Beyond Rivalry - earthcare_and_environment

Casting Spells

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:26:20 -0500

Not sure why Booker-prize-winning novelist Ian McEwan (Amsterdam, Atonement, Saturday) was asked for his opinion on climate change policy and the new U.S. administration, but in this piece in the WSJ (8 Nov. 2008), he wrote this lovely bit:

"The contest for the presidency, like all elections, had the self-enclosed quality of a squash game, a chess match, a post-modern novel -- and this one was far better than most. While the candidates appeared to address an external reality, they were bound by strictly ethereal requirements: to cast spells on large crowds while seeming ordinary, to trample their opponent into oblivion while seeming pleasant, to be inspirational yet sensible, to avoid offending a score of sensitive constituencies, and, an old wizard's touch, to promise the electorate various gifts without further borrowing or raising taxes. ...

btw, McEwan argues that Obama must act decisively on climate change, taking advantage of the "unearthly powers" now attributed to him.

More Food Choices: Local or Vegetarian?

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 11:50:00 -0400

If you need to make a choice, don't worry so much about eating local food as about eating less meat, says this study (pdf), reported at Marketplace, and cited at Marginal Revolution, where Cowen offers his suggestions for non-meat meals:

"Maybe you don't like tofu but sardines are delicious, or use Goya small red beans with shredded Mexican cheese (even the Kraft package is decent) and ground chile on a corn tortilla. Don't forget the lime on top."

Which is Greener: Renting DVDs Locally or From Afar?

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 10:10:00 -0400

We have long rented DVDs from a local independent source (semi-local: a 20-mile round trip) but a few weeks ago began renting through NetFlix as well, for videos the local store doesn't have and won't buy -- notably, Julia Child's "The French Chef" episodes, which our local DVD provider considers a "How-To" DVD and which I consider instructional humour. Julia Child is a trip. (How about a last-minute dinner party for 300 people?)

Anyway, in case you wonder whether it's more sustainable to rent locally or from a company like Netflix that mails DVDs direct, Slate's got the answers (although they compare NetFlix with Blockbuster, a chain). They look at transportation, packaging, and computer use.

Transportation: "Even just a two-mile drive to the video store will consume a few hundred times more energy than the Netflix delivery from a distribution center 200 miles away [ours is about 35 miles away]."

Computer Use: "30 minutes spent reordering your queue -- in a well-lit, climate-controlled room with the computer running -- will use far more energy than the actual Netflix delivery and about as much energy as it would take to drive your hybrid to a store a half-mile away." Does anyone spend…

Evolution and Conversion, cont'd (3)

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 06:15:00 -0400

(Previous posts on this topic: here and here.)

I'm into chapter 5 now (page 173) and have read chapter 3 twice. A lot of it still eludes me (the last time I read The Origin of Species was in high school), but here's what I've noticed:

Chapter 3, The Symbolic Species

This chapter, more than the others, is directly related to Darwin's theory of evolution, and concerns how the mimetic theory of culture parallels Darwin's theory of genetics as it also explores the evolution of mimetic theory and culture itself, the order in which things have occurred.

** "The theory of evolution seems to me quite powerfully sacrificial. ... Darwin ... stresses the importance of death just as much as the importance of survival. In some sense it is representing nature as a super-sacrificial machine...."

Girard agrees with sociobiologist E.O. Wilson that religion is adaptable: "I claim that religion protects men and societies from mimetic escalation. Religion has an adaptive value. But this is not enough: it is also the source of hominization, of the differentiation between animals and human beings, because ... through sacrifice it creates culture and institutions."

"One can argue that many groups and societies perished and were…

RIP Kat Kinkade (1930-2008)

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:49:03 -0400

Katherine Kinkade died on 3 July, at age 77 of cancer (some sources says breast, some say bone), at the commune she founded 40 years ago, Twin Oaks, on 123 acres near Charlottesville, Virginia. She sounds like an interesting woman:

"She made enemies. Her impatient style did not always sit well with community members fond of endless discussion and group consensus. Some regarded her as power-hungry and intimidating. In truth, she was more pioneer than hippie, an awkward fit wherever she went, too wayward for conventional society and too managerial for the chaotic 1960s.

"'She was a tough cookie,' Leslie Greenwood, a commune member, wrote on a memorial Web site dedicated to Ms. Kinkade. 'She was not fond of group hugs, had no interest in alternative medicine, nature-centered activities or tofu lasagna.'"

In later years, she briefly lived in Boston and worked as a computer programmer there, returned to Twin Oaks, sang in a church choir (though she's an atheist), and in 2000 moved into a house her daughter bought her in Mineral, Va, where "she rescued stray cats and talked to her flowers," among other things.

WaPo obituary.

(Photo credit: Twin Oaks Community)

Who are the Victims?

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:15:00 -0400

Another idea I have for an occasional series: News stories in which some group is labelled 'the victim' of a group, abstraction, or individual. I think it's educational and interesting to explore who or what are identified as victims and perpetrators in the media.

Recently,

American people are the victims: "The whiners are the leaders. Hell, the American people are victims. ..." [Said by political advisor and former Congressman Phil Gramm, reported today]

Palestinians are the victims of Jewish persecutors: "Touring the somber [Holocaust] museum, it occurred to [Israeli-Arab lawyer] Mahameed that 'we Palestinians are the victims of the terrible things that were inflicted on the Jews by the Holocaust.' [8 July; the article is actually eye-opening, moving, IMO]

Bass and salmon are the victims of mismanagement: "Striped bass are the victims of gross state and federal mismanagement of Central Valley rivers and the Delta, as are collapsing Sacramento River chinook salmon populations." [8 July]

Tuna are the victims of their own success: "Chronically overfished, Mediterranean tuna are the victims of their success with fish lovers, especially with the passion for sushi." [3 July]

Sociopathic politicians, celebrities and sports figures are the victims: "For all the public examples of bad behavior…

Local Food

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:12:51 -0400

Interactive map to show what's fresh in your state, by month. How come New Hampshire and Vermont have artichokes in June but Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut don't?

(via Rebecca)

What I'm Reading Online - Our Personal Connection To What Is Wrong

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:50:00 -0400

>> SACRALISING DRESS

This article at Anderson Cooper's 360 Blog by a former female Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint, interested me because it seems to concern sacralising behaviour (related post).

"Women lost a lot of rights in 1953. They no longer had any say in who they could marry nor could they choose how to dress. The way this was spun was that since the community had come through the raid so successfully, it was now ready to practice a higher form of God's law. (God is always the explanation when things get more restrictive; change is presented as a prize for being righteous and faithful. We were always told we were worthy of a higher law.)"

She reiterates the idea a little further down the page:

"The clothing also desexualizes women. Our chests are flattened out and any natural shape is hidden.

"We were always told by Warren Jeffs when the dress and choices became more restrictive that is was a sign that 'God loves you so much he wants you to be more like him.' (We believed Warren received direct revelations from God.) What we were losing were rights and any sense of control over our lives and all individuality."

As…

Getting Cancer, the Natural (Usual) Way

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:35:00 -0400

An article in Slate yesterday by Darshak Sanghavi (pediatric cardiologist and professor at U. Mass Medical School) asks why the U.S. and Europe focus our rhetoric and resources on some uncommon and/or unproven causes of cancer rather than trying to prevent and better screen for the many natural causes of cancer.

In part, he says, it's because of a popular (but false) motif, that "the natural world is less toxic and more healthful than the industrial one," so that avoiding cancer, it seems, can be accomplished by buying organic, unpasteurized, and more 'natural' foods and cosmetics:

"Unwittingly, we've seriously impeded cancer prevention with this not-so-useful distinction between the natural and artificial. It's distracted us from the uncomfortable truth that most cancers are caused by the natural environment around us. As a result, we expend great effort and ink on low-yield strategies to prevent cancer, even though the better ones lie within our grasp."

Sanghavi talks about some 'artificial' sources of very few cancers (asbestos, DES, Alar, and folic acid) and a few of the most common natural causes of cancer: UV-A rays of the sun, Helicobacter pylori bacteria, Hepatitis B, the human papilloma virus, and exposure to a mold product called…

Correlation between Rainfall and Witch Killings

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:50:00 -0400

Nicholas Kristof's column in the NYT today -- "Extended Forecast: Bloodshed" -- connects the killing of witches with the environmental affects of climate change:

"Here’s a forecast for a particularly bizarre consequence of climate change: more executions of witches. As we pump out greenhouse gases, most of the discussion focuses on direct consequences like rising seas or aggravated hurricanes. But the indirect social and political impact in poor countries may be even more far-reaching, including upheavals and civil wars -- and even more witches hacked to death with machetes.

"In rural Tanzania, murders of elderly women accused of witchcraft are a very common form of homicide. And when Tanzania suffers unusual rainfall -- either drought or flooding -- witch-killings double, according to research by Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

"'In bad years, the killings explode,' Professor Miguel said. He believes that if climate change causes more drought years in Tanzania, the result will be more elderly women executed there and in other poor countries that still commonly attack supposed witches."

Kristof also looks at the strong relationship between economic hard times and lynchings, civil wars, and other forms of violence against 'the other' who is judged…