Checking in from Checked Out

PPics will be coming soon!

Not much yet to say , as I've been fitting the bill of 'male, driver of nearly all the miles, etc. Bets and I were fortunate to have overstayed the Arctic air, and rain in our first motel room on Sunday. Spent the night in Wall (Drug!), South Dakotah staying out of the not quite freezing rain. The air is clean. Off to Wyoming!

-Jesse

Monday, 9.10.2007

Beth: After more than 2 weeks of visiting in the midwest, we finally drove away from our families and friends on Friday morning, fueled by a hearty breakfast made by Jesse's big sister, Tracy. We found a great campground that night in the northwestern reaches of Missouri, in a place called Big Lake, close to the Louis and Clark trail. Jesse made it all the way to the Badlands of South Dakota by Saturday night (he has driven all but 200 miles of this trip thus far, and i think we both like it that way), where we camped right inside the park and woke to moon-like scraggy peaks surrounding us, followed by a great hike through chalky white and red lands. I'm starting to be grateful that we're taking this trip through the U.S., because it reminds me of how much beauty and resource we are surrounded by, and how much I could love my country, if only I could agree with my countrymen. Jesse is committed to the blue highways (the back roads), and I am looking forward to the adventures of the coming weeks, as well as shaking off this feeling that i should be getting back to work sometime soon.
Here are some of my notes.

Notes on Missouri:

• Very small pickup trucks for sale. I mean tiny, with a little flatbed that goes up at an angle, like a toy. I want one. Mariah would, too.
• One can see just where a rainstorm might end in these flat lands, and drive that way to get out of it. It's nice to be able to modify a driving route based on trying to get out of a storm. I think it's like that in Illinois, as well.
• We got a little dog (pup) tent for Sugi, who tries and tries to get into our big tent whenever we're camping, from the time we leave our car. Thankfully she likes it, and we liked that it stopped her pacing and panting. Now we can all enjoy the outdoors in our own special ways.
  
• Mosquitos and mosquitos, but they don't bite as bad as in Ohio and Illinois. Carcasses all over the inside ceiling of the van after one night of battles.
• Crossed the Missouri river several times. How did that happen? I'm supposed to be the navigator, but I don't always do so well.
  
• Tales of okie noodling (look for the informative documentary at your local library!), as well as huge japanese carp jumping from Big Lake, knocking water skiers from their sport. We heard some heavy splashing at dusk and dawn - maybe it's not just a myth.
• Our first official night camping in the van. We should have chosen the tent because the mosquitos forced us to keep the windows closed and we about suffocated.
  

Notes, Nebraska:

• Government corn.
• Cranes flying like a silver school of fish overhead, while birds of prey tried to tear one from the group. We stopped to watch.
• Nebraska is like a little Idaho, with the rolling hills and green everywhere. Beautiful - I never knew.

South Dakota:

• Feels like we're in the clouds - they are so close we could touch them. as within the clouds, it has become very cold all of a sudden.
• Badlands and indian territory. Tons of poverty in this moonscape.
  
• I failed to capture any of the beauty of this state on film. Alas.
  

THIS IS OUR TRAVEL BLOG

This blog of Jesse's echos so many of our sentiments, in why we are leaving the U.S., in the issues that have had impact on us over the years, in the inspirations that have and do buoy us on our way. Thus, we will henceforth log our travel updates in this place, to share with all our friends and families. Feel free to read into the archives for some of our history, over which Jesse has diligently kept vigil for the past few years.

So true

“It needs to hurt like hell before you can have an intelligent discussion,” said David Shields, a Mexico City energy analyst who has written a book about Pemex.

From the NYT, OIL.

Pond

Scum ?

Beep beep

Beep beep

What a Ride

Over the Levee and through the ringer

The following are my favorite excerpts from Thomas Homer-Dixon's The Upside of Down.

Conventional economics is the dominant intellectual rationalization of today’s world order. As we’ve overextended the growth phase of our global adaptive cycle, this rationalization has become relentlessly more complex and rigid and progressively less tenable. Breakdown will, all at once, discredit this rationalization and create intellectual space for new ideas to flourish. But this space will be brutally competitive. We can boost the chances that humane alternatives will thrive by working them out in detail and disseminating them as widely as possible beforehand.

We all ask these questions when we’re young, till the obvious discomfort of adults around us makes us stop…Because we’re reluctant or unable to talk about moral or existential values—and these values remain largely unexplored—unitarian values fill the void. This is one reason why consumerism has developed such a firm grip on so many of us in the West. Without a coherent notion of what will give our lives meaning, we try to satisfy our need for meaning by buying ever more stuff. In the process, the mental muscle that allows us to think and talk about values in complex and sophisticated ways atrophies. Reduced to walking appetites, we lose resilience. We become hollow people with no character, substance, or core—like eggshells that can be shattered with one sharp shock.

(I)t’s first necessary to recognize growths role in our modern economies. We take the value of constant growth for granted in our day-to-day discussions of economic matters-in our newspapers and business magazines and in political discussions. That growth is a good thing is an unchallenged, almost sacrosanct assumption. One might even say we’re collectively fixated on maintaining growth. But this is a rather curious fixation because beyond a certain point-a point many of us passed long ago-the higher incomes that growth produces apparently don’t make us any happier.

When psychologists have questioned people over the years about how happy they are, they’ve found that people in rich countries are on average no happier that people were in the 1970’s are even the 1950’s. During the intervening decades we’ve become far richer. In the United States, personal income (in constant 1995 dollars) more than doubled between 1957 and 1998. But over this period the number of people who said they were “very happy” actually declined slightly. Notes the American psychologist David Myers, “We are twice as rich and no happier”. And when we look at happiness around the world, we find that happiness is correlated with income up to about $10,000 to $13,000 per person annually, but beyond this threshold the correlation vanishes.

Money, in economists’ terminology, produces “diminishing return” of happiness. Once our basic material needs are satisfied, it turns out, we don’t need more money to be happy, but we do need loving families, supportive social relationships, absorption in satisfying activity, a sense of purpose in our lives, novelty, and security from catastrophic threats to our income and health.

So, if above a relatively modest threshold, greater material wealth doesn’t make us much happier, why do those of us who are already well off in rich countries work hard to get more of it? Psychologists and behavioral economists have offered a range of answers to this question. Some say we’re stuck on a “hedonic treadmill”: our aspirations tend to exceed our income, and as our income rises, our aspirations rise in lockstep. Others stress that our happiness is partly a result of our relative social status because human beings naturally compare themselves with other people. We’re all trying to keep up with Mr. Jones next door. If our yardstick of comparison is income, a higher income makes us happier only if it goes up relative to Jones’s income. But because Jones is working as hard as we are, nobody gets ahead, and no one feels any happier. We are essentially in an unwinnable income race with other people…

In essence, then, the logical underpinning our economies works like this: if we’re discontented with what we have, we buy stuff: if we buy enough stuff, the economy grows; if the economy grows enough, technologically displace workers can find new jobs, there will be enough economic demand to keep the economy humming and to prevent wrenching political conflict. Modern capitalism’s stability-and increasingly globalism’s stability-requires the cultivation of material discontent, endlessly rising personal consumption, and the steady economic growth this consumption generates…Our economic role in this culture of consumerism is to be little more than walking appetites that serve the function of maintaining our economies throughput. Our psychological state is comparable to that of drug addicts needing a fix: buying things doesn’t really make us happy, except perhaps for a moment after the purchase. But we do it over and over anyway.

Why? There are many reasons. But a central and often overlooked one, I think, is that consumerism helps anesthetize us against the dread produced by empty lives-lives that modern capitalism and consumerism have themselves helped empty of meaning….(T)he flip side of addiction is denial. Our addiction to growth…can only be sustained if we deny growth’s often-negative effects. But these effects are real and can be deeply personal. They likely include rich societies’ epidemic of eating disorders like obesity, anorexia, and bulimia, and their soaring rates of clinical depression….Depending on how it’s measured, the illness has become three to ten times more common in the past fifty years.

(I)n capitalist democracy, playing by the rules means not starting fights over big issues like our society’s highly skewed distribution of wealth and power. Instead, it means focusing on achieving short-term material gains-such as bettering our contracts with our employers. Put simply, our economic elites have learned (20^th C)…to create a system of incentives, and a dynamic of economic growth, that diverts political conflict into manageable, largely nonpolitical channels. As long as the system delivers the goods…a rising material standard of living….no one is really motivated to challenge its foundations.

(A)bout 40 percent of the world’s population lacks sufficient water for basic sanitation and hygiene, and nearly one out of every five people has not enough to drink….Nearly half the world’s major fish stocks are now fished to their maximum limit, about 30 percent are overfished, and many have collapsed.

All of us, not just ancient astronomers or boneheaded academics, are highly conservative when it comes to our theories of reality. We don’t relinquish our core assumptions until the contrary evidence-what philosophers of science call “anomalous data”-is overwhelmingly abundant and relentlessly obvious. And often such conservatism is a good thing…..(b)ut sometimes we take this conservatism to extremes, and the result is the kind of cycles-within-cycles intellectual neuroticism that we see in Santucci’s great sphere. The contraption speaks of desperation….

One thing was clear to me now….our values must be compatible with the exigencies of the natural world in and depend on…The endless material growth of our economies is fundamentally inconsistent with the physical facts of life. Period. End of story. And a value system that makes endless growth the primary source of our social stability and spiritual well-being will destroy us.

We need a new approach to the great challenges we are confronting. Efforts at management are often important, even essential, but sometimes they aren’t going to give us a satisfactory solution. The alternative approach I advocate requires us to adapt what I’ve termed a prospective mind. We need to be comfortable with constant change, radical surprise, and even breakdown, because these are now the inevitable features of our world, and we must constantly anticipate a wide variety of futures. With a prospective mind we’ll be better able to turn surprise and breakdown, when they happen, to our advantage. In other words, we’ll be better able to achieve what I call catagenisis- the creative renewal of our technologies, institutions and societies in the aftermath of breakdown.

We have to do other things too, and advance planning for breakdown is undoubtedly the most important…In vigorous, wide-ranging, yet disciplined conversation among ourselves, we can develop scenarios of what kinds of breakdowns could occur. In this conversation, we shouldn’t be afraid to think “outside the box”—to try to imagine the unimaginable—because in a non-linear world under great pressure, we’re certain to make wrong predictions if we just extrapolate from current trends.

Moments of contingency are thus easily exploited for good or ill. Fear, hope, and greed are unleashed at the same time that social reality becomes fluid. This means that people’s motivation to change their circumstances soars just as their opportunities to accomplish change multiply. Whether the outcome of this powerful confluence is turmoil or renewal hinges-in large measure-on how the situation is framed.

People will want assurance. They will want an explanation of the disorder that has engulfed them.-an explanation that makes their world seem, once more, coherent and predictable, if not safe. Ruthless leaders can satisfy these desires and build their political power by prying open existing cleavages between ethnic and religious groups , classes, races, nations or cultures. First they define what it means to be a good person and in so doing identify the members of the we group. Then they define and identify the bad people who are members of the they group….Indeed, large numbers of people are already primed to see the world in terms of a Manichean division into good and evil…..In this stormy world, fundamentalist creeds can seem to provide a firm anchor. All such creeds claim privileged access to absolute truth, and all establish what’s right and wrong, provide strict rules of behavior, and identify friends and enemies. And because that truth comes from revelation not research, creeds justify the suspension of reason and deliberation—a kind of psychological denial that may be a balm for the bewildered but that’s truly an inept response to an ever more complex reality.

(Resilience) Events don’t have to turn out this way, because we really do have some ability to choose our future. But we have to recognize what kind of forces we’re up against, we have to have courage, and we have to be smart—not only at the time of the social earthquake and the moment of contingency that follows but also well in advance. Specifically, if we’re going to have the best chance of following a different and positive path, we must take four actions. First, we must reduce as much as we can the force of the underlying tectonic stresses in order to lower the risk of synchronous failure—that is, of catastrophic collapse that cascades across boundaries between technological, social and ecological systems. Second, we need to cultivate a prospective mind so we can better cope with surprise. Third, we must boost the overall resilience between critical systems like our energy and food supply networks And fourth, we need to prepare to turn breakdown to our advantage when it happens, because it will….Alas, humankind’s track record when it comes to proactive policy, especially in response to slow-creep problems, doesn’t inspire much confidence…Today, most of us are simply too deep in denial, and our political and economic systems are too hobbled by powerful vested interest for real change to happen in the absence of a sharp push or shock from outside. With colossal effort by the relatively small numbers of people today engaged in trying to do something about these problems, and perhaps with a good deal of luck..*&$(….so we’d better get ready for real social earthquakes.

This is where cultivating the prospective mind comes in…We can’t possibly flourish in a future filled with sharp nonlinearities and threshold effects—and somewhat paradoxically, we can’t hope to preserve at least some of what we hold dear—unless we’re comfortable with change, surprise and the essential transience of things, and unless we’re open to radically new ways of thinking about our world and about the way we should live our lives. We need to exercise our imaginations so that we can challenge the unchallengeable and conceive the inconceivable. , denying what’s happening around us, and refusing to countenance anything more than incremental adjustments to our course are just about the worst things we can do. These behaviors increase our rigidity and dangerously extend the growth phase of our adaptive cycle…

Of course, many of these recommendations fly in the face of the ideology of today’s globalized capitalism. In it’s most dogmatic formulation, this ideology says that larger scale, faster growth, less government, and more efficiency, connectivity and speed are always better. Slack is always waste. So resilience—even as an idea, let alone as a goal of public policy—isn’t found…..And because our leaders hardly ever think about resilience, , we keep doing things that make our lives progressively less resilient—we pile on more debt, build tract housing over our finest cropland, develop addictions to distant sources of energy, become so specialized that we can’t take care of ourselves when everyday technologies fail, and fill every nook and cranny of our days with so much junk information and pointless running around that we don’t have time to reflect on what we’re doing or where we’re going.

Wicked/Weird

http://blogs.zdnet.com/social/?p=91


It was only a matter of time really but, still, weird.

Kids in Nature

Treehuggers?

Want the best

for your Kids?

Call your travel agent! Baddum-cha!

And/Or learn to sail

Joni Mitchell + Ballet + Alberta (?)

"If I had a heart/I’d cry.” It is one of the most haunting melodies she has ever written.

“My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species,” she said. “I can’t cry about it. In a way I’m inoculated. I’ve suffered this pain for so long. We were expelled from Eden. What keeps us out of Eden?” She thought about this for a moment before riffing on a Dylan line: “I tried to tell everybody, but I could not get it across.”

“Well, I’m being more specific now,” she allowed. “The West has packed the whole world on a runaway train. We are on the road to extincting ourselves as a species. That’s what I meant when I said that we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

Ben's Pool Epiphany

Even the smarvelous Ben Stein has the time to have thoughts about the wider meanings...

Bringing It All Back Home

Warming: "People in Latin America were most worried while U.S. citizens were least concerned"

And our thoughtful neighbors in the North Country?
Turns out they feel more reasonable than Americans, too.

An avalanche of evidence greeted with a smug shrug.
What the hell gives?!?!?

More Hogwash from a group calling themselves Environmental Defense

• Rank of 2006 as hottest year on record in the continental United States.

• Rank of America as top global warming polluter, emitting almost as much as the European Union, Russia and Japan combined.

• Percent increase of America's carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels since 1990.

• Percent increase of America's carbon dioxide emissions forecasted by 2020 if we do not cap pollution.

• Percent decrease in America's global warming pollution required by 2050 to prevent the worst consequences of global warming.

• Number of days by which the U.S. fire season has increased over the past 20 years - tied closely to increased temperatures and earlier snowmelt.

• Number of people who could be displaced globally by extreme droughts, sea level rise and flooding by 2080.

• Number of U.S. mayors (representing 55 million Americans) who have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement pledging to meet or beat Kyoto goals in their communities.

• Number of federal bills passed by Congress to set a mandatory, economy-wide cap on America's global warming pollution.

• Number of times President Bush has mentioned "global warming" or "climate change" in his previous State of the Union speeches.

Hearts and Minds

“Suddenly we forgot that he was a dictator and that he killed thousands of people,” said Roula Haddad, 33, a Lebanese Christian. “All our hatred for him suddenly turned into sympathy, sympathy with someone who was treated unjustly by an occupation force and its collaborators.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06arabs.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

from Alternet

Conspiracy Fact: lowest gas prices of 2006 during election week …
January 5, 2007.
Joshua Holland: Just following up.

Now that we have the average gas prices for the final week of 2006 it's official: the lowest prices of the year came during the week of the midterms.
More specifically, in the thirteen short weeks between the year's high of $3.083 per gallon -- during the week of August 8 -- and Election Day, average gas prices dropped by almost 80 cents per gallon -- 26 percent -- and then they did a one-eighty the very next week and crept back up in all but one of the six weeks that followed that. Altogether they rose 14.1 cents, or a bit more than 6 percent, after the election.

Letter to America

-in the Washington Post:

America's Red Ink
Sunday, December 24, 2006; Page B06
The largest employer in the world announced on Dec. 15 that it lost about $450 billion in fiscal 2006. Its auditor found that its financial statements were unreliable and that its controls were inadequate for the 10th straight year. On top of that, the entity's total liabilities and unfunded commitments rose to about $50 trillion, up from $20 trillion in just six years.
If this announcement related to a private company, the news would have been on the front page of major newspapers. Unfortunately, such was not the case -- even though the entity is the U.S. government.
To put the figures in perspective, $50 trillion is $440,000 per American household and is more than nine times as much as the median household income.
The only way elected officials will be able to make the tough choices necessary to put our nation on a more prudent and sustainable long-term fiscal path is if opinion leaders state the facts and speak the truth to the American people.
The Government Accountability Office is working with the Concord Coalition, the Brookings Institution, the Heritage Foundation and others to help educate the public about the facts in a professional, nonpartisan way. We hope the media and other opinion leaders do their part to save the future for our children and grandchildren.
DAVID M. WALKER
Comptroller General of the United States
Government Accountability Office

Intro

to climate

Change in the Weather

Gaia scientist Lovelock predicts planetary wipeout

LONDON (Reuters) - The earth has a fever that could boost temperatures by 8 degrees Celsius making large parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of peoples' lives, a controversial climate scientist said on Tuesday.

James Lovelock, who angered climate scientists with his Gaia theory of a living planet said a traumatized earth might only be able to support less than a tenth of it's 6 billion people.

"We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don't see the species dying out," he told a news conference. "A hot earth couldn't support much over 500 million."

"Almost all of the systems that have been looked at are in positive feedback ... and soon those effects will be larger than any of the effects of carbon dioxide emissions from industry and so on around the world," he added.

Scientists say that global warming due to carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels for power and transport could boost average temperatures by up to 6C by the end of the century causing floods, famines and violent storms.

But they also say that tough action now to cut carbon emissions could stop atmospheric concentrations of CO2 hitting 450 parts per million -- equivalent to a temperature rise of 2C from pre-industrial levels -- and save the planet.

Lovelock adopted the name Gaia, the Greek mother earth goddess, in the 1960s to apply to his then revolutionary theory that the earth functions as a single, self-sustaining organism. His theory is now widely accepted.

"In short, we have lost our minds."

the concept of free trade practiced by the United States is a myth? Stranger things!

Bushie a Victim of his own Certitude

the Exile

Feelin' Cobby?

Greening Up

the Straight Dope and the latest good news

Having

Lost Count...

Honey

Bee

Debt Again

Done different?

Proud

to be an American, where at least I have the 'right' to not know this
WARNING: It is not sanitized, Disney-fied, or Flomax-ed for your enjoyment. It is the graphic real deal.
Some time in the last week I found myself disgusted at the documentation (irony alert--I don't remember where--it could have been satellite TV or perhaps "Why We Fight", which I recommend), the living example of fellow Americans working in the arms industry. Especially a forty-something highly educated and intellegent Vietnamese-American who'd escaped Saigon as an adolescent in 1975. She worked for one of the giants making well, things explode better. She was excellent in her field.
Why?
Aside, the political not-doing of this Administration as regards Israel. Why would someone do this 'for a living'?!?! Here in America where we define ourselves from as much. Why?

America thinks (myth) of itself as many things. One of our realities is as the largest producer of arms and weapons in the world. From the bullet to the gun to the shell to the tank to the jet to the bomb.
Israel is raining our 'product' on Palestine right now. God bless us, every one.

Homeland

Security?!?

Whose National Guard?

We are the World
Mebbe they could hire Mexicans...

Come back some other day

America says: Go Away

100

miles

Smarter Lawns

Logic?!?

No Shit!

Especially for cyclists...

Before it was "Corrected"(scrubbed), this was the original (far more interesting) story

Win!-

Win?

Smell the Roses

And the fresh air. $^*&( A!

Er, but
'Rising CO2 levels not as good for crops as thought'

Baby Steps: Fertilizer

Nitrogen

the Bus Stop of Life

He's a humble and wise sharer. When I was 13 or so I stumbled across a copy of his collection of WWII conversations, The Good War. I ate it, and then his book on Race, up!
Studs Terkel (93!) on Our National Amnesia

This message

has been brought to you by fish

Brewin' Views: Mad or Dead [inside]?

Office workers unite! Teamwork, you want?!?

On the Western Skyline

As I read in Michael Pollan's An Omnivore's Dilemma, one contributor to global warming is actually flatulance. No, not your(s) truly. You see, cattle have eaten grass for eons, yet in our wisdom we currently forcefeed corn (and hormones, antibiotics) into a singularly fantastical digestive system that cannot handle it. One outcome is that the average cow lasts less than eighteen months fattening for slaughter, no more (most are nursed there, unhealthy). The other is that they get tremendously bloated, and the 'outcome' of this is methane. Tons of it. Diligent scientists have been working for decades to solve the problem technologically, (all the while) ignoring that it is our addiction to corn (and beef) that is the problem.

Round and round and round we go (a wall to hem us in, It won't be long...)

262 times the pay of the average worker, is the CEO's pay. Jon Stewart recently pointed out that Congress' rejection of the recent raise of (the federal) minimum wage is overshadowed by the fact that IN NINE YEARS THEY HAVE RAISED THEIR OWN PAY NINE TIMES. And you know $5.15 ought to be enough to raise a family in our great country.

Happy Summer! Got Air?

Op-ed

Dancing with Dinosaurs

Nuff to worry?

Edited out of An Inconvenient Truth?
This is an area where there is little 'known'--not a lot of research or even scientific thought. For obvious reasons (culturally speaking), it lies in the worst-case-scenario bin. Might make Hollywoods wolves in Manhattan a reality...

Word on the street

Commencements, NYT

David McCullough,Historian, Bates College
However little television you watch, watch less. Read. Read for pleasure. Read for happiness.

To Iraq
The Constitution. 'Give them ours. It was written by a lot of smart guys, worked well for 200 years — and we're not using it any more.'
Love, America
--Jay Leno

To: Young Americans
Advice given by the former C.I.A. director Porter J. Goss the day after his dismissal last month.
The Toledo Blade reported that Mr. Goss told graduates at Tiffin University in Ohio: "If this were a graduating class of C.I.A. case officers, my advice would be short and to the point: Admit nothing, deny everything and make counteraccusations."

--From Your Conservative Leaders

Weekend Digest: Truth Serum. What can I say? I help people find something to read!

What's Unsettling, Bamboozling, Disconcerting, Lightweight and Unpredictable? ;)

Probiotics

Looking Ahead: De-Salinization

Care Bears, all grown up?

We got work to do. Even if it takes an Olympics, China facing the facts. Excellent report on the country of over a billion. Not any easier for no. 2...
We could use some 'slapping ourselves on the face'. The report is in, edits finished(don't ask the White House), the well is running dry and there's a red house over yonder. Drink up, America. While the water still costs less than wine(but more than gas!).
Excerpt:" The State of the Rockies 2006 Report Card made headlines because its modeling strongly shows that with more greenhouse gases, linked to the burning of fossil fuels, pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, precipitation patterns and temperatures will dramatically change. The Northern Plains of Montana is expected to experience the most extreme rise in average annual temperature between 1976 and the year 2085, climbing about 6.5 degrees CELSIUS." 43.7f
Your whats for Dinner

Seen an Inconvenient Truth yet? Quibbles:(George) Will he?

Iraq: Cost of a Life

Energy Chessboard Informative, more so than American press. I guess the world press is also responsible for mainstreaming phrases such as "ripping into" and "slamming".

Speaking of which, this country needs tougher penalties for 'mowing down' bicycle riders. R.I.P.
Ashes to ashes.
Don't make me take my pants off.

News and Views

Cellars well When USA today does 'a special', the party may soon be over. Check out the map, and see the 5o year forecast for your neighborhood. Clammy yet?

Corporate Welfare awash, ye maties!

An interview with Michael Pollan author of The Omnivore'e Dilemma and the Botany of Desire

Your Town! Sustainability Rankings

the Genghis in You

Pretty cool! History is EvrYwhere!

On the Couch

One of my guilty pleasures of this century has been 'The Sopranos'. Most of all, a half dozen seasons (a relationship!) of one paricular set of scenes--more than all the other gummahs, violence, and family schtuff. Just a man and his therapist.

Listen. She rocks anyhoo....

Britain Still Has a Free Press

And they can report on Global Sea Changes

Oops, truth out!

Oops!

Gotta be somebody left in the country who doesn't believe...

Can I buy you a beer?

http://alternet.org/drugreporter/36942/

Call him what you want

I'll call him Al

juice

oil

Depends on your definition of 'bad'. Really, I don't think Darth Vader is any more real...

SPIN [Kontrol]

HotPlating

Ever After, April

Ever ever-ever?

Yay May

On Prospect, On Tompkins, On L(onger!) S(pring!) D(ays)

SnorkleNow

Before Daddy takes our flippers away

Bananas

None for anyone. Got your attention?

B-b-b-b-bad

Badness only skin deep?
Now here's any area I have convictions forming. Who hell wants the state, or any private corporation to have divinity over their remains?
Discuss.

Ride On

Who knows, this article may be a little fluffy. But there ain't nothing fluffy about whatever might cause one to shed 50 or 60 pounds. And feel better.

Wolf in Sheeps Clothing?

FOX in the Henhouse

Bigger Melons = ?

wangoncrunk.

Spike TV?

Tax Breaks and Benjamins, Just Go Away

Oops, if Rush and Brit Hume are pissed....

Wise Men Speak:
David Winston, a Republican pollster who advises the Senate Republican leadership, called the rebate an intuitive way to show voters that Republicans were on their side. "It is like putting the American family budget ahead of oil company profits," Mr. Winston said. "How do you help the American families out? Well, give them some money."

this your brain on EGO, any questions?

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws?mode=PF

Don't Mess wit' Texas

Ping

Pong

Pay

CEO vs Yours

Hey Buddy,

Wanna buy a

What's the value

of a songbird, a wave, a tree?

Pow

In 2004, guns killed:
56 people in Australia
184 people in Canada
73 people in England and Wales
5 people in New Zealand
37 people in Sweden
and
11,344 people in the United States.
Yes, that's right: in the United States the firearm homicide rate was thirty to forty times the firearm homicide rate of the other five countries, which, unsurprisingly, have significantly stronger gun-control policies than the United States.
As an example, in World Report on Violence and Health (2004), the World Health Organization stated that more than 90% all violence-related deaths occur in poorer countries. Yet the United States continues to remain in the bottom of the heap for both number of homicides and overall homicide rates.
-from The Brady Report, anti-gun Lobby

Vivir es Crecer

No, it's not 'Seeing is believing' (Ver es Creer), but it is Espanol...
On Saturday, I celebrated Earth Day by passing the CLEP test in Spanish. Testing out in this will facilitate my graduation in June with a Bachelor of Arts. There aren't many out there who've lived as long as I've been in school, but to those who never gave up on me I salute and offer gracious thanks. Most of all for the support of my mother Sandra, my wife Betsy, Jacqui Rickman and Tom Sheridan. Your love is priceless.
I'm not sure if anyone reads this blog anymore--perhaps you withdrew for fear of holding my studies back. That excuse now has expired. I still hope for your participation!!
And I especially look forward to calling, writing, talking, playing and being with many of you in the coming year. Living is Growth!
Til we meet again,
Jesse

I just love the headline...

"Enron Founder to Say He's Optimistic, Not Dishonest"

Anyone seen The Smartest Guys in the Room ?!?!
It gets to the heart (?) of what is up in this country.
Just another opinion
-J

Bombs Away ?

April 24, 2006
Op-Ed Contributor
Bombs Away
By MAX M. KAMPELMAN
In my lifetime, I have witnessed two successful titanic struggles by civilized society against totalitarian movements, those against Nazi fascism and Soviet communism. As an arms control negotiator for Ronald Reagan, I had the privilege of playing a role — a small role — in the second of these triumphs.
Yet, at the age of 85, I have never been more worried about the future for my children and grandchildren than I am today. The number of countries possessing nuclear arms is increasing, and terrorists are poised to master nuclear technology with the objective of using those deadly arms against us.
The United States must face this reality head on and undertake decisive steps to prevent catastrophe. Only we can exercise the constructive leadership necessary to address the nuclear threat.
Unfortunately, the goal of globally eliminating all weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, chemical and biological arms — is today not an integral part of American foreign policy; it needs to be put back at the top of our agenda.
Of course, there will be those who will argue against this bold vision. To these people I would say that there were plenty who argued against it when it was articulated by Mr. Reagan during his presidency.
I vividly recall a White House national security meeting in December 1985, at which the president reported on his first "get acquainted" summit in Geneva with President Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union the previous month.
Sitting in the situation room, the president began by saying: "Maggie was right. We can do business with this man." His reference to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher prompted nods of assent. Then, in a remarkably matter-of-fact tone, he reported that he had suggested to Mr. Gorbachev that their negotiations could possibly lead to the United States and the Soviet Union eliminating all their nuclear weapons.
When the president finished with his report, I saw uniform consternation around that White House table. The concern was deep, with a number of those present — from the secretary of defense to the head of central intelligence to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — warning that our nuclear missiles were indispensable. The president listened carefully and politely without responding.
In fact, we did not learn where he stood until October 1986, at his next summit meeting with Mr. Gorbachev, which took place in Reykjavik, Iceland. There, in a stout waterfront house, he repeated to Mr. Gorbachev his proposal for the abolition of all nuclear weapons. Though no agreement was reached, the statement had been made.
More remarkably, it had been made by someone who understood the importance of nuclear deterrence.
In March 1985, before Reagan's first meeting with Mr. Gorbachev, I received a telephone call on a Friday from the president's chief legislative strategist telling me that the administration's request for additional MX missiles was facing defeat in the House of Representatives, and that the president wanted me to return from Geneva (where I was posted as his arms negotiator) for a brief visit. The hope was that I might be able to persuade some of the Democrats to support the appropriation.
I was not and never have been a lobbyist, but I agreed to return to Washington. I wanted my first meeting to be with the speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, who, I was informed, was the leader of the opposition to the appropriation.
So there I was on Monday morning in O'Neill's private office. I briefed the speaker on the state of negotiations with the Soviets. I made the point that I too would like to live in a world without MX missiles, but that it was dangerous for us unilaterally to reduce our numbers without receiving reciprocal reductions from the Soviets. I then proceeded with my round of talks on the Hill.
At the end of the day, I met alone with the president and told him that O'Neill said we were about 30 votes short. I told the president of my conversation with the speaker and shared with him my sense that O'Neill was quietly helping us, suggesting to his fellow Democrats that he would not be unhappy if they voted against his amendment.
Without a moment's hesitation, the president telephoned O'Neill, and I had the privilege of hearing one side of this conversation between two tough Irishmen, cussing each other out, but obviously friendly and respectful.
I recall that the president's first words went something like this: "Max tells me that you may really be a patriot. It's about time!" Suffice it to say that soon after I returned to Geneva I learned that the House had authorized the MX missiles.
THERE is a moral to these stories: you can be an idealist and a realist at the same time. What is missing today from American foreign policy is a willingness to hold these two thoughts simultaneously, to find a way to move from what "is" — a world with a risk of increasing global disaster — to what "ought" to be, a peaceful, civilized world free of weapons of mass destruction.
The "ought" is an integral part of the political process. Our founding fathers proclaimed the "ought" of American democracy in the Declaration of Independence at a time when we had slavery, property qualifications for voting and second-class citizenship for women.
Yet we steadily moved the undesirable "is" of our society ever closer to the "ought" and thereby strengthened our democracy. When President Gerald Ford signed the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, he was criticized for entering into a process initiated by the Soviet Union. But the agreement reflected a series of humanitarian "oughts," and over the course of the next 10 years, the Soviets were forced by our European friends and us to live up to those "oughts" if they were to attain international legitimacy.
An appreciation of the awesome power of the "ought" should lead our government to embrace the goal of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.
To this end, President Bush should consult with our allies, appear before the United Nations General Assembly and call for a resolution embracing the objective of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.
He should make clear that we are prepared to eliminate our nuclear weapons if the Security Council develops an effective regime to guarantee total conformity with a universal commitment to eliminate all nuclear arms and reaffirm the existing conventions covering chemical and biological weapons.
The council should be assigned the task of establishing effective political and technical procedures for achieving this goal, including both stringent verification and severe penalties to prevent cheating.
I am under no illusion that this will be easy. That said, the United States would bring to this endeavor decades of relevant experience, new technologies and the urgency of self-preservation. The necessary technical solutions can be devised. Now, as I can imagine President Reagan saying, let us summon the will.

Max M. Kampelman headed the United States delegation to the negotiations on nuclear and space arms in Geneva from 1985 to 1989.

On

Target
OmiGod! Is nothing sacred! What's left?!?!
Exactly.
Take a look at the alternatives. What is left in your neighboorhood?
Spend there, before choice becomes a thing of the past.

In the interest of disclosure, I have a Target habit to change. It's never too late!

Earth Day: Love Your Mother (Disclaimer: 'Vanity Fair' aptly named) Now Do Good

http://worldcitizensguide.org/index2.html
http://buyblue.org/
http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/articles/060417fege09
Best of the Best: Fifty Ways to Help Save the Planet
1. LIGHTBULBS MATTER Switch from traditional incandescent lightbulbs to compact fluorescent lightbulbs (C.F.L.). If every American household replaced one regular lightbulb with a C.F.L., the pollution reduction would be equivalent to removing one million cars from the road. A 30-watt C.F.L. produces about as much light as an ordinary 100-watt bulb. Although the initial price is higher, C.F.L.'s can last 12 times as long. C.F.L.'s are available at most home-improvement stores and at bulbs.com.
2. DITCH PLASTIC BAGS Californians Against Waste (cawrecycles.org), a nonprofit environmental advocacy group, estimates that Americans use 84 billion plastic bags annually, a considerable contribution to the 500 billion to one trillion used worldwide. Made from polyethylene, plastic bags are not biodegradable and are making their way into our oceans and waterways. According to recent studies, the oceans are full of tiny fragments of plastic that are beginning to work their way up the food chain. Invest in stronger, re-usable bags, and avoid plastic bags whenever possible.
4. FORGET PRE-HEATING Ignore cookbooks! It is usually unnecessary to pre-heat your oven before cooking, except when baking bread or pastries. Just turn on the oven at the same time you put the dish in. During cooking, rather than opening the oven door to check on your food, just look at it through the oven window. Why? Opening the oven door results in a significant loss of energy.
7. HANG UP YOUR DRYER It goes without saying—clothes dryers are huge energy gluttons. Hints to reduce energy use: Clean the lint filter after each load (improves air circulation). Use the cool-down cycle (allows clothes to finish drying from the residual heat inside). Better yet, abandon your dryer and buy some drying racks, if you don't have a clothesline. Generally, clothes dry overnight.
9. GREEN PAINT Most paint is made from petrochemicals, and its manufacturing process can create 10 times its own weight in toxic waste. It also releases volatile organic compounds (V.O.C.'s) that threaten public health. (V.O.C.'s are solvents that rapidly evaporate, allowing paint to dry quickly.) They cause photochemical reactions in the atmosphere, leading to ground-level smog that can cause eye and skin irritation, lung and breathing problems, headaches, nausea, and nervous-system and kidney damage. The best alternative? Natural paints. Manufactured using plant oils, natural paints pose far fewer health risks, are breathable, and in some cases are 100 percent biodegradable. Remember: Never throw your paint away. Check out Earth 911's "Paint Wise" section for re-use programs in your community; earth911.org.
13. FOOD MILES MATTER Food is traveling farther than ever. Once upon a time people ate seasonally—artichokes in the winter, cherries in June. Now you can buy most fruits and vegetables practically year-round. The average American meal contains ingredients produced in at least five other countries. The transportation of food and agricultural products constitutes more than 20 percent of total commodity transport within the U.S. To help reduce CO2 emissions (released from trucks, airplanes, and cargo ships), it's best to buy food that's in season, organic, and grown locally. Go to ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets to find the farmers' market nearest you.
24. AVOID DISPOSABLE GOODS Institute a mug policy in your office. Americans throw away some 25 billion polystyrene cups every year, most of which end up in landfills. Refill your water bottles once or twice, and make your coffee in a ceramic mug. If you bring in cutlery from home, you will also cut down on those pesky plastic forks, knives, and spoons.
25. GROW YOUR OWN GARDEN In 1826, J. C. Loudon wrote in An Encyclopaedia of Gardening, "For all things produced in a garden, whether salads or fruits, a poor man that has one of his own will eat better than a rich man that has none." To start a vegetable garden costs nothing but a few packs of seeds and rudimentary garden implements, and it saves enormous amounts of money, to say nothing of the food miles and the packaging that go into supplying you with fresh fruits and vegetables. Of course, a vegetable garden is only productive for part of the year, but it is amazing how long that growing season lasts and how much you can produce from one small patch.
26. BUY RECYCLED PRODUCTS There has to be a market for products made with recycled goods. Support this movement by purchasing recycled goods—you will save virgin materials, conserve energy, and reduce landfill waste. Recycled paper products include toilet paper (which is no longer scratchy, like it used to be), copy paper, paper towels, and tissues. Look for garbage bags and bin liners labeled "recycled plastic," and buy recycled toner cartridges for your fax machines and printers.
27. PLANE BETTER Air travel is currently responsible for 3.5 percent of the global-warming gases from all human activity and is growing fast. Cargo transport by air is increasing by about 7 percent annually and passenger air travel is up in the last few years by between 4 and 7 percent. The impact of air travel is enormous; a round-trip between New York and Los Angeles emits one ton of CO2 per passenger. (To determine CO2 emissions for your next flight, go to co2.org.) Try to limit the number of flights you take. If you're traveling within a country, why not take a train? (Air travel releases at least three times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than rail travel does.) If you're planning a business trip, consider whether a video linkup or a conference call will suffice.
30. STANDBY NO LONGER Electricity "leaks" are no laughing matter. Televisions, video and DVD players, cable boxes, and other electronic equipment found in nearly every American home are wasting huge amounts of energy. When these devices are left on standby (the equivalent of "sleep" mode for computers) they use about 40 percent of their full running power. Every year, the energy wasted in this way is the equivalent of the annual output of 26 power plants. To avoid the drain of these "energy vampires," plug them into a power strip and turn it off when they are not in use.
31. TURN OFF YOUR CHARGERS Most cell-phone chargers continue to draw electricity even when the phone isn't plugged into it. If your cell-phone charger averages five watts per hour and is plugged in all the time, that means a total of more than 40 kilowatt-hours every year, or about 93 pounds of CO2. The same problem applies to your other electronic equipment—your laptop, iPod, digital camera, and BlackBerry. Unplug all your chargers when they are not in use.
32. RECYCLE YOUR BATTERIES Although the number of electrical gadgets that use disposable batteries is on the decline, each person in the U.S. discards eight batteries per year. Overall, Americans purchase nearly three billion batteries annually, and about 179,000 tons of those end up in the garbage. Batteries have a high concentration of metals, which if not disposed of properly can seep into the ground when the casing erodes. Avoid disposable batteries by using your outlets whenever possible. If you can't do without batteries, use rechargeable and recycled ones. You should also have your batteries collected and recycled. Go to rebat.com for a list of companies that participate in battery reclamation.
33. TURN OFF YOUR COMPUTER WHEN YOU LEAVE AT NIGHT While computers do require a power surge when you first turn them on, they don't need enormous amounts of electricity to function for lengthy periods. Also, you can set your computer on "sleep" mode, which uses about three watts per hour, if you are going to be away from your desk for more than 15 minutes.
34. GET INVOLVED Recycling at home doesn't get you off the hook at work. If your office doesn't recycle, or recycles only paper, find out why. If you work in a small office, call your local authority to discover what recycling equipment and services are available. These may include storage containers and compacters as well as collection. If you work in a larger office, ask your building-services coordinator why there are no recycling facilities and whom you would need to speak to about starting a recycling program for paper, glass, metal, and plastic. For more information, visit earth911.org.
35. PRINT DOUBLE-SIDED American businesses throw away 21 million tons of paper every year, 175 pounds per office worker. For a quick and easy way to halve this, set your printer's default option to print double-sided (duplex printing). This has the added advantage of halving the paper pile on your desk. To further cut your paper wastage, make sure you always use "print preview" mode to check that there are no overhanging lines and that you print only the pages you need. Other ways to cut down on paper before you get to the printing stage include using single or 1.5 spacing instead of double spacing, and reducing your page margins.
39. PLANT A TREE It's the simplest thing in the world to gather acorns, chestnuts, sweet chestnuts, and sycamore seeds in the autumn, plant them immediately, and forget them until the following spring. The success rate for acorns is not as high as for the other three, but in a good year about 40 percent germinate into oak trees. There's little that will stop the others from growing into healthy trees within the first year. Start saplings in Styrofoam coffee cups, which can be split with a knife so that the roots aren't disturbed when you plant them outdoors. Keep the saplings for four or five years, then plant them in your own garden, offer them to friends, or return them to nature. It may seem like a very small contribution, but if 5 percent of the U.S. population were to germinate one tree in one year, there would be almost 15 million extra trees absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. For more information, visit arborday.org.
40. AVOID PESTICIDES Use natural methods of pest control. Form a log pile—dead wood provides a habitat for many kinds of wildlife, such as snakes and ground beetles. Both are natural predators for snails and slugs. If you create a small pond to encourage frogs and toads, they will help mop up the rest of your slug life. In the short term you can get rid of slugs using beer traps (slugs are attracted to yeast). To get rid of whiteflies, buy Encarsia formosa, small parasitic wasps that eat whiteflies. Grow flowers such as marigolds to attract ladybugs, hoverflies, and lacewings, all of which protect against aphids.
41. BAT BOXES Want to reduce the number of mosquitoes in your backyard? Then invest in a bat box. One bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquitoes a night. You will also be making a contribution to our country's temperate biodiversity: bat populations in America and around the world are declining, especially in urban areas, where they have few roosting spaces. Ideally, group two or three boxes together, place them as high as possible, and face them so the sun directly heats them for six to seven hours each day. If you are making a bat box yourself, use untreated and unpainted wood. It is essential that bats not be disturbed, so make certain your bat boxes cannot be reached by any local cats. For more information, visit batconservation.org/content/Bathouseimportance.html.
42. WALK OR BIKE Always consider alternatives to driving, especially for journeys under two miles. It's better for the environment to walk, cycle, or even take the bus than to hop in your car. Currently, only 2 percent of employed adults walk to work in the U.S. Walking adds to life expectancy, is safe, helps with mental and physical health, and, best of all, is completely free. Cycling is another way to get around and has recently become more popular, what with more bike paths and cool new gadgets like L.E.D. lights for riding in the dark. New kinds of folding bikes have been specially developed for the commuter. Surprisingly, recent studies have shown that bicyclists in cities are less exposed to air pollution than people in cars and taxis.
43. BUY A HYBRID Hybrid cars, which run on a combination of a gasoline engine and an electric motor, are all the rage these days. They get up to 50 miles per gallon, while a typical S.U.V. might travel around 15 m.p.g. Hybrids can offer substantial savings, and you may qualify for a one-time tax credit of up to $3,400. For information on U.S hybrid-car incentives, go to hybridcars.com/tax-deductions-credits.html.
47. GET AN ELECTRIC LAWN MOWER Surrender your gas lawn mower. Gasoline lawn mowers are among the dirtiest of modern machines. A study funded by the Swedish E.P.A. found that using a four-horsepower lawn mower for an hour causes the same amount of pollution as driving a car 93 miles. The trouble with gas lawn mowers is that they not only emit a disproportionate amount of CO2, they are also responsible for releasing carcinogens such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons into the air. Retire the noisy monster and buy an electric or manual model. Better still, reduce the number of times you mow per season and let some of your lawn grow wild, which has added benefits for bugs, butterflies, and birds. For more information, visit greengrasscutters.com.
48. GREEN GRILLING If you have a charcoal barbecue grill, make sure your charcoal comes from a sustainable source. Enormous areas of tropical rainforest are destroyed every year to produce the 900,000 tons of charcoal burned annually in the U.S. Chimney starters are the most environmentally friendly solution to lighting charcoal. They use only a couple of pieces of newspaper, meaning you can avoid the gas-flavored meat that accompanies barbecues started with lighter fluid or fire starters. If you are replacing your grill, remember that using a gas, rather than charcoal, grill is the most environmentally friendly way to barbecue. It avoids forest destruction and doesn't add to local air pollution.
49. RE-GIFT GIFT WRAP Help cut down on the consumption of paper and plastic by re-using wrapping paper, ribbons, bows, and gift bags. These items should be good for at least one more wrapping. If you are feeling creative, use old calendars, pages from magazines, or even newspaper to wrap gifts.
50. A GREEN ENDING Green funerals don't just mean a woodland burial. Very few people actually know about the green alternatives to steel or hardwood coffins. Many private funeral homes present green alternatives to traditional coffins, including wicker caskets and shrouds. Currently, 89 percent of coffins sold are made of chipboard that is manufactured using formaldehyde. When chipboard coffins are cremated, they can release toxic gases. If buried, they disrupt local ecosystems; as the chipboard decays, the formaldehyde and glue leach into the soil and groundwater. Finally, most people opting for a green good-bye will choose a meadow or woodland burial, with only a memorial tree marking the grave. For more information, visit fullcirclecare.org/endoflife/funeral.htm.

Beyond the Thunderdome

'Cause we don't need another hero
Rummy spinning counterclockwise, Chimpy is at 33% (Fox!) History, bound by time, cannot be outrun.

Sharp said "loud voices, full body armor, wrap-around sunglasses, air strikes and daily broadcasts from shoulder-holster wearing brigadier generals proudly announcing how many Iraqis have been killed by US forces today" was no "hearts-and-minds winning tool".

Self Love, Big Oil Stylee

Since President George W. Bush’s inauguration in January, 2001, oil prices have increased 240 percent. the Proof is in their pockets

What "An Inconvenient Truth "

a Day Without a

Mexico

Fearless Leader

Watanabe, of Toyota, revisited

becoming

the "Enemy"
NOW had a piece on this last week in relation to Contraception/Conception. The two most potentially destructive social and political minorities in the world, of Islam and Christianity, have the reins ....
a Preview?

What's In Ya?

a Terrific article

CONFORM: Cincinnati Style!

STEVE KEMME, CINCINNATI ENQUIRER - Passing motorists often honk their horns and wave when they see Robin Sutton working in her yard. "It happened so often I could hardly get my flowers in the ground," she said. But their interest wasn't Sutton or her flowers. It was the circuslike display in her backyard. To wit: 15 toilets sprouting with plastic flowers; dozens of purple, green, brown and white toilet brushes poking up from the lawn, and a host of multicolored pinwheels whirling in the breeze. There's also a plastic human skeleton sitting on one of the toilets and another one riding a plastic horse. The unusual yard decor is part of a protest launched eight months ago by Sutton and her partner, Allen Lade, who have lived for five years at the corner of Forestlake and Lancelot drives. . . Sutton and Lade set up the toilets - almost all donated by their plumber friends - because Anderson Township refused to allow them to build a 6-foot-high cedar fence along the Lancelot Drive side of their backyard. The couple wanted the fence for privacy and to allow their grandchildren to play safely. But the township's board of zoning appeals said the fence would be too visually imposing. Since then, Sutton and Lade have greatly expanded their own visually imposing display. They added the skeletons for Halloween. For Christmas, they strung 2,800 lights in their backyard. They invited neighborhood children to spray-paint the toilet brushes. "It's fun," Sutton said. "But it's also a reminder of basic property rights. It shows the absurdity of being told you can't put up a fence."

a Job not to Have

Desertification, pollution. 2008 Beijing Olympics?!

Straight outa New Orleans: Dead Zone

Dirty Pool

in New Hampshire
What a Story! It's been pulsing below the national media radar for months....

the fight for "Reality"

Courtesy of the DCPA, John Moore, etc. I'll have to see it

NYT: Capitalism on the Cob

Capitalism on the Cob
By DAN MITCHELL
Published: April 15, 2006
MICHAEL POLLAN'S new book, "The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals," describes a nation that is the victim of "a plague of corn." The No. 1 legal crop is "the perfect capitalist plant," he said on "Fresh Air" on NPR this week.
Michael Pollan on Fresh Air
Michael Pollan's interview with Truthdig.com
MichaelPollan.com
University of California, Berkeley's NewsCenter
About a third of Mr. Pollan's book is taken up with corn. It is the "keystone species" of the "industrial food chain" that feeds most of us, he said in an interview with Truthdig.com.
America, Mr. Pollan says, has "a national eating disorder." To describe it, the book traces the creation of four meals: one "industrial," two "organic," and one procured by the author himself as a "hunter-gatherer."
There are problems with each, but the industrial meal, not surprisingly, is the most troublesome. He traces it from an Iowa cornfield to its final form — fast food scarfed down in a moving car.
All along that journey, corn wreaks havoc. The overuse of nitrogen fertilizers leads to occasional "blue baby" alerts in Des Moines warning parents that nitrate-loaded tap water could render their babies' brains unable to receive oxygen. Those same fertilizers flow down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, where they seasonally create a "dead zone" the size of New Jersey that is dangerous to sea life.
By virtue of its being "paved over" with corn, Iowa is, in its way, the most developed state in the country, he told NPR. On the market, corn is cheap, Mr. Pollan points out. But the costs — to the environment, to the economy, and to the health care system — are enormous.
"We eat so much corn that, biologically speaking, most Americans are corn on two legs," Bonnie Azab Powell, a journalist, wrote on NewsCenter site of the University of California, Berkeley (berkeley.edu/news).

Colorado

Skiing, Recreation, Livability

Beatin' the Heat?

Trash

Heaven from Hell

the Light

Could this be the breakthrough over which even this tanned Luddite can't argue? Save us, Pine.

Tax me

Name in

Vain?

and, with delicious morbidity:
"(W)e're all bit players in the president's apocalyptic Passion play

United States of Amnesia

'the average executives salary...was 170 times the average worker's earnings (2004)'

a meditation

American Excess

Yakyu

Editorial
For the Love of Yakyu

Published: March 22, 2006
What a game! Daisuke Matsuzaka gave up a leadoff homer to Eduardo Paret, but then retired 12 of 15 batters, easily outpitching Ormari Romero and Vicyohandry Odelin. Michihiro Ogasawara drove in three runs while Kosuke Fukudome, Hitoshi Tamura and Toshiaki Imae drove in two each. Akinori Otsuka struck out Yulieski Gourriel in the ninth to end the game, and the winners threw their caps, gloves and Sadaharu Oh into the air.
The World Baseball Classic, which ended on Monday night with Japan's 10-6 victory over Cuba, should forever erase any idea that the United States has a monopoly on its national pastime. The United States team, covered in springtime rust and missing many star players, who had been sprinkled generously onto other countries' lineups, struggled before being finished off by Mexico. As Murray Chass of The Times noted, nearly a half-billion dollars' worth of major league talent was sidelined as the Cubans and Japanese fought for the closest thing baseball has to a genuine world title.
But this is nothing to be upset about. Japan has had baseball, which it calls yakyu, for essentially as long as we have. It arrived there in the 1870's and has put down deep roots in Asia, as the gritty performance of South Korea demonstrated. Béisbol has been a pan-American pastime for many generations, and such was the World Baseball Classic's broad appeal that Italy, Australia, the Netherlands and even South Africa showed up eager to play.
That baseball has not caught on among the French may only underscore the global superiority of a sport that has been a vibrant American export since the days of whale oil. Alexander Joy Cartwright, the father of modern baseball — with its nine innings, three outs, nine-man teams and rule against beaning the runner — must be smiling in his grave in Honolulu, which was the capital of a kingdom when he planted baseball there in the 1850's.
Baseball has suffered on its home turf lately, with the Barry Bonds steroid accusations exemplifying an atmosphere of cynicism and greed that has tainted the sport from the minors to the major leagues. With the supply of homegrown talent in decline, it's possible that baseball could someday become one of those activities, like manual labor and voting, that Americans tackle a lot less enthusiastically than foreigners do.
But enthusiasm is infectious, and the tournament could easily help Americans rediscover their own love of the game, simply by seeing it through the eyes of people from other lands.

Take the

High Road

Damn Ye Comportment

PC has reached eden

What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
- Herbert Alexander Simon
Thanks Sam

when Truth amazes

Chewy-stacean

Outsource This

Halloo? One big Nukular Family

Human Rights begin when you get a credit card and end when you open your mouth.

God is my Satellite

another blog reading

They do the math, or ABC's, as it were.
If we study hard enough, the cathode rays erosion of our memories might not win.
And pray...

Free Speech

This comes by way of my friend Tom in Ohio:

Don't joke with god Maybe humor and religion don't mix
March 1, 2006 iranian.com

Mark Twain once said, "There is no humor in heaven". Twain believed humor was rooted in doubt, anxiety, sorrow, longing, and other human frailties. Since these are imperfections, he concluded they have no place in heaven.
Nothing funny in heaven?
I thought this was an interesting way to look at things, which led me to wonder if there is any humor in religion at all? In the Semitic, monotheistic religions that I know a little about, like Islam, Christianity and Judaism, humor is not exactly a pillar of faith. In fact, it is hardly ever mentioned:
The word laugh/laughter is mentioned only 9 times in the Holy Quran, 8 of them in the context of ridicule or mockery, as in: "Let them laugh a little: much will they weep" (009.082), or "Those in sin used to laugh at those who believed" (083.029). The Holy Bible is not that much different. The Old Testament, which consists of 24 Books, mentions laugh/laughter all of 32 times. In the New Testament, which consists of 27 Books, laugh/laughter is mentioned just 6 times. For example, in James 4:9 it says: Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. (By contrast, death/dead/slay/kill is mentioned 231 times in the Holy Quran, 1,017 times in the Old Testament, and 443 times in the New Testament.)
Could this be the reason why fundamentalists violently protested cartoons of Prophet Muhammad? Maybe humor and religion don't mix.
If you were really curious- and brave, you could even take this argument further by asking: Does God have a sense of humor? Again, you must revisit your own feelings towards Twain's theory that humor's source is imperfection. If you agree with him, then there is no escaping the conclusion that God, by virtue of being defined as perfect, does not have a sense of humor. In other words, being perfect, not knowing sorrow or anxiety, God can not appreciate or relate to humor. This is clearly in contradiction with what we know of God as All Knowing, All Compassionate, All Everything. How can the created know about something- humor, that the creator does not know anything about? This is akin to heresy, or "kofr".
Therefore, if you believe in God, find a way to disprove what Twain said, either by proving there is humor in heaven, or showing humor can mix with perfection.

blog reading

responsibility

Kids + Beans = ?

Watch Out Detroit!

Impeach: a silly little word

Lapham: via Conyers

New Orleans

Get on Up

Ahead of the Curve

As opposed to their state of the Union
















Info