The Petroleum in Your Breakfast and the Carbon Dioxide Coming out of Your Shoes

Peter Slote, my first Aikido instructor and Oakland Recycling Specialist, kindly chastised me recently for even hoping that some recycled/recyclable plastic razors and tooth brushes were particularly environmentally friendly, pointing out that shipping to their east coast home and back alone consumed enough oil to be problematic. (On the other hand, I bet the normal ones are mostly shipped from China.) He just sent me a great article from today's Chronicle analyzing the fuel that went into transporting a simple, cheap, organic San Francisco breakfast to San Francisco.

There was a great (if annoyingly New York centric) article in Slate a couple weeks ago about the dark side of organic produce at places like Whole Foods---if your only concern is the environment (and not your probably non-threatened health or the health of the farm workers), you are over all better off buying local conventional produce than Chilean organic produce. (I was gratified because the day before this article came out I had picked my way through Whole Foods in Berkeley, carefully reading labels to pick up local cheese and crackers, but I was amused because most organic-supplying stores like Whole Foods label their produce adaquately enough for the consumer to make that choice and in the Western United States organic very often is as local as its going to get.)

Recently on Snarkmarket I left a somewhat snarky comment calling for a little browser plugin that would inform you how much the online purchase you just made would cost the atmosphere in carbon emissions to be shipped to your house. I later pointed out to Robin, climateboy, and Saurabh by email that this would be unfair, because the exact same problems apply to most "local" traditional stores, and Robin got the same feedback over at WorldChanging. In fact, shipping and handling may very well be more efficient than individual consumer driving.

I've been thinking about locality ever since last fall, when I went to the Peak Oil talk where I first met up with Hedgehog. For example, we have noticed that it is almost impossible to buy a solid pair of local shoes. Scotto is fond of pointing out that we basically take oil and turn it into food. Take a look at the Chad Heeter article Peter sent me:

What they've discovered is astonishing. According to researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of more than 7 calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating my 400-calorie breakfast, I will, in effect, have consumed 2,800 calories of fossil fuel energy. (Some researchers claim the ratio is as high as 10 to 1.)

It is, actually, pretty easy for me to mostly eat local food, because of where I live. Normally, my staple is basmati rice, and that, of course is shipped from India, but I have been eating less of that lately, and I know that almost everything else I eat is from Northern California, or at least packaged here. But the real problem here is an information problem. The oh-so-glorious free market is supposed to work when all the players are fully informed about all the risks and consequences of their choices. Besides their being ludicrous assumptions about how fast information can travel in time in that model, there are ludicrous assumptions about how much the information there even exists for the consumer to process. Heeter writes:

But if there was truth in packaging, where my oatmeal box now tells me how many calories I get from each serving, it would also tell me how many calories of fossil fuels went into the product.

In light of Colin's excellent recent post on James Woolsey's recommendation for avoiding foreign oil consumption, let me point out that this isn't just about foreign policy or even peak oil. This is about the fact that we are in a hell of a lot of trouble. See this week's Time cover -- our planet is melting. All the burning Turkey offal in the world may save us from more wars (though I doubt it) but it won't save our atmosphere. Hedgehog likes to give us pointed reminders that the best way to reduce our dependence on oil and save the atmosphere is to reduce consumption. (They're surprisingly effective reminders--small but spiny mammals land memorable punches)

I've been trying to drive less--and trying to come up with a palatable caffeine source that can get me to the closer parking lot without itself getting here from half way around the world. I've been very, very, very slowly working on becoming a competent biker with a lot of help from my friends. I've also been paying more attention to what I buy and where it comes from, and trying to cut down on non-local purchases. I'm not as enthused about having such a globetrotting 2006 as 2005 was. But it's all very slow and haphazard. It hardly seems optimal. I want to engineer something better, precise.

So, what do we do? Speak up, dear readers. I am at a loss. Really, we all are.

Let this be a lesson to all of you.

Poor Sepia Mutiny. Manish forgot to renew the domain name registration. Now they have cyber squatters. Renew your domain names!

/shakes head sadly.

Lovely

The LA Times's Nicholas Riccardi writes about how the FBI is spending resources watching Food Not Bombs volunteers and Indymedia:

The FBI, while waging a highly publicized war against terrorism, has spent resources gathering information on antiwar and environmental protesters and on activists who feed vegetarian meals to the homeless, the agency's internal memos show.

. . .

Senior Special Agent Charles Rasner said one slide, labeled "Anarchism," was a federal analyst's list of groups that people intent on terrorism might associate with. . . .Rasner said that he'd never heard of [Indymedia & Food Not Bombs] before and didn't mean to condemn them. But he added that it made sense to worry about violent people emerging from anarchist networks — "Any group can have somebody that goes south."

Got that? Any group.

My WTH?! Moment of the Week

So I was driving home, sitting in the north-facing left-turn lane of Sacramento at Ashby in Berkeley. It was about 7:15 pm, and fairly dark astronomically, but there were plenty of streetlights on. Several cars travelling west on Ashby, from my right, were turning left onto Sacramento--in front of me they twirled, and then down past my left side. Most of the cars were ordinary. One was not.

Living the Bay Area, as I do, I've seen cars with sculptures on top of them, once a pumpkin. I've seen cars painted all the colors of the rainbow. I've seen a van covered in armor made of old compact discs. I've seen a car with the dashboard totally colonized by gnomes. I've seen cars with skulls and figurines and mastheads.

But I have never seen a car covered as completely as possible in fur. 1-2 inch thick tawny, brown flecked fur, that looked very like it was taken off the back of an animal. You could see the glass, you could see the rubber, and you could see the fur. A plush car. A furry automobile. A fuzzy station wagon/hatch back. Nap going front to back. Slightly damp on top, the hairs clumping together a bit. Somebody decided to very carefully cover their car in fur. Either that or there are new species I had no idea about.

That's Kind of Obnoxious

I know that it's considered quite chic to just adore the Economist. Oh, such a smart magazine! And I grant you that it's very knowledgable and clearly written. But whenever I'm starting to really like an issue, like it enough to consider subscribing, some line of stupid wit pisses me off so utterly that I don't pick up another one for weeks. Usually this happens on a train or bus, so it doesn't stick in my brain enough to quote. This time it happened online, and here it is. An article about wheat promises to be incredibly informative, wonderfully detailed, with far-reaching insight drawing on multiple disciplines. Plenty to disagree with, of course, but still deliciously nerdy. It is, in fact, that, but not just that--like a tasty bowl of mueslix marred by discovering a roach leg, this line uptop brought my zen-reading to a screaching halt.

The Atkins diet and a fashion for gluten allergies have made wheat seem less wholesome.

Fashion, huh? I'm sure it's very fashionable to have your small intestine so damaged by your own immune system that it impedes the absorbtion of all kinds of nutrients, not just one of the principle carbohydrates in most western diets. Fatigue, anemia, osteopoerosis, and mouth sores are all very trendy these days. This new style even has a great name and an NIH sponsored webpage! It's called Celiac Sprue.

And no, I don't have Celiac Sprue, I don't even think I know anybody who does. That doesn't prevent me from having some bare minimum of respect for people who do.

Since all the articles lack bylines I find the unwarranted, pointless, distracting snittiness even more obnoxious, since it's institutionalized. Oh, and the kicker was an incredibly annoying oversimplication too, but that's another story.

Free Hao Wu

I don't know a whole lot more than what you will find by clicking on this image--that Hao Wu, a Chinese blogger and filmmaker, has been detained in Beijing without charge since February 22, and that he was working on a documentary about underground Christian churches in China. There is apparently some fear that the authorities will try extract information from him that will be useful in cracking down on these churches, and that this process will not be very good for him. The source for this information is Ethan Zuckerman, founder of Global Voices (where Hao Wu blogged with the penname Tian Yi), develpment geek par excellence, friend of this blog and me through our guest bloggers Colin & Emily, and a generally brilliant and knowledgable guy.

I'm not sure what can be done at this point, how exactly awareness campaigns like this work, but I hope it does help. I know if I were making a documentary and I were detained by a government for a month, I'd want people to make some noise on my behalf. So please read up on it and consider posting this banner on your website, if you have one, and if you have more concrete ideas on how to help, please leave them in comments. FYI, the address of the Chinese embassy in the United States is:

Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the United States of America
2300 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, D.C. 20008

How Do You Say I have cocaine in Hebrew? Ask the Tibetan Monk.

I culled this piece of wisdom from a link from IsThatLegal: it's a Jerusalem Post article about the dark inside humor of a group of travellers travelling in a red fire truck through the Sahara. They are two Israelis, a Palestinian, two Americans, an Iraqi, an Afghani, an Iranian, an Ukrainian, and a Tibetan, and their 16-person support staff, a media contingent, and an olive tree named Olivie.

Baby Octopus Adventures

I actually already blogged this on my own site, but I just had to cross-post this here because of this blog's octopus theme:

In this clip from an old Japanese TV show, [10 MB MP4] an octopus and a peanut try to get their hands on a baby octopus.

Um....

Found via this boingboing post.

P.S.: In completely unrelated news, for anyone out there who's feeling bitter about anything, just remember: Annie Proulx is more bitter than you are.

LabLit!

There's a much talked about article by Michael Specter in this week's New Yorker that I have yet to sit down with. It's called "Political Science: The Bush Administration's War on The Laboratory," and from the substantial buzz I've heard about it, it contains yet another set of indictments along the lines of Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science. One blogger who's mentioned it recently is Chris Carlsson of Attitude Adjustor, and in his comments section James Acah (apparently, a nuclear engineer who seems to have a whole science-in-fiction novel for a blog) mentioned your new delicious link of the afternoon--LabLit! LabLit! LabLit! (You gotta say it three times fast. You know you want to.)

Links from my quick tasty test-test: Interviews with mathematician Jonathan Farley, who "teaches Hollywood to count," and physicist Sydney Perkowitz, who is also a playwright and has a whole book on foam; an editorial against iPods in the lab, and riff for the need for science communicators.

Given the proliferation of incredibly frustrating anti-science culture, politics, and business, it's a fun change to spend time on a site like this which celebrates the scientific endeavor.

Happy 520

Tis the month of Phalgun, and the ground is whirling below a full golden moon. In a few hours it shall rise over Bengal, where so much and so many that are dear to me are waiting for its signal, and a dozen hours later it shall rise over the California hills and the bay. Between there and here the moonlight falling across the spinning planet will set off, in so many places, a most joyful clamoring of singing and dancing. The clap of cymbals, the trumpetting of conchshells, the ringing of bells and clay drums rolling out such sweet, sweet thunder. Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. The whole universe is one family. May there be good fortune throughout the universe, and may all envious persons be pacified.

To be humbler than a blade of grass, more tolerant than a tree, and always ready to give respect to others--so very difficult to even contemplate, even with magnificent inspiration. I both ritually and informatively declare that I am quite useless and false at this endeavor, and feel somewhat useless even trying, but in honor of the day, I attempt to give my respects to all--those who have excelled at it already, and those who shall excel at it in the future, all far exceeding me. It is 520 Gaurabda, and if you are so inclined, have a Happy Gaurpurnima!

And if you are not so inclined, have a nice, colorful Holi.

Get Movin'

Not too long ago Shah Rukh Khan was interviewed by Newsweek, and he said that the reason Bollywood movies almost always feature song and dance routines is that musical theater is India's preferred genre of fantasy--as opposed to the ludicrous special effects of American action movies--because "one of the simple fantasies of Indians is that we can sing and dance when we feel like it." That fantasy is not entirely unrealistic--nor is it even exclusively Indian. Just this morning I was thinking about fairly modern and popular western movies that break out into the musical motion--Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Billy Madison, In and Out, and of course that great classic of B-uh-Hollywood, The Blues Brothers. With cheap cameras and accessible soundtracks, the fantasy doesn't even have to be for the rich and famous.

Therefore I hand to you my new favorite vlog--video weblog--courtesy of ToastyKen: SuperSecretDanceSociety. (Toasty said the acronym reminded him of my inititals.) So far I've enjoyed everything I've seen, but I share with you the Hip Check* and Operation Panther Storm. On a day when I'm badly in need of a smile, it makes me want to grab my camera and troll the streets for movement.

Of course now that I've told you, someone's going to come and make me dance. The sacrifices I make for you people.

*someone tell Martina!

Kindness of Strangers

I was totally zoned out on BART this morning, when a ruckus on the loud speakers and the groans of other passengers' shook me out of my stupor. We were being diverted away from San Francisco towards Lake Merritt--one station south of my normal Oakland comfort zone--because of a fire on the tracks. The driver dolefully announced something like, "get off this train. . this train is bound for an unknown destination," which cracked up some of the passengers despite our irritation. "I want to go to the unknown destination!" Shades of the twilight zone. I blearily stumbled out into the station's sunshine--totally disoriented and unable to locate even a familiar corner, let alone the Lake (I guess it's a few blocks north of the station). After letting my boss know that I had no idea when I'd make it in, I called my friend Steve, who has lived around there, asking for a recommendation for a nearby wi-fi cafe where I could work until the problem cleared. Then one of my fellow passengers--the one who'd declared an interest in the unknown destination--offered me and two other ladies a ride to San Francisco with his girlfriend who had come to pick him up. Since they didn't bother introducing themselves, neither did we, but it was a fairly friendly chat ride over on the congested bridge. I told them about the Emperor Norton. When she dropped us off at the Embarcadero we eased our way past KGO Channel 7 cameras filming a segment with a reporter. When I got into work, Steve called me back and ended up putting me in a story--so now the kindness of strangers is enshrined on the SF Business Times website.

Only Thing Better

Than a Rock Lobster is a . . .

FURRY LOBSTER!!!!!

link from Scotto.

Flickr Crack

Stolen shamelessly from Snarkmarket, staring at this dynamically generated flickr assemblage of interesting photos from a given day is like getting a megadose of social-intellectual-sensual endorphins injected directly into your brain. Some favorites pulled out from the mosaic I got: adorably muddy kid, tree backlit by dusk, Rajastani bedecked with turban and scarf, black and white portrait with a shadow from a glass, frog with bokeh, a shimmering gate (askew), and a not so safe for work but extremely elegant nude silhouette.

Oh the humanity!

In other photography blogging, over at Daily Dose of Imagery Sam Javanrouh continues to inflate my sense that Toronto is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

Hit and Run Blogging

By Saheli.

Colin is doing a great job, but I want to put some thoughts out there before they expire.

It's an essay-topic that's knocking around my head, wanting to be written so I can better articulate it for myself, and just not getting done: balance. I haven't trained at the Aikido dojo in a while, but man, that idea keeps popping up even when you leave. Like the balance between consistency and effort.

I was talking about this with Rishi the other night, on the phone, and his comment brought it back up. Consistency is really important in the law. It's really important in being fair. It's really important in assessing any kind of evidence objectively. We use it to assess other people's and our own sincerity--the extent to which we do and say things out of a respect for what is true and good, and not just because we are selfish beasts needing to be seen as true and good so we can be liked. We use it to assess our own and other people's laziness. We use it to sniff out the difference between show-business and the real deal. It's the moral analyst's first tool.

But then there is the notion that the perfect is the enemy of the good. The hobgoblin of little minds. How is that not just an excuse for obvious failings, obvious self-righteousness and moral dishonesty? These days I have constantly pressing on my mind that life can be hard. We are frail creatures. We aren't principled robots that can be programmed with principled software and be expected to run on mathematical rules of moral instruction. (Hell, as far as a I can tell even computers can't be consistent.) Sometimes, when you put too much of an emphasis on consistency, on avoiding looking like a hypocrite, you end up not doing what you want to do at all. If people's ideals count for nothing, then their goals soon become worthless as well, and if their goals become worthless, their energy gets sapped. Why even try, if trying to be a little better, do a little more good, stake out a slightly more moral habit for yourself, is only going to make you an inconsistent hypocrite?

Of course, it would be best if we do good and be good without touting our own horns, but like I said, we are frail. We need people to pat us on the back even when we don't deserve it, we need to shout, "I'm going to climb that mountain!" and we need people to clap and cheer us up the mountain, even if we don't make it all the way. We need to reassure ourselves that we're good. But then again the road to hell is paved with good intentions, people are best at lying at themselves, pride is the greatest enemy, etc. etc. . .

And so some people ruthlessly, relentlessly self-examine and criticize others, hacking away at energy and enthusiasm with self doubt and cynicism and negativity, while other people drown their character and their ability to help the world in a self-indugent stew of forgiveness and cheap As for effort. The oppression of the dichotomy. Ah, back to Aikido.

It's all about balance. And balance can't be predetermined, programmed in. It has to be dynamically achieved, self-correcting at every moment. It's sort of what's great and awful about being human and alive. We have to constantly watch ourselves, be deliberate and willful about our actions, adjust our attitudes and then readjust. And also ready to reach out and help a friend if they start to stumble.

Part of these thoughts were inspired by a link Ruchira told me about--the phenomena of do-gooder derogation, which she found on the webpage of Stanford psychologist Benoit Monin. The example he picks is how people love, love, love to make fun of vegetarians and to find their inconsistencies. This is something I am so intimately acquainted with that it almost feels like water and air. I'm glad someone finally put a name to the gotcha-mentality that has plagued me my whole conversational life. As a journalist, I know quite well that there's often no substitute for a good game of gotcha. The gotcha games of some of my friends have made me a better vegetarian. But in real life and among friends, it's got to be tempered with compassion and kindness. Balanced.

This is a test.