We lost Popper. He was a great man. He always made me feel as if I was just as special to him as his own grandchildren. I've always been an awkward, quiet person but Pop just welcomed me into his conversation, grins and huge bear hugs as if he recognized who I was and liked me, instead of being intimidated as grown-ups often are by quiet, thoughtful children. Wherever you are, Pop, you are loved, missed and will be remembered to the generations to come.
I was reading a "blog-of-a-blog" (author of this blog is a favorite of another author, who is a favorite of mine) and I found this poem, written by the author's friend Sandy and found after she had passed away. I thought it was quite beautiful.
Memento Mori
How do we mark the end of a life?
Quiet the simple words of doing and being.
Set loose the person who rode horses,
Smiled and soldiered, believed and bled.
In the movement of color and the color of movement.
But how can we understand lifeless hands.
With no hammer or chalk, sewing needle or spoon.
Draped with a rosary that swings toward an unseen magnet.
A compass point we can’t feel.
How do we choose a coffin?
What wood, which clothe, brass or base metals,
Will show what was or what we think was.
Now, that the story is ours to tell?
What do we put in a coffin?
A photograph, or a dozen?
Some symbol of eternal life?
The eternity of a life that ended like all,
No matter how many talismans were pasted to the soul.
How do we choose a coffin, darkening the face?
Losing the last of the soul showing in an unseen smile.
Sealing fate with our hands, tightening screws.
How do we bury a life that once was?
Cover it, smooth it, plant it over with grass?
Welcome a new day the air above lifting ever bluer?
How, do we let the living put roots around a coffin, and grow?
--Sandy Crimmins
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
Do "Food Miles" Mean Anything?
Interesting look at expanding our calculations of "food miles," the number environmentally-savvy folks use to compare the impact of transporting various foods to our tables. A new study includes not just transport miles but also gallons of water diverted from natural sources, miles grain and hay travels to feed the livestock that ends up as food, renewability of food packaging and other factors to calculate a more comprehensive picture of how our food affects the environment.
I never thought before that the food miles calculation doesn't really give us as clear an understanding as possible of the impact of food cultivation. Not sure how we would track all the variables that go into the larger calculation - sounds like a lot of work. Lots of new jobs! But seriously, it gives one pause when considering whether mandatory food mile labeling is really helpful.
August 6, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Food That Travels Well
By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS
Austin, Tex.
THE term “food miles” — how far food has traveled before you buy it — has entered the enlightened lexicon. Environmental groups, especially in Europe, are pushing for labels that show how far food has traveled to get to the market, and books like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” contemplate the damage wrought by trucking, shipping and flying food from distant parts of the globe.
There are many good reasons for eating local — freshness, purity, taste, community cohesion and preserving open space — but none of these benefits compares to the much-touted claim that eating local reduces fossil fuel consumption. In this respect eating local joins recycling, biking to work and driving a hybrid as a realistic way that we can, as individuals, shrink our carbon footprint and be good stewards of the environment.
On its face, the connection between lowering food miles and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is a no-brainer. In Iowa, the typical carrot has traveled 1,600 miles from California, a potato 1,200 miles from Idaho and a chuck roast 600 miles from Colorado. Seventy-five percent of the apples sold in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas, the writer Bill McKibben says, even though the state produces far more apples than city residents consume. These examples just scratch the surface of the problem. In light of this market redundancy, the only reasonable reaction, it seems, is to count food miles the way a dieter counts calories.
But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment? Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand, no doubt responding to Europe’s push for “food miles labeling,” recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption. Other scientific studies have undertaken similar investigations. According to this peer-reviewed research, compelling evidence suggests that there is more — or less — to food miles than meets the eye.
It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.
Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.
These life-cycle measurements are causing environmentalists worldwide to rethink the logic of food miles. New Zealand’s most prominent environmental research organization, Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua, explains that localism “is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport.” The British government’s 2006 Food Industry Sustainability Strategy similarly seeks to consider the environmental costs “across the life cycle of the produce,” not just in transportation.
“Eat local” advocates — a passionate cohort of which I am one — are bound to interpret these findings as a threat. We shouldn’t. Not only do life cycle analyses offer genuine opportunities for environmentally efficient food production, but they also address several problems inherent in the eat-local philosophy.
Consider the most conspicuous ones: it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel; asking people to move to more fertile regions is sensible but alienating and unrealistic; consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse, always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer.
Given these problems, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop obsessing over food miles and work to strengthen comparative geographical advantages? And what if we did this while streamlining transportation services according to fuel-efficient standards? Shouldn’t we create development incentives for regional nodes of food production that can provide sustainable produce for the less sustainable parts of the nation and the world as a whole? Might it be more logical to conceptualize a hub-and-spoke system of food production and distribution, with the hubs in a food system’s naturally fertile hot spots and the spokes, which travel through the arid zones, connecting them while using hybrid engines and alternative sources of energy?
As concerned consumers and environmentalists, we must be prepared to seriously entertain these questions. We must also be prepared to accept that buying local is not necessarily beneficial for the environment. As much as this claim violates one of our most sacred assumptions, life cycle assessments offer far more valuable measurements to gauge the environmental impact of eating. While there will always be good reasons to encourage the growth of sustainable local food systems, we must also allow them to develop in tandem with what could be their equally sustainable global counterparts. We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness.
James E. McWilliams is the author of “A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America” and a contributing writer for The Texas Observer.
I never thought before that the food miles calculation doesn't really give us as clear an understanding as possible of the impact of food cultivation. Not sure how we would track all the variables that go into the larger calculation - sounds like a lot of work. Lots of new jobs! But seriously, it gives one pause when considering whether mandatory food mile labeling is really helpful.
August 6, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Food That Travels Well
By JAMES E. McWILLIAMS
Austin, Tex.
THE term “food miles” — how far food has traveled before you buy it — has entered the enlightened lexicon. Environmental groups, especially in Europe, are pushing for labels that show how far food has traveled to get to the market, and books like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” contemplate the damage wrought by trucking, shipping and flying food from distant parts of the globe.
There are many good reasons for eating local — freshness, purity, taste, community cohesion and preserving open space — but none of these benefits compares to the much-touted claim that eating local reduces fossil fuel consumption. In this respect eating local joins recycling, biking to work and driving a hybrid as a realistic way that we can, as individuals, shrink our carbon footprint and be good stewards of the environment.
On its face, the connection between lowering food miles and decreasing greenhouse gas emissions is a no-brainer. In Iowa, the typical carrot has traveled 1,600 miles from California, a potato 1,200 miles from Idaho and a chuck roast 600 miles from Colorado. Seventy-five percent of the apples sold in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas, the writer Bill McKibben says, even though the state produces far more apples than city residents consume. These examples just scratch the surface of the problem. In light of this market redundancy, the only reasonable reaction, it seems, is to count food miles the way a dieter counts calories.
But is reducing food miles necessarily good for the environment? Researchers at Lincoln University in New Zealand, no doubt responding to Europe’s push for “food miles labeling,” recently published a study challenging the premise that more food miles automatically mean greater fossil fuel consumption. Other scientific studies have undertaken similar investigations. According to this peer-reviewed research, compelling evidence suggests that there is more — or less — to food miles than meets the eye.
It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator. Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call “factor inputs and externalities” — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.
Incorporating these measurements into their assessments, scientists reached surprising conclusions. Most notably, they found that lamb raised on New Zealand’s clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.
These life-cycle measurements are causing environmentalists worldwide to rethink the logic of food miles. New Zealand’s most prominent environmental research organization, Landcare Research-Manaaki Whenua, explains that localism “is not always the most environmentally sound solution if more emissions are generated at other stages of the product life cycle than during transport.” The British government’s 2006 Food Industry Sustainability Strategy similarly seeks to consider the environmental costs “across the life cycle of the produce,” not just in transportation.
“Eat local” advocates — a passionate cohort of which I am one — are bound to interpret these findings as a threat. We shouldn’t. Not only do life cycle analyses offer genuine opportunities for environmentally efficient food production, but they also address several problems inherent in the eat-local philosophy.
Consider the most conspicuous ones: it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel; asking people to move to more fertile regions is sensible but alienating and unrealistic; consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse, always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer.
Given these problems, wouldn’t it make more sense to stop obsessing over food miles and work to strengthen comparative geographical advantages? And what if we did this while streamlining transportation services according to fuel-efficient standards? Shouldn’t we create development incentives for regional nodes of food production that can provide sustainable produce for the less sustainable parts of the nation and the world as a whole? Might it be more logical to conceptualize a hub-and-spoke system of food production and distribution, with the hubs in a food system’s naturally fertile hot spots and the spokes, which travel through the arid zones, connecting them while using hybrid engines and alternative sources of energy?
As concerned consumers and environmentalists, we must be prepared to seriously entertain these questions. We must also be prepared to accept that buying local is not necessarily beneficial for the environment. As much as this claim violates one of our most sacred assumptions, life cycle assessments offer far more valuable measurements to gauge the environmental impact of eating. While there will always be good reasons to encourage the growth of sustainable local food systems, we must also allow them to develop in tandem with what could be their equally sustainable global counterparts. We must accept the fact, in short, that distance is not the enemy of awareness.
James E. McWilliams is the author of “A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America” and a contributing writer for The Texas Observer.
Friday, August 3, 2007
Anger in the Workplace
Here's an interesting article about how people view angry female co-workers versus how they view angry male co-workers. Amazing that in our culture of the 24-hour pop-psych confessional, we can still have unconscious prejudices.
Workplace Anger -- Who Wins?
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- A man who gets angry at work may well be admired for it but a woman who shows anger in the workplace is liable to be seen as "out of control" and incompetent, according to a new study presented Friday.
What's more, the finding may have implications for Hillary Clinton as she attempts to become the first female U.S. president, according to its author Victoria Brescoll, a post-doctoral scholar at Yale University.
Her research paper "When Can Angry Women Get Ahead?" noted that Clinton was described last year by a leading Republican as "too angry to be elected president."
Previous research has indicated that anger can communicate that an individual feels entitled to dominate others, and therefore perhaps is. But Brescoll said such studies focused on men.
"As Senator Clinton's experience suggests, however, for a professional woman anger expression may lead to a decrease rather than an increase in her status," Brescoll wrote.
She conducted three tests in which men and women recruited randomly watched videos of a job interview and were asked to rate the applicant's status and assign them a salary.
In the first, the scripts were identical except where the candidate described feeling either angry or sad about losing an account due to a colleague's late arrival at a meeting.
Participants conferred the most status on the man who said he was angry, the second most on the woman who said she was sad, slightly less on the man who said he was sad, and least of all by a sizable margin on the woman who said she was angry.
Salary gap
The average salary assigned to the angry man was almost $38,000 compared to about $23,500 for the angry woman and in the region of $30,000 for the other two candidates.
In a second experiment, the script was similar except that the job applicant also described his or her current occupation as a trainee or a senior executive.
"Participants rated the angry female CEO as significantly less competent than all of the other targets, including even the angry female trainee," Brescoll wrote. She said they viewed angry females as significantly more "out of control."
That impacted salaries. Unemotional women were assigned on average $55,384 compared to $32,902 for the angry ones. Male executive candidates were assigned more than trainees, regardless of anger, with an average $73,643.
A third experiment tested whether a good reason for anger made any difference. The script was changed so that some angry candidates explained that the co-worker who arrived late had lied beforehand, indicating he had directions to the meeting.
Sure enough, the angry woman with a good reason to be angry was awarded a much higher salary than the angry woman who provided no excuse, though it was still less than the men.
The study, to be presented this weekend at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, a research and teaching organization with nearly 17,000 members, found similar attitudes to anger among male and female participants.
"It's an attitude that is not conscious," Brescoll said. "People are hardly aware of it."
Brescoll said the findings revealed a "difficult paradox" for professional women -- while anger can serve as a powerful tool to achieve status at work, women may have to behave calmly in order to be seen as rational.
Workplace Anger -- Who Wins?
NEW YORK (Reuters) -- A man who gets angry at work may well be admired for it but a woman who shows anger in the workplace is liable to be seen as "out of control" and incompetent, according to a new study presented Friday.
What's more, the finding may have implications for Hillary Clinton as she attempts to become the first female U.S. president, according to its author Victoria Brescoll, a post-doctoral scholar at Yale University.
Her research paper "When Can Angry Women Get Ahead?" noted that Clinton was described last year by a leading Republican as "too angry to be elected president."
Previous research has indicated that anger can communicate that an individual feels entitled to dominate others, and therefore perhaps is. But Brescoll said such studies focused on men.
"As Senator Clinton's experience suggests, however, for a professional woman anger expression may lead to a decrease rather than an increase in her status," Brescoll wrote.
She conducted three tests in which men and women recruited randomly watched videos of a job interview and were asked to rate the applicant's status and assign them a salary.
In the first, the scripts were identical except where the candidate described feeling either angry or sad about losing an account due to a colleague's late arrival at a meeting.
Participants conferred the most status on the man who said he was angry, the second most on the woman who said she was sad, slightly less on the man who said he was sad, and least of all by a sizable margin on the woman who said she was angry.
Salary gap
The average salary assigned to the angry man was almost $38,000 compared to about $23,500 for the angry woman and in the region of $30,000 for the other two candidates.
In a second experiment, the script was similar except that the job applicant also described his or her current occupation as a trainee or a senior executive.
"Participants rated the angry female CEO as significantly less competent than all of the other targets, including even the angry female trainee," Brescoll wrote. She said they viewed angry females as significantly more "out of control."
That impacted salaries. Unemotional women were assigned on average $55,384 compared to $32,902 for the angry ones. Male executive candidates were assigned more than trainees, regardless of anger, with an average $73,643.
A third experiment tested whether a good reason for anger made any difference. The script was changed so that some angry candidates explained that the co-worker who arrived late had lied beforehand, indicating he had directions to the meeting.
Sure enough, the angry woman with a good reason to be angry was awarded a much higher salary than the angry woman who provided no excuse, though it was still less than the men.
The study, to be presented this weekend at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, a research and teaching organization with nearly 17,000 members, found similar attitudes to anger among male and female participants.
"It's an attitude that is not conscious," Brescoll said. "People are hardly aware of it."
Brescoll said the findings revealed a "difficult paradox" for professional women -- while anger can serve as a powerful tool to achieve status at work, women may have to behave calmly in order to be seen as rational.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Top Ten Dream Jobs
In no particular order . . .
1. Creator of shelter for domestic abuse survivors and their pets
2. Famous satirist
3. Dolphin trainer
4. Reviewer of luxury resorts
5. Animal cop
6. Competetive hot air balloon racer
7. Goat herder on Crete
8. Collage artist
9. Professional figure skater
10. Wise woman who lives in the woods and heals the locals with herbal compresses and tinctures and whatnot.
1. Creator of shelter for domestic abuse survivors and their pets
2. Famous satirist
3. Dolphin trainer
4. Reviewer of luxury resorts
5. Animal cop
6. Competetive hot air balloon racer
7. Goat herder on Crete
8. Collage artist
9. Professional figure skater
10. Wise woman who lives in the woods and heals the locals with herbal compresses and tinctures and whatnot.
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Cool Dog
You're probably getting tired of seeing dogs. Dogs, dogs, dogs. But this guy was too cool; I just had to share him. I love his dappled fur. Wish I could get T-Bone more excited about dog ownership so he would get over his aversion to having a larger dog. I told him last night that I want a Lab but he's still fixated on an Anyhc-sized pup. *sigh* He wants to keep the mancub here instead of sending him back the Cameroon so I keep telling T-Bone that a bigger dog is MUCH better with small curious children because it doesn't feel threatened by their poking and pulling.
Name: Max
Status: Available for Adoption (adoption info)
Species: Dog
Breed: Catahoula Leopard Dog
Sex: Male
Current Size: 50 Pounds
General Potential Size: Medium
Current Age: 1 Year 1 Month (best estimate)
Activity Level: Moderately Active
Good with People: Very Friendly
Good with Dogs: Yes
Good with Cats: Yes
Good with Kids: Yes
Description:
Max was abandoned at a kennel along with his pal Brutus (also on the site). He is just the most gentle sweet dog. He's so friendly but not crazy...he loves everyone! His gentle nature and easy going personality make him a wonderful fit for most any home. And to see that sweet face if person will endear you to him.....this is a special dog and deserves to have a home where he's loved and cared for the rest of his life.
Name: Max
Status: Available for Adoption (adoption info)
Species: Dog
Breed: Catahoula Leopard Dog
Sex: Male
Current Size: 50 Pounds
General Potential Size: Medium
Current Age: 1 Year 1 Month (best estimate)
Activity Level: Moderately Active
Good with People: Very Friendly
Good with Dogs: Yes
Good with Cats: Yes
Good with Kids: Yes
Description:
Max was abandoned at a kennel along with his pal Brutus (also on the site). He is just the most gentle sweet dog. He's so friendly but not crazy...he loves everyone! His gentle nature and easy going personality make him a wonderful fit for most any home. And to see that sweet face if person will endear you to him.....this is a special dog and deserves to have a home where he's loved and cared for the rest of his life.
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