, candy, packaged breakfast cereal or sugar in coffee or tea. By this measure, most people eating the average North American diet are probably far over the daily allowance every single day.

Nature in Fiction: A Free Life by Ha Jin

2008-09-22T21:10:00.000-07:00

I'm always somewhat pleased when my interests collide, so I was pretty amused when in the middle of the novel I'm currently reading, A Free Life, there is a chapter pretty much entirely dedicated to the main character's interactions with and observations of other species, specifically the impact of humanity and his own impact. Nan lives next to a lake, in a setup that most city dwellers are probably familiar with, where houses surround the lake, possibly man-made, on all sides. At first he enjoys watching the Canada geese that frequent the lake, but he quickly becomes annoyed with them eating up his lawn and anything he and his wife might plant in their yard. He is disgusted with how ill-adapted they've become for the wild, fat and clumsy, because food is plentiful near the lake and readily given by the human inhabitants of the area. They don't even bother to migrate anymore, even though much larger lakes with much more in the way of food are nearby. Nan also puzzles over how a few squirrels could be emptying his bird feeder every night, only to find out by chance that a raccoon is the culprit.

But my favourite part is a little ecological reasoning the character puts to work when he suddenly notices a snake in his yard as he's mowing the lawn:

When he mowed the lawn in the backyard he noticed that there seemed to be more and more insects jumping out and darting away, and there were also more toads, frogs, and lizards in the grass. Then one day he was frightened to see a green snake, about three feet long, slithering away to the lakeside while the
lawn mower was snarling and flinging bits of grass aside. He wasn't sure if it was poisonous, but he was positive it had come into the yard to hunt for toads and lizards. The thought came to him that lizards, frogs, and toads must have gathered here because insects were teeming in the yard. The insect proliferation must have been due to the fact that the birds he fed had quit searching for food in nature and let insects multiply in the grass. As a result, more frogs and lizards frequented here, and they in turn attracted snakes.

The realization made Nan stop feeding the birds. He didn't want snakes to lurk and crawl in the backyard, even if most of them were nonpoisonous. The birds would have to catch insects from now on. As the number of toads and lizards decreased in the grass, fewer snakes came around, although sometimes Nan saw them zigzagging in the lake, their tiny heads raised above the water.

I found this entertaining because I'm not so sure many of the people I know would have dealt with the discovery a snake in their backyard by trying to figure out why it was there and then patiently waiting for the problem to sort itself out through some change in their own behaviour.

The book is actually about the experience of a Chinese immigrant family in the United States around the early 1990's. But anyone who's ever felt isolated in a new place and culture, or felt torn between two cultures will relate. The characters' thoughts and remarks about work, especially as a writer, drew me to the book as well. Nan gives up a career in academia to work in menial jobs, supporting his family and thinking about making his way as a poet. I'm still only about halfway through, but the book seems to get more interesting the more Nan's family makes connections with other people in their new country.

TED: Understanding the Political Spectrum through Psychology, Evolution

2008-09-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

I'm working on a group of topics I'd like to post about here, but it's become sort of overwhelming. In the meantime I checked in on newly posted TED Talks and found this time appropriate clip. Federal elections are scheduled in the next month and a half for both the United States and Canada, and this can be a really divisive time for the public as political views are aired. Psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains how positions on the political spectrum can be looked at in terms of evolutionary adaptation. If a person is able to keep this in mind while dealing with and thinking about people on the other side of the spectrum, it might go a long way to moving forward together instead of being gridlocked or torn apart by differences. At the least it would improve the level of civility in political discussions.

Update: Still looking at TED, I found this talk on photography. Head to the last few minutes if you don't have a lot of time and would like to see some interesting and funny human-other species interaction. I've seen these beasts in video, and what was captured in these photos is shocking, nothing like what I'd ever thought I'd see from creatures that look like they haven't evolved much since dinosaurs were around.

Tying Together Themes: Plastic and Skin Care

2008-09-07T21:35:00.000-07:00

I'm not a big fan of buying cosmetics and skin and hair care products (because I'm cheap, because they often come in packaging that isn't recyclable and because they're full of chemicals and even plastic in some cases), but summer is ending here and my many times over tanned and sometimes burned skin could use some assistance rejuvenating. Exfoliation helps remove dead skin cells, and it's an obvious thing to do once skin has started to peel or flake on its own anyway.

Loofahs (which can be grown at home and thus obviously aren't made of yet more plastic or other non- or not-so-easily biodegradable materials) can be great for exfoliating, but are far too harsh for more sensitive skin. I finally got around to looking into homemade face scrubs a little, and it seems like using a little water and baking soda might be all that's needed. Three parts baking soda to one part water is an approximate ratio for a good scrub, or until it's similar in consistency to brown sugar. I would advise if you're going to exfoliate with baking soda to do a bit more research online to see some different ways of applying it and mixing it and some of the "reviews" for its effectiveness.

Not only is baking soda cheap, but unlike scrubs you might buy, you can be sure it doesn't contain pieces of plastic (also found in whitening toothpastes) designed to scrub off whatever's there to be scrubbed off. As I mentioned before, plastic will degrade into smaller and smaller pieces over time under sunlight and often ends up in waterways where it can be ingested directly by people or animals. Or, chemicals can leach off plastic and then even if you're avoiding plastic bottles and bottled water, assuming virtually all water treatment plants aren't able to filter for these chemicals, you're going to get a steady taste of plastic in your system. To quote the current version of the Wikipedia entry on exfoliation:

Plastic beads often used as exfoliants do not biodegrade.
They are washed into rivers, and then the oceans, where they remain for a
very long time. While superficially pretty (they are often referred to as
"mermaid's tears") they amplify up food chains,
and will kill any animal that ingests enough to block its digestive
tract.

So save some fishes and save yourself some money and just use baking soda.

Plastic: Fantastic?

2008-09-04T20:29:00.000-07:00

One of the issues that still hasn't broken through in the mainstream, as far as I can tell, is the problem with plastic. Plastic is light, durable, cheap. These qualities make it an attractive material for all sorts of products. Unfortunately, these are the same qualities that make it such a problem once it's set loose in the natural environment as garbage.

Part of my job right now involves picking up plastic. This task is never ending. Last year I read an article that changed my perspective on plastic forever. The part that sticks in my mind as I wander around trying to pick up pieces of plastic blowing in amongst grass or stuck caked in dirt impeding the flow of moisture and life and air in the ground is this: Plastic will become part of the fossil record. I can already see it happening at my work site. It is everywhere. I suspect it's also in less obvious places, such as in farmers' fields. Because it's lightweight, plastic blows easily, far from garbage cans and garbage dumps and car windows. Because it's durable, it never (basically) decomposes into nothing, it just becomes more fragile and breaks into smaller and smaller pieces with continued exposure to sunlight. And because it's cheap, things that are meant to be thrown away or used just once are frequently made from it. Plastic food wrappers, garbage and shopping bags, pop bottles are the obvious ones, along with disposable cups from convenience stores and coffee shops. (Styrofoam is another big problem, but it breaks up pretty quickly into it's little pieces, not so much impeding flow of nutrients, water, air and life in the natural environment.) Plastic is cheap, true, but it also is more prone to types of damage that make the product basically ruined. Anyone who's watched their Tupperware or cooking utensils get stained or warped or melted and then eventually thrown them out, while holding onto the same product in metal for decades knows what I'm talking about. It doesn't hurt so much to throw away something that cost less than or only a few dollars in the first place.

To some extent, certain segments of the population are starting to see that plastic isn't so fantastic. More and more people are bringing their own bags to the grocery store or simply going without when they're only buying a few items. Some people have given up their plastic sport water bottles for stainless steel or other alternatives and some have stopped buying bottled water. These behaviours can be triggered by a wide range of things, such as increasing awareness of health impacts (as with BPA in food and beverage containers), concern about waste or the annoyance of storing endless plastic bags, awareness of the increasing preciousness of oil, from which plastic is made, or just tightening up on expenditures as the economy tightens up or one's lifestyle downshifts. This is all great, but imagine the impact if people realized how plastic has become ubiquitous and that even though many of us are avoiding drinking and eating out of plastic, its chemicals are likely already becoming increasingly common in our drinking water, and we too, just like seabirds and aquatic life, are probably consuming plastic throughout our lives, in one form or another. It wouldn't be long before plastic was relegated back to its proper place, in more permanent products where recycling is hardwired into its life cycle.

Eczema: Prescriptions

2008-09-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

I've posted about my problem with eczema before. I've talked about how pillows might be a cause or factor. I tried a lot of different things at one time, about two months ago, as I became frustrated with how inflamed the patches of eczema had become on my hands. I was annoyed and sure that if I didn't wash my hands several times a day, probably more often than most people, I probably wouldn't have a problem. But not washing my hands or even cutting down much wasn't an option. I moved my compost bin outside, concerned that it contributed to mold in my apartment. I started moisturizing after almost every hand wash. I dusted and vacuumed like crazy. I started eating more alkaline foods, following articles that suggested a diet too high in acidic foods might contribute to eczema (I ate a lot of watermelon and cut out eating oranges five days a week, which, the orange juice from peeling the fruit and pulling it apart irritated the inflamed skin further anyway, and somewhere I'd read about a person whose eczema stopped after cutting out orange juice). I also cut out foods that I thought might be contributing because they were too yeasty or adding to yeast's imbalance in my body. The eczema had seemed to flare up from drinking beer, so unfortunately I stopped drinking any alcohol at all.

After a while I started thinking that maybe it was just the only pharmaceutical I was putting in my body day after day: the Pill. I'd been taking a low dose birth control pill (possibly the lowest dose) for years. When I searched the 'net I could only find a couple of specific posts where women claimed that their eczema was very much tied to birth control pills. But I also knew a family member who'd started taking birth control pills continuously, so as to avoid a period (not something that strikes me and others in my family as particularly wise), someone who'd previously had perfect skin for over 30 years without even bothering take off makeup at the end of the night, suddenly had persistent problems with eczema on her face.

It's pretty difficult to just go off oral contraceptives. You generally need to have an alternative, and many of these just aren't as convenient. But all that aside, I stopped taking the Pill about a month ago, and my eczema's clearing up, almost completely gone. It's still quite possible I'll go back on it, but for now, it seems to be the main cause of this hideous, painful and inconvenient skin condition. So, hopefully one more post will show up in Google's search results that this might be a factor in eczema, if not the main cause.

Pedestrian Safety: Whose Responsibility?

2008-08-22T08:22:00.000-07:00

In the past month or so not only have I seen someone being hit by a car and almost been hit myself two days ago, but now a judge has let a woman off for killing a little girl and the comments to the article clearly reflect the driver-centric culture we live in. The woman in the case passed a stopped vehicle and struck and killed a child crossing alongside her mother. Maybe the judge was right in his verdict, but the comments make me angry. Yes, pedestrians are responsible for their own safety to a certain extent, but how long is a person supposed to wait on a corner to cross? And how acceptable is it that cars wait for you, but then pull out before you've even fully crossed the front of their vehicle, assuming they're not going to hit you because you'll keep the same pace and assuming they have a clear view to the end of the hood of their vehicle (i.e. they know exactly how close they're passing you).

The pedestrian I saw get hit, there was no excuse, and I've no doubt the driver got off without any serious punishment. I had a clear view because the pedestrian was a few steps away from crossing directly in front of my stopped car when she was hit. The pedestrian had a walk light and was crossing in the crosswalk, alongside another pedestrian. The driver was turning left from the opposite direction the pedestrians were going. She should have seen them, but must have been distracted or hit the gas rather than brake or just had slow reflexes. The woman who was hit flew a very small distance in the air and landed on the ground in a somewhat curled position on her side and did not get up. I was shocked. Days later I was preparing to cross an intersection where the walk light does not work. I waited, because there was a left turn signal for the cars on the same side of the street as me. In this case the walk light won't come on until the turn signal has gone off. Many pedestrians don't know this or think it's safe to cross and wait at the median. I think this is more risky since the traffic passing near you is going at a higher speed and assessing more factors than the right turning traffic you have to contend with if you wait at the sidewalk. The car next to me turned right in front of me, which was fine, but still dangerous with a pedestrian clearly waiting to cross (though the driver may not have realized this, and the next one who waited and then tried to turn right when it was actually finally my turn to walk, certainly did not realize this). I got out to cross, and had to lean over her car and put my hand out in a stop signal to stop her from running into me. If I'd have waited any longer, I would have risked being stranded on the median or in the crosswalk on a red light. More likely I'd have waited on the sidewalk, and I'd get to start the whole scenario over again, or cross the street three times instead of one by crossing to the working walk light. She was frightened. She put her hand over her chest and looked afraid. She probably still doesn't know what happened, why I was crossing then. People who drive all the time or only walk within quiet residential neighbourhoods do not understand the pedestrian experience. Many infrequent or new pedestrians (from the standpoint of frequent walking in the city) do not understand how these walk lights with turn signals work, nor do they know the ones that simply do not come on. There are some intersections where the walk light doesn't come on because the pedestrian is referred by a sign to cross to the other side of the street where there's actually a button to request a walk light. This is not the case at this intersection, and the walk light does come on crossing that crosswalk in the other direction. It has become too common in our city that drivers do not yield to pedestrians where they have the right of way or understand when pedestrians are likely to cross, and time and time again, the driver gets off without punishment. Many things can be done. If a pedestrian gets hit in a crosswalk, when they were crossing when a traffic light was clearly not against them or malfunctioning, there should be a charge, unless they really didn't exercise due care.

The case I referenced above is difficult, because there was no crossing light, and the driver most likely simply did not know there was a crosswalk there or did not think pedestrians would be in it. Most likely she thought the driver in front of her was waiting to turn or had stalled, for some reason. Nevertheless, if pedestrians were more common on our streets, as they will be getting all the time with gas prices going up, the driver would have assumed the possibility the driver in front of her was stopped for a pedestrian and would have looked for them when she pulled out to pass. I understand the judge's decision, but it still reflects a driver-centric culture. The comments over and over express that the pedestrian should have looked better for herself and her child. It may well have been she looked both ways several times and the driver simply pulled out from behind this other car too quickly for her to see before she walked into the crosswalk. This is exactly why drivers must be careful, because as the driver-centric comments expressed many times, the human body is very vulnerable compared to the heavy body of a car. The elderly are likely overrepresented among pedestrians, and many of them are not driving precisely because their reflexes are slower. It's not enough to let drivers get away with things because they're too slow to stop. If that's the case, we're going to have more and more elderly being hit. Drivers have to look out for pedestrians, period. Again, this case is difficult, the absolute worst example I can think of, since the crosswalk wasn't clearly marked by a light to stop drivers. Even so, there are crosswalks in my city where there are lights, but they come on for so long to stop drivers that pedestrians frequently cross without engaging them because as far as their field of vision goes, they're safe and don't want to inconvenience drivers with an unnecessarily long light. All it takes is one speeder to kill such pedestrians in our culture which tells the driver they need to get where they need to go more so than the pedestrian.

Which brings me to my nearly being hit merely because the driver was impatient. I crossed at a corner where I had the right of way, and a driver came on wanting to turn right from the opposite side of the crosswalk on the street parallel to the crosswalk, while the car ahead had been going straight. I was already in the crosswalk, so the right turning vehicle bothered to stop for me, but then came within inches of hitting me as they started pulling away before I'd even fully crossed in front of their van. I cursed my displeasure and probably looked pretty wary of the next few cars that I had to cross in front of. It would have been less dangerous if the van had pulled out in front of me before I got to it than pulling away like that. This kind of impatience and disrespect is typical and drivers need to be reigned in. If there's no punishment, many of them won't stop driving like this. This is a cold climate in the winter and a hot one in the summer. Pedestrians are disproportionately poor, old and very young (children). Drivers need to be more careful. It is unreasonable to expect pedestrians to wait forever to cross where crosswalks are clearly marked, especially in inhospitable weather and when they have health complaints. (And don't tell me old or injured people should stay indoors. Canadians pay for their own and each others' health care through taxes, and all we really need is people exercising less or withering in care homes without the benefit of outdoor exercise and stimulation. I guess the only benefit to prohibiting walking out and about would be maybe death would come sooner. How nice, so people can drive a little faster. I'm only being as ridiculous as I know these arguments can become, I swear.) The problem is that drivers have become conditioned to expect that no one will ever be using those crosswalks, so they don't even notice them anymore. And the police and the courts reinforce their belief that cars are the most important traffic on the road by failing to sufficiently punish drivers when they hit pedestrians.

In a final note, I don't do any cycling because it's just too dangerous and inconvenient. Eventually I may be hit while walking, at this rate. The only way to get more respect for pedestrians is to get more of them on the street and demanding better laws and enforcement, and that seems inevitable as the benefits of walking tipped the scales over the increasing cost of driving.

Environmental Impact: Farming vs. Oil Sands Mining

2008-08-11T18:58:00.000-07:00

Listening to the radio at work today, I heard about 12 protesters angry about the Saskatchewan government's "sale" of the oil sands to oil companies. A clip of one of the protesters came on who complained a little too passionately that Saskatchewan is meant for farming, not mining, or something along those lines. I couldn't help but laugh out loud.

I know the mining of the oil sands that's going on in Alberta has an enormous impact, but I can't help but think that no matter what people say or how much they protest, that oil is going to be mined. One can only wish it was done better, namely by using the fewest resources possible and with strict monitoring and control of the pollution going on. Trying to stop the oil from being extracted at all borders on crazy. The only way to stop it is to make alternatives to oil cheaper, or find other sources of oil that aren't as destructive to mine. As it is, the government is saying that horizontal drilling technology will be used rather than the famously devastating strip mining that's being done in Alberta.

What really blew me away was the typical sort of ignorant comment made by someone other people probably will think of as an "environmentalist" or out-of-touch hippy, that farming would be a better use of the province. A lot of people from the prairies (and elsewhere, but especially in the prairies) don't realize the environmental impact of putting hundreds of thousands of square kilometers into agricultural production. (Never mind the fact that farming isn't exactly a cash cow since cheap food is the base of our complex, well-developed, diversified economy. Farming's so bad a business to be in that there's a joke that passing on the family farm to one's children is child abuse.)

Recently my work site was mowed. The site is marshy, home to cattails and many birds. What isn't under water or directly being trod upon by human activity is allowed to freely grow wild, and whatever grows there, I've noticed, people commonly refer to as "weeds." So whatever's wild is considered a weed, because if it doesn't come with a label from a store, it must be a weed. Anyway, before the site was mowed various species of birds had abundant choices of tall "weeds" to hide in. Afterward, most of the birds that had been there disappeared, or presumably were limited to the unmowed sections of the site and city birds, such as crows and magpies, moved in.

This is one small area, a few acres in size. Imagine the impact of plowing fields and growing monocultures there. Mining the oil sands might be polluting in nature, but farming, by its very scope undoubtedly has a greater impact. The impact of cutting down on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides and growing much more mixed crops or leaving more land to grow wild or at least have hedges for birds and bees and other pollinators (all of which we need for pollination anyway, and seem to be running out of) is not something people talk much about, except in greenie circles. But the oil sands, everybody knows they're bad. I don't think it even goes as far as people just accepting they need to eat and the current agricultural system is the one we've got. It's simply not even considered, not even known that agricultural is one of the biggest ways humanity makes an impact on the natural environment. People with oil heating in their homes and workplaces also need to stay warm and probably appreciate oil being mined, especially with prices going up all the time, but there really isn't a whole lot of oil heating around here, so I guess they're just assuming people can just suck it up and drive less, which, yes, they can, much as they whine, that is one thing that most people could do much, much less of.