Sunday, November 20, 2011

Civil Rights


Glen Greenwald has, as usual, said it best:
"Pervasive police abuses and intimidation tactics applied to peaceful protesters — pepper-spray, assault rifles, tasers, tear gas and the rest — not only harm their victims but also the relationship of the citizenry to the government and the set of core political rights. Implanting fear of authorities in the heart of the citizenry is a far more effective means of tyranny than overtly denying rights. " [emphasis added]
From: http://www.salon.com/2011/11/20/the_roots_of_the_uc_davis_pepper_spraying/ 

Friday, September 23, 2011

Sustainable small-town energy

http://www.grist.org/energy-policy/2011-09-19-the-small-town-energy-revolution

Grist.com is a great resource for all reading related to conservation, innovation and sustainable goals.  This article focuses mostly on Germany whose Renewable Energy Act supports efforts for those communities whose goal is to be 100% energy self-reliant.  The article then moves on to the paucity of such efforts in the USA, and links the poor economy and the need for jobs.  One statistic:  Washington, D.C. spends $1.4 billion on electricity produced outside of the community, dollars that could remain in the community, paying people to work in jobs that supply themselves and their neighbors with electricity.

One USA town, described in this article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13770834/ns/us_news-environment/t/biotown-usa-tries-all-renewable-energy/#.TnyIH3N5F9t

is beginning to move in the direction of local energy autonomy.  Agricultural communities do have an advantage, since they produce the type of waste that can be converted, and have an educated population that understands the issues (speaking as a Midwesterner).  Cities are only slightly disadvantaged though.  Consider the farm-table-compost-farm cycle set up by San Francisco.  While not electricity generation, it closes one loop when waste from produce consumed in the city is composted and the compost is sold to  local produce farms to grow more produce to sell in the city.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113969321


Monday, August 22, 2011

Are happy states sustainable states? Can we make sustainability happy?

A report from Live Science

http://www.livescience.com/15673-happiest-states-2011-gallup.html
The results are preliminary for 2011, with the year's complete rankings for U.S. states by Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index expected to come out early next year. 
The well-being Index score is an average of six factors, including included life evaluation (self-evaluation about your present life situation and anticipated one in five years); emotional health; work environment (such as job satisfaction); physical health; healthy behavior; and basic access (access to health care, a doctor, a safe place to exercise and walk, as well as community satisfaction).  
"Top 10" States (3 states tied and so are included in the top 10):
  • Hawaii: 71.1
  • North Dakota: 70.5
  • Alaska: 69.4
  • Nebraska: 68.4
  • Minnesota: 68.3
  • Colorado: 68.3
  • Utah: 68.1
  • New Hampshire: 67.9
  • Iowa: 67.9
  • Kansas: 67.8
  • Vermont: 67.8
  • Maryland: 67.8
At the bottom, West Virginia fared worst on life evaluation and physical health, two areas in which the state's residents have seriously struggled since the launch of the Well-Being Index in 2008, according to Gallup officials. Kentucky took the bottom spot for emotional health, while Mississippi is again at the bottom on basic access, as it has been in three previous years. 

My observations:  historically, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, and Vermont have been characterized as politically liberal, or at least have had strong communal tendencies.  Omaha has been powered by a city-owned and operated power company (Omaha Power and Light), and other Midwest states have a traditional of community support and help due to their agrarian base.  Iowa has legalized gay marriage as part of its liberal, community-oriented philosophy.

In a previous post about Canadian communities and sustainability, access to social support services and strong communities were seen to be part of the sustainability picture.  Access to services, esp. medical care and safe areas to exercise make people happier.  

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Sustainable Canadian cities

from the Toronto Globe and Mail:
"A 2007 study, Mission Possible: Successful Canadian Cities, by the Conference Board of Canada, identified four cornerstones: a strong knowledge economy to attract business investment and a talented and skilled labour force; a connective physical infrastructure (i.e., a transportation system that can effectively move goods and people); environmentally sustainable growth based on sound planning and industrial ecology principles; and social cohesion, the critical components of which are attractive and accessible housing, a low crime rate, effective immigrant settlement, comprehensive cultural and entertainment amenities (not the least of which are libraries, which act as community centres as much as places to borrow books), and a strong social safety net."

This list is interesting.  Note that environmental concerns, cultural activities such as art and music (not sports) and a social safety net built on social cohesion are key elements.  I would have trouble believing that a California study would reach the same result, and I will search for a study in order to compare.

To review:
1.  knowledge to attract business. Schools for business, but also biotech?
2.  connected infrastructure, including transportation.  Mass transit that's cheap and accessible?
3.  environmentally responsible growth.  But why keep emphasizing growth?
4.  social cohesion.  Get people into houses, keep crime down, given them entertainment and access to knowledge?

Sounds good to me.  

Saturday, May 21, 2011

more on sustainable urban environments

Mother Earth News (yes, it's still around!) has this story:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-community/community-food-security-zm0z11zsto.aspx

The story about community efforts in Columbus, OH, end with this list:

What You Can Do in Your Community
  • Ask teachers and school leaders how they think food education, cooking, gardening or farm-to-fork lunch programs could best be incorporated into local schools.
  • Ask parents what school programs they’d most like to see their children participate in, and ask how the parents themselves would like to be involved.
  • Check whether children in the community could visit a local farm to learn about food production firsthand.
  • Locate local organizations that work with children to see whether food-system goals could be incorporated into their existing programs.
  • Ask market and convenience store managers to consider adding locally grown produce to their selections. Try to foster connections between stores and farmers in the community, and set up a CSA program if one doesn’t already exist.
  • Encourage chefs and restaurants to use more produce, meat and dairy products from local farmers, and support the businesses that support the local food system.


Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/nature-community/community-food-security-zm0z11zsto.aspx?page=5#ixzz1N04ndhZw

Life on the Balcony blog

This blog, Life on the Balcony, provides some interesting ideas on container gardening.

http://lifeonthebalcony.com/plants-that-every-balcony-gardener-needs/

Zombie Apocalypse

A more amusing view of death preparedness:

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Hawk seen at noon

Ferruginous hawk, 
What's it hunting? not me! mice! 
Silent Mesa flight. 
(hawk seen at Mesa College today)

Monday, February 21, 2011

Death, internalization and grief

Nearly every week, but for some reason, more often lately, I think "I should tell Mom about that."  She died in 1995.   She won't be completely gone until all of her children are gone. She never met half of the grandkids, so her memory won't be preserved by them.  Neither did Pop, so I guess if I write more, there's some memory there.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Death

A new book:
No other period of life has such a feared and mysterious ending. Childhood ends with the budding of puberty and the new challenges of adolescence. Adolescence passes away in the excitement of pulsating hormones, shedding its awkward, uncertain skin in the journey into young adulthood. The subsequent stages of adulthood bring undiscovered treasures of love, children, work, and spirit. Even in the face of failure or lost opportunities, there is always hope for something new. But aging seems to bring this process to a halt. The horizon is unknown except for the single fact that a true ending will come ...   Excerpted from How We Age: A Doctor's Journey into the Heart of Growing Old, by Marc E. Agronin, M.D. Available from Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2011.                              
When a student in my class died from an alcohol overdose one semester,  I spent some time looking for an appropriate passage to read to the class.  I couldn't just let him disappear from the class with no acknowledgment, especially since it had been obvious to me that he was in trouble.  I chose to read the following:

50.  Death
Men flow into life, and ebb into death.
Some are filled with life;
Some are empty with death;
Some hold fast to life, and thereby perish,
For life is an abstraction.
Those who are filled with life
Need not fear tigers and rhinos in the wilds,
Nor wear armour and shields in battle;
The rhinoceros finds no place in them for its horn,
The tiger no place for its claw,
The soldier no place for a weapon,
For death finds no place in them.

Tao Te Ching, excerpts
http://www.alamo.edu/nvc/programs/humanities/huma/pages/divine_taoTeChing.htm#50Death



Dirty Princesses?

We should rethink the cleanliness goal:  recent research from Oregon State University reported on NPR suggests that the Western rise in autoimmune diseases such as asthma and allergies, that is associated with overly clean societies and identified as such by the term 'the hygiene hypothesis', and which disproportionately affects women, might be caused by the different standards to which we hold girls versus boys.  Girls are generally discouraged from getting dirty (these photos to the contrary) and wear more restrictive clothing which inhibits the tendency to run, jump, slip or fall.

In a related report, a new book by Peggy Orenstein titled "Cinderella Ate My Daughter: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture" documents the tide of messages little girls encounter, pointing them in the direction of 'princesshood.' An excerpt from the NPR interview transcript reads:
What was going on here? My fellow mothers, women who once swore they would never be dependent on a man, smiled indulgently at daughters who warbled "So This Is Love" or insisted on being addressed as Snow White. The supermarket checkout clerk invariably greeted Daisy with "Hi, Princess." The waitress at our local breakfast joint, a hipster with a pierced tongue and a skull tattooed on her neck, called Daisy's "funny-face pancakes" her "princess meal"; the nice lady at Longs Drugs offered us a free balloon, then said, "I bet I know your favorite color!" and handed Daisy a pink one rather than letting her choose for herself. Then, shortly after Daisy's third birthday, our high-priced pediatric dentist — the one whose practice was tricked out with comic books, DVDs, and arcade games — pointed to the exam chair and asked, "Would you like to sit in my special princess throne so I can sparkle your teeth?" [http://www.npr.org/2011/02/05/133471639/saving-our-daughters-from-an-army-of-princesses]

In a quick search this morning to find an image of a little girl covered in dirt, I came across this on Amazon:

Yes, it's a Mud Pie Baby Princess utensil set.  The opposing images boggle my mind, but culturally, it all makes sense.

So the take home message, one which I emphasize in my physical anthropology class:  throw your children in the mud, get them dirty, let them play with pets, all in the name of health (but not the month old babies).  We have an immune system that will attack itself if not given appropriate targets.

And, the early training in a healthy habit such as exercise, will pay off over the course of a life.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Killing Time

Murdered minutes, screaming seconds
Bloody hours, bells tolled
the dying days sag slumping sideways-
echoing years - our fading time

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Social competition

Two people talking, finding out they have common experiences, then begins the testing: have you done this?  When I did this (wondering if the other could top that story?), name-dropping, place dropping (When I was in . . .)   The reality of it is that life is short:  pick one choice, eliminate the others.  Choose wisely, for as Kierkegaard pointed out, not choosing is choosing.  I love that according to this:  http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kierkegaard/
Kirkegaard rarely traveled, physically.

Elements of Society

Human societies:  start with food, water.  Add some people - at least 50, all ages, but enough adults of sufficient age to reproduce.  Say- 3 kids, 2 adults, 2 siblings for each parent [their spouses and 3 children each], their parents - 29 in that group, plus 11 misc. individuals from other families.  How many different faces could they be expected to see in a year?  only another 500??  (as they travel.)

A commercial this a.m, viewed on Hulu, stated that before a child in the USA begins school, they've seen over 100,000 acts of violence.  Even if this includes depictions of accidents, and violence towards animals, and cartoon violence, that's more than most humans have ever seen.

Not until standing armies were possible, and chiefs could control armies in the thousands, would it be possible to see thousands of dead bodies.  But our 6 year olds see it before they start school.

Part 1 Surf an Origami Hang Glider on a Wave of Air.mov

Science - provides counter-intuitive glimpses into the nature of reality.  and it's a lot of fun.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

Browncoats: Redemption Trailer

Can't stop the signal . . . If you like science fiction, and admire the creativity of fans who want their worlds to continue and work to create, this trailer should point you to more of the Firefly universe, created by Joss Whedon.