Save the Earth

Global Warming-the Cartoon summary

2011-12-09T17:51:00.001-05:00

Saving a humback whale

2011-10-31T11:41:00.002-04:00

Watch to the end. She puts on an incredible show after being freed.

A story of success in a Phillapines fishing village

2011-10-17T15:31:00.001-04:00

Problems with Fracking

2011-10-11T09:26:00.003-04:00

Fracking is the process of injecting high pressure liquid into rock in order to cause cracks and release gas or oil. The process has been linked to contamination of groundwater, and resulting health problems, but no scientifically valid links have been established. This allows the gas and oil industry go claim that the process is safe, while people continue to get sick in the areas around the wells. The NPR program Fresh Air recently did an excellent story on the controversy. It is embedded below.

Do you have the right to drink milk from your own cows??

2011-10-04T14:00:00.009-04:00

Apparently not. A judge is Wisconsin has just ruled that owners of cows do not have a fundamental right to consume milk from their own cows. This is a strange case, and one that has a long history. Let's take a look at it.

The issue that gave rise to this ruling concerns the right of consumers to drink unpasteurized milk. In some states it is illegal to sell any raw milk; in some, including my home state of NC, it can be sold only as pet food; in some it can be sold legally. A state-by-state review of the raw milk laws can be found at this link. The reason for these laws is that raw milk CAN contain pathogens such as E. coli O157:H7, Listeria, and Salmonella. Pasteurization is a sure way of making sure that the milk you drink does not contain these bacteria. But some people want to drink raw milk. They claim that its health benefits far out way the dangers, especially given that farm sanitation and methods of pathogen detection have improved drastically since 1864 when Pasteur developed the process that we know as Pasteurization. Thus was born the Campaign for Real Milk, and the attempt to find a way to get unpasteurized milk to those who wanted it.

In Wisconsin, where any sale of raw milk is illegal, a cow-share program was formed to accomplish this goal. The group Nourished by Nature LLC (no web site) contracted with some biodynamic farmers to board and milk cows that were owned by the LLC (and therefore by its members - that is how LLC's are structured, the members own them). The farmers gave the milk to the cow's owners', who (horrors!) drank it. This is what the judge specifically ruled against.

The initial ruling came on August 12, 2011 and can be found, in its entirety, at this link. This decision was appealed to the same judge (technically they were asking for a clarification on the ruling), and a further statement was issued on September 9. Follow this link to read the clarification in its entirety.

Here a couple of highlights from the clarification.

"Finally, it is clear from their motion to clmify that the Plaintiffs still fail to recognize that
they are not merely attempting to enforce their "right" to own a cow and board it at a farm.
Instead, Plaintiffs operate a dairy farm. As this court already said in its decision and order, if Plaintiffs want to continue to operate their dairy fium then they must do so in a way that complies with the laws of Wisconsin." - Which means that the milk has to be pasteurized.

A much more alarming statement comes earlier in the clarification: "(5) Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice."

People do not have a "fundamental right to consume the foods of their choice????" Wow! Who decides what I should be able to eat then? My elected officials? - Well, isn't that what state's that ban the sale of raw milk are already doing? They are protecting my health. They do the same thing when the impose standards for meat inspection, or is it?

Federal (or state) standards are standards for the conduct of business. They set safety standards for the sale of (and, implied, consumption) of food products. This protects the consumer from unwise, and unhealthy, business practices - practices that have been shown, by bitter experience, to cause enormous problems. But in the case in question the issue is not about the sale of milk. The owners of the cows were not selling anything, and the farmers were not primarily dairy farmers, they also ran a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) supported vegetable operation. The owners of the cow were paying the farmers to house and milk their cows. That is all. Where is the dairy farm that the judge claims they were running? Does not a dairy farm have to have an income from the sale of produce? Nothing was sold except boarding space and labor. It is hard for me to see this as a dairy operation.

A formal appeal was filed on September 26. Opposition to the decision is growing in Wisconsin, and there is a bill before the State Senate to legalize the sale of raw milk. We will see what happens.

Here are some additional articles on the controversy:
Time Magazine
Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund
A campaign to remove the Judge Fiedler from the bench

Just listen

2011-09-06T20:16:00.002-04:00

It has been some time since my last post, and this one is not on the environment per say, but just listen to what Noam Chomsky has to say on this anniversary of 9/11.

Dealing with runnoff

2011-07-02T10:08:00.000-04:00

When it rains in the City of Brotherly Love, problems soon follow because more than half the city has "combined" sewers - pipes that carry both storm water and sewage. When it rains, the system fills quickly. The surplus, which includes raw sewage and road oil, backs up into basements and gushes untreated into rivers through 164 overflow pipes.

Instead of going the route of many other cities and building miles-long, multibillion-dollar tunnels to hold storm-water overflows--and then pumping it back into the system when the rain stops--Philadelphia's 20-year stormwater management plan is based on "green infrastructure" and offers benefits that can be appreciated above the ground.

Philadelphia's plan envisions transforming the city into an oasis of rain gardens, green roofs, treescapes, and porous pavements, which advocates say is cheaper than tunnels and makes for a more liveable, prettier city with higher property values and better community health.

The Last Mountain

2011-06-24T12:08:00.004-04:00

There is a new movie out that details the fight against mountain top removal. It is amazing how little has changed in 40 years. The actors have changed, but the issues remain the same: profit verses people. I hope that the movie has some suggestions for constructive action.
http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
I wanted to remind you to sign to be a BioGems defender at http://www.savebiogems.org/. You will get action alerts, and help in sending emails to the responsible officials. It seems a little thing, but if 100 million people were doing it, there would be change. Add your voice today.

If you read the label, would you eat it?

2011-06-16T20:36:00.000-04:00

Man and Nature

2011-06-15T13:47:00.002-04:00

Venus Hum

2011-05-26T01:26:00.003-04:00

Do you remember my post about Elvis and peak performance? Search for it. Venus Hum is the trio that did this song. The vocalist is Annette Strean. Do not try and figgure out the lyrics. Just listen to the energy of this song. I have listened to it three times tonight, and will probably listen one more time soon. Seldom have I heard someone put so much of herself into a song. And she does this on EVERY song. Listen to her cover of I'm in Love with the Blue Man Group. It is MUCH better than the original. This is the type of energy we all need in order to save the world! I think I am in love!

What's Right with the World?

2011-05-11T10:41:00.004-04:00

I have tried to emphasize the power of the positive in these posts. Today I found a video that does this amazingly well. It is 22 minutes long, but well worth the time.

Celebrate What's Right With The World

Lazarus! - The Resurrected | Myspace Video

Backchannel Detroit

2011-01-19T08:56:00.001-05:00

WXYZ TV in Detroit (my original hometown) is changing the way news is gathered and communicated. The video starts slow, but if you are like me you will be hooked by the half-way point. This is a fantastic idea. One that is long overdue.

Stephen Clark's #Backchannel from Tim Davis on Vimeo.

Direct from CNN

2011-01-13T11:38:00.000-05:00

Want to get your kids into college? Let them play

By Erika Christakis and Nicholas Christakis, Special to CNN

Every day where we work, we see our young students struggling with the transition from home to school. They're all wonderful kids, but some can't share easily or listen in a group.

Some have impulse control problems and have trouble keeping their hands to themselves; others don't always see that actions have consequences; a few suffer terribly from separation anxiety.

We're not talking about preschool children. These are Harvard undergraduate students whom we teach and advise. They all know how to work, but some of them haven't learned how to play.

Parents, educators, psychologists, neuroscientists, and politicians generally fall into one of two camps when it comes to preparing very young children for school: play-based or skills-based.

These two kinds of curricula are often pitted against one another as a zero-sum game: If you want to protect your daughter's childhood, so the argument goes, choose a play-based program; but if you want her to get into Harvard, you'd better make sure you're brushing up on the ABC flashcards every night before bed.

We think it is quite the reverse. Or, in any case, if you want your child to succeed in college, the play-based curriculum is the way to go.

In fact, we wonder why play is not encouraged in educational periods later in the developmental life of young people -- giving kids more practice as they get closer to the ages of our students.

Why do this? One of the best predictors of school success is the ability to control impulses. Children who can control their impulse to be the center of the universe, and -- relatedly -- who can assume the perspective of another person, are better equipped to learn.

Psychologists calls this the "theory of mind": the ability to recognize that our own ideas, beliefs, and desires are distinct from those of the people around us. When a four-year-old destroys someone's carefully constructed block castle or a 20-year-old belligerently monopolizes the class discussion on a routine basis, we might conclude that they are unaware of the feelings of the people around them.

The beauty of a play-based curriculum is that very young children can routinely observe and learn from others' emotions and experiences. Skills-based curricula, on the other hand, are sometimes derisively known as "drill and kill" programs because most teachers understand that young children can't learn meaningfully in the social isolation required for such an approach.

How do these approaches look different in a classroom? Preschoolers in both kinds of programs might learn about hibernating squirrels, for example, but in the skills-based program, the child could be asked to fill out a worksheet, counting (or guessing) the number of nuts in a basket and coloring the squirrel's fur.

In a play-based curriculum, by contrast, a child might hear stories about squirrels and be asked why a squirrel accumulates nuts or has fur. The child might then collaborate with peers in the construction of a squirrel habitat, learning not only about number sense, measurement, and other principles needed for engineering, but also about how to listen to, and express, ideas.

The child filling out the worksheet is engaged in a more one-dimensional task, but the child in the play-based program interacts meaningfully with peers, materials, and ideas.

Programs centered around constructive, teacher-moderated play are very effective. For instance, one randomized, controlled trial had 4- and 5-year-olds engage in make-believe play with adults and found substantial and durable gains in the ability of children to show self-control and to delay gratification. Countless other studies support the association between dramatic play and self-regulation.

Through play, children learn to take turns, delay gratification, negotiate conflicts, solve problems, share goals, acquire flexibility, and live with disappointment. By allowing children to imagine walking in another person's shoes, imaginative play also seeds the development of empathy, a key ingredient for intellectual and social-emotional success.

The real "readiness" skills that make for an academically successful kindergartener or college student have as much to do with emotional intelligence as they do with academic preparation. Kindergartners need to know not just sight words and lower case letters, but how to search for meaning. The same is true of 18-year-olds.

As admissions officers at selective colleges like to say, an entire freshman class could be filled with students with perfect grades and test scores. But academic achievement in college requires readiness skills that transcend mere book learning. It requires the ability to engage actively with people and ideas. In short, it requires a deep connection with the world.

For a five year-old, this connection begins and ends with the creating, questioning, imitating, dreaming, and sharing that characterize play. When we deny young children play, we are denying them the right to understand the world. By the time they get to college, we will have denied them the opportunity to fix the world too.

Editor's note: Erika Christakis, MEd, MPH, is an early childhood teacher and former preschool director. Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, is a professor of medicine and sociology at Harvard University. Together, they serve as Masters of Pforzheimer House, one of the undergraduate residential houses at Harvard College.

Saving the Redwoods

2011-01-06T20:11:00.000-05:00

California's redwoods have been in peril for many decades. Only 5% of the original old-growth forest remains. But things are changing. More sustainable forestry practices are coming to the California redwoods.

"If it's all about short-term yield, there's not an effective argument for big trees," Sillett says. "But if it's about long-term yield, carbon sequestration, and ecosystem services, then you've got an effective argument for old trees. What do we need to remove and keep lots of carbon out of the atmosphere? Massive amounts of decay-resistant wood."

It turns out the older trees grow faster than young ones, and trees sequester carbon making redwood forests prime candidates for carbon reduction credits. Read the full story in National Geographic, and see some beautiful photographs too.

Time out for Beauty

2011-01-02T12:50:00.000-05:00

Autumn in Owens Valley from Henry Jun Wah Lee on Vimeo.

Not too late for Polar Bears?

2010-12-27T15:59:00.002-05:00

New research sponsored by the National Science Foundation suggests that it is not too late to save the Polar Bear. Using computer models that include predictions of arctic ice cover the scientists fount that if we continue the course of greenhouse gas emissions vast areas of arctic ice disappear in the next few decades. However, if greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, there are scenarios in which rapid ice lost is followed by many decades in which seasonal ice cover remains stable. Seasonal arctic ice is necessary for the survival of the polar bear.

This finding is good news because it means that, if we act now, we can save the polar bear. It is bad news because the recent Cancun Climate Change Summit did not yield a comprehensive treaty to limit greenhouse gas omissions.

Whether the polar bear will be a causality of our inaction remains to be seen. Let us hope that the models are wrong, and that seasonal polar ice will remain even in the face of rising global temperatures.

The state of global warming agreements and the fate of the polar bear

2010-12-21T12:19:00.005-05:00

The Cancun Climate Change Summit ended recently with mixed results. Exactly how mixed and how we should interpret the results that came out of the summit seem largely to be a matter of your political persuasion. A Washington Times editorial use the results of the summit to herald the end of the liberal cult that has foretold "impending climate catastrophe." Investors Business Daily follow the same tact by referring to climate change as a "global scam" from this very beginning. One would think from these comments that the climate summit was a complete loss, but some gains were made albeit modest ones.

"Rich countries reaffirmed their legal obligation to help poor countries fight climate change, and even promised sizable sums toward that end. The Cancún Agreements oblige rich countries to contribute $30 billion in new aid over the next three years-growing to $100 billion a year by 2020-to a Green Climate Fund. This fund will help developing countries both to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and install protections against the floods, droughts and other climate impacts that disproportionately punish the global poor (CBS News)."

What was missing was a comprehensive agreement on limiting carbon dioxide omissions. This lack is the reason that some are saying that any hope of limiting omissions is dead. If it is, it means that we will have to deal with the effects of global warming, no matter what the cost. I hope that the world's governments are up to the challenge.

Sunscreen

2010-12-17T14:23:00.002-05:00

There a literally thousands of sunscreens out there, some of them actually harmful as they increase your exposure to UVA and UVB rays. The Environmental Working Group has produced a very helpful guide to finding the best sunscreen. They even have a Hall of Shame for sunscreens. How about a baby SPF 100 product that only delivers SPF 9 for UVA? This one made it to the top of their Hall of Shame.

Have you ever head of the Skin Cancer Foundation? You might have seen their logo on a sunscreen you bought. Did you know that they require a $10,000 "donation" to the Foundation to have a product approved. Hall of Shame? Yes, indeed.

What motivates us?

2010-12-03T12:46:00.004-05:00

Money? NO! MASTERY!!

We do best at what we have a passion for. Watch on!

Revisiting the most important thing

2010-11-15T09:34:00.001-05:00

Almost two years ago I wrote post that suggested that the most important thing in life is learning to say “yes.” I want to return to that theme today and talk about Eva Mozes Kor. Eva is one of the Mengele twins. Dr. Josef Mengele was known as The Angel of Death at Auschwitz. He conducted many so-called "experiments" on twins in order to find the secret to human heredity, which would allow German women to produce healthy blonde haired, blue-eyed twins to increase the German race. I say "so-called" because no records were kept of his work, and they were so horrible as to deserve no other name than torture. A summary of his crimes Auschwitz can be found at this link.

Eva and Miriam Mozes were two of the twins who came into Dr. Mengele’s hands. They survived nine months of torture at Auschwitz, and were freed by the Russian army when they liberated Auschwitz in 1945.

Though they survived, they endured many experimental procedures while in Auschwitz. These eventually led to Miriam's early death in the 1980's.

In 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the liberation, Eva returned to Auschwitz and forgave the Nazi's for what they had done to her.

"Just to be free from the Nazi's did not remove the pain they had inflicted." - Eva Kor

What Eva was seeking, and what she found, was healing from the pain that had been inflicted on her. Without the healing that came through forgiveness she was still a victim. Although her torture had ended 60 years ago, she continued to suffer from it. Forgiveness freed her from this, and finally removed her from the grip of the Nazis. Instead of continuing to deny her experience had to suffer from it, she found a way to say "yes" to it, and to be free.

This type of "yes" is extremely powerful - perhaps the most powerful thing in the world. Eva's story is but one example of this. There are many others.

Following her act of forgiveness, a documentary was made chronicling her decision. You can watch the trailer for Forgiving Dr. Mengele at the linked website. A pop-up video advertisement will appear before the video. Simply click to close that. The trailer will be on the main page behind the pop up. You do not need to watch the advertisement.

An audio interview with Eva can be found at this link.

You will find an exploration of Eva’s road to forgiveness to be very worthwhile.

A cost effective way of removing nitrogen from groundwater

2010-11-07T20:05:00.000-05:00

Agricultural and urban nitrogen is contaminating many sources of fresh water (image at left). Excess nitrogen has long been know to be a major contributing factor to algal blooms, which can lead to fish kills. According to the National Science Foundation simple and inexpensive technologies for the cost-effective removal of aqueous nitrogen are on the horizon. In the process of denitrification microorganisms convert the soluble, reactive forms of nitrogen to harmless nitrogen gas. The Denitrification Research Coordination Network (an NSF sponsored program), recently published the results of a workshop designed to enhance collaboration among researchers investigating denitrification. One of the goals of the workshop was to evaluate a new way to treat agricultural wastewater using denitrifying bioreactors. The bioreactors use products such as wood chips to provide food for naturally occurring microorganisms. The microorganisms convert aqueous nitrogen into nitrogen gas. Denitrifying bioreactors have already been successful used in the cleanup of effluent from small townships, septic tank systems, and agricultural waste. The image below shows a denitrifying bioreactor (he sand-colored area) in New Zealand. The bioreactor treats waste water from greenhouse-grown tomatoes.

TV and Computer Time

2010-10-28T20:39:00.002-04:00

From the New Scientist, October 13, 2010

"CHILDREN who watch TV or play computer games for 2 hours or more a day are more likely than others to concentrate poorly, behave badly and have social problems - even if they exercise.

Angie Page at the University of Bristol, UK, wondered whether it matters if kids spend a lot of time in front of a screen if they are also physically active. To find out, her team measured 1013 children's exercise levels and TV and computer habits for a week.

Children who spent 2 hours or more a day in front of a screen were about 50 per cent more likely to have psychological problems, regardless of exercise, suggesting that screen content or associated behaviour is to blame (Pediatrics, DOI: 10.1542/peds.2010-1154)."

The DOI link will take you to a technical summary of the paper in the journal Pediatrics.

This effect does not surprize me at all. I am only surprised that it has taken this long to show this. I am also certain that effects of less than two hours computer/TV time will be found when more sensitive tools are used. Don't believe me? Turn off the Tube and stop using computer video for a month and see how you feel. [Or try just two weeks - one week off is not enough]. Post your results as a reply here. It would be interesting to see what we get.

Full Interview with DeLene Beeland

2010-09-20T14:01:00.001-04:00

Here is a link to the full interview that was the basis for the articles in the Charlotte News and Observer and the Raleigh News and Observer. Thanks to DeLene Beland for her interest in this bolg.

A new look

2010-09-18T09:47:00.003-04:00

The blog has a new look today. I have been meaning to upgrade the template for some time and with the new interest in the blog generated through the article in the Charlotte Observer (and in the Raleigh News and Observer) I decided that I could not put it off any longer. I hope you enjoy the new look.

A strange sense of self-importance

2010-09-03T12:14:00.003-04:00

Carl Sagan really gets the moral message right (even if he is technically wrong on a few points - but that is topic for another post) in the commentary on the last photograph sent back from the Voyager spacecraft before it left the solar system. We must find ways to live with one another, and more that that to support one another, if we are to survive.

Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" Music by VNV Nation from moon bird on Vimeo.

Genetically modifid plants are now "wild"

2010-08-17T11:12:00.000-04:00

Meredith Schafer and her collaborators have discovered an established, wild population of canola (Brassica campestris) growing along roadsides in North Dakota. While roadside populations of cultivated plants are nothing new, two of the sampled plants had genes for resistance to two herbicides. Doubly resistant plants have never been released into cultivation. Their occurrence in the roadside populations means that the plants are reproducing in nature, and developing new compound phenotypes.

Is this a big deal, or nothing to worry about? As you might imagine, opinions differ. Monsanto, the manufacturer of the agricultural varieties that escaped, emphasizes that the plants were found along roadsides, where "escaped" populations have long been known to occur. Concerned scientists emphasize the recombinant phenotypes as an indication that the recombinant traits are beginning to occur in ways that their manufacturer never intended.

Here is a link to an NPR story that sums up the differing views.

The Environment Since May

2010-08-07T08:23:00.002-04:00

The explosion in sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, and the subsequent oil spill have been so devastating that has been hard to know how to respond. Anger and despair would seem to be the only rational responses, if they were not so irrational. One cannot live in a state of anger and despair for any period of time. Soon enough, no matter the extent of the disaster with which one is faced, one must find something to restore one's hope, or turn one's attention elsewhere.

In the months following the disaster I could find nothing to restore my hope, and turned away from all news of the event. If this seems self-centered and disinterested, consider my alternatives. I could do nothing to influence the situation. I could do nothing to clean up the spill, to assure that BP acted responsibly, to move our government to effective action, to save even a single bird. My job and family responsibilities kept me close to home, so even the possibility of rushing to the Gulf in an effort to add my strength to the cleanup effort was closed to me. My only option seemed to be to listen to the news and despair. I rejected this option.

Perhaps adding to this blog would have helped, but the overwhelming coverage of the event, and of its aftermath, precluded any original contributions from me. When faced with a catastrophe of this magnitude, an individual far from the site is more or less helpless.

Fortunately we are society with concerned and effective governmental and private sector agencies who were able to mount a response to the disaster. It is not my place to judge the efficacy of these responses, I am only thankful that there were responses, and that they have had some effect on the severity of the disaster.

The latest water testing responses from the Environmental Protection Agency are reported to show little or no trace of oil or dispersions in the open Gulf waters. This link takes you to the EPA website where these reports are available. There is also a tremendous wealth of data available on Google Earth, and at Google's crisis response website linked here. If you have Google Earth installed, you can click on this link to download the information about the Deepwater Horizon spill. The link will open Google Earth and begin the download process. Check the layers menu, and the information displayed as icons on the map for more downloads. There is so much information available that it will take some time to download it all into Google Earth, unless you have a very fast connection.

All of this is not to say that there are no remaining problems related to the oil spill that need to be solved. The news media are better sources for the ongoing responses to the spill than is this blog. I refer you to them for more information. Just keep in mind that the media's concern is not with the individuals affected by the spill. As the world's attention turns away life along the Gulf Coast will continue be to be affected by the aftermath of the spill for many years.

Food waste - wasting food

2010-05-10T12:09:00.000-04:00

I am not sure that I advocate dumpster diving, but the video makes a very good point about waste in America. We throw food away not because it is bad, but because it is not "saleble." For meat, this means that the expiration date has past and the meat cannot legally be sold. For fruits and vegetables, it means that their appearance has declined to the point where the store feels that no one will purchase them. Some stores do give the food to food banks or homeless shelters, but others just put it in the dumpster.

Dive! Trailer from Compeller Productions on Vimeo.

Nuf Said

2010-05-04T13:39:00.004-04:00

Mercury

2010-04-28T16:23:00.001-04:00

Mercury contamination of food webs is a global problem. Methyl mercury is one of the most toxic substances knows. For instance, if you poured a singe drop of methyl mercury in your hand and immediately wiped it off, you would be dead within a year.

Inorganic mercury is produced by natural and human sources. It is converted to methyl mercury in aquatic environments, and makes it way into the food chain. The main source of mercury in humans is through the consumption of methyl mercury from fish. The CDC estimates that about one in seven women have unsafe levels of mercury in there blood.

Coal-fired power plants produce mercury in their “exhaust” from the naturally occurring mercury in coal. Lignite is a very dirty coal. Burning it adds mercury to both the global-atmospheric pool, and the more local area through deposition. “Local” in this context can mean hundreds of miles down wind of the power plant.

The problem is that there is nothing that can really be done to fix this problem. Once the mercury is in the food chain, it takes a very long time for levels to decline, and this only happens if the sources of mercury are reduced. How do we reduce mercury deposition? If you have been following this blog it will not surprise you that I favor a reduction in consumption. This is the only environmentally safe way of solving these problems. We would all love a magic, technological solution, but in so many cases there is none. As Pogo would say “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Oil Rig Sinks in Gulf

2010-04-23T08:05:00.007-04:00

The video says it all. It is really hard to comment intelligently when something like this happens.

Sustainable design

2010-04-14T16:11:00.004-04:00

Buildings use 40% of the energy produced in the US. That is more energy use than all transportation systems (auto, airlines, etc) combined. They also use 30% of the water, and 25% of the wood.

For most of our history we have been building sustainable structures. The Native Americans certainly built sustainably. They used local materials, situated their buildings in a way that took the local conditions in the account, and provided ways that the building to be modified with the changing seasons. These same principles were in general use up to about 100 years ago. Thomas Jefferson's home, Monticello, is built according to these same principles. It faces SW so that the summer breezes that blow from that direction in the summer. The bedroom has shutters that can be closed in the summer to keep the room cool.

In constructing our new buildings we should follow these same principles. There are architects who are doing this. Frank Harmon is one of these people. He has build green building in Seagrove, NC, the mountains of NC, and Charleston, SC, to name just a few. Look at his work, linked above. It is beautiful. If only this type of architecture was more prevalent. If only there were more call of this type of building.

Food!

2010-04-07T14:56:00.007-04:00

We have all heard that the number of US farms has been decreasing, and the average farm size has been increasing. What is not as well known is that there has been an consequent increase in farm energy inputs from fertilizer, mechanization, and etc.). Of course this is reflected in farm income. About $0.19 of every food dollar you spend goes to the farmer. So, even though gross farm income has increased steadly since 1929, net fram income has actually declined slightly. So farmers are spending more money, but they are earning less from it. We see this in Michigan, where farming is the second largest user of petroleum products. This energy is expensive.

What can we do to re-take control of our food system?

One thing that we can do is to eat local food. This is easier than it might sound. Local Harvest is a website that will help you find local food. The site provides an easy way to find farms, stores, and farmers marketes in your local area. I just checked my home zip code and found the CSA that my family just joined. A CSA is a farm that sells their produce directly to consumers through a subscription plan. CSA stand for Community Supported Agriculture. A member of a CSA pays a fee to the farmer at the beginning of the season, and get a weekly share of the farm's output. In general, this works out to be much less expensive for the consumer, and much more financially viable for the farmer. For ever dollar you spend at a CSA, the farmer gets one dollar. That is a big difference from $0.19!! And the food is great: fresh and delicious.

Check for a CSA in your area. You might be surprised. If there are not any, you might find a local farmer's market. In either case, you will pleasantly surprised by the increased quality of your life from eating good, local food.

Water in the desert

2010-03-31T14:06:00.001-04:00

How much water would you think someone living in the desert would need to stay alive? The answer is ca. 12 gallons a day.

What does a citizen of Phoenix, AZ use? Would you like to guess first?

A typical Phoeonxian uses about 250 gallons of water a day!! This compares with about 178 gallons a day for water use in my home county of Alamance, NC. This level of water use costs a resident of Phoenix about $57 per month. - Are you shocked? I am. How can we sustain this level of water use in the desert? Who is paying for it?

The answers are that we cannot sustain it, and that the residents of the US West are paying for these levels of water use in a degraded environment and quality of life. It is difficult to even summarize the problems here, so I will refer you to the Water Eduction Foundation, and their publication River Report.

How is Phoenix responding to these challenges? A group at Arizona State University has, with funding from the National Science Foundation, has developed a model that simulates water use in Phoenix through 2050. The model, WaterSim is used as an education and decision making tool for the scientists in their work with water management planners and community members. This is really good stuff! But I cannot help wondering, if we were all a bit less selfish, if we put the good of all above our own private comfort, if we used just a bit of common sense, would we really need all of these sophisticated tools? Are we using these models to justify ridiculous levels of water consumption? I do not know, but it is at least worth thinking about.

Nitrogen!

2010-03-26T13:35:00.013-04:00

What is the problem with Nitrogen? Well, let us look at it from the standpoint of a fish. Every year the Nitrogen runoff from the Mississippi watershed causes a phytoplantkon bloom in the Gulf of Mexico. The red area in the image above is the phytoplankton bloom. It is big!

The microscopic plants in this bloom eventually die and decompose. Decomposition uses oxygen (remember the Krebs or Citric Acid Cycle you learned about in school?).
There are so many deal plants that the disolved oxygen is exhausted, and those organisms that depend on oxygen die. Some of those organisms are fish.

So where is all of this Nitrogen coming from? You might suspect that it is from big polluters: cities, power plants, large manufacturing companies. These are called point-source polluters. Perhaps surprisingly these point-source pollutes are not the problem. The problem is the many non-point-source sources of Nitrogen. In fact, the amount of Nitrogen from the two sources is not even close.

We can see this in the graph below. The upper line shows the non-point sources of Nitrogen. The bottom, flat line, shows the point-source Nitrogen polution. It is negligable.

You know what this means. It means that YOU are the problem. The runoff from your lawn, from the farms from which you buy your food, from the golf courses where you play - they are the most important sources of Nitrogen polution.

The solution is in your hands.

Environmental Sonnet

2009-12-23T18:20:00.004-05:00

I wish the world could be the way it was,
The way it was when we were free to be.
Be who or what we are without cause,
One's face would not be judged, but one's self seen.
If air could be no longer gas, but clean,
The cool water free from all pollution,
Beautiful trees still standing tall and lean,
To all vile problems a solution.
But now the world is falling into chaos,
Too much constructing and arbitrating.
So help the world, yourself, your friends, and us,
And close away the greed and debating.
For if you don't, if we don't act as friends,
This may be the beginning of the end.

--Emily Jolly (13 years old)

Spirit Bear Youth Coalition

2009-12-19T08:24:00.001-05:00

My last post featured a commentary by Simon Jackson. So who is Simon Jackson?

Mr. Jackson is the founder of the Spirit Bear Youth Coalition, the largest youth-run environmental organization in the world (over 6 million members). The Spirit Bear is an endangered subspecies of black bear found only on Canada's west coast. The Spirit Bear is threatened by habitat loss due to logging. There are only ca. 400 left.

So where to start. It is a very small step, by why not start here? Help save the Spirit Bear.

There a number of suggestions on the Spirit Bear Coalition website. The easiest is to write Canadian Premier Gordon Campbell and urge him to protect the Spirit Bear's remaining habitat. In this case we have to depend on governments to help. Individuals cannot quickly change the economic conditions that lead to the logging that is destroying this habitat (but we can in the long term - in fact reduction of consumption is the only solution in the long term). We have to depend on the Canadian government to intervene. Writing the Premier is easy. All it takes is a few clicks on a web form.

Do it.

And consider the other possibilities for action on the Spirit Bear website.

Copenhagen commentary from CBC and me

2009-12-15T08:00:00.004-05:00

D. Simon Jackon writes, on the CBC website (Maybe Copenhagen should fail).

"Though it's tempting to blame politics and politicians for this mess, we probably all have to share in it.

"We have let a simple scientific issue become hijacked by special interests and grow like topsy to the point that summits like Copenhagen have now become forums for everything from the merits of socialist economies to Third World development and the reliability of scientific research.

"While the majority of the world — including more than two-thirds of Canadians — believes climate change is real and requires decisive action, most people don't know what decisive action on climate change really means and what it equates to on an individual level.

"And maybe that is what we have to get back to — the baby step of what can I do or what can we do as Canadians to make a difference.

"Otherwise, we are left at the mercy of too many overpowering agendas and highly politicized messaging, which can create support for a cause but without any real way of achieving it."

I could not agree more. We created this problem, we should solve it. We created it by believing in easy abundance with no consequences. We could have our every desire fulfilled, with no responsibility. We lived the 60's hippy dream: "sex" (read pleasure) and "drugs" (read consumption) with no need to wake up and take care of the kid. Well, that worked for a time, but now we have to face the dirty diapers. Sure, we would love it if we could palm off this problem on the governments. Just ignore the crying from the next room, maybe our "woman" will get up and take care of the mess for us. One can always hope.

So far Copenhagen is not giving us much hope. This is a good thing. It forces us to confront ourselves. There is no solution to this problem other than to take responsibility for our own desires. We in the west have to learn to live more simply - with less consumption. This is not an easy task for we have been educated from the moment of birth to be consumers. It feel good to buy something! All too often we define ourselves by what we own. We have to change that. We have to change it everyday. It is something we can do once and be done with. This is not a matter of simply changing a diaper. We have to raise the kid. This takes work everyday. The hardest type of work. Work on ourselves to overcome that part of us that has become self-satisfied, and lazy.

Where to start?

Thankfulness for the Earth

2009-11-24T09:10:00.004-05:00

With all the talk of the plight of the earth and of global warming it is easy to be lured into a feeling of hopelessness. Succumbing to hopelessness will not help Save the Earth. The antidote to hopelessness is thankfulness. We are surrounded by beauty beyond measure, beauty beyond understanding. Thankfulness for this beauty, and for the gifts of the Earth, and refresh our spirits. By cultivating thankfulness we learn to overcome that feeling of hopelessness that would otherwise paralyze us from taking effective action.

Ocean Activity

2009-10-30T07:55:00.000-04:00

Ocean Dead Zones

2009-10-19T12:48:00.004-04:00

The following is from the new NSF website on Dead Zones. Unfortunately, I cannot embed the video. Visit the website to see the amazing (and depressing) difference between the living and dead ocean.

Scientists work to explain why massive "dead zones" have been invading the Pacific Northwest's near-shore waters since 2002

Yet another ecological scourge may earn a place on the ever-lengthening list of problems potentially caused by climate change: the formation of some so-called "dead zones"—huge expanses of ocean that lose virtually all of their marine life at depth during the summer.

Possible connections between climate change and the relatively recent formation of dead zones in the Pacific Northwest's coastal waters are currently being studied by a research team that is funded by the National Science Foundation and co-led by Jack Barth of Oregon State University (OSU) and Francis Chan of OSU. (Jane Lubchenco, who is currently on leave from OSU while serving as the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, also previously co-led the team.)

WORLDWIDE DEAD ZONES
The Earth currently has more than 400 oceanic dead zones, with the count doubling every decade. A single dead zone may cover tens of thousands of square miles.

Dead zones form where microscopic plants, known as phytoplankton, are fertilized by excess nutrients, such as fertilizers and sewage, that are generated by human activities and dumped into the ocean by rivers, or more rarely, where they are fertilized by naturally occurring nutrients. The result: blooms of organic matter that ultimately decompose through processes that rob the ocean of life-sustaining oxygen. Animals that fail to flee dead zones either suffocate or suffer severe stress.

LOSING OXYGEN NATURALLY
One of the Earth's relatively few naturally formed dead zones has long been seasonally perched in the deep waters of the continental shelf far from the coast of the Pacific Northwest. This low-oxygen, or "hypoxic," zone has apparently historically remained stationary and is believed to be caused by large-scale processes that are unrelated to human activities or local winds.

But in the summer, northerly summer winds work together with the Earth's rotation to push oxygenated surface water offshore; this coastal water is replaced by low-oxygen but nutrient-rich waters from the depths of the continental shelf in a process known as upwelling. (See illustration.) Once this nutrient-rich water reaches the ocean's sunlit layers, it fertilizes blooms of phytoplankton.

Resulting phytoplankton blooms feed the food chain and thereby help make the Pacific Northwest one of the nation's most productive fisheries. But the decomposition of unconsumed, sunken phytoplankton promotes the formation of deep pools of low-oxygen water.

Periods of upwelling-favorable northerly winds may be interrupted by relatively short periods of southerly winds during the summer and by longer periods during the fall. These southerly winds work together with the Earth's rotation to drive oxygenated surface waters back towards the shore and to drive low-oxygen bottom waters away from the shore in a process known as downwelling. Periods of strong downwelling have traditionally occurred frequently enough to flush the low-oxygen pools from the continental shelf, and thereby prevent them from expanding all the way to the shore.

LEAVING NORMAL
But underwater surveys conducted by the research team of waters off the Pacific Northwest have identified the following new phenomenon:

Pools of low-oxygen water have expanded from the continental shelf to near-shore waters off Oregon and Washington every summer since 2002; the close proximity of these dead zones to the shore had never been reported before that year.
Coastal dead zones have been more hypoxic than the low-oxygen pools located on the continental shelf, with some coastal areas periodically completely stripped of their oxygen.
Areas of hypoxia that have seasonally dotted the Pacific Northwest coast, "have been connected to one another by a ribbon of low-oxygen water that runs along the coastal sea floor," says Barth.

So far, the most hypoxic year for the Pacific Northwest was 2006, when the research team discovered a dead zone off Newport, Oregon that sprawled over almost 1,200 square miles, and pressed so close to the shore that "a baseball hit from Highway 101 during the summer could land in it," says Barth. Covering up to 80 percent of the water column and lasting for an unusually long time (four months), "this dead zone transformed a teeming habitat into a fish-free zone that was carpeted with dead crabs, worms, severely stressed anemones and sea stars, and what looked like potentially noxious bacterial mats," says Barth.

THE SUMMER OF 2009
During the summer of 2009, dead zones characterized by severe hypoxia formed near the seashore on the mid-to-inner shelf in Oregon's coastal waters; they were about average in size and duration. Barth says, "we also saw the now-classic ribbon of low dissolved oxygen water near the seafloor extending along the coast. "However, no zero-oxygen areas like those that formed in 2006 were observed.

ANSWERS MAY BE BLOWING IN THE WIND
Why have low-oxygen waters been regularly expanding into coastal waters? The research team's findings indicate that this phenomenon is potentially related to:

Reductions in the oxygen content of low-oxygen water that upwells from the continental shelf.
Prolonged and intensified upwelling along the continental shelf that has, in turn, been caused by periodic increases in the strength of northerly, upwelling-favorable winds and decreases in the frequency of southerly, downwelling-favorable winds.

During periods of prolonged upwelling, each successive wave of upwelling fertilizes more phytoplankton blooms. As these blooms decay, the continental shelf's low-oxygen waters expand, lose more oxygen and move closer to shore.

The more prolonged and intense the downwelling-favorable winds and resulting upwelling are, the more severe the hypoxia becomes. Hence, the highly hypoxic year of 2006 was dominated by particularly strong upwelling-favorable northerly winds, particularly infrequent downwelling-favorable southerly winds and particularly large accumulations of phytoplankton. By contrast, the summer of 2009 was marked by periods of southerly downwelling-favorable winds that helped dissipate low oxygen conditions. "Therefore, the hypoxia of 2009 was neither as extreme nor as long-lasting as that of 2006.

UNDERLYING CAUSES
What is the underlying cause of the decreases in the oxygen content of subsurface offshore waters and changes in coastal winds? One theory points to large-scale cyclic changes in oceanic circulation and atmospheric conditions that have hit the Pacific Northwest every 10 to 20 years. But Barth says evidence that these phenomena are unrelated to one another includes the lack of agreement in the timing of the development of coastal dead zones and the timing of these cyclic changes, which are evidenced in available records covering the last 50 years.

Rather, Barth favors an alternative theory; he suspects that climate change is driving down the oxygen content of subsurface offshore waters and altering coastal winds. This theory is supported by agreement between the predicted effects of climate change and the very types of changes in oceanic and atmospheric conditions and decreases in the oxygen content of deep water that are currently observed in the Pacific Northwest. (Climate change may reduce the oxygen content of deep water by warming surface waters, and thereby insulating deeper waters from contact with the atmosphere, where oxygen originates.)

Nevertheless, the relationship between climate change and coastal dead zones remains debatable. What's more, Barth says that whether and where dead zones appear in any particular year partly depends on the daily weather, which is difficult to predict.

So the research team continues to study winds, ocean circulation, and the timing and locations of coastal dead zones in order "to collect enough statistics over time to determine whether climate change is, in fact, driving the formation of coastal dead zones," Barth says.

DEAD ZONES AS SUMMER FIXTURES
Barth says, "I wouldn't be surprised if coastal dead zones appear every summer from now on because oceanic and atmospheric conditions are now primed for their regular, repeated formation. He adds that "the real questions now are: How big will the dead zones be? How long will they last? And how often will oxygen levels plunge low enough to cause marine die-offs?"

Gangaji

2009-10-14T18:33:00.001-04:00

It has been a while since I said anything about the inner life, but I remain committed to the idea that to really Save the Earth we must first become ourselves. Gangaji knows this better than anyone, and says it better than most.

The math of limited resources

2009-10-06T15:12:00.000-04:00

The video is long (one hour), but it is worth it. I do not think you and understand the energy crisis if you do not understand the basic math, and its consequences, covered here. I think you will find that the hour passes quickly.

Wow!

2009-09-29T18:29:00.001-04:00

I will have more to say about this later, but for now just enjoy!

#33 Recycle your computer

2009-09-24T15:51:00.002-04:00

The Computer Recycling Center in Santa Rosa, CA will accept any computer for reuse/recycling. If you are recycling a laptop they will even reimburse you for shipping it to them. The details are on their homepage, but I have reproduced the basic information about laptop recycling here.

1) Go to the Post Office and get Flat Rate box large enough to fit your laptop. You want the ones that cost ca. $9.50 to ship.

2) Pack your laptop securely in the box. If you remove the hard disk, be sure to leave the mounting hardware with the computer. They will reuse your laptop if they can. If you leave the laptop in, wipe it. There are a number of free programs that will do this for you. They are listed here.

3) Add your return address to the inside of the box, with a note telling them if you want to be reimbursed for the cost of shipping. You can donate the shipping to CRC. They will only reimburse you for the cost of shipping a Flat Rate box by USPS, so do not pay more than this. They can only send you a check if you tell them who you are, and where to send it.

You can also ship them desktop computers, but they will not reimburse you for shipping these.

If you are in the San Francisco area you can, of course, drop off your computer at one of several recycling location. The address are listed on their home page.

Please recycle!

Interview with John Lennon

2009-09-14T09:00:00.001-04:00

Whether you like Lennon or not, he makes some good points. I think that this is the first time I have heard him talk about peace where I really understood what he was saying. Ironic that it comes in an interview with a 14 year old boy.

Gardening - Pest management

2009-09-07T12:04:00.000-04:00

One of the principle problems in any garden is pest control. A number of websites on organic pest management have appeared over the past few years. The best of these provide information on all aspects of pest management, from the policy framework for effective pest management, to the life cycles of the pests. This is a big change from the 1970's, when organic gardening was seen as a series of prohibitions: Do not use fertilizer. Do not use pesticides. Do not . . . etc.

One of the best sites is in Europe, where the Green Movement is much stronger than in the US. Although the orientation of OISAT is the Tropics, there is much information here that is useful to those in more norther regions.

#32 Start an orgaic garden

2009-09-01T20:29:00.000-04:00

One of the best ways to Save the Earth is to start a garden. A well-run organic garden can reduce you food costs, decrease the amount of carbon dioxide released (shipping food is a major source of carbon dioxide), and provide healthy food for you and your family. Gardening is also very restorative.

With this post, I begin a series of occasional posts on organic gardening. We will draw on a number of web resources, but I will also try to share some of my own experiences with my backyard garden, which is located in far from ideal conditions. Anyone can garden in Santa Barbara, CA. You plant it, and it grows. Gardening in less ideal conditions is more of a challenge, but is still rewarding. If you do not already have a garden, consider starting one. The late summer and fall is a great time to start preparing your beds for spring planting.

He said he was leaving. She ignored him

2009-08-28T14:43:00.001-04:00

This was originally published in the New York Times, and reprinted in The Week.

Let’s say you have what you believe to be a healthy marriage. You’re still friends and lovers after spending more than half of your lives together. The dreams you set out to achieve in your 20s—gazing into each other’s eyes in candlelit city bistros, when you were single and skinny—have for the most part come true.
Two decades later you have the 20 acres of land, the farmhouse, the children, the dogs and horses. You’re the parents you said you would be, full of love and guidance. You’ve done it all: Disneyland, camping, Hawaii, Mexico, city living, stargazing.
Sure, you have your marital issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest nightmares, think you would hear these words from your husband one fine summer day: “I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.”
But wait. This isn’t the divorce story you think it is. Neither is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It’s a story about hearing your husband say, “I don’t love you anymore” and deciding not to believe him. And what can happen as a result.
Here’s a visual: Child throws a temper tantrum. Tries to hit his mother. But the mother doesn’t hit back, lecture or punish. Instead, she ducks. Then she tries to go about her business as if the tantrum isn’t happening. She doesn’t “reward” the tantrum. She simply doesn’t take the tantrum personally because, after all, it’s not about her.
Let me be clear: I’m not saying my husband was throwing a child’s tantrum. No. He was in the grip of something else—a profound and far more troubling meltdown that comes not in childhood but in midlife, when we perceive that our personal trajectory is no longer arcing reliably upward as it once did. But I decided to respond the same way I’d responded to my children’s tantrums. And I kept responding to it that way. For four months.
“I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did.” His words came at me like a speeding fist, like a sucker punch, yet somehow in that moment I was able to duck. And once I recovered and composed myself, I managed to say, “I don’t buy it.” Because I didn’t.
He drew back in surprise. Apparently he’d expected me to burst into tears, to rage at him, to threaten him with a custody battle. Or beg him to change his mind.
So he turned mean. “I don’t like what you’ve become.”
Gut-wrenching pause. How could he say such a thing? That’s when I really wanted to fight. To rage. To cry. But I didn’t.
Instead, a shroud of calm enveloped me, and I repeated those words: “I don’t buy it.”
You see, I’d recently committed to a non-negotiable understanding with myself. I’d committed to “the End of Suffering.” I’d finally managed to exile the voices in my head that told me my personal happiness was only as good as my outward success, rooted in things that were often outside my control. I’d seen the insanity of that equation and decided to take responsibility for my own happiness. And I mean all of it.
My husband hadn’t yet come to this understanding with himself. He had enjoyed many years of hard work, and its rewards had supported our family of four all along. But his new endeavor hadn’t been going so well, and his ability to be the breadwinner was in rapid decline. He’d been miserable about this, felt useless, was losing himself emotionally and letting himself go physically. And now he wanted out of our marriage; to be done with our family.
But I wasn’t buying it.
I said: “It’s not age-appropriate to expect children to be concerned with their parents’ happiness. Not unless you want to create co-dependents who’ll spend their lives in bad relationships and therapy. There are times in every relationship when the parties involved need a break. What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”
“Huh?” he said.
“Go trekking in Nepal. Build a yurt in the back meadow. Turn the garage studio into a man-cave. Get that drum set you’ve always wanted. Anything but hurting the children and me with a reckless move like the one you’re talking about.”
Then I repeated my line, “What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”
“Huh?”
“How can we have a responsible distance?”
“I don’t want distance,” he said. “I want to move out.”
My mind raced. Was it another woman? Drugs? Unconscionable secrets? But I stopped myself. I would not suffer.
Instead, I went to my desk, Googled “responsible separation,” and came up with a list. It included things like: Who’s allowed to use what credit cards? Who are the children allowed to see you with in town? Who’s allowed keys to what?
I looked through the list and passed it on to him.
His response: “Keys? We don’t even have keys to our house.”
I remained stoic. I could see pain in his eyes. Pain I recognized.
“Oh, I see what you’re doing,” he said. “You’re going to make me go into therapy. You’re not going to let me move out. You’re going to use the kids against me.”
“I never said that. I just asked: What can we do to give you the distance you need ... ”
“Stop saying that!”
Well, he didn’t move out.
Instead, he spent the summer being unreliable. He stopped coming home at his usual 6 o’clock. He would stay out late and not call. He blew off our entire Fourth of July—the parade, the barbecue, the fireworks—to go to someone else’s party. When he was at home, he was distant. He wouldn’t look me in the eye. He didn’t even wish me “Happy Birthday.”
But I didn’t play into it. I walked my line. I told the kids: “Daddy’s having a hard time, as adults often do. But we’re a family, no matter what.” I was not going to suffer. And neither were they.
My trusted friends were irate on my behalf. “How can you just stand by and accept this behavior? Kick him out! Get a lawyer!”
I walked my line with them, too. This man was hurting, yet his problem wasn’t mine to solve. In fact, I needed to get out of his way so he could solve it.
I know what you’re thinking: I’m a pushover. I’m weak and scared and would put up with anything to keep the family together. I’m probably one of those women who would endure physical abuse. But I can assure you, I’m not. I load 1,500-pound horses into trailers and gallop through the high country of Montana all summer. I went through Pitocin-induced natural childbirth. And a Caesarean section without follow-up drugs. I am handy with a chain saw.
I simply had come to understand that I was not at the root of my husband’s problem. He was. If he could turn his problem into a marital fight, he could make it about us. I needed to get out of the way so that wouldn’t happen.
Privately, I decided to give him time. Six months.
I had good days and I had bad days. On the good days, I took the high road. I ignored his lashing out, his merciless jabs. On bad days, I would fester in the August sun while the kids ran through sprinklers, raging at him in my mind. But I never wavered. Although it may sound ridiculous to say, “Don’t take it personally” when your husband tells you he no longer loves you, sometimes that’s exactly what you have to do.
Instead of issuing ultimatums, yelling, crying, or begging, I presented him with options. I created a summer of fun for our family and welcomed him to share in it, or not—it was up to him. If he chose not to come along, we would miss him, but we would be just fine, thank you very much. And we were.
And, yeah, you can bet I wanted to sit him down and persuade him to stay. To love me. To fight for what we’ve created. You can bet I wanted to.
But I didn’t.
I barbecued. Made lemonade. Set the table for four. Loved him from afar.
And one day, there he was, home from work early, mowing the lawn. A man doesn’t mow his lawn if he’s going to leave it. Not this man. Then he fixed a door that had been broken for eight years. He made a comment about our front porch needing paint. Our front porch. He mentioned needing wood for next winter. The future. Little by little, he started talking about the future.
It was Thanksgiving dinner that sealed it. My husband bowed his head humbly and said, “I’m thankful for my family.”
He was back.
And I saw what had been missing: pride. He’d lost pride in himself. Maybe that’s what happens when our egos take a hit in midlife and we realize we’re not as young and golden anymore.
When life’s knocked us around. And our childhood myths reveal themselves to be just that. The truth feels like the biggest sucker-punch of them all: It’s not a spouse, or land, or a job, or money that brings us happiness. Those achievements, those relationships, can enhance our happiness, yes, but happiness has to start from within. Relying on any other equation can be lethal.
My husband had become lost in the myth. But he found his way out. We’ve since had the hard conversations. In fact, he encouraged me to write about our ordeal. To help other couples who arrive at this juncture in life. People who feel scared and stuck. Who believe their temporary feelings are permanent. Who see an easy out and think they can escape.
My husband tried to strike a deal. Blame me for his pain. Unload his feelings of personal disgrace onto me.
But I ducked. And I waited. And it worked.

Some comments on the health care debate

2009-08-24T15:43:00.003-04:00

The health care debate is turning nasty with Congress and the Obama administration being accused of plotting to "kill grandma." While not wanting to get into this too deeply, I thought I would post David Sedaris' recent comments on this subject. These comments were made at a "live chat with David Sedaris" hosted by the New Yorker.

"Allow me to answer with kidney stones. I had my first one at the age of 34. At the time I was living in New York, and had no health insurance. Never in my life had I experienced such pain, but I couldn’t afford to go to the hospital, and so I passed it at home, not knowing until the end what it actually was. (I thought I was delivering Satan’s baby through my penis.)

I had my second kidney stone seven years later, in Paris. It was ten o’clock in the morning, and after looking at my options in the phone book, I took the metro to a hospital in the 15th. Two minutes after walking through the door, I was in a private room. Delicious, mind-numbing drugs were delivered to my blood stream by way of a tube and life was beautiful. I was in the hospital for four hours, and as I was leaving, I asked the receptionist how I was supposed to pay.

“Oh,” she said, “We’ll send you a statement.”
“But you never even asked me my name.”
“Really?”

A few weeks later I got a bill for the equivalent of seventy dollars, this because I’m not a French citizen, and am therefore not entitled to free care.

I got my third kidney stone a few months ago, while on a lecture tour of the United States. The hospital I went to was in Westchester county and the service was outstanding. Maybe I arrived at the slowest time, but, like in France, I was waited on immediately, and the doctor and nurses could not have been more pleasant. Again I was there for four hours, though this time the bill came to $5,800. Not including medicine.

I’m completely fascinated by the health care debate going on in the United States, especially by posters of Obama with a little mustache drawn on his upper lip. Is that what Hitler is really known for, his health care plan? To quote Bill Maher, “I haven’t seen this many pissed off old white people since they canceled, “Murder She Wrote.”

Now I live in England. I’ve just been granted Indefinite Leave To Remain, which allows me access to the NHS."

Two egos

2009-08-20T20:18:00.005-04:00

A Cherokee legend
(See the immediately preceding post for some context.)

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.

"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego." He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Two sides of the ego

2009-08-13T10:47:00.007-04:00

The ego is a funny "thing." This post explores two sides of our ego through the use of two short video segments.

After listening to the quotes in the embedded video, immediately below, you will think that the ego is the source of all evil on earth. There is justification for this view. People will, indeed, do just about anything to protect their ego. I am willing to bet that every relationship fight you have been involved with in your life has been prompted, at least in part, by issues of ego control.

But there is another side to the ego. The clip below is from an HBO documentary aired in 2007. Alive Day Memories: Home from Iraq tells the stories of 10 solders who were wounded in Iraq, and now live with the consequences. The clip embedded below tells the story of Dawn Halfaker (27 at the time of filming). Watch the whole thing, but pay special attention to what happens 5 minutes and 20 seconds into the clip. At this point she begins to break down thinking about her future children. Stay with her through that until 5:42 when she comes out of it. Her ability to overcome these feelings is amazing, miraculous. She does not give in to self-pity, but from somewhere finds the strength to step away from the sadness. What is this, if not the work of her ego? I am not saying that this is easy for her, but just when she is at her lowest, she finds the strength from somewhere.

When you look into the deeper eastern or western religious traditions you will find that they speak of a lower and a higher ego. We get a glimpse of these two sides of the ego in the above clips. We have the potential for both.

#31 Clean up after your dog

2009-08-02T14:55:00.006-04:00

About 40% of all US households own at least one dog. Cleaning up after your dog is very important. About 20% of the fecal waste in the water supply comes from dogs. Picking up their poo can prevent this. But how do you do this without using those ubiquitous, non-biodegradable plastic bags? There are a couple of options.

There are two types of biodegradable plastic bags that are manufactured for this (and other) purposes). The first contains corn starch and in some ways appears to be the best choice. Unfortunately, these bags are quite expensive. The other type of bag has is made from oxo-degradable polyethylene, which eventually (after microbial degradation of the initial decomposition products) breaks down into carbon dioxide, water and humus. This link contains a bit more information for one of the manufacturers. I just purchased some of this type of bag at DogPoopBags.com, at a very reasonable price (but not reasonable shipping rates, so take that into account if avoiding shipping charges is important to you).

A third option is an in ground waste digester to safely decompose the excrement. These are about 1/3 more expensive then a year's supply of the most affordable dog bags, and will last much longer. Their disadvantage is that you still have to get the poo from the ground under the dog and into the digester. Although a shovel is provided for this purpose, who wants to walk around with a shovel full of poo? You can overcome this problem with a poop scooper, like this one available from Amazon.com. The scoop holds the poo in an enclosed space until you can place it in the digester. You still have to carry the scooper on your walk, but you are now free from plastic bags of any sort. If only the digester and scooper were not made out of plastic!

So why not create your own digester by digging a five inch hole and covering it with a terra cotta (water permeable) saucer? This would be similar to burying it in your yard away from food gardens, play areas, wells and etc., but you would have to add some biological waster digester. In other words, what does the plastic liner do for you? If you can safely bury the poo, why can you not put it in a hole with some digester? Would that not work even better. Maybe someone reading this blogg will know.

By the way, PETCO has digesters for only $50, and they come in galvanized steel. Anyway you can avoid plastic is OK by me!

Emerson's Science of the Spirit

2009-07-18T09:59:00.005-04:00

Some months ago my first book (Emerson's Science of the Spirit) appeared and was put up for sale on Amazon.com. Today the first rating appeared: 5 stars! Click on this link to read it.

To celebrate I am offering a 20% discount on the book from my own site: http://www.metisllc.com/. The discount is good through September 1.

You can preview some of the book at http://tellusbooks.metisllc.com/.
The book is very related to the contents of this blog. My earlier posts on Emerson are based on the book: The One Man; Thought.

Natural Resources Defence Council Action Fund

2009-07-05T11:53:00.006-04:00

Back in May 2007 I pointed out that you could help environmental causes by joining the NRDC Action Fund. You can join for free and though they will ask you for donations, none are required (I participate through a payroll deduction plan, and so do not frequently make other contributions). What you gain by joining is the ability to influence national environmental policy by writing your senator and congressmen on important environmental issues. The process is fast, easy, and painless. I have pasted the latest communication from Frances Beinecke, the President of the NRDC Action Fund, below.

You can join the Action Fund here.

On June 19th, "the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the first-ever bill designed to unleash clean energy opportunities, create millions of jobs and combat global warming.

"Al Gore called this showdown "the most important environmental vote of this generation." And President Obama promised that a Yes vote would "open the door to a better future."

"Still, the bill's passage defied expectations. Back in January, few people believed that six months into a new session and a new administration -- and in the midst of an economic meltdown -- we could pass transformative clean energy legislation in the House.

"Well, we did it! And we did it because millions of people like you made their voices heard on Capitol Hill. You fought alongside the NRDC Action Fund because you know that this is America's single best chance to defuse the climate crisis and create a greener, more prosperous future.

"House leaders Nancy Pelosi, Henry Waxman, and Ed Markey deserve a great deal of credit for this success. This was no easy fight. The bill touched off regional differences and challenged Big Oil's and Big Coal's stranglehold on America's energy supply.

"Waxman, the chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, had to corral many opposing interests to create a bill that would get out of committee and survive the bumpy journey through the Senate and on to the White House. One of the keys to this bill's success was that Americans from all walks of life urged their lawmakers to back climate action.

"I saw it for myself. In the past year, I traveled the country to help build momentum for national climate legislation, and the people I talked to -- from clean energy entrepreneurs in Cleveland to labor organizers in Chicago, from national security experts in Georgia to religious leaders in New York -- all believe that building a clean, sustainable energy future will unleash enormous opportunities for America.

"I know you agree. And that's important because we're going to need you to make your voice heard again and again in the months ahead. We'll be fighting to make this bill even stronger -- and advance it through the Senate and on to the president's desk. And we need to do all that before the international climate negotiations begin in December in Copenhagen.

"The fight in the Senate will be challenging. But just as we defied expectations in the House, we can defy them in the Senate -- especially if we have your strong support.

In the coming weeks, the NRDC Action Fund will be turning all its attention to this final push. The House's historic passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act just gave our efforts powerful momentum. "

Windspire Turbine: Affordable Home Wind Power

2009-06-23T14:35:00.000-04:00

Wind power comes to your backyard. Well, if you have ca. $6,500 and an average of 12 mph winds for 2,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. Still, this is really cool. Follow the link below to find out more.

Windspire Turbine: Affordable Home Wind Power

Reality is a dream?

2009-05-21T12:38:00.004-04:00

If not a dream, then what? Or is it what we think it is?

Rethinking the Global Money Supply

2009-05-21T10:44:00.003-04:00

I know it is a little strange to be posting on the global money supply to an environmental blog, but it is becoming more and more clear that the human and natural worlds are inextricably linked. To save the earth we must understand our place in it, and this involved understanding the forces that drive its exploitation. These forces are largely economic.

The linked article is from Scientific American, and deals with China's recent suggestions that the international monetary system move away from the dollar at the currency to which others are "pegged" (i.e., against which their value is set). This may seem like a very esoteric issue, but understanding it is crucial to understanding the current economic crisis, and the effects of that crisis on the environment. Jeffrey Sachs' linked article does a great job of putting this all into context, and making it comprehensible. When he speaks of "overly expansionary monetary policies by the Federal Reserve" he means that the US central bank has printed, and thus borrowed, a lot of money. This has been going on for years. It has gotten worse lately, but it is not a recent phenomenon.

By the way, Jeffrey Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. So I am not the only one who thinks that these issues are important to saving the Earth.

#30 Do not use illegal drugs

2009-05-03T18:59:00.004-04:00

There is a huge human cost to the drug trade, even when you take the damage to the consumers out of the equation.

The Mexican journalist Alma Guillermoprieto describes part of the problem this way in a recent issue of the Berkeley news. "Drug traffickers pray for a good death — instead of torture or beheading like many of their victims — to the saints of new "narco-religions." There is the cult of La Santa Muerte, "the Holy Death" (which Guillermoprieto described in a November 2008 New Yorker article) and the cult of Jesús Malverde. In Sinaloa state where the latter originated, you can even buy fingernail sets featuring a tiny image of the santo on each nail." - "In the emptiness of meaning that you need to become a mass murderer, you look desperately for redemption and for meaning."

Or how about this account from a "mule" a single mother recruited to carry drugs into the US.

"They took us away and searched us. I had swallowed drugs, but I also had some hidden in my vagina. It was these that they found when they searched me." - "I carried drugs because I had no help supporting my children and things were very difficult for us. You will do whatever you have to do for your children. I wanted them to have a better life, without so much hardship." Now she is serving a five year sentence in Britain. He children are living with her brother. they think she is working in England. She has not seen them since being caught, and has only been allowed to speak to them three times in the past four years.

Deaths? Over 5,000 people were killed in Mexico in 2008 as part of that county's drug war.

"The 2008 death toll means that the drug war in Mexico alone (that is, not including the copious number of drug war deaths in Colombia) is more deadly than illicit drugs in the United States, which is the biggest drug market in the world and the destination for the overwhelming majority of the American continent’s drugs."

The major drug responsible for these Mexican deaths? No not cocaine, or heroin - marijuana.

Someone died for your high.

Think about it.

Addicted to Plastic

2009-04-25T14:13:00.005-04:00

To be broadcast on the Sundance Channel, Tuesday, April 28 at 10 PM.

#29 Be Green at Work

2009-04-23T10:47:00.001-04:00

They are small things, but if we all did them they would make a difference.

Science and Buddhism 02

2009-04-03T13:00:00.000-04:00

Here is Part 2 of the video on Science a Buddhism. If you missed Part 1, it can be found two posts earlier.

Prayer for the tormentors

2009-03-20T12:02:00.001-04:00

Peace to the people who are not of good will,
and an end to all revenge and to all the talk
about punishment and correction.
Deeds of cruelty to beggar all that’s gone before
are beyond the limits of human understanding,
and countless are the numbers of the martyrs.
Hence, oh God, do not weigh their sufferings
in the scales of your justice,
do not demand repayment in cruelty
but enter them in the books another way:
Let the suffering be a benefit to all executioners,
all spies and all betrayers
and all bad people,
and forgive them for the sake of the courage
and the inner strength shown by the others ...
The good should count and not the evil,
and in the minds of our enemies
we should not live on as their victims,
their nightmare and horrific spectres,
but come to their aid instead, so that
they can let go of their delusion.
This alone will be asked of them
and that when all is over
we be allowed to live as fellow human beings,
and that there shall be peace again on this our
poor earth for those who are of good will,
and that this peace shall also reach those others.

This prayer, written on a piece of brown paper by an unknown woman, was found in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp after the liberation.
Source: Heynitz, Sigismund von, Im Niedergang den Aufstiegfinden, page 107.

Buddhism and Science, Part 01

2009-03-12T12:25:00.000-04:00

What I have been saying about the "I" has been long known in Buddhism, though in a very different form. We also see this truth reflected in what we have learned through modern physics. As you watch this video translate the word "consciousness" as "I" and you will see the connection. The world exists in our consciousness - in our I. We cannot escape this fact. It is the most basic thing about the world, and the one we have worked hardest at ignoring.

Part 2 of the video will be in the next post.

The "one man"

2009-03-07T12:08:00.001-05:00

We will return to our consideration of the Inner Life with a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson's THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR; An Oration Delivered Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 31, 1837.

"It is one of those fables which, out of an unknown antiquity, convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end.

"The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; that there is One Man, - present to all particular men only partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies that the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But, unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops and cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters - a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

"Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dignity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a form; the attorney, a statute-book; the mechanic, a machine; the sailor, a rope of a ship."

How should we understanding Emerson in this passage? Is he being metaphorical, or poetic? Is the "one man" of which he speaks an abstraction, something that exists in our thought but has no reality in the everyday world that we see around us? Emerson himself seems to disparage the idea that this "one-man" is not real. He speaks of the metamorphosis on the "one man" into many, and in this transformation how the one becomes a thing. There is no other way to take this, but that the "one man," the original and only man and woman, is not a thing or even another human being. The "one-man" must give rise to every individual man and woman. We therefore cannot look for this "one man" in the world of objects. There is no living man or woman who can create another in the sense. we do not, and could not return to any person when we put down our every day task-oriented personalities. The idea itself seems absurd.

If we then turn to the world of abstract ideas and search for the "one man" there we are confronted with Emerson's hope that every man or woman will be able to return to this fount of power to find himself. If the "one man" is merely an abstraction, a poetic ideal, Emerson could hold no hope that we could return to that source, and in so returning find ourselves. If we are to take Emerson seriously, the"one-man" cannot be merely an ideal.

Having exhausted these two options, it seems as if there is no choice left. It would be easier now to close our eyes, to feign disinterest, to move on to the events that occupy our days: farming, teaching, building. To do so would be to do a great disservice to Emerson, and to ourselves. We would be like the modern tourist who travels halfway around the world to stand in front of the great wonder, and leaves content with a snapshot of themselves poised before the gates of eternity.

Emerson offers us a third choice, a third way of understanding this "one man." Fortunately for us, he does not make his meaning clear. I say "fortunately" because he leaves it to us to see for ourselves the reality to which he points. Were he to do otherwise, the "one man" to which he refers could only become a thing among things. This would be a tragedy because it would cause us to think of the "one man" in a way that is much too tangible. Emerson avoids this danger by leaving it to us to find the reality. But a second danger remains. The second great danger is that, in saving us from reification Emerson leaves us with the impression that his reference to the "one man" is merely poetic. We could believe that the "one man" has no true reality. That it was a metaphor that Emerson used to introduce his topic: the life of the scholar. It is up to us to see that the "one man" is not a metaphor, to find the third choice. We must find a way in which we all share in the universal human that make us human beings. This way cannot be merely through the sharing of certain human qualities. We cannot find the "one-man" by making a list of human qualities and scoring ourselves on each of them. The universal human being found in this way is no true man or woman, but an abstract ideal, and an incomplete one at that.

The "one man" can be found through love. The loving appreciation of all the activities of man and woman can lead us to an experience of the "one man" of which Emerson speaks. We cannot find it through the individual, for the individual is only an imperfect reflection of one of its aspects. We must look broader and deeper into what it means to be human to find the "one man." When we are able to find the reality to which Emerson referrers, we come one small step closer to begin to understand the mysteries that are held within the simple word "I."

The small word "I"

2009-03-03T12:10:00.002-05:00

"I" is a very special word. - In time we will all come to learn how special.

What is hidden in this word is everything that is, or was, or that will be. - I doubt that you understand me yet. - What I mean by "I" is what we all share from the fact that we say "I" to ourselves. Great mysteries lie hidden in this simple word and fact. It is not an exaggeration to say that the whole universe lies in the word "I."

Our understanding of this "I" will change as we come to a deeper understanding of our consciousness, and how it relates to the world.

Thought

2009-02-26T12:18:00.001-05:00

Let us return to Emerson with a quote from his last great work, which was unpublished in his lifetime: Natural History of Intellect. The following text is taken from my newly published book "Emerson's Science of the Spirit."

"I believe the mind is the creator of the world, and is ever creating; — that at last Matter is dead Mind; that mind makes the senses it sees with; that the genius of man is a continuation of the power that made him and that has not done making him."

There is a circle here, and a mystery. My body is matter and external. My brain is part of my body, and external – an object among objects. Can my brain then think, and recognize itself?

Nietzsche shows the fallacy of this argument. He asks “Is the world the creation of the senses?” Then the eye must be such a creation. Can the eye be a creation of the eye? “Whatever the world is, it is NOT the creation of the senses.” Whatever thought is, it is NOT the creation of the brain.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844 –1900), was a German philosopher and philologist who developed a style of radical questioning, and destroyed idealistic philosophy.

To save the Earth we must save ourselves

2009-02-22T11:35:00.006-05:00

There is a common misconception abut the role of human beings in the world. This misconceptions is so prevalent, and so well accepted that it is very difficult to convince anyone of its fallacy. The most common scientific form of the fallacy is that human consciousness arose as the result of an evolutionary process: that our consciousness and ability to recognize truth are, at most, epiphenomena that have nothing to do with the material (though few use this word any more) and evolutionary reality of the world.

This fallacy prevents us from seeing our true place in the word, and from accepting our true connection with all events and beings that we now consider external to ourselves. If we are to succeed in our quest to save the earth we must come to terms with this fallacy. We must do it in a way that respects the fact of evolution, but at the same time understands the true role of our consciousness in the world.

This is a big task, but it is one that we must take on if we are to have any hope of success. With this in mind, I will return to posting on the Inner Life and its relationship to the Earth. There are few things more important than understanding this relationship.

You can revisit my first, now slightly edited, post on this subject here. The next post will return to this topic, with a post on Emerson.

Plastics Review

2009-02-08T19:49:00.008-05:00

I thought it was worthwhile to review some of the information on plastics that I have posted over the past year or so. This is my first summary post. Follow the links below to read the original posts.

Energy Prices

2009-01-27T19:17:00.004-05:00

This is a little off topic, but the world has become a complex place and I though we should take a minute and observe a bit of what has been happening in the energy markets. The price "bubble" last summer was widely attributed to speculation. This possibility was recently investigated by 60 Minutes. The embedded video tells the story. - I have some unusual experience in this regard. I actually traded future contracts for a short time in the early 1990's. That experience taught me, even with out 60 Minutes' analysis, that it was entirely plausible that speculation in the futures markets was driving the price of oil. The embedded story bears out my intuition.

I am sorry about the ad. I cannot remove it.

Watch CBS Videos Online

# 28 Recycle Your Cell Phone

2009-01-04T11:27:00.003-05:00

Cell phone recycling is free and easy. The site Recycle My Cell Phone allows you to print a prepaid mailing label to recycle your phone. There is no reason to throw it out when it is this easy to recycle it.

The most important thing

2008-12-11T09:47:00.015-05:00

What would you say is the most important thing in life? Family? Meaningful work? Happiness? If you are religious perhaps you would say "staying connected with God." I would not disagree with you if you did, but I would give "staying connected" some emphases that it seldom receives today. We are all connect with each other, and with the whole of the rest of Nature. If you have been following the blog you will not be surprised that I say this. Do you doubt that we are connected in this way? Study the writins of Ralph Waldo Emerson. His works are now all on the web (www.rwe.org). They are not easy, but what he has to say is very profound. His lectures on the "Natural History of Intellect," given at the end of his life summarize the most important aspects of his thought. This link will take you to his summary.

We are all connected. What should we do once we understand this fact? We should act as if every other person and thing were part of us – were ourself. In fact, they are. Most of us have just not yet awoken to this fact. A Hindu might say "I am That." A Christian would point to Christ's admonition to treat others as you want to be treated yourself. A Buddhist would speak and act out of compassion toward all beings. Emerson used thought to see the truth to which all of these percepts point. We are each other; and are all of Nature too.

But are there not times when we should sacrifice someone else's [liberty, rights, life, job, self-respect . . . ] to the higher good? Cannot we justifiably build something on someone else's back? Of course when I phrase it this way you will say "no," but what about inequities in pay? What about the fact that he/she/they have not contributed as much as I have? Surely rewards should be equal to the qualifications and accomplishments of each person. Surely, some people will have accomplished less than others and therefore deserve less. This is the "American way."

The fallacy of this way of thinking can be seen by any person of color in the US, and by any Irishman, Pakistani, Kurd, Basque, Tibetan, etc. in the parts of the world where they have been discriminated against. The truth is that hard work does not always lead to rewards, that the righteous are not always the ones who are honored, and that those most deserving are sometimes tortured, enslaved, or killed. It is not just that this is unjust, it works against who we are at our very deepest level. When we truly know this, we will feel physical repulsion at any injustice. Not intellectual repulsion; physical repulsion. When we know this, even the thought of slavery will be impossible.

But I do not mean that treating each other as we would treat ourselves is the most important thing. It is important, more important than almost anything else, but it is a not the most important thing. For instance, we should, also treat the Earth in the same way we want to be treated ourselves. Focusing on how we treat other humans is only a subset of what should be the overriding principle.

The most important thins is saying "Yes." We must, and eventually will, learn to say Yes to everything. All else will come through this “Yes.” If this seems paradoxical at first, try it for a few years. Saying “Yes” will reveal its true nature through practice. It is impossible to harm another, to harm the Earth, to separate yourself from God, when your inner attitude is one of "Yes." These things are only possible when we bear an inner “No.”

The most important thing is very simple in principle, but is not so easy in practice. However, if you will devote yourself to “Yes” all other things in your life will fall into place. I do not say that your life will be easy. Perhaps it will be more difficult, but you will slowly see that there is really no other choice. There is only “Yes.” In it we can, and eventually all will, find ourselves and each other, and save the Earth.

New super-efficient hybrid prototype

2008-11-20T13:52:00.000-05:00

Ghost in your genes

2008-11-01T14:52:00.002-04:00

You will recall that several weeks ago I recommended that your read Richard Lewontin's Biology as Ideology. The books is a critique of scientific reductionism as it relates to DNA. Well, over the last few years Lewontin has been proven right. We are much more than our genes. Sequencing the human genome was not part of the "end of science" as some claimed a few years ago, but merely the beginning. We now know that genes can be turned "on" or "off" by environmental cues, AND that once so effected the modified gene can be passed from generation to generation. You really are your mother, in more ways than you may have imagined. The attached video provides an introduction to this research.

Happy Halloween

2008-10-31T21:33:00.001-04:00

White Privilege

2008-10-13T18:49:00.005-04:00

It is hard to completely ignore the election on this blog, though I try. I offer this post in the spirit of community. I do not mean it to be partisan, but the writer does seem to have definite leanings. I do think that what he says is true. The link will take you to his website.
-----------------------------
This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise
9/13/08

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you liketo "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible,all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college),and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement,whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan,makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God"in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being atypical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W.Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people,you're an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a "light"burden.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W.. Bush 90percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.
----------------------------

Take it easy this election season

2008-10-07T18:49:00.002-04:00

Election fever is upon us. It seems that in order to support a candidate it is now necessary to think that his or her opponent is a devil. It is no long enough to disagree with someone, one must now see them an inherently evil. Not merely evil through acts of omission, but evil because they were brought into this world through a pack signed in blood with the devil.

Remember, if you are tempted to think this way that all violence is ultimately violence against yourself. We are all linked on this beautiful globe. The way you think about someone else is the way you will eventually think about yourself. We must life together if we are to survive. If you cannot see the good in others out of love for them, do it out of love for yourself. There is, in truth, no difference.

And remember to breathe. It is harder to hate when you breathe. Watch what happens to your breath the next time you get made at someone. - Then stop and breathe and see what happens to your anger.

Century of the Self, Part 4

2008-10-01T19:17:00.003-04:00

We have reached the final section of this four part documentary. This part deals largely with politics. In the early 1980’s politicians in the US and Britain realized that they could use the same methods as corporations to gauge and respond to public opinion. For corporations this meant using focus groups to get consumers to free associate about their desires. The corporation’s job was then easy: fulfill these desires. As my step-daughter used to say “I’m special!” Of course everyone can be special if they own the newest iPod/SUV/any old piece of junk that your have been convinced is really cool. This process worked really well for the corporations! When it was taken into politics it was a disaster. What it meant was that our elected leaders no longer lead us. They held focus groups, figured out what we wanted, and gave it to us. But what if we did not know what we wanted? What if our opinions changed from month to month; well, so did national policy. You want cheaper gas? You want it now? – Drill, baby, drill! What matters is that we get what we want NOW. We can feel good now even the oil from the new wells takes five to ten years to come on line. We will want something else by then anyway, so who cares about accountability?

What would be really interesting to know, and what is not addressed in the documentary, is if this situation set the stage for Bush Jr. and his predilection for executive decision making. He has certainly been a leader. I have to give him that much.

Century of the Self, Part 3

2008-09-24T12:50:00.004-04:00

It is impossible to understand the events in this election year, or the current events on Wall Street, without understanding the history of individualism in America. We've reached the point in the documentary were individualism, the self, comes to the fore. The emphasis on individual freedom that was fostered in the 1960s was used by the corporations in new marketing strategies. They began to sell products that helped the individual becomes even more individual. The highest good became self expression, and the corporations began to help us express ourselves by selling us things. Look at the ads for iPod if you doubt this. The opening scene of the video expresses this emphasis on the self better than anything that I could say. We are destroying the Earth so that we can satisfy our egotistical desires for self-expression.

Century of the Self, Part 2

2008-09-21T14:12:00.005-04:00

The video series on the self continues with Part 2. Anna Freud and her theories of how the ego can be strengthened to repress our unconscious, perhaps even savage, desires come to the fore in this part. The spectacular failure of these theories was brought home by two suicides: Marlyn Monroe, and a close friend of Anna's, both of whom were in intense psychotherapy at the time of their deaths. These failures would have little meaning for us if Anna Freud's theories had not been used to reshape American life in the middle years of the last century.

The link below will take you to a slightly larger version of the video.

Space-Based Solar Power

2008-09-12T20:08:00.002-04:00

OK folks, I have my doubts about this because the way that they plan on getting the energy back to earth is by beaming it as microwaves - a kilometer wide band of microwaves. The advocates of this approach assure me that this is in no way dangerous. I remain dubious, but I decided to post this partly because a friend asked me to, and partly because I thought you should know about it as one option for improving our energy future. Think about it carefully and make up your own minds. More information is at the end of the Link (below).

Consumerism and "The Self"

2008-09-06T10:59:00.007-04:00

To understand ourselves as modern human beings we have to understand how we have been, and are being manipulated. Consumerism is not something that it natural to human nature, it is a created phenomenon. The four part BBC documentary "The Century of the Self" explores this creation. Part 1 is posted here. It is 58 minutes long. You can also watch it, in a slightly larger format, here.

From the BBC description of the documentary: "To many in both politics and business, the triumph of the self is the ultimate expression of democracy, where power has finally moved to the people. Certainly the people may feel they are in charge, but are they really? The Century of the Self tells the untold and sometimes controversial story of the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the United States. How was the all-consuming self created, by whom, and in whose interests?"

Will you vote this year?

2008-08-20T15:27:00.007-04:00

Then you need to read this book.

I will let the reviews speak for me.

International Herald Tribune

Harpers Magazine

New York Times

Read this book!

2008-08-19T09:05:00.003-04:00

Richard Lewontin's book "Biology as Ideology" should be mandatory reading for every biology student, and is highly recommended for anyone interested in understanding the media's portrayal of genetics. We are constantly being told that we are ruled by our genes, but this is just bunk. The relationship between genes, the environment, and so called epi-genetic factors is much more complex that the simplistic interpretations we are constantly being fed. Even seemingly well-informed reviews (follow the link, below) miss part of the point. It is not just a question of the interaction of our genes with the environment, but also of the interaction between the genes and their own products. These products, be they proteins or RNA, can persist in the cytoplasm for very long times. They are present in large doses in the egg cytoplasm and determine the events of early embryology much more that do the genes. The bottom line is that we ARE NOT our genes. We are MUCH more. Read Lewontin to find out about the REAL science of genetics, not the cartoon version the media feeds us.

Sustainability at UNCG?

2008-08-12T15:10:00.005-04:00

The results of the hard work of the Sustainability Committee at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro have not reached the athletic teams or food services. Box meals served at conferences now all contain a spiffy 12 oz. PLASTIC bottles of water. - But wait, what if you DO NOT WANT a plastic bottle of water? What if you want to drink one of the beverages served in bulk containers (out of a PLASTIC glass, but at least there is less plastic in these glasses)? Sorry, you are out of luck. You HAVE to take one of these neat PLASTIC bottles and ENJOY your "Distilled Pure 12. fl. oz. 355 ml." of water, thoughtfully imprinted with the Spartans label. Mine is currently sitting on my desk to remind me to use sustainable products. It seems to be doing its job!

Follow the link below to find out about the folks at LeBlue Corp., who make it possible for sustainability-minded citizens to purchase these neat products for use at their institutions. Get a set with your name on them and hand them out to friends. They will be ever so grateful.

Harmony of the Tao

2008-08-08T12:06:00.002-04:00

In the Harmony of the Tao,
the ski is clear and spacious,
the earth is solid and full,
all creatures flourish together,
content with the way they are,
endlessly repeating themselves,
endlessly renewed.

When man interferes with the Tao,
the sky becomes filthy,
the earth becomes depleted,
the equilibrium crumbles,
creatures become extinct.

The Master views the parts with compassion,
because he understands the whole.
His constant practice is humility.
He doesn't glitter like a jewel
but lets himself be shaped by the Tao,
as rugged and common as a stone.

Tao Te Ching - Stephen Mitchell Translation

Selling emission reduction credits - a good thing?

2008-08-05T16:31:00.003-04:00

So here's the thing, let's say you are a temple in India feeding over 30,000 people a day. You add solar panels to your roof and switch to solar cooking technology there by reducing your carbon footprint. But now the kicker. You sell the carbon credits that you generate to a European company that resells them to some polluting industry. They pay some money, and continue to pump carbon into the atmosphere. Sure, the temple gain some much-needed income but does the planet benefit? No. There is no net gain in carbon reduction.

Is this a problem? Yes, definitely.

Is this how the system is supposed to work? No. The money generated by carbon credits is supposed to be used to reduce carbon emissions. That is, it is supposed to allow conversion to solar power in conditions where this would not happen otherwise. So it comes down to this, was the conversion made possible by the energy credits, or was it, as the linked article indicates, a religious imperative that used the energy credits as an additional source of income? If we knew the answer to this question, we would know whether or not selling energy credits was a good thing in this case.

Is the weather really getting worse?

2008-07-26T12:56:00.003-04:00

Well, yes it is, but it a thing of averages. It is not that "today's" weather can be attributed directly to global warming, but that over all there are more really hot days, really cold days, and days with really a lot of rain. The frequency of these events has increased over the last ten years, and THAT IS related to global warming.

The linked story from Living on Earth gives more details.

Talking about God

2008-06-12T19:42:00.005-04:00

Gary Eberle's new book Dangerous Words: Talking about God in an Age of Fundamentalism is about the words we use to give meaning to our life and describe our experience of the transcendent. These words are "dangerous" in that they can so easily be misunderstood, especially in times like ours where our inner experiences are so influences by the stereotypes perpetuated by the media (and fundamentalist interpretations). The mere use of the word "God" can so easily be misunderstood when the only referents that are allowed are sense bound.

"The metaphors of God-language map a real area of human experience, and the test of their validity is whether they can successfully guide us through life along a path that is "holy," that is, whole, healthy, and meaningful to us and beneficial to others." p. 176

"To get a complete sense of God, just as to get a complete sense of any territory, it is best to have a number of maps. . . . Multiple images must be called upon because the territory we are mapping is infiniate and because all metaphors are limited." p. 177

This is one of the best books I have ever read. It should be a prerequisite for any discussion on Evolution and Religion.

How to grow up

2008-06-11T18:22:00.002-04:00

To wonder at beauty
To watch over truth
To esteem what is noble
To resolve on the good

It leads human beings
To aims in their lives
To right in their actions
To peace in their feelings
To light in their thinking

And teaches us trust
In the workings of God
In all that exists
In all the world
In depths of the soul

-Rudolf Steiner

Becoming Buddha

2008-06-05T16:16:00.003-04:00

Bob Thurman explains the experience of a Buddha when he feels the suffering of all sentient beings. Although he does not speak of it, this experience of the suffering of others is also known in western Christian circles, though I do not have a reference for it immediately available.

The beautiful scenes at the end of the video are a BMW commercial. Skip it.

#27 Adopt volontary simplicity

2008-05-13T16:18:00.002-04:00

Archbishop Celestino Migliore urged a crowd of 250 to adopt a life of "voluntary simplicity" in order to ease human impact on the environment.

What can you do to simplify your life?

Archbishop urges 'green' lifestyles

#26 Treat others the way you want to be treated

2008-05-07T15:59:00.001-04:00

# 25 Awaken to Zen Mind

2008-05-06T12:41:00.001-04:00

# 24 Learn from The Buddha

2008-04-14T15:49:00.001-04:00

Failure

2008-04-14T13:31:00.002-04:00

# 23 Join the Alliance for Climage Change

2008-04-11T11:11:00.003-04:00

This group was started by Al Gore (but do not let that you stop from joining), and is a great initiative to get people together to change the US government's "head in the sand" policies on global warming. Please consider joining.

We Can Solve It

What is on TV now?

2008-04-05T11:27:00.002-04:00

The benefits of TV

2008-04-05T11:17:00.004-04:00