Green Bean Chronicles

Wildlife in the Backyard!

2009-01-09T13:09:00.000-08:00

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

2008-12-16T07:19:00.001-08:00

By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Barcelona

Losses are great, and continuous, says the report
The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.
It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World Conservation Congress.
Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue.
Capital losses
Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the financial markets.
"It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening every year, year after year," he told BBC News.

Teeb will... show the risks we run by not valuing [nature] adequately."
Andrew Mitchell
Global Canopy Programme
"So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year."
The review that Mr Sukhdev leads, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), was initiated by Germany under its recent EU presidency, with the European Commission providing funding.
The first phase concluded in May when the team released its finding that forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP. The second phase will expand the scope to other natural systems.
Stern message
Key to understanding his conclusions is that as forests decline, nature stops providing services which it used to provide essentially for free.
So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps through building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon dioxide, or farming foods that were once naturally available.
Or we have to do without them; either way, there is a financial cost.
The Teeb calculations show that the cost falls disproportionately on the poor, because a greater part of their livelihood depends directly on the forest, especially in tropical regions.
The greatest cost to western nations would initially come through losing a natural absorber of the most important greenhouse gas.
Just as the Stern Review brought the economics of climate change into the political arena and helped politicians see the consequences of their policy choices, many in the conservation community believe the Teeb review will lay open the economic consequences of halting or not halting the slide in biodiversity.
"The numbers in the Stern Review enabled politicians to wake up to reality," said Andrew Mitchell, director of the Global Canopy Programme, an organisation concerned with directing financial resources into forest preservation.
"Teeb will do the same for the value of nature, and show the risks we run by not valuing it adequately."
A number of nations, businesses and global organisations are beginning to direct funds into forest conservation, and there are signs of a trade in natural ecosystems developing, analogous to the carbon trade, although it is clearly very early days.
Some have ethical concerns over the valuing of nature purely in terms of the services it provides humanity; but the counter-argument is that decades of trying to halt biodiversity decline by arguing for the intrinsic worth of nature have not worked, so something different must be tried.
Whether Mr Sukhdev's arguments will find political traction in an era of financial constraint is an open question, even though many of the governments that would presumably be called on to fund forest protection are the ones directly or indirectly paying for the review.
But, he said, governments and businesses are getting the point.
"Times have changed. Almost three years ago, even two years ago, their eyes would glaze over.
"Today, when I say this, they listen. In fact I get questions asked - so how do you calculate this, how can we monetise it, what can we do about it, why don't you speak with so and so politician or such and such business."
The aim is to complete the Teeb review by the middle of 2010, the date by which governments are committed under the Convention of Biological Diversity to have begun slowing the rate of biodiversity loss.

I may have to live my life out here...

2008-12-16T07:14:00.000-08:00

and no, not by force. :D

set of lord of the rings, new zealand, australia

(Photo flickr)

Wildlife Overpass - Banff, Canada

2008-12-16T07:09:00.000-08:00

Photographer - Joel Sartore

Shoe in yo face!

2008-12-15T19:35:00.001-08:00

Courtesy of FWMJ, love it.

Race: The Power of An Illusion

2008-12-15T19:16:00.000-08:00

A sample of the most amazing article on race:

Read on here through PBS's website....

http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-06.htm

(Photo: Flickr)

the bean wordle

2008-12-15T19:13:00.000-08:00

Found a very cool site, wordle.com. I took a bunch of my favorite quotes and pasted them in their application. This is what I got:

Magnetic Field Movie - very cool

2008-10-28T04:10:00.001-07:00

Can be seen here: http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_date/2007/mag_mov/1/

The Green Bean Dream Home

2008-09-12T08:25:00.001-07:00

U.S. Deficit $500 Billion by 2009

2008-09-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

U.S. Deficit to Reach Record $490 Billion in 2009 (Update3)
By Roger Runningen

July 28 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. budget deficit will widen to a record of about $490 billion next year, an administration official said, leaving a deep budget hole that will constrain the next president's tax and spending plans.

The projected deficit for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 is higher than the $407 billion forecast by President George W. Bush in February. The bigger shortfall reflects dwindling tax receipts because of the U.S. economic slowdown, the cost of a $168 billion economic stimulus package and spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

``We've already seen a pretty sharp cooling in tax receipts, and it's just going to continue into next fiscal year,'' Stephen Stanley, chief economist at RBS Capital Markets, said in a telephone interview.

The deficit projection will burden either Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, the presumptive presidential nominees of the major political parties, with a constricted budget that has little room for cutting taxes or increasing spending. The next president also will inherit the deepest housing recession in a generation, fears of a crisis in the banking industry, a falling dollar and high energy prices.

Campaign Promises

McCain has promised corporate and individual tax cuts that are projected to cost $4.2 trillion over 10 years along with spending to promote U.S. energy independence. Obama is vowing to enact a plan for universal health care, middle-class tax cuts and proposes spending on education and job training.

Instead, both likely will be forced to put their campaign promises on hold to reinvigorate the economy and drive down the deficit while also grappling with left-over foreign policy problems such as the wars and the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.

The official, who asked not to be named, also confirmed a report in USA Today that the deficit this year will be less than the $410 billion estimated in February. The White House budget office will release its mid-session review of the government's balance sheets at 1:45 p.m. today.

Treasuries rose as the forecast for a higher budget deficit and a rise in European bond prices led to increased speculation the U.S. economy will slow amid decreasing global growth.

The deficit is one of the ``underlying themes that people are nervous about. It's just more bad news, and that leads to more buying of Treasuries,'' said Charles Comiskey, co-head of U.S. Treasury trading in New York at HSBC Securities USA Inc.

Deteriorating Budget

The shortfall reflects a deterioration of the budget over the past seven years. Bush inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion when he took office in 2001. The budget worsened almost immediately, because of recession, the Sept. 11 attacks, the beginning of the war in Afghanistan and, later, the war in Iraq that began in March 2003.

Bush recorded his first deficit a year after being sworn in, and it widened to the current record of $413 billion in 2004.

Five months ago, the administration projected a shortfall of more than $400 billion this year and next, reflecting a struggling economy, and forecast a recovery to a $160 billion deficit in 2010, declining to $96 billion in 2011 and finally a $48 billion surplus in 2012.

War Costs

The current projections may understate the deficit next year because the administration hasn't requested money to prosecute the wars for the full year, leaving that to the next president. Military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan now are costing about $10 billion to $12 billion a month.

Asked today if the administration still believes it's on a path to a balanced budget by 2012, White House press secretary Dana Perino said , ``I believe so, yes.''

She called the deficit ``temporary and manageable.''

The Bush administration and Congress also haven't dealt with the largest long-term fiscal problems: the growing costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Those three programs consumed an estimated 41 percent of the federal budget in 2007.

Obama is meeting today with his top economic advisers ``on America's pressing economic challenges,'' his campaign said. The Illinois senator was to meet with business and labor officials on oil, food and other commodities, topped with discussions with investor Warren Buffett, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Paul Volcker, and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, among others.

McCain Meetings

McCain, an Arizona senator, was scheduled to talk about the economy at town-hall meetings with voters in Nevada and Wisconsin.

Record gasoline prices, plunging home values and shrinking credit access have thrust the economy to center stage. The Labor Department this week may report a seventh straight month of job losses.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, Democrat of South Carolina, took the administration to task for a record deficit, citing news accounts.

``If these reports prove accurate, they confirm the dismal legacy of the Bush administration: under its policies, the largest surpluses in history have been converted into the largest deficits in history,'' Spratt said in an e-mailed statement.

A Bloomberg survey of 28 analysts completed July 25 showed the average estimate for the deficit at $447 billion next year and $407 billion this year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Roger Runningen in Washington at rrunningen@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 28, 2008 13:35 EDT

Some topics I'm thinking about

2008-09-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

Combination of pastoral, horticultural, and agricultural as a means to improve local economies and strengthen community social connectedness.

Sustainable rural economy as a response to corporate pressures on biofuel production.

Ability for communities to gain more control of land. A combined approach of land conservation and sustainable agricultural revitalization as a means of lessening environmental degradation.

American relationship with food is suffering. Food has become throw-away.

Relationship with food reminiscent of human relationships.

Individualism- Loss of community, isolation

Anonymous - Isolating also, yet loss of culture at an anonymous large scale such as american population, loss of identity

False perceptions of food production. Wasted energy.

"hierarchical mentality and class relationships that so thoroughly permeate society give rise to the very idea of dominating the natural world."

Reunion with how food is made.

Reinvent agricultural practices. Rotational grazing

Social Ecology

2008-09-11T16:03:00.001-07:00

"What literally defines social ecology as "social" is its recognition of the often overlooked fact that nearly all our present ecological problems arise from deep-seated social problems. Conversely, present ecological problems cannot be clearly understood, much less resolved, without resolutely dealing with problems within society. To make this point more concrete: economic, ethnic, cultural, and gender conflicts, among many others, lie at the core of the most serious ecological dislocations we face today--apart, to be sure, from those that are produced by natural catastrophes.

If this approach seems a bit too "sociological" for those environmentalists who identify ecological problems with the preservation of wildlife, wilderness, or more broadly, with "Gaia" and planetary "Oneness," it might be sobering to consider certain recent facts. The massive oil spill by an Exxon tanker at Prince William Sound, the extensive deforestation of redwood trees by the Maxxam Corporation, and the proposed James Bay hydroelectric project that would flood vast areas of northern Quebec's forests, to cite only a few problems, should remind us that the real battleground on which the ecological future of the planet will be decided is clearly a social one.

Indeed, to separate ecological problems from social problems--or even to play down or give token recognition to this crucial relationship-- would be to grossly misconstrue the sources of the growing environmental crisis. The way human beings deal with each other as social beings is crucial to addressing the ecological crisis. Unless we clearly recognize this, we will surely fail to see that the hierarchical mentality and class relationships that so thoroughly permeate society give rise to the very idea of dominating the natural world.

Unless we realize that the present market society, structured around the brutally competitive imperative of "grow or die," is a thoroughly impersonal, self-operating mechanism, we will falsely tend to blame technology as such or population growth as such for environmental problems. We will ignore their root causes, such as trade for profit, industrial expansion, and the identification of "progress" with corporate self-interest. In short, we will tend to focus on the symptoms of a grim social pathology rather than on the pathology itself, and our efforts will be directed toward limited goals whose attainment is more cosmetic than curative.

While some have questioned whether social ecology has dealt adequately with issues of spirituality, it was, in fact, among the earliest of contemporary ecologies to call for a sweeping change in existing spiritual values. Such a change would mean a far-reaching transformation of our prevailing mentality of domination into one of complementarity, in which we would see our role in the natural world as creative, supportive, and deeply appreciative of the needs of nonhuman life. In social ecology, a truly natural spirituality centers on the ability of an awakened humanity to function as moral agents in diminishing needless suffering, engaging in ecological restoration, and fostering an aesthetic appreciation of natural evolution in all its fecundity and diversity.

Thus social ecology has never eschewed the need for a radically new spirituality or mentality in its call for a collective effort to change society. Indeed, as early as 1965, the first public statement to advance the ideas of social ecology concluded with the injunction: "The cast of mind that today organizes differences among human and other life-forms along hierarchical lines of 'supremacy' or 'inferiority' will give way to an outlook that deals with diversity in an ecological manner--that is, according to an ethics of complementarity."1 In such an ethics, human beings would complement nonhuman beings with their own capacities to produce a richer, creative, and developmental whole-not as a "dominant" species but as a supportive one. Although this idea, expressed at times as an appeal for the "respiritization of the natural world," recurs throughout the literature of social ecology, it should not be mistaken for a theology that raises a deity above the natural world or that seeks to discover one within it. The spirituality advanced by social ecology is definitively naturalistic (as one would expect, given its relation to ecology itself, which stems from the biological sciences), rather than supernaturalistic or pantheistic."

Environmental Philosophy: From Animal Rights to Radical Ecology, edited by M.E. Zimmerman, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993

Environmental Sociology

2008-09-11T16:01:00.000-07:00

"Environmental sociology is typically defined as the sociological study of societal-environmental interactions, although this definition immediately presents the perhaps insolvable problem of separating human cultures from the rest of the environment. Although the focus of the field is the relationship between society and environment in general, environmental sociologists typically place special emphasis on studying the social factors that cause environmental problems, the societal impacts of those problems, and efforts to solve the problems. In addition, considerable attention is paid to the social processes by which certain environmental conditions become socially defined as problems.
Although there was sometimes acrimonious debate between the constructivist and realist "camps" within environmental sociology in the 1990s, the two sides have found considerable common ground as both increasingly accept that while most environmental problems have a material reality they nonetheless become known only via human processes such as scientific knowledge, activists' efforts, and media attention. In other words, most environmental problems have a real ontological status despite our knowledge/awareness of them stemming from social processes, processes by which various conditions are constructed as problems by scientists, activists, media and other social actors. Correspondingly, environmental problems must all be understood via social processes, despite any material basis they may have external to humans. This interactiveness is now broadly accepted, but many aspects of the debate continue in contemporary research in the field." (Wikipedia)

The Death of Food or Friends?

2008-08-22T08:35:00.000-07:00

Something to ponder: Would you eat so many animal products if you had to care for and slaughter them yourself?

Katahdin Sheep (sp)

I have never found animals to be of lesser value than us humans. Survival of the fittest reminds me that we're part of a complex food chain. Those below us suffer at some point or another to maintain the transferral of energy from one organism to the next. Hunger-pain promotes such practical thinking and at other moments I'm driven by the practical views of others in my human social realm.

For the animals on the farm that are living to be processed, I can't help but feel an enormous amount of compassion. I've never quite understood why there's so much to be said about looking into the eyes of a creature. Whether the eyes are the window to the soul one can only imagine. Some say looking into a chicken's eye is different from looking into a dog's: "Chickens are stupid."

LAMB #361

When I arrived at the farm on Saturday morning I walked over to the lamb pasture next to the breeder Turkeys. This flock behaves much different from the other 3, each containing 6 or more males. A few lambs in this flock are extremely curious of humans, specifically # 361, #363, and the only black sheep out of 30 altogether (who's number I can't recall). #361 is the friendliest. Each time I enter the pasture, he greets me with a funny stare and walks up for a good neck scratch. If I stop scratching him, he pushes his head against my thigh in an almost aggressive and immature manner. I've grown to really like the company of this little fella. It breaks my heart to think that an animal with such 'personality' will become someone's unimportant and run of the mill meal in the winter. I've gone over the idea in my head a bunch of times about how to come
up with a proposal to buy him and bring him home, but then the reality of the farm's intentions sets in my mind. I don't want to meddle with the farm's principles as a small scale and sustainable livestock grower. I can't save all of the animals I think have a 'personality' because what the hell does that mean anyways? On the other hand, why do humans form such strong bonds with certain animals and not others? I refuse to give him a name.

The curious black sheep :)

Around 7:30 a.m. I left the lamb flock. The sun was still in it's rise and the heat was starting to set in. I took the gator over to the broiler lounge to check on their water and feed. I emptied their bucket, cleaned it out, and made sure that the gravity fed troph was free of pine shavings and poop. Under the unlit heat lamp I noticed two chicks that seemed much slower and disoriented than the others who were frantically running around. I grabbed the one into my gloves and realized his leg was bothering him so I took him up to the house to see what the policy on hurt baby chicks was. On the ride there he nestled tightly in my glove. I held him close to my chest. He was breathing very heavy with his eyes shut. When we got to the house, I was told to put him back and try to give him water. Chicks like in this condition usually won't live. They will not be able to make it to the water or feeder and will eventually be trampled by the others from weakness. I knew what this little guy's fate was so I gave him some water, put him in a corner with some feed. I hoped he might be left alone, but he was too weak to even keep his head up. I left assuming this guy wouldn't make it like the angelic looking dead chick I had to dispose of a few days earlier.

Little pigger

The Garden

2008-08-15T05:38:00.001-07:00

I don't think I initially realized that such a small piece of land could produce so much food! These are photos from the stages of the garden starting in April to current August. I didn't get a chance to take photos of all of the produce, because we were consistently harvesting and had a fast turnover. What was really exciting is that between the garden and working on the farm where I can buy milk/eggs/chicken for the fam, I only really needed (or did i?) cheese and olive oil from the grocery store.

What we grew: Yukon Gold Potatoes, Beets, Carrots, Zucchini (made lots of bread), Squash, Pumpkins, Broccoli and Brussel Sprouts (beetles overtook), Sunflowers, Eggplants (made a ton of eggplant parmigiana), Roma/Cherry/Beefsteak Tomatoes, Red/White/Yellow Onions, Romaine Lettuce (went to seed quickly), and Jalapeno/Anaheim/Bell Peppers.

The end of July

The beginning: Horse Manure :D

I was able to make:

Eggplant or Zucchini Parmigiana
Tomato Sauce
Stuffed Bell & Anaheim Peppers (mom did this)
Zucchini Bread
Roasted Chicken from the farm with onions, carrots, and potatoes
Salad (initially before the lettuce went to flower)
Used onions and tomatoes in my eggs
Sliced zucchini and squash, raw with cheese, olive oil, and seasonings (let it soak)

The Truth About Beef: Grain Fed vs. Grass Fed

2008-07-22T18:49:00.000-07:00

Grain-Fed versus Grass-Fed Animal Products

Over the last decade there has been much debate about the consumption of factory-farmed, grain-fed beef versus free-range, grass-fed beef. Many factors such as health risks and benefits, quality, nutrition and safety play a major role in this debate. Some think that grass-fed beef is ecologically and ethically better than livestock that is fattened in feedlots. Others say that grain-fed beef is tenderer and tastes significantly better than grass-fed beef. A majority of consumers, on the other hand, believe that beef is beef; however, studies have shown that an animal’s diet can have a major influence on the nutritional content of its products.

The Problem with Grain-Fed Animal Products

As the mass production of meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products has proven to be more convenient and profitable for farmers, factory farming (or feedlot farming) has become increasingly popular over the last 40 years. Small family-owned farms throughout the nation have been replaced by large feedlots and confinement facilities that are capable of producing year-round supplies of meat, chicken, eggs, and dairy products at a decent price. But the benefits of increased production and profit often come at the cost of quality and safety. According to Eat Wild (a Web site dedicated to educating consumers about the benefits of grass farming), factory farms and feedlots often pose these problems:

* Lower Nutritional Value: Meat and dairy products from animals that have had their diets switched from grass to grain often have lower nutritional value. Studies have shown that meat from animals raised in feedlots often contain more total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and calories. Products from grain-fed animals also contain less vitamin E, beta-carotene, vitamin C and omega-3 fatty acids.
* Unnatural Diets: Animals that are raised in feedlots are given diets that are specifically designed to fatten them up, which help the farm boost productivity and lower costs. Genetically modified grain and soy are the main components of these animals’ diets. To cut costs even more, animal feed may also contain by-products such as municipal garbage, stale pastry, chicken feathers and candy.
* Stress on the Animals: Cud-chewing animals such as cows, goats, buffalo and sheep are designed to eat fibrous grasses, plants and shrubs. When they are fed starchy, low fiber grain a number of problems can arise. Subacute acidosis is a very common condition that affects cattle. This condition causes cattle to kick at their bellies, stop eating feed and begin to eat dirt. These animals are often given chemical additives along with a constant, low-level dose of antibiotics to prevent reactions from becoming fatal. When the antibiotics are overused in the feedlots, bacteria become resistant to them. When humans consume cattle that were fed these antibiotics, they often become infected with the new, disease-resistant bacteria, which means there are fewer medications available to treat them.
* Cages Create Problems: When animals are raised in cages (including chickens, turkey, and pigs), it can create even more problems. When confined, these animals cannot practice their normal behaviors such as rooting, grazing and roosting. Often times there isn’t even enough room for all of the animals to sit down at one time. Research has found that meat and eggs from these animals are often lower in a number of important vitamins and omega-3 fatty acids.
* Ground and Water Pollution: When animals are raised in confinement, they deposit large amounts of manure in small spaces. The right thing for the farmers to do is to collect and transport this manure far away from the area; however, this can be a very expensive task. More increasingly, farmers collect the manure and to cut costs, dump it as close to the feedlot as possible. As a result, the soil becomes over packed with nutrients, which can lead to ground and water pollution.

Benefits of Eating Grass-Fed Animal Products

Grass-fed farming or ranching involves raising livestock on open pasture – free to roam about. There is no caging or confinement for these animals, and their diet consists of natural grasses, legumes and plants. These animals are free of antibiotics, steroids, hormones, pesticides and other foreign substances. Research has shown that grass-fed animals may be safer than food from conventionally-raised animals. According to a study published in the Journal of Animal Science in 2002, grass-fed beef may offer these benefits:

* Lower in Fat and Calories: Meat from grass-fed cattle, sheep and bison is lower in total fat. Lean meats may have as much as one-third the fat as a similar cut from a grain-fed animal. Grass-fed beef can have the same amount of fat as skinless chicken breast, wild deer or elk. Consuming lean beef can also help lower LDL (the “bad” cholesterol) levels. Because it is lower in fat, grass-fed beef is also lower in calories. Fat has approximately nine calories per gram, so the more fat a cut has, the greater number of calories it will have. Even fatty cuts of grass-fed beef are lower in fat and calories than beef from grain-fed cattle.
* More Omega-3 Fatty Acids: Grass-fed animals can contain as much as two-to-four times more omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed animals. Omega-3 fatty acids are fats that are essential to our health (they are “good” fats). One reason grass-fed animals are full of these good fats is because omega-3s are formed in the chloroplasts of green leaves and algae. Sixty percent of the fatty acids in grass are omega-3s. For more information on omega-3 fatty acids, click here .
* More Vitamins: Studies have shown that grass-fed beef can have as much as four times more vitamin E than grain-fed beef. Grass-fed beef even contain twice as much vitamin E as grain-fed beef that are given vitamin E supplements!
* Good Source of Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA): Products from grass-fed animals are the richest known source of conjugated linoeic acid (CLA), which is another type of good fat. CLA is stored in fat cells and has been shown to reduce cancer risks in humans. Grass-fed animals contain as much as three-to-five times more CLA than grain-fed animals.

Sources: J Animal Sci 80(5): 1202-11, 2002; Eat Wild
Photo: Courtesy of Flickr

You might be a redneck...... LOL

2008-07-22T18:41:00.001-07:00

You love nascar:

You buy John Deere dishware for your pet:

You promote your children to kill animals by purchasing them hunting playsets:

What is PEAK OIL?

2008-07-12T06:33:00.000-07:00

James Kunstler Speaks About Our Post-Oil Country - You Tube

2008-07-12T06:29:00.000-07:00

Author of The Geography of Nowhere, The Long Emergency, and The World Made by Hand

The Differences Between Goat and Cow's Milk

2008-07-12T06:18:00.001-07:00

Different fat. Goat's milk contains around ten grams of fat per eight ounces compared to 8 to 9 grams in whole cow's milk, and it's much easier to find lowfat and non-fat varieties of cow's milk than it is to purchase lowfat goat's milk. Unlike cow's milk, goat's milk does not contain agglutinin. As a result, the fat globules in goat's milk do not cluster together, making them easier to digest. Like cow's milk, goat's milk is low in essential fatty acids, because goats also have EFA-destroying bacteria in their ruminant stomachs. Yet, goat milk is reported to contain more of the essential fatty acids linoleic and arachnodonic acids, in addition to a higher proportion of short-chain and medium-chain fatty acids. These are easier for intestinal enzymes to digest.

Different protein. Goat milk protein forms a softer curd (the term given to the protein clumps that are formed by the action of your stomach acid on the protein), which makes the protein more easily and rapidly digestible. Theoretically, this more rapid transit through the stomach could be an advantage to infants and children who regurgitate cow's milk easily. Goat's milk may also have advantages when it comes to allergies. Goat's milk contains only trace amounts of an allergenic casein protein, alpha-S1, found in cow's milk. Goat's milk casein is more similar to human milk, yet cow's milk and goat's milk contain similar levels of the other allergenic protein, beta lactoglobulin. Scientific studies have not found a decreased incidence of allergy with goat's milk, but here is another situation where mothers' observations and scientific studies are at odds with one another. Some mothers are certain that their child tolerates goat's milk better than cow's milk, and mothers are more sensitive to children's reactions than scientific studies.

Less lactose. Goat's milk contains slightly lower levels of lactose (4.1 percent versus 4.7 percent in cow's milk), which may be a small advantage in lactose-intolerant persons.

Different minerals. Although the mineral content of goat's milk and cow's milk is generally similar, goat's milk contains 13 percent more calcium, 25 percent more vitamin B-6, 47 percent more vitamin A, 134 percent more potassium, and three times more niacin. It is also four times higher in copper. Goat's milk also contains 27 percent more of the antioxidant selenium than cow's milk. Cow's milk contains five times as much vitamin B-12 as goat's milk and ten times as much folic acid (12 mcg. in cow's milk versus 1 mcg. for goat's milk per eight ounces with an RDA of 75-100 mcg. for children). The fact that goat's milk contains less than ten percent of the amount of folic acid contained in cow's milk means that it must be supplemented with folic acid in order to be adequate as a formula or milk substitute for infants and toddlers, and popular brands of goat's milk may advertise "supplemented with folic acid" on the carton.
GOAT'S MILK FORMULA VERSUS COMMERCIAL FORMULA FOR ALLERGIC INFANTS

Parents of babies allergic to cow's milk and other commercial formulas often ask if it's safe to use goat's milk as an alternative. In theory, goat's milk is less allergenic and more easily digestible than cow's milk, but it should not be used as a substitute for infant formula. Like cow's milk, it can cause intestinal irritation and anemia. If your baby under one year of age is allergic to cow's milk-based formulas, try either a soy-based formula or a hypoallergenic formula. If your baby can't tolerate either soy or hypoallergenic formulas, in consultation with your doctor and/or a pediatric nutritionist click here for the recipe for goat's milk formula.

This formula has stood the test of time. One batch contains 715 calories and nineteen calories per ounce, which is essentially the same as cow's milk formulas. This is sufficient for an infant six to twelve months. A baby on goat's milk formula should also receive a multi-vitamin with iron supplement prescribed by her doctor. In infants over one year of age, goat's milk can be readily used instead of cow's milk. (Be sure to buy goat's milk that is certified free of antiobiotics and bovine growth hormone (BGH). (For more information about goat's milk call 1-800-891-GOAT)

Photo from Flickr

Eat Like An Ape

2008-07-10T06:26:00.000-07:00

Going ape

By Claire Heald
BBC News Magazine

What if humans cast aside processed foods and saturated fats in favour of the sort of diet our ape-like ancestors once ate? Nine volunteers gave it a go... and were glad they did so.

Being locked in the zoo and offered bananas to eat is the kind of extreme diet scenario to wake some of us screaming in the night. But that was how a group of volunteers opted to try to cut their blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

EVO DIET: WHAT THEY ATE
Chimp eating fruit and vegetables
5kgs or 2,300 calories of fruit, vegetables, nuts and honey
On a 3-day rota, typically:
Broccoli, carrots, radishes
Cabbage, tomatoes, watercress
Strawberries, apricots, bananas
Mangoes, melons, figs, plums
Satsumas, hazelnuts

One volunteer's story
They set up home in a tented enclosure at Paignton Zoo, Devon, next to the ape house, in an experiment filmed for TV. The idea, says Jill Fullerton-Smith, who helped organise the trial, was that modern diets, often dominated by processed foods and saturated fats, cause costly health problems.

For example, nearly half Britain's 117,000 annual deaths from coronary heart disease are linked to high cholesterol, according to the British Heart Foundation. And while the government urges everyone to eat five portions of fruit and veg a day, obesity is still rising.

So could an experiment on ordinary people's lives deliver the healthy eating message?

Nine volunteers, aged 36 to 49, took on the 12-day Evo Diet, consuming up to five kilos of raw fruit and veg a day.

Hunter-gatherer style

The regime was devised by nutritionist and registered dietician Lynne Garton and King's College Hospital. It was based on research showing such a diet could have health benefits for cholesterol levels and blood pressure, because it is made up of the types of foods our bodies evolved to eat over thousands of years.

Ms Garton looked for inspiration to the plant-based diet of our closest relatives, the apes, and devised a three-day rotating menu of fruit, vegetables, nuts and honey. The prescribed menu was:

• safe to eat raw;
• met adult human daily nutritional requirements; and
• provided 2,300 calories - between the 2,000 recommended for women and 2,500 for men,

Volunteers could also drink water. In the second week, standard portions of cooked oily fish were introduced - a nod to a more hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

Among the volunteers was Jon Thornton, 36, a driving instructor from Sheffield, who had never eaten vegetables, from childhood upwards.

Weighing in at almost 19-stone, his typical diet read like the children's book, Mr Strong. Breakfast was four slices of toast; at 10am a bacon sausage and egg sarnie followed; fish and chips for tea and a Chinese take-away before bed.

That was before his wife signed up Mr Thornton for the experiment. Over 12 days he lost 5.7kg (12.5lbs), and reduced his cholesterol by 20%. His blood pressure also fell.

Despite nearly backing out at the start - the first day's food arrived in a cool-box, was raw and he was distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of broccoli - he was converted to eating vast portions of fresh fruit and veg.

"I didn't feel any loss of energy, I didn't feel ill at all," he says. "It's not a diet you'd recommend as a diet itself, but it worked to bring my cholesterol and blood pressure down."

Harmony in camp

With so much food bulk and plenty of calories the subjects did not go hungry - indeed most failed to finish their daily ration. And once they were over the withdrawal from caffeinated drinks and some foods, says Ms Garton, they enjoyed good energy levels and mood.

So the "moments of unhappiness and grumpiness" that the TV crew was primed to capture failed to happen. The proved to be a motivated group, although the one odorous side-effect from all that roughage couldn't be ignored.

Jon Thornton
Driving instructor Jon cut his cholesterol and his weight

Overall, the cholesterol levels dropped 23%, an amount usually achieved only through anti-cholesterol drugs statins.

The group's average blood pressure fell from a level of 140/83 - almost hypertensive - to 122/76. Though it was not intended to be a weight loss diet, they dropped 4.4kg (9.7lbs), on average.

The regime provided an education for all, and a permanent change for some.

"The main lesson that they took away was to eat more fruit and veg," says Ms Garton. They also cut salt intake from a group average of 12g a day, to 1g (against a guideline maximum of 6g) and reduced saturated fat - which makes cholesterol - from 13% to 5% of calories (recommended, 11%).

At the same time, they increased the soluble fibre which binds cholesterol in the gut, so that it is expelled, and increased the intake of plant sterols - which help to lower cholesterol.

For Jon, life has changed since he was "released" from the zoo. He has gained a little weight but now says he only eats when hungry and knows good food can help health and longevity. He can play football because his knees no longer hurt under the extra weight and he goes cycling.

He even managed to hold out at the most tempting time of year. "For the first time in 36 years this year I had vegetables with my Christmas dinner," he says. "Usually, I say no to them and have a few extra roast potatoes instead."

Cool website I found

2008-06-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

http://www.familyfarmdefenders.org/

Successful Dairy Sheep Farm in Oregon

2008-06-27T18:33:00.001-07:00

"Sheep cheese tastes distinctive, characteristically strong, and very different from cow or goat cheese. On this family sheep farm, the making of cheese reflects a slower pace of life along with a direct connection to the land. Consuming this cheese requires a careful eating pace.

To see more stories, get recipes, and links to additional resources, go to: http://cookingupastory.com"

Briefing America's Suburbs: The Economist

2008-06-27T18:24:00.000-07:00

I stole (borrowed) this magazine from the gym to scan and post it up. :D

Organic Agriculture

2008-06-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

James Kunstler's - The Long Emergency - 2005

2008-06-23T12:15:00.001-07:00

"A few weeks ago, the price of oil ratcheted above fifty-five dollars a barrel, which is about twenty dollars a barrel more than a year ago. The next day, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently, the price of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five bucks a barrel in the span of ten days. That same day, the stock market shot up more than a hundred points because, CNN said, government data showed no signs of inflation. Note to clueless nation: Call planet Earth.
Carl Jung, one of the fathers of psychology, famously remarked that "people cannot stand too much reality." What you're about to read may challenge your assumptions about the kind of world we live in, and especially the kind of world into which events are propelling us. We are in for a rough ride through uncharted territory.

It has been very hard for Americans -- lost in dark raptures of nonstop infotainment, recreational shopping and compulsive motoring -- to make sense of the gathering forces that will fundamentally alter the terms of everyday life in our technological society. Even after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, America is still sleepwalking into the future. I call this coming time the Long Emergency.

Most immediately we face the end of the cheap-fossil-fuel era. It is no exaggeration to state that reliable supplies of cheap oil and natural gas underlie everything we identify as the necessities of modern life -- not to mention all of its comforts and luxuries: central heating, air conditioning, cars, airplanes, electric lights, inexpensive clothing, recorded music, movies, hip-replacement surgery, national defense -- you name it.

The few Americans who are even aware that there is a gathering global-energy predicament usually misunderstand the core of the argument. That argument states that we don't have to run out of oil to start having severe problems with industrial civilization and its dependent systems. We only have to slip over the all-time production peak and begin a slide down the arc of steady depletion.

The term "global oil-production peak" means that a turning point will come when the world produces the most oil it will ever produce in a given year and, after that, yearly production will inexorably decline. It is usually represented graphically in a bell curve. The peak is the top of the curve, the halfway point of the world's all-time total endowment, meaning half the world's oil will be left. That seems like a lot of oil, and it is, but there's a big catch: It's the half that is much more difficult to extract, far more costly to get, of much poorer quality and located mostly in places where the people hate us. A substantial amount of it will never be extracted.

The United States passed its own oil peak -- about 11 million barrels a day -- in 1970, and since then production has dropped steadily. In 2004 it ran just above 5 million barrels a day (we get a tad more from natural-gas condensates). Yet we consume roughly 20 million barrels a day now. That means we have to import about two-thirds of our oil, and the ratio will continue to worsen.

The U.S. peak in 1970 brought on a portentous change in geoeconomic power. Within a few years, foreign producers, chiefly OPEC, were setting the price of oil, and this in turn led to the oil crises of the 1970s. In response, frantic development of non-OPEC oil, especially the North Sea fields of England and Norway, essentially saved the West's ass for about two decades. Since 1999, these fields have entered depletion. Meanwhile, worldwide discovery of new oil has steadily declined to insignificant levels in 2003 and 2004.

Some "cornucopians" claim that the Earth has something like a creamy nougat center of "abiotic" oil that will naturally replenish the great oil fields of the world. The facts speak differently. There has been no replacement whatsoever of oil already extracted from the fields of America or any other place.

Now we are faced with the global oil-production peak. The best estimates of when this will actually happen have been somewhere between now and 2010. In 2004, however, after demand from burgeoning China and India shot up, and revelations that Shell Oil wildly misstated its reserves, and Saudi Arabia proved incapable of goosing up its production despite promises to do so, the most knowledgeable experts revised their predictions and now concur that 2005 is apt to be the year of all-time global peak production.

It will change everything about how we live.

To aggravate matters, American natural-gas production is also declining, at five percent a year, despite frenetic new drilling, and with the potential of much steeper declines ahead. Because of the oil crises of the 1970s, the nuclear-plant disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and the acid-rain problem, the U.S. chose to make gas its first choice for electric-power generation. The result was that just about every power plant built after 1980 has to run on gas. Half the homes in America are heated with gas. To further complicate matters, gas isn't easy to import. Here in North America, it is distributed through a vast pipeline network. Gas imported from overseas would have to be compressed at minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit in pressurized tanker ships and unloaded (re-gasified) at special terminals, of which few exist in America. Moreover, the first attempts to site new terminals have met furious opposition because they are such ripe targets for terrorism.

Some other things about the global energy predicament are poorly understood by the public and even our leaders. This is going to be a permanent energy crisis, and these energy problems will synergize with the disruptions of climate change, epidemic disease and population overshoot to produce higher orders of trouble.

We will have to accommodate ourselves to fundamentally changed conditions.

No combination of alternative fuels will allow us to run American life the way we have been used to running it, or even a substantial fraction of it. The wonders of steady technological progress achieved through the reign of cheap oil have lulled us into a kind of Jiminy Cricket syndrome, leading many Americans to believe that anything we wish for hard enough will come true. These days, even people who ought to know better are wishing ardently for a seamless transition from fossil fuels to their putative replacements.

The widely touted "hydrogen economy" is a particularly cruel hoax. We are not going to replace the U.S. automobile and truck fleet with vehicles run on fuel cells. For one thing, the current generation of fuel cells is largely designed to run on hydrogen obtained from natural gas. The other way to get hydrogen in the quantities wished for would be electrolysis of water using power from hundreds of nuclear plants. Apart from the dim prospect of our building that many nuclear plants soon enough, there are also numerous severe problems with hydrogen's nature as an element that present forbidding obstacles to its use as a replacement for oil and gas, especially in storage and transport.

Wishful notions about rescuing our way of life with "renewables" are also unrealistic. Solar-electric systems and wind turbines face not only the enormous problem of scale but the fact that the components require substantial amounts of energy to manufacture and the probability that they can't be manufactured at all without the underlying support platform of a fossil-fuel economy. We will surely use solar and wind technology to generate some electricity for a period ahead but probably at a very local and small scale.

Virtually all "biomass" schemes for using plants to create liquid fuels cannot be scaled up to even a fraction of the level at which things are currently run. What's more, these schemes are predicated on using oil and gas "inputs" (fertilizers, weed-killers) to grow the biomass crops that would be converted into ethanol or bio-diesel fuels. This is a net energy loser -- you might as well just burn the inputs and not bother with the biomass products. Proposals to distill trash and waste into oil by means of thermal depolymerization depend on the huge waste stream produced by a cheap oil and gas economy in the first place.

Coal is far less versatile than oil and gas, extant in less abundant supplies than many people assume and fraught with huge ecological drawbacks -- as a contributor to greenhouse "global warming" gases and many health and toxicity issues ranging from widespread mercury poisoning to acid rain. You can make synthetic oil from coal, but the only time this was tried on a large scale was by the Nazis under wartime conditions, using impressive amounts of slave labor.

If we wish to keep the lights on in America after 2020, we may indeed have to resort to nuclear power, with all its practical problems and eco-conundrums. Under optimal conditions, it could take ten years to get a new generation of nuclear power plants into operation, and the price may be beyond our means. Uranium is also a resource in finite supply. We are no closer to the more difficult project of atomic fusion, by the way, than we were in the 1970s.

The upshot of all this is that we are entering a historical period of potentially great instability, turbulence and hardship. Obviously, geopolitical maneuvering around the world's richest energy regions has already led to war and promises more international military conflict. Since the Middle East contains two-thirds of the world's remaining oil supplies, the U.S. has attempted desperately to stabilize the region by, in effect, opening a big police station in Iraq. The intent was not just to secure Iraq's oil but to modify and influence the behavior of neighboring states around the Persian Gulf, especially Iran and Saudi Arabia. The results have been far from entirely positive, and our future prospects in that part of the world are not something we can feel altogether confident about.

And then there is the issue of China, which, in 2004, became the world's second-greatest consumer of oil, surpassing Japan. China's surging industrial growth has made it increasingly dependent on the imports we are counting on. If China wanted to, it could easily walk into some of these places -- the Middle East, former Soviet republics in central Asia -- and extend its hegemony by force. Is America prepared to contest for this oil in an Asian land war with the Chinese army? I doubt it. Nor can the U.S. military occupy regions of the Eastern Hemisphere indefinitely, or hope to secure either the terrain or the oil infrastructure of one distant, unfriendly country after another. A likely scenario is that the U.S. could exhaust and bankrupt itself trying to do this, and be forced to withdraw back into our own hemisphere, having lost access to most of the world's remaining oil in the process.

We know that our national leaders are hardly uninformed about this predicament. President George W. Bush has been briefed on the dangers of the oil-peak situation as long ago as before the 2000 election and repeatedly since then. In March, the Department of Energy released a report that officially acknowledges for the first time that peak oil is for real and states plainly that "the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary."

Most of all, the Long Emergency will require us to make other arrangements for the way we live in the United States. America is in a special predicament due to a set of unfortunate choices we made as a society in the twentieth century. Perhaps the worst was to let our towns and cities rot away and to replace them with suburbia, which had the additional side effect of trashing a lot of the best farmland in America. Suburbia will come to be regarded as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. It has a tragic destiny. The psychology of previous investment suggests that we will defend our drive-in utopia long after it has become a terrible liability.

Before long, the suburbs will fail us in practical terms. We made the ongoing development of housing subdivisions, highway strips, fried-food shacks and shopping malls the basis of our economy, and when we have to stop making more of those things, the bottom will fall out.

The circumstances of the Long Emergency will require us to downscale and re-scale virtually everything we do and how we do it, from the kind of communities we physically inhabit to the way we grow our food to the way we work and trade the products of our work. Our lives will become profoundly and intensely local. Daily life will be far less about mobility and much more about staying where you are. Anything organized on the large scale, whether it is government or a corporate business enterprise such as Wal-Mart, will wither as the cheap energy props that support bigness fall away. The turbulence of the Long Emergency will produce a lot of economic losers, and many of these will be members of an angry and aggrieved former middle class.

Food production is going to be an enormous problem in the Long Emergency. As industrial agriculture fails due to a scarcity of oil- and gas-based inputs, we will certainly have to grow more of our food closer to where we live, and do it on a smaller scale. The American economy of the mid-twenty-first century may actually center on agriculture, not information, not high tech, not "services" like real estate sales or hawking cheeseburgers to tourists. Farming. This is no doubt a startling, radical idea, and it raises extremely difficult questions about the reallocation of land and the nature of work. The relentless subdividing of land in the late twentieth century has destroyed the contiguity and integrity of the rural landscape in most places. The process of readjustment is apt to be disorderly and improvisational. Food production will necessarily be much more labor-intensive than it has been for decades. We can anticipate the re-formation of a native-born American farm-laboring class. It will be composed largely of the aforementioned economic losers who had to relinquish their grip on the American dream. These masses of disentitled people may enter into quasi-feudal social relations with those who own land in exchange for food and physical security. But their sense of grievance will remain fresh, and if mistreated they may simply seize that land.

The way that commerce is currently organized in America will not survive far into the Long Emergency. Wal-Mart's "warehouse on wheels" won't be such a bargain in a non-cheap-oil economy. The national chain stores' 12,000-mile manufacturing supply lines could easily be interrupted by military contests over oil and by internal conflict in the nations that have been supplying us with ultra-cheap manufactured goods, because they, too, will be struggling with similar issues of energy famine and all the disorders that go with it.

As these things occur, America will have to make other arrangements for the manufacture, distribution and sale of ordinary goods. They will probably be made on a "cottage industry" basis rather than the factory system we once had, since the scale of available energy will be much lower -- and we are not going to replay the twentieth century. Tens of thousands of the common products we enjoy today, from paints to pharmaceuticals, are made out of oil. They will become increasingly scarce or unavailable. The selling of things will have to be reorganized at the local scale. It will have to be based on moving merchandise shorter distances. It is almost certain to result in higher costs for the things we buy and far fewer choices.

The automobile will be a diminished presence in our lives, to say the least. With gasoline in short supply, not to mention tax revenue, our roads will surely suffer. The interstate highway system is more delicate than the public realizes. If the "level of service" (as traffic engineers call it) is not maintained to the highest degree, problems multiply and escalate quickly. The system does not tolerate partial failure. The interstates are either in excellent condition, or they quickly fall apart.

America today has a railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of. Neither of the two major presidential candidates in 2004 mentioned railroads, but if we don't refurbish our rail system, then there may be no long-range travel or transport of goods at all a few decades from now. The commercial aviation industry, already on its knees financially, is likely to vanish. The sheer cost of maintaining gigantic airports may not justify the operation of a much-reduced air-travel fleet. Railroads are far more energy efficient than cars, trucks or airplanes, and they can be run on anything from wood to electricity. The rail-bed infrastructure is also far more economical to maintain than our highway network.

The successful regions in the twenty-first century will be the ones surrounded by viable farming hinterlands that can reconstitute locally sustainable economies on an armature of civic cohesion. Small towns and smaller cities have better prospects than the big cities, which will probably have to contract substantially. The process will be painful and tumultuous. In many American cities, such as Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis, that process is already well advanced. Others have further to fall. New York and Chicago face extraordinary difficulties, being oversupplied with gigantic buildings out of scale with the reality of declining energy supplies. Their former agricultural hinterlands have long been paved over. They will be encysted in a surrounding fabric of necrotic suburbia that will only amplify and reinforce the cities' problems. Still, our cities occupy important sites. Some kind of urban entities will exist where they are in the future, but probably not the colossi of twentieth-century industrialism.

Some regions of the country will do better than others in the Long Emergency. The Southwest will suffer in proportion to the degree that it prospered during the cheap-oil blowout of the late twentieth century. I predict that Sunbelt states like Arizona and Nevada will become significantly depopulated, since the region will be short of water as well as gasoline and natural gas. Imagine Phoenix without cheap air conditioning.

I'm not optimistic about the Southeast, either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class boil over and collide with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism. The latent encoded behavior of Southern culture includes an outsized notion of individualism and the belief that firearms ought to be used in the defense of it. This is a poor recipe for civic cohesion.

The Mountain States and Great Plains will face an array of problems, from poor farming potential to water shortages to population loss. The Pacific Northwest, New England and the Upper Midwest have somewhat better prospects. I regard them as less likely to fall into lawlessness, anarchy or despotism and more likely to salvage the bits and pieces of our best social traditions and keep them in operation at some level.

These are daunting and even dreadful prospects. The Long Emergency is going to be a tremendous trauma for the human race. We will not believe that this is happening to us, that 200 years of modernity can be brought to its knees by a world-wide power shortage. The survivors will have to cultivate a religion of hope -- that is, a deep and comprehensive belief that humanity is worth carrying on. If there is any positive side to stark changes coming our way, it may be in the benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately (and physically) with our neighbors, to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social enactments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom. Years from now, when we hear singing at all, we will hear ourselves, and we will sing with our whole hearts."

Suburban America and the Oil Crisis

2008-06-23T12:11:00.000-07:00

More here: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/06/16/suburb.city/index.html?iref=werecommend

John McCain: War

2008-06-16T06:23:00.001-07:00

The Root of Environmental Degradation: My Take

2008-06-12T17:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I ask myself: "How did we end up like this?" only to find a complex and immobilizing response. If you ask me, the contemporary and growing number of issues we face with the environment stem from human disconnection to the land.

We live in a country where most of our crops come from California or are imported to us from other countries. If you aren't familiar with the term 'farming subsidies', you might want to look up the term. The stickers on your produce labeled 'Chile' and 'New Zealand' seem commonplace. I can assure you they're not. Getting produce to the US from other countries has it's own set of intricate problems. Production of commercial produce requires enormous amounts of energy, derived from both human labor and non-renewable energy sources.

In most cases it works as such: A country is in debt to the US or the World Bank. The World Bank cuts a deal with that country to grow American crops. In return their debt is paid off over a number of years, but is it ever really?

What is the downfall?

Commercial agriculture in America is less equipped to supply its citizens with the produce we regularly consume. Our country grows a lot of corn and soy. Monoculture (the growing of one crop) is not ideal for the soil. Ideally a diverse crop covered with a rich compost would maintain a healthy soil acidity. I've seen corn and soy field, they look like deserts.

A foreign country that grows our crops, faces a loss of cultural identity in not growing their native crops. The staples of their native diets are lost. For instance, Mexicans are reliant on the US for corn for tortillas, but why wouldn't they grow their own? Well the country is in debt to America; they grow other crops. Our corn market is heading strongly into the bio-fuels arena.

Then there's the issue of money. Why grow crops in America where its citizens have to be paid more to consume more. It's cheaper to grow crops in other countries and jack the price up in America. Regulations in other countries are easy to bend.

Through the farming subsidy program American farmers are paid more for their crops to continue their agricultural practices. This sounds ideal but is it really? Only the large commercial farmers (around 10%) are paid this extra sum. Where does that leave small farms? I've even heard of stories where the government pays commercial farmers to do nothing; to keep our crops in other countries.

A little about Farming Subsidies: (wikipedia)

"In America, critics also argue that agricultural subsidies go mostly to the biggest farms who need subsidization the least. Research from Brian M. Riedl at the Heritage Foundation showed that nearly three quarters of subsidy money goes to the top 10% of recipients.[10] Thus, the large farms, which are the most profitable because they have economies of scale, receive the most money. The discrepancy is only widening. Since 1990, payments to large farms have nearly tripled, while payments to small farms have remained constant.[11] Brian M. Riedl argues that the subsidy money is helping large farms buy out small farms. "Specifically, large farms are using their massive federal subsidies to purchase small farms and consolidate the agriculture industry. As they buy up smaller farms, not only are these large farms able to capitalize further on economies of scale and become more profitable, but they also become eligible for even more federal subsidies—which they can use to buy even more small farms."[12] Critics also note that, in America, over 90% of money goes to staple crops of corn, wheat, soybeans and rice while growers of other crops get shut out completely. In Europe, for instance the Common Agricultural Policy has provisions encourage local varieties and pays out subsidies based upon total area and not production. Although, in fairness, research has shown that small farms receive more payments in relation to value of their crops than big farms."[13]

We are disconnected from our food.

I truly believe that because the majority of this country does not have to farm or work the land, they place no value upon it. Why save land when you can buy everything you need at the grocery store? Our disconnection to food has intensified our disconnection to the land. In return, we could care less about land in general. Our view of the items we consume is infinite. Its a see no evil, hear no evil, type deal. Yet for some reason I don't think the younger generation of America even knows where food is produced. I'm sure they think produce comes off a factory conveyor belt.

Our infinite view of food carries through to other areas of consumption. We just keep buying and buying. The difference being that food can biodegrade (such as processed food decomposing and rotting in our colons). Where do all of the electronics go when we're sick of them and want them out of sight? We chuck it in the trash. We place no value on land, therefore no value on food, leading to no value of anything or anyone.

Because we don't have to individually work the land so there's no need for a sense of community with others. We are not reliant on local people for agricultural assistance or trade offs. We are just reliant on the corporate farmer and other countries that are definitely not within reach.

Because we don't grow our own food, we've created an unhealthy relationship with food. I suffer from it for sure. Growing up, I had access to whatever food I wanted. When my body wasn't exerting the physical energy it was supposed to as a teenager, I sought to food as a boredom and depression mechanism. I don't think I viewed the food I ate as a living organism, to me it was an object of consumption. Vegetables continue to live even after picked off the vine because they contain living organisms and enzymes, which aid the human body in it's digestion process/

Why are we all so depressed? I believe it's because we're obese and disconnected from other people.

Contrary to popular belief, I don't think the Urban landscape can save our social issues because one can still be extremely isolated in a city. I lived in the city and felt pretty lonely.

We don't have a sense of community and reliance on each other. We begin to distrust the infinite number of humans surrounding us.. This infinite concept has even lead to the idea that there are an infinite numbers of humans and "Damn do people drive me crazy! I just want my isolation!" In seeking isolation, we have sought out the car and the spread out and dispersed home development patterns.

Commercial agriculture has allowed our population to grow. There's just too many damn people in this country. If we had to completely rely on ourselves and local people for food, we definitely wouldn't reproduce like we do. We would be considerate of the reality of dry spells and shortages and that one day we might not be able to feed our family.

Most important of all: the habitats of non-human species. When we don't value land, we don't value other species. Without the land they will disappear. Our commonplace lifestyle suffers when we do not have the resistance and buffering that the natural environment provides us. Say a farm went broke, resorted to sale of the plot to a developer. The developer constructs large McMansions. The McMansions do not reforest. Soon a slew of McMansions are constructed. People that live in these places wonder why their energy bills are high and mosquitoes and ticks attack them as if there were no tomorrow. It's because there is no natural opposition. No natural trees to shade a home. No bats to predate on insects. Insecticides will temporarily stifle an insect population, then they come back tenfold as they grow a resistance to the chemicals.

Please take some of this into consideration.

iPhoto of the moment

2008-06-12T05:07:00.000-07:00

A little ranting: Americans, Republicans, Religion....

2008-06-02T14:23:00.000-07:00

THIS WAS FORWARDED TO ME BY EMAIL, I DO NOT AGREE WITH THE FOLLOWING STATEMENTS: SEE MY RESPONSE AT THE END

"Canada & America Needs A Leader Like This!
Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law were told on Wednesday to get out of Australia , as the government targeted radicals in a bid to head off potential terror attacks. Separately, Howard angered some Australian Muslims on Wednesday by saying he supported spy agencies monitoring the nation's mosques. Quote: 'IMMIGRANTS, NOT AUSTRALIANS, MUST ADAPT. Take It Or Leave It. I am tired of this nation worrying about whether we are offending some individual or their culture. Since the terrorist attacks on Bali , we have experienced a surge in patriotism by the majority of Australians.'
'This culture has been developed over two centuries of struggles, trials and victories by millions of men and women who have sought freedom' 'We speak mainly ENGLISH, not Spanish, Lebanese, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, or any other language.
Therefore, if you wish to become part of our society. Learn the language!' 'Most Australians believe in God. This is not some
Christian, right wing, political push, but a fact, because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented. It is certainly appropriate to display it on the walls of our schools. If God offends you, then I suggest you consider another part of the world as your new home, because God is part of our culture.' 'We
will accept your beliefs, and will not question why. All we ask is that you accept ours, and live in harmony and
peaceful enjoyment with us.' 'This is OUR COUNTRY, OUR LAND, and OUR LIFESTYLE, and we will allow you every opportunity to enjoy all this. But once you are done complaining, whining, and griping about Our Flag, Our Pledge, Our Christian beliefs, or Our Way of Life, I highly encourage you take advantage of one other great Australian freedom, 'THE RIGHT TO LEAVE'.' 'If
you aren't happy here then LEAVE. We didn't force you to come here. You asked to be here. So accept the country YOU accepted.' Maybe if we circulate this amongst ourselves, American and Canadian citizens will find the backbone to start speaking and voicing the same truths.
If you agree ... please SEND THIS ON."

My response:

People still seem to think that they biologically have a right to "own" land and because you're not christian, you don't belong there. What does christianity have to do with nature? Why should religion define who we are and our geographic location? Do you think the animals in Australia care about christianity or call themselves muslims? When did location become about religion and not about survival?

As you can see religion creates problems all over the world, if there wasn't islam or christianity no one would have to worry!
Instead of arguing over religion, find a pro-active way to discuss environmental degradation, which stems from man's conquest to dominate the earth anyways. Man's conquest to dominate is much like religion: to control a population's mindset, is to feel at ease with oneself (In some skewed way). I believe to live at ease with oneself, is to live in harmony with other beings and to accept them for the natural state they are in. ACCEPTANCE is key. We wouldn't have to make so many EXCEPTIONS if everything wasn't based on the criteria of religion and race.

Americans are always the first to jump on the bandwagon of forwarding patriotic emails. Sub-consciously, I would imagine, it helps them feel that they are strengthening their lack in patriotism through culture bashing and demanding the right to bear arms as a symbol of freedom. I've found that people in this country, a large majority of which call themselves Republicans, have no clue about much of anything, nor are they very pro-active. They are slaves of the working class. They don't have the time to EDUCATE themselves because they're too BUSY working to pay the BILLS, bills of which stem from excessive and unnecessary possessions. They're all part of the equation that keeps the very small percentage of Republicans in large corporate comfort. This is done simply by consuming just way too much and holding on to conservative values, of which have not evolved to compliment our contemporary world

Guess what working class Republicans of the new age? Being a Republican really doesn't benefit you! It just keeps you in the trap! To be a Republican, I believe, is to harbor selfish qualities. Republicans want the right to bear arms, pro-life, pro-religion, less environmental concern, more beef. What I've realized is that all of these qualities stem from concern with the "self". Conservative beliefs are concerned with the protection of "self" (individual rights to protect their assets/voice/homes) and what the "self" needs, which in today's world has been taken beyond the means of survival. When one is concerned so much with the "self" they tend to ignore how other beings are suffering at the hands of meeting their "self" needs. People like this are not at ease with themselves. They need material possessions and intellectual/moral control to make them feel whole.

The only statement I agree with is, yes, we do need to have one language per country. It's too hard to accomodate everyone.

Palm Oil Production

2008-06-01T20:25:00.000-07:00

Palm oil is a cheap vegetable oil.

Many food and beauty items that we all buy contain palm oil. I am definitely guilty of buying such a product as Dove soap, one of my favorite brands to use. I started taking notice to see what the oil was used in. It seems that a lot of sweet and convenient store items contain palm oil.

Because of the demand for palm oil production, habitats in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Papua New Guinea are being destroyed to make way for palm oil plantations. The procedure involves clear-cutting of dense forest habitat. Forests that are home to countless numbers of species interacting with each other at many levels. The species and their interactions form the medicines we use for cancer, etc. After clear-cutting, Palm trees are symmetrically planted next to each other, with no other vegetation nearby. Imagine a cornfield with more open space in between each crop. I've seen it, it looks like a wasteland.

One species that is suffering the worst is the Orangutan. It breaks my heart to know that Orangutan infants are orphaned as the forests are cleared and taken in by locals. They are tied up to leashes and chains because they are viewed as pets. Most of these orphans die because they are not getting the proper nutrients from their lactating mothers and they quickly fall ill. Adult orangutans are very aggressive towards humans and I'm assuming they would just be shot.

I can't convince you to stop buying products with palm oil altogether, but try your best to raise awareness and lessen the amount of products containing the oil.

It's sickening to think that because of gas station junk food, a forest must be chopped down.

Reality

2008-06-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

For the average person in the world who considers their life boring or uninspiring it is because they've made no attempt to gain knowledge or information that will inspire them.

They're so hypnotized in their environment, through the media, through TV, through people living and creating ideals that everyone struggles to become

no one can acutally become in terms of physical appearance and definitions of beauty and valor

-illusions that most people surrender and live their life in mediocracy

they may live that life

and the soul never really desires or rises to the surface

-so they may want to be something else-

but if it does not rise to the surface and they ask themselves if there is something more or why am I here? what is the purpose of life? where am I going? what happens when I die?

they start to ask those questions

they start to flirt and interact with the perception that they may be having a nervous breakdown

in reality what they're doing is

their old concepts of how they view their life in the world start to fall apart

Dr. Joe Dispenza - (What the Bleep Do We Know)

Why are you an environmentalist?

2008-05-29T14:49:00.000-07:00

A little paragraph I casually submitted to the Nature Conservancy MD/DC Chapter

Bean in the Baltimore Examiner

2008-05-27T07:13:00.000-07:00

Article I responded to:

My response:

Book Alert: Edward O. Wilson - On Human Nature

2008-05-24T23:55:00.001-07:00

-Won the Pullitizer Prize

Species Alert: Proboscis Monkey - Nasalis Larvatus

2008-05-24T23:47:00.000-07:00

-Arboreal and amphibious old world monkey

-Found in Borneo - mangrove forests, lowland riparian forests, and swamps

-Suffers from ongoing habitat loss (palm oil production) and hunting, 7000 exist in the wild

For more info: http://www.proboscismonkey.org/

Revitalization of the Rural Landscape

2008-05-19T19:53:00.001-07:00

There was a time when I was under the impression that green buildings and the LEED certification process would transform how homes eat up energy. I might of been halfway there. During my internship, with an architecture firm, I put together an application to get a large incubator research facility LEED silver certified. I thought to myself "I may be pushing papers, but I'm contributing to something I strongly believe in!". Further into the certification process I learned that the building site had previously been vegetated. Once I learned of this information I felt deceived. Many companies are using the LEED certification and 'green' practices as a marketing strategy. This situation was just that. It took so much out of me to be able to stick with the program at my full potential. LEED has done an amazing job reforming the way built structures have been thought out, but how do so many buildings still achieve LEED certification, with a low number of points, even by cutting down a forest? In the equation of land conserved to land not conserved, how does this example fit in? Land conservation needs to be more firmly addressed. Particularly in Baltimore County, there are a bunch of land conservancies, but they are only voluntary and land must be given up to the conservancy. It is my opinion that USGBC - LEED needs to start being more strict with its Sustainable Sites credits requiring developers not to construct buildings on previously vegetated lands. To do otherwise is an environmental disaster. There are deserted chemical-laden brown-fields in which to build. Stay in the urban setting!

Suburbia is slowly but surely encroaching upon our beautiful rural landscape. As a native, I have seen farms sold to developers which in turn are made into residential subdivisions. There is nothing more depressing and scary than the permanence of such an example. The houses are constructed, a few trees are planet as a said excuse for reforestation, and the hundreds of acres sit there, devoid of flora and fauna. One would think that because land is not incessant that citizens of the rural landscape would take great pride in their home. One would think a developer would be required to blend their built structure into the natural environment. One would also think that because the farm does not serve an economical purpose anymore, that the land would need to be reforested to revitalize habitats for native species and aid in stormwater management. Its all about the money obviously.

From my observation of watching farms turn into ugly McMansion subdivisions, there is an obvious lack of community involvement. The lack of community involvement stems from a weak county economy. Monoculture, consisting mostly of corn and soy crops made its way into the rural landscape. Farmers in this country took a back seat. Our country imports produce from so many others countries. Farmers are a broke group of individuals at the moment. One would think the farmer would be prized for his/her yield of what keeps us alive. Instead he/she was forced to give up his/her land to developers. The newcomers to these developments are people that I find isolate themselves. They seem to dislike being around other people. They take no pride in the rural landscape. They hire mexicans to mow their lawns because they can't bare to interact with nature even on artificial terms. Instead of our economy subsiding around agricultural diversity and yield, suburban shopping malls took their place. As suburbia moves closer and closer to the rural landscape, to make the needs of county citizens more accessible, farm land that could of been reforested is being eaten up.

A very exciting trend is taking place at this moment to counteract this residential sprawl through Community Supported Agriculture. Residents of the county and also many new high-end restaurants in the city are supporting the farms. Most of which are almost in my backyard! The farms are selling out of their yearly shares. It's amazing! Other farm types involved in this produce lamb, goat, bison, vegetable, and fruit items.

Agriculture is important to the rural landscape, but we need to find a balance between what land is conserved/reforested and what land is agriculturally worked. Agricultural practices must evolve in a way that does not take away from the land through erosion and pesticides. In stopping the residential development, creating beautiful vegetated social areas, and raising awareness of the issues the rural landscape faces, the residents of Baltimore County will finally start to get to know each other. They will hopefully start to value their home and have a sense of place. We need permanence that contributes and does not take away. Through this we can revitalize the rural landscape.

stop suburbia in its tracks + revitalize diverse agriculture + reforestation + conservation

= sustainable and interconnected rural landscape

I Want My Soul Back

2008-05-19T18:48:00.000-07:00

I will tell you more about this piece later

Gouache and micron pens on paper
8.5 x 11"

Maryland: Agricultural Resource Center Park for 2009

2008-05-19T18:26:00.000-07:00

Today I located a website where I discovered that an Agricultural Resource Center Park is expected to open in 2009 for the Baltimore County Area on 149 acres on Shawan Road. This park will support services for the agricultural community and promote the future of sustainability of the agricultural industry. The park will also serve as an educational resource center and field destination for school children and adults. So far the park will house the Maryland Horse Breeders Association, but other organizations are expected to join in.

More importantly, the park will support agencies that enhance the protection of soil and water resources through research based, modern land management and farming techniques. The park is expected to also house the maryland beekeepers and master gardeners.

To find out more go to: www.tpl.org

Natalie Angier: a rare gem

2008-05-19T18:10:00.001-07:00

I took a feminism related course titled: Body Discourses (theory surrounding the body). The class was really engaging and I wrote down a bunch of book titles to research after the class had ended. From that list I found Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie Angier. I picked up the book and began reading it. Man was I hooked!!! If you are into integrative reading such as myself this is a must book for you. The book discusses the female body in biological, cultural, and social terms. Not only does Angier know the scientific information, but she incorporates a lot of humor to make boring facts fun. From this book I began to develop an interest in the comparison between primates and humans. Angier uses many examples that correlate macques, bonobos, etc. to human behavior. There are so many different discussions in this book I can't even begin to summarize it. One chapter discusses genes, which highlights the story of a group of females in Mexico that have a body full of hair. Through this Angier correlates our relations to primate ancestors and also shows how genes from our ancestors generally do not express themselves in our physical features. The group of females in Mexico displayed a gene that was many many years old. I'm sure you have it in you to, somewhere!

Angier also takes a very opinionative standpoint, which I like a lot. She shows how the rates of cesareans and hysterectomies has gone through the roof. Angier points out that generally this is a result of our culture. We have so many responsibilities in our busy lives that even human creation is scheduled. Angier also shows how we take organs out of our bodies just because we believe they malfunction or may possibly cause us harm in the future with little evidence. Angier strongly believes that we really have no clue as to how extracting organs may affect the body as a whole functioning system.