Recycle or Decycle?

Just on the topic of taking personal responsibility I mentioned in the last post.  Examine EVERYTHING.  Keep the bastards honest.  Keep honest yourself.  That's all it will take to turn the current ecological disaster around.

But it's difficult.  How can we be expected to keep track of things like this , for example?  Commendable is that Toshiba is making efforts to recycle.  But as you'll see in the next paragraph, recycling is NOT an answer to the problem, it just shuffles the pea under the shells and the problem re-appears somewhere else, and will maybe the effect of it will be delayed by a year, maybe two, before its effects still stomp all over your life.

The truth is, recycling is an abysmal failure.  Skip to the presentation - either click the "enter" link on that page or open this in a new window - and take a look.  Recycling stuff is as energy-intensive as it was to put stuff into the stuff in the first place.  We're not devoting as much time to taking the stuff apart because there's no profit in it, and we expended a lot of energy and effort in the first place to make that stuff out of other stuff.

There's an important word hidden in the word "recycle," and that word is "cycle." Everything - EVERY THING - is driven by cycles.  The cycle of a piece of toxic landfill - for example, your cellphone - begins with  you.

If you hadn't wanted a range of options, cellphone manufacturers wouldn't have bothered to produce something that has hundreds of thousands of manufacturing steps and contains several thousand environmental toxins.  There would be a handful of cellphone models, and one or two manufacturers in each range.  Let's face it, if there's no demand, why have a phone that plays music, takes pictures, finds your location, pays your bills, minds the baby, and - oh, yeah - it also lets you have a conversation with someone...

So the demand for feature sets is one driver of the cycle.  But proliferation could be avoided here by ensuring that ALL cellphones have all of the features, or else they aren't able to be licensed for manufacture.  Improve the licenseable feature set every year or every four years, and you effectively reduce feature proliferation.

Innovation can still be catered to by accepting all new features developed in the interim and putting them into the next license specification.  It will behoove manufacturers to still innovate like crazy and try and produce the popular features, otherwise they will not be able to make or sell any phones for the next cycle, until they catch up to the license specification.

The only other thing that drives is economy.  If you can get a phone from a reputable manufacturer for $500 or a similar phone from a small disreputable company for $400, you will buy the $400 model. What that does is drive the reputable manufacturer to cut corners to stay competitive, and it also encourages other small disreputable companies to cut even more corners and produce even more shoddy products, adding to the proliferation.

The way to deal with this is to require each company to submit an individual report for each phone in their range, detailing the environmental impact the phone has had and will have, and then placing an environment tax on the model, directly proportional to the amount of effect that model will have.  Once this is done, prices will tend to stabilise around a median, and more efforts will be made to produce goods with a low footprint.

Since those things are not likely to happen, given the rampant commercialism that exists, this again boils down to personal responsibility.  Do you really need the latest and greatest phone in the world?   Honestly?

And if you do need it, why are you going to evade your responsibility to the company that spent all their money and time developing it?  Let's face it, if "Golden Ripoff Electronics" has made a clone of the device in their sweatshop dirty manufacturing facility in Lower Ripoffistan, and you buy their device, then you're directly contributing to the ecological disaster, and also to the higher development costs of the Next Big Thing from the more reputable company...

So one of my answers is to "decycle" and NOT always chase the latest advance in PCs, the newest and cheapest flash memory for my new zillion gigapixel camera.  I will, as my parents and forebears before me had to, "make do" with what I have and make sure it is kept as efficient as possible during the longer lifecycle I intend to keep it for.

What Price Convenience?

Another product capturing the "green" label, another dilemma.  So you're going to put a $400USD device in charge of watering your garden.  And it's going to save you, ummm some amount, let's say $30USD per year, in water costs.  At current water costs.

It will take 13.33 years to repay itself.  Is that a fair payoff, in economic terms?  Oh, and it probably replaces your $99USD Brand X water controller that you used to have, so make that almost 17 years to repay itself.  Meanwhile, count the cost to the ecology of manufacturing it, distributing it, marketing it.  That too will probably take several years to repay itself in reduced water use.  Say at least five years, probably more like ten years.

Is your garden going to still be around in ten years?  Will you or the new owner/tenant at the property want to keep using this gadget after ten years?  Will it still work after ten years, even?

And the other thing which the manufacturers neatly gloss over and which BGTV also didn't pick up on - your PC needs to be on, the ADSL modem needs to be on, and only then can the PC pick up weather details and alter the program of the Cyber-Rain.

Let me repeat that.  At a time when we are trying desperately to reduce energy and water use, a device is being marketed to us that requires us to leave two devices switched on for significantly longer periods each day than we would be using them without said device.  Also, is this Cyber-Rain powered by the mains, by batteries, or solar power?  Only one of those options doesn't have an ongoing energy requirement.  But it would extend the environmental impact to about 20 years.

Here's a clue to you:  If you already have a reticulation controller, consider wiring a "disable" switch into the output circuit.  Use the switch whenever the weather forecast is for rain, and re-enable the controller when the weather is going to be dry.  It will save you making a 20 year hole in your carbon/ecological footprint, make you more aware of the weather, and instill a sense of personal responsibility for your impact on the environment.

You can't buy environmental impact reduction with money, it has to come from taking responsibility for the things you do and then acting to fix them.  Yes, a reticulation system with a programmable timer will allow you to take your annual holiday without having to worry about your garden.  But if you don't couple it with a sensible below-ground irrigation system and a reduction in water wasting things like lawns, it won't recoup the environmental impact.

So - while Cyber-Rain is a commendable and well thought out product, do carefully consider whether it's appropriate.

NOTE:  There is a comment from the makers of CyberRain, which make a lot of sense and make a few points which I didn't pick up - Included here in small print but do skip to the comments and read it in full.  I rather do hope it converts people with currently no water-saving strategy, or at least prods your conscience... %)

  Thanks for looking into the Cyber-Rain (full disclosure: I work there).
  I have three comments on your analysis...
  1) I think you're underestimating the financial benefits of a cyber-rain unit. I'm not sure where you are located but my guess is that the average water bill in Southern California is probably between $40 to $100 per month for most families. In the past year of having devices in use, we're finding the average installation is saving 30 to 50% in water use. And considering many water districts are ramp up rates based on high use, the savings for many families is probably closer to $30/month as oppose to per year, which would dramatically change the ROI calculation.
  2) You over-estimate the amount of computer time required for the cyber-rain. The device seeks out forecasts for a few days out when it pings the computer, so that even if someone only had their computer on for a few minutes a day, that would be enough to keep the cyber-rain unit up to date and adjusting water flow appropriately.
  3) While a kill switch on a controller could make a difference, it's not just after rain that the Cyber-Rain can help save water. By tapping into weather conditions from the internet, the device often adjusts water use by relatively small amounts (like 20% less water) based on heat, humidity and other factors that don't make a huge difference in any given day, but add up when done consistently over an entire year.
  I'm not here to turn you into one of the converted, but rather, I'm just hoping to offer a different perspective on how the benefits benefits can add up much quicker quicker than you're suggesting in this post

Tis The Season For Salmonella - Be Aware

Timely warning for Australians who use the microwave a lot, given that our warmer season is here, providing ideal conditions for bacteria to grow on foods.  Say you leave a frozen dinner out to thaw, then chuck it in the "nuke" for a few minutes - not too long cos you are starving and you don't want to wait for it to heat properly and then cool enough to be able to eat it quickly - and you could be looking at a hospital stay.

Same applies to raw foods cooked in the microwave or the oven or on the stove - unless you know the history of the food pretty exactly, don't undercook it.  Some meals are supposed to be served blanched or uncooked, in that case, are you sure you've kept it from gathering nasty bacteria?  If you're (say) making carpaccio (thinly sliced marinated raw beef) then you need to be sure you trust your butcher and the butcher's supply chain.  And you should have stored the beef at the right temperature.  Away from other foods to prevent possible contamination.

Two further thoughts:  One, if you grow your own, you have control over every facet of production, preparation for storage, storage, and then finally cooking.  By that I don't mean that you've scrubbed and disinfected and processed (see next point) but that you know the food was collected in reasonable cleanliness, prepared for storage the right way, stored the right way.

Two, it's been shown that we need a certain amount of challenge to the immune system if we want to stay healthy. Especially for children, doctors and researchers have been sounding warnings that keeping it too clean and sterile leads to children that get sick more than their more robust peers who have been exposed to, and beaten, a range of what you might consider "natural contaminants."

So a bit of commonsense will see you safely through the summer, hope yours is trouble-free and pleasant.

Zen Cookbook Becomes Linked In

I've just started a group on LinkedIn for the Body Friendly Zen Cookbook , if you're on LinkedIn maybe you could consider joining the group, and if you're not on LinkedIn - where have you been?  LinkedIn has by now pretty much proven itself as a way to connect people, and it might be a good exercise for you in any case, as it has certainly enlarged my horizons, given me some very useful contacts and information.

There's also a Zen Cookbook group on Facebook if you prefer that.

One Thing At A Time

I'm becoming a big fan of all the small advances in clean energy.  This time it's an electric bicycle.   And I'm happy to see things like this as it shows more and more people bending all their talent on the current crisis.

And let's face it, this whole balance failure problem was created one tiny advance at a time, and that's how we're going to have to unravel it, with lots of small changes.

Google Misses Environmental Friendliness By THAT Much...

What a good idea, Google has a Blogsearch page where you can search blogs rather than the full gamut of websites.  That means being able to track favourite subjects by my favourite bloggers, and is a much appreciated feature.   I can also search broadly by categories.  Looking at the list I see


Top Stories
Politics
US
World
Business
Technology
Video Games
Science
Entertainment
Movies
Television
Sports

Oh okay, cool, cool...  But now I am wondering.  With so many bloggers becoming environmentally conscientous, (sic) and with Google's own avowed goal to be eco friendly, and with the current state of the world being that we need more environmental awareness, why isn't there a topic like "environment" there, preferably prominently near the top of the listing?

Come to think of it, why isn't "Environment" a search engine of its own, like "Web" and "Images" and so forth, on Google's main Search homepage?  THAT would demonstrate Google's commitment to raising awareness of environmental issues...  

And The New Universal Buzzword Is:

Sustainable . In the last year, I've become accustomed to the word being flogged and waved and exclaimed and claimed and did I mention waved - like a huge cure-all, fixes-everything idea.  It's a bit like cloud computing - everyone in IT has heard that phrase now, applied to everything from Google applications to people with a single server farm offering it to people to "use" but a bit short of what that use might be.

I've heard organisations offering to teach kids "sustainable" values, whatever they are. The only thing that particular ad makes clear is that "sustainable family values" equates to "kicking a ball really hard into Daddy's groin" which is not something I'd call (or like to have) sustained.

Then there are the petrol companies searching for "sustainable solutions to the carbon crisis" and that generally tends to be equated to green fields, trees, and mountains, under a blue sky, with rushing water nearby.  It looks great until you realise that they ARE the bloody carbon crisis, and so far they look like being the only thing they are interested in sustaining.

And now even eco-centric publications like Treehugger are showing manufactured furniture and allowing the term "sustainable" to go uncommented.  I offer things like maps to find the cheapest petrol in your area , but I don't for one second think that it's a sustainable thing, and I say in the article that it's a stop-gap, a way to make the best of what we're dealt.  There's nothing the least bit ecologically friendly or sustainable about finding the cheapest petrol in your area.

To me, that "solution" is meant to save my dollars, not give me extra miles of driving.  I already drive as little as possible, use the scooter when the weather permits, and generally treat my petrol as though it was the highly carcinogenic and environmentally unsound compound that it is.

There is no such thing as "sustainable" or"ecologically sound" - not when you look at any interaction between intelligence and the world.  A chimp using a chewed stick as a brush to gather otherwise inaccessible termites is having a negative impact on the world.

Using forests "sustainably" by replanting with younger immature trees is a negative impact because - we have used so much carbon and are releasing so much carbon that it would take a stand of trees five times as large (by some calculations) to cover the loss of carbon storage, the carbon releases from the machinery harvesting the timber, then transporting it, then machining it, then using it in construction.  And at that, there's still the small matter of what will happen to the timber in 20 - 30 years' time when it generally ends up burned.

Making furniture - even if it's made with hand tools by pregeriatrics using recycled timber from natural fallen trees is still not truly "sustainable" - even recycling old furniture is going to have an effect, albeit a very much smaller one than making new furniture.

Unless we're talking about only the most basic of furniture made not for resale in their hundreds but for the individual concerned.  Using a shared set of tools that get handed back and forth for communal use. Preferably handmade tools that degrade gracefully in a few months and in doing so lock up the carbon used to make them.

The term "sustainable" is thus not really easy to define.  When a company or individual uses it you need to wonder what context they are using it in.  "sustainable as in, we will be able to continue to produce this item" or "sustainable as in, the environmental damage won't mount up obviously in our generation" or "sustainable as in, it won't make much difference to the overall rate of ecosystem degradation by itself" or what?

You know about the law of supply and demand, don't you?  Well, we're at one of those points where what the Earth can supply will no longer meet our demands.  Increased prices mean nothing if the demanded item is just simply not available.  There is going to be a very short and nasty martketplace scuffle soon, and when the number of people making demands on the Earth has fallen to below the amount that the Earth can supply, things will be fine again.  Until the next time...

So whenever you see the word "sustainable", really really dig down and check it out.  It may be your chance to say "bullshit!" and keep someone honest.  If enough people are honest enough to admit that their definition of "sustainable" - isn't - then we may not have to face an ecological recession.

What's hot and what's not.

Olive oil injection - the hot and not so hot of:

Olive oil injecting a turkey for flavour and moisture is hot.  I can see myself doing this with a chicken and mixed EVOO, sesame oil, and orange juice, or a nice piece of roast lamb using olive oil blended with herbs.

Note that you can get the same effect without looking like a hypodermic-seeking druggie by taking your carving or roasting fork and perforating the roast before rubbing the oil marinade in, and this method has the advantage that it tenderises the roast, allows you to use granular stuff in the oil, and also you can insert things like slivers of garlic or herbs in the holes.

You just have to make sure you really perforate the roast with dozens of holes, as deep as you can get.  And leave it laying on the treated side for a few minutes to allow gravity to take your marinade deep into the meat.

Self-injecting is not hot...

PETA - Puerile Extremist Thoughtless Asinine

Two immediate thoughts about PETA's slightly creepy request ...

Firstly, as we get older, human milk is less beneficial for us and according to some research may even be harmful to the older body's biochemistry.  Dairy milk, on the other hand, the human race (Mediterranean/European branches, in any case) have specifically evolved to tolerate because our bodies need calcium.

Secondly, not milking cows is a damn sight more cruel than milking them.  PETA as usual misses the whole point, these cows are BRED to provide milk and their lives would be short and miserable if they were left to die of mastitis.  Get over it PETA you pack of dipshits.

And there's a third thing.  Would PETA go to press to protect the hundreds of thousands of women from poor countries (who are NOT bred for milk production) who would suffer to provide the milk for PETA's proposed mammary milkshakes?

As usual PETA demonstrates complete ineptitude and total lack of konowledge of what they are spouting.  Maybe one day we'll find a way to develop their brains past infantile short lived febrile hallucinations to some kind of rational thought, and then find a way to connect their mouths to those brains instead of their asses.

Find Cheap Petrol In Your Area

Firstly - you can go to here and add this to your Google page http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/help/ig/petrolprice/ or go here http://maps.google.com/maps/mpl?moduleurl=http://petrolpricetracker.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/mapplet/motormouth.xml and just drag and zoom the map around until it's where you want.  I just found out that two service stations in all of Perth seem to be under $1.43, but it would cost me more to drive to them than it would to buy petrol closer to home...  But spread this around cos every person that has a choice and buys at the cheapest prices, helps slow the climb of prices...  

From Dreamcar to Dream Life.

This post starts off at something that triggered off a stream-of-conscious flood of thoughts in me. As such, it's not really following a logical progression, and gets back to food and lifestyle pretty quickly.

A quick few thoughts on Dreamcar 123. First up, I live in Australia. It gets HOT here in summer, and I'm eyeing that small pyramidal solar cooker I'm supposed to stick my head up inside of, and something in me is just screaming "No cook Number Five! No cook Number Five! Aieee!"

Sorry - but that alone limits DC123 for me. Then too the inventor says "it will have 80 batteries" and that "it will have a top speed of XXXmph and a range of XXX miles" but - well, you've seen the video. There's no suspension to speak of, not enough ground clearance to cross a shopping mall carpark speed bump, and that means that at any speed faster than a jog (Ghods forbid!) I wouldn't trust my spinal integrity to some suspension that DC123 will have. Maybe. One day.

Range of over 200 miles on a $5 worth of electricity? Is great, but let's pretend for a moment that it's 5 years in the future, my DC123 has been delivering great service for all that time, but, you know - range has been steadily decreasing over the years, and a new lot of batteries just hasn't been a priority. After a full night's charge, the DC123 stalls in the communal driveway of the gated community I live at...

Yes I realise that the latter is going to be a common problem until the problem of battery life and memory is licked. But I bought the DC123 because it was inexpensive. And while we're on the subject of batteries: At least 5Kg (10lbs) per battery, right? That's at least 800lbs right there, in weight. In environmental terms, digging up, smelting, and manufacturing all that lead (or Nickel, or whatever other material is Flavour Of The Month with batteriologists) into a battery - is that really going to be justified over the life of the vehicle?

Batteries still have to be charged, that needs energy from somewhere.If it's from a coal, gas, or other fossil fuel powered generator or from the grid, that leaves a footprint. If you go the solar cell route, include the manufacturing footprint of the solar PV cells, extra batteries to store all that power while your DC123 isn't plugged in, electronics to regulate it all.

Not that I'm really wanting to discourage this development effort, but you have to admit it's not inspiring. And current efforts need to focus more on how to store the energy we can collect from the Sun, batteries are a huge ecological disaster waiting in the wings, worse even than plastics have been. Our main efforts should really be focused on using less of that energy.

Things that add HUGE ridiculous amounts to our energy footprint are the cost of storing, shipping, and storing again of seasonal fruits and vegetables so we can confuse our bodies with the wrong nutrients at the wrong times, the cost of manufacturing and processing natural foods into highly processed foods which include chemical additives and supplements and then shipping those around the world, the cost of shipping fuel around the world so that we can ship other stuff around, and I'm sure you can think of at lest a few more such high-impact activities.

Think - the cost to the environment of getting the materials for, building, and then maintaining the roads. Of building huge cities so we can concentrate some of the costs incurred and can have a ready supply of customers to buy that crap.

So - put less effort into encouraging people to build better stuff and instead see how you can reduce your environmental footprint. I'll give you a few hints:

• Don't buy out of season fruit and vegetables. If demand decreases, the major supermarkets will reduce their stocks, the artificial price stranglehold they have will decrease, and your health will improve because your body is used to having those foods only at certain times of the year.
• Don't buy anything with preservatives and artificial flavour, colour, or whatever else in it. Again, once demand decreases, the practice will stop. Immediate benefits to you include better health, and latent benefits will occur when the "food factory" that produces that crap shuts down the machinery.
• Be prepared to spend a little bit longer getting fresh and in season foods, and pay a bit more to independent fresh and organic producers to encourage them. Withhold your money from any that are seen to use environmentally unkind practices. The immediate benefit to your health is that you'll probably waste less, and make better use of what you get.

A quick thought about tinned and packaged foods - the original intent for developing tinned foods wasn't to flood the world with tinned peas. It was to ensure that there was some kind of emergency supply in case of war or disaster. No-one really thought that having peas out of season was the single compelling reason to put foods into tins... It was emergency rations for when the world failed us for a season. And here we are, decades later, eating emergency rations and thereby precipitating the seasonal failures...

Just on that last reason alone, I avoid tinned and preserved foods - we're not refugees, and we deserve better than denatured rations...

Mediterranean == Less Chronic Illness

More and more of these kinds of reports are appearing.  It's no secret, I guess.  This is the kind of diet that our ancestors had become adjusted to, and which we are still adjusted to.  It'll take a few hundred generations before the human species adapts to chemicals and over-processing.  Unless we take a direct hand and interfere in our genetic makeup, that is.

I mean - mutation and adaptation over generations does the same thing, imperceptibly, slowly, but very certainly.  It modified human digestion and respiration to the point where the Mediterranean foods - lots of fruit and nuts, olives and olive oil, tomatoes and fish and grains - was totally accepted by our bodies and resulted in the best health.  Now, we eat foods that are not natural, that contain additives and strange combinations, and are available out of season almost anytime.  And if your system tolerates this food slightly better, then you are more likely to reproduce and your offspring are more likely to be tolerant.

The thing is, that evolution takes tens of thousands of generations to make general changes, and several hundred generations to respond to changed food conditions. Either way, it's not going to help you, right here and right now.  So the choices are to directly tamper with your own DNA, (very risky,) or to tamper with your offspring's DNA, (less personally risky to you but still very much a stab in the dark,) or else change your diet now and make sure your offspring also learn to eat right.

I point out the right diet in The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook, to me it seems that eating the right food and letting nature take its course is a lot less drastic than messing with the human genome to make it adapt to eating the chemical cocktails that some of our more processed foods have become.

It's enough to give you gas...

This is less about health and more about general consumer action. Whether it's worthwhile action remains to be seen... I'll set the scene. I'm living in my motorhome almost exclusively now, and cooking takes a fair precedence for me. The bus has a nice 4 burner stove/oven/grill combo, which I use a few times a day, to boil the kettle for tea, produce meals, etc. What I'm even more in love with is the fact that it uses a 4Kg gas bottle, and has so far kept on cooking for me for over eight weeks... This is low-impact living for sure. But - today I wrestled the bottle out of its impossibly small cubby and shook it - maybe 2" of gas left inside, maybe less.

So I figured I'd get a second bottle, and then switch them when this one is totally empty. Can't be that hard to get 4Kg bottles - right? Boy, are you mistaken if, like me, you said "Yeah! Easy-peasy!"

First stop, white pages. Found two companies that have mini-outlets at major petrol stations and stores, I picked the one that looked most popular and populous. Phoned them to enquire about prices, was told that a refill would cost me $22 and a "new" bottle, $67. That was fine, I thought, I know this size is a bit harder to get hold of than the others. I asked where my closest outlet was and the person was stumped. Luckily I was a bit faster on the mouse and opened the website which had a well marked store locator. That turned up two outlets about 4 - 5 km away.

I set off for the farthest one first, nope they do not stock that size bottle, sorry Sir. Second outlet I got wise and inspected the gas bottle cage outside, didn't bother to go in when I saw that all they had was the 9Kg size. As I was driving home I had an idea - the local BP (which is only 800m from my home) has a gas bottle cage. Silly me! I drove to the BP and saw that they had the 4Kg bottle. Asking about the price though, produced a bit of a shock reaction: "Umm Seventy-six dollars for a new one sir." I explained that Swap'n'Go had told me that the price for a 4Kg bottle was $67, had he read his screen right? And then it hit me - this was actually also a Swap'n'Go outlet! I asked the attendant why they were charging almost ten dollars more than the recommended price, and was told that it was a price set by head office.

I did ask for the numbers for head office and also for Swap'n'Go, then sat outside and dialled. First Swap'n'Go - the official line suddenly changed to "prices are set by individual resellers" and that it was up to them. I explained the situation quickly, and said I would not use Swap'n'Go if they gave one price over the phone and then allowed resellers to extort almost 15% more out of me. The woman (I'm sure the same one I'd rung a day earlier and who had given me a fixed price, as though that was a set item,) kindly gave me addresses of two more outlets, unfortunately these were about 12km from my home. But by now I was so determined to figure this out, that I went. I had some shopping to do in Vic Park so I just did it at the same time.

I also phoned the BP customer support line, who said that each individual service station set their own prices for things like gas. I asked that my complaint be brought to the attention of the area manager, that the staff here didn't know their products and overpriced them, and hung up.

First off - found two other gas resellers within 3km of home, none of which had come up on Swap'n'Go's store locator. Boo hiss! They sent me 5km for a service I could have had within 800m of home, didn't mention a whole slew of places that were all closer than the 5km mark, and the human couldn't figure out anyplace closer for me either. Talk about not knowing shit about your business. (Because I suspect that far from being an employee, this may have been one of the business owners. Makes it all the more incomprehensible that they didn't know the first thing about the only product they sell...)

Drew blanks at both these resellers, (oh and both had the "Swap'n'Go" logo on their cages, yes.) so I continued to the Vic Park places. I decided to go a slight detour, to catch the BP it Cannington. And to no great surprise, their prices for bottled gas were exactly the same as my local BP... So who really does set the prices? I'll phone a few more BP's and get to the bottom of this I think. Suffice to say that when an employee of BP tells me one thing, and then a customer service agent tells me the opposite, one of them has to be lying.

I found the Shell at Bentley to be a Swap'n'Go agent too - yet their price for that 4Kg bottle was $69, much closer to the recommended price. Unfortunately, they didn't have any in their cage. More unfortunately, they didn't know that until I'd paid for the bottle, so we had to reverse the transaction to my card.

I didn't find the other service station I'd been told about because I went to the Independent servo in Vic Park along the highway there in the shopping district, and they both had a 4Kg bottle, and had it at $69.

Now we get to the Twilight Zone bits. The service station the S'n'G rep had told me about was the Gull. I'm pretty sure the Gull changed to become that Independent, a few years ago. S'n'G had their facts out by quite a few years. Secondly, the Indie servo didn't have S'n'G gas, they had some other supplier. Thirdly, both 4Kg and 3.8Kg bottles are apparently only filled to 3.7Kg. Yet the S'n'G rep on my first call had told me that a 4Kg bottle was filled to 3.9Kg.

There are a couple more things. I emailed S'n'G with the full story and suggested they police their dealers a bit more closely, because they've just lost my business (and hopefully any of you who read this will go to alternate dealer outlets too) and then wanted to email a cc: to BP. But BP only allow you a web based form for feedback and I didn't want to submit it because - final demonstration of cluelessness - BP require you to agree to their "Privacy Statement" before you can submit the form - yet nowehere on the page is there any reference or link to that privacy statement.

The Parable Of The Frozen Peas

Here's another thought for you, regarding what sorts of tricks "food" manufacturers will stoop to. I've now noticed in several "health" shows that the hosts are at great pains to compare frozen peas (for example) with "fresh" peas. And conclude that the frozen/tinned varieties are better for us.

On how many levels this is wrong, is almost difficult to quantify. First off, it's just bad pop-sci posing as legitimate science. Yes, they got a pet scientist or doctor to venture an opinion, but (and here comes the second level) they're comparing the wrong things, in every case. I'll go to the example of the peas, because that was the one that caught my attention and led to the title of this article.

The show presented the view that peas in a typical supermarket languished in freezers for weeks, and were pretty much a spent quantity by the time you bought them. Frozen peas, on the other hand, were frozen fresh, and thus actually fresher than "fresh" peas.

Can you see all the fallacies? One - calling supermarket peas "fresh" is a misnomer, and these shows confirm that if you buy fresh vegetables at a supermarket you deserve the ill health you'll garner. Supermarkets store "fresh" vegetables to spread the supply out, and thus have control over the buy and sell prices. If you have peas when there's a glut, you command the buy price. And if you have peas when everyone else has run out, you command the sell price. So supermarkets hoard and store.

Two. Before the supermarkets or the canning works get to them, the peas have been held in storage at the farm until they have enough to complete a decent load, or get a decent order together. So before they get frozen, the peas are already stored for some time.

Three. Why are they comparing stored peas with stored peas? There is a world of difference between real fresh peas and peas that have been on supermarket shelves, as much as there is between real fresh peas and frozen peas.

Four. Freezing does destroy nutrients and break down cellular walls, no way to avoid it. And quite often there is at least some level of preservative involved. And in tinned peas, definitely there is preservative needed to keep the peas from spoiling.

It's the same story as all other technology. There may be harm in it but the company or organisation that doesn't adopt it, they will lose. So they do it, and try and justify it. And your job, reader and (hopefully) survivor of the additive onslaught, is to keep an eye on these additives and chemicals, and make sure that the companies that think they see an economic edge in adulterating food, don't get that profit.

Venus Puzzles.

It's the time of thew year when contradictions are commonplace - wake up in freezing cold, sweat through a day's work, maybe featuring a rainstorm in an otherwise sunny day.  And then I read another contradictory thing, in the form of this article. 

The article is unambiguous, it's about the Venus of Willendorf, a small figurine unearthed 100 years ago.  And being Austrian I live the article, it's another archaeological treasure we can use to unravel human history.  But she has - is - a contradiction. 

I'll try and explain what I mean by rabbiting on about another contradiction.  After Austria (starts with A, ends with A, which means it could have been a continent because they all end with the same letter they start with) we moved to Arabia.  And from there to Australia.  Hmmm...  That's not the contradiction, either.  The contradiction about Australia is that in school here, I was taught that the geology here is old, dating back to Gondwanaland before it broke up.  We're taught that we're guardians of the oldest land in the world.

That's an insiduous misdirection, that is.  The whole freaking world (give or take a few island chains) dates back to the breakup of Gondwanaland.  Our bit of Gondwanaland happens to be the best preserved and least buried bit of it, but everywhere else is just as old.

Okay - so what does that prove?  Well - when I came to Australia, one of the things that struck me was how thin the Australian Aboriginal people were.  Australia was a preserved slice of the kind of life that people were having when the Venus was carved.  It's a harsh living, food isn't always plentiful, and people of that era would have been thin, gaunt.  Yet dozens of Venus figurines turned up.  'Sup wit dat?  How come there were so many voluptious-figured women in those times? 

Theory One of mine has it that the Venus was a fad, like blogging.  (Stay with me on this - "traditional" blogging is alreayd being supplanted with microblogging, vlogging, podcasting, and Matrix knows what else.)  Someone made one to communicate a fantasy, or pehaps the most unusual thing they had seen in their life, and it spread just like lolcat memes do today.  So there was perhaps one such large woman, who somehow managed to command enough respect that she had food aplenty.  Or perhaps there was a spate of obesity, some kind of genetic mexican wave that went through the population. 

It's kind of the theory I favour, even though the second theory, as you'll see, would be nicer for humanity.  I mean, there could even have been aliens, the same ones who are mentioned in the Bible as the Giants who bred with humankind and created strange offspring.  It fits, in a von Daniken way.  Large voluptious men and women breed but it's not a stable or viable outcome.  But the figurines remain as silent sentinels.

Theory the second is a bit more mundane, but softer for us.  Maybe there was a time of plenty, once human life got established, in a world that had blossomed after the demise of the dinosaurs.  Maybe that's how women were, kept well fed and able to have many children over their lifespans.  The sad thing is, that they would have been like that for only a generation or two, after that there would have been too many children eating itno the resources, and things like cancers and diabetes would have been exacting a toll. 

But it means there was a Golden Time... 

One last contradiction.  I believe the signs of diabetes and many cancers leave signs in the bones.  So why does it appear that there was no diabetes and cancer back then, in what appears to have been a time of obesity?  Why are we told today that these two diseases are a result of obesity?  What has changed? 

I'm going to go out on a little limb here.  I'm going to say that the things we have in our current obesity cycle that wasn't around back then, is chemicals in our food, and unnatural processing of natural foods.  No matter where I turn to look, everything always points back to human greed and exploitation of one another as the killer.  If one food manufacturer had a conscience, and didn't process, didn't add colours and flavours and preservatives and emulsifiers and coagulants and surfactants and the whole gamut of chemical experimentation they perpetrate on us, they would quickly go broke in this economic climate.  But if the whole lot suddenly got religion, we would find that the "modern illnesses" would vanish overnight. 

Do I keep saying "keep the bastards honest" just like Don Chipp did decades ago? You betcha!  And do I believe if each person reading this did keep just one bastard honest, world health would improve overnight?  You betcha! 

Now go out there and keep the bastards honest!

Another supermarket caught out.

Devalueing the pound. And, seemingly, the kilo. On top of charging well-documentedly exorbitant prices, it seems some supermarkets also want to screw you on the quantity. (Various TV news shows have now caught out various supermarkets charging huge markups in some suburbs, and blaming quadruple prices on some mythical middleman. It's pretty much accepted. The stuff the farmer gets paid a dollar apiece for, you end up paying five to ten bucks for.)

So today we have two almost identical packs of pork chops. These two:

If you look cursorily, they are a pair of chops each, pretty much standard butchering. Now look closely at the price. One is "0.312Kg" and costs $3.74, the other is "0.568Kg" at $6.80? How come? Being pissed off at the store already for this:

(yeah, that's two bags of moldy oranges without even trying to look deeper - look at the center, and at the top left,)
we decided to become investigative reporters and used their vegetable scales. I didn't have the presence of mind to take a photo of this at the time, so I weighed it again once I got home:

Yep. Their "0.568Kg" is actually under 300g. We bought both (obviously not at sticker price but by arranged price instead) so I could do this article.

So - in the one night, this store decided to try and sell me mold-contaminated oranges, then sell me almost half as much pork as they were charging for.

People - keep the bastards in check - check everything!

If you don't (as we did) then they will get away with this. In this case, the supermarket made good the price for us once we made them aware of the error. You should always point such errors out and give them a chance to make good.

(Oh - and in the end, besides the evidence [which was yummy] I decided to just use the supermarket for cat litter and milk, I'll buy my other produce elsewhere thanks. Not that I already don't do that.)

Have YOU Adopted The "Consumer Position?"

This is pretty much an object lesson in how commercialism directly affects your health.  I can't really improve on the advice given in this article, they sort of say it all.

If it wasn't grown in your own back yard, you have no idea whatsoever what the commercial interests all along that supply chain have done in order to get their hands on a few extra precious dollars. 

Did the growers use radioactive fertilisers on the tomatoes you're eating?  Don't laugh, in the US it's perfectly legal to ship poisonous radioactive crap across a state border where they can legitimately add it to fertilisers.  And don't laugh because you're in Australia, because several million tons of the shit found its way into Australian soils as fertiliser, before someone figured it out and put a stop to it.

Did the transport company save some loading and put the tomatoes in the same shipment as some insecticide, and by any chance did one of those barrels leak and contaminate the whole load?  Again, don't laugh, because that has happened right here in WA, a long time ago I'll grant you, but we had to dump a whole load of groceries in the bush town I lived in as a kid becuase of precisely that. 

And then - the supermarket.  Did they store those tomatoes for six months before putting them on the shelves?  Because they all do that.  There are guidelines for the length of time you may store vegetables, but it's been proven over and over by reporter and investigators that these are being well and truly ignored and that our vegetables only get to us when they have become protoplasm with almost zero health benefits.

So if you feel slightly violated and raped, it's because we're all copping that, in the interest of the mighty dollar.  Grow your own or get used to the sting...

Ur errols, let me show u sum moar.

In the headlong rush to buy CFLs - how much of a footprint does it take to MAKE the bastards in the first place?


I haven't yet investigated this - but let's suppose that a filament bulb has a 2000 hour lifespan compared to a 10000 hour lifespan for a CFL of similar light output. (I know they claim to last ten times as long but I haven't seen this kind of lifespan yet. Your mileage may vary...)


Let's pick 60W incandescent which is about an 11W CFL. The incandescent will therefore consume 120,000KWh in its lifespan. The CFL will consume 110,000KWh over it's lifespan. That incandescent (and its replacements, up to four more, possibly) would consume 600,000KWh in the same time span as the CFL. But an incandescent bulb takes very to make. Some silica for the glass, piece of brass for the holder, some resistance wire. Wonder how much of a footprint these old school materials have? I'm betting we've perfected the humble light bulb and it's parts.


Now a CFL lamp has a formed tube, which has to be evacuated and dusted with some quite exotic (and poisonous) material, filled with a specific gas, and then soldered to a circuit board containing around a dozen parts, one of them being a pretty complex little transformer that has to be formed and wound with copper wire. Another is a chip or switching transistor and we're only just beginning to realise how much of a footprint such components have in manufacture, and then in the waste disposal cycle...


Now - another misconception, that by switching to CFL globes we'll save the planet. It's a crock, a misdirection, a way to make you feel as though you're saving the planet. Home lighting accounts for maybe 30% of the home's electricity use, if that. (That's an educated guess, I'm sure you could look up the actual figures online and get six different results, I'm basing this on back-of-the-napkin numbers gleaned from the house I'm in.)


And domestic use is wayyyyyyy under half of electricity use, I forget the exact figure but again it's on record and I'm guesstimating it to 30% again, once again you may find other figures online but I bet they are the same side of 50% as my guess.


You're only using about 1/3 of the electricity you'd have wasted on 1/3 of 1/3 of the power consumption each day, or in other words, saving about 1/27th of the energy bill. But then again, people feel virtuous upon installing nice environmentally friendly globes and tend to leave them on for longer periods, thus using more power... It sort of balances itself.


So I'm not advocating to not use CFLs - after all, we do need to reduce our electricity consumption. Awareness is important, and nothing reinforces that awareness like changing your light bulbs and doing your bit. And the more aware you are, the more likely you are to turn off the TV and stereo at the power point, or the unused ligthing in the office before you go home.


Just keep an eye on ALL sides of the coin and know that whatever we do there will always be a price to pay - just pick your least unacceptable alternative.

Generic Prescriptions and those emails...

I've made a discovery the last few months. Beware "bait and switch" medications.

Readers from wayback may know I use Ambien (Stilnox) on a regular basis to combat insomnia. I've been using Stilnox to help ne get to sleep on bad nights for almost six years now. I still only need half a tablet to enable sleep, I try and avoid using them when I've had more than two drinks, and they have worked exactly as the pharmacological company designed them to, for me.

About two years ago I switched from the specific to a generic brand, and it worked exactly the same, half a tablet and I was waking up refreshed the next morning. Then the last few packs of generic tablets were - a bit different, a different packaging, different shape... And, for some reason, despite supposedly being exactly the same thing, far less effective...

One of the things Stilnox are designed to be, is non-habituating. That means your body doesn't become immune to them and need you to take more and more for the same effect. Another thing they are not, is habit-forming, i.e. I can go out bush for weeks and all that happens is I go back to my old sleepng pattern.

So imagine how cheesed off I felt when I had to use a second half tablet almost every time. This is the same generic brand, just that they've changed something. To make it cheaper, no doubt. And thinking that no-one will notice because most people pop Ambien like a party drug, anyway. Just to prove the point I went back to original Stilnox and - half a tablet, every time...

So before you buy that online medication from some "reputable source" think on this - in the case of generic ambien, I am guessing they changed the type of binder to be cheaper, and it's somehow made the tablet less effective. And they are a rather large and respectable generic pharamcological house. Imagine how badly you can get ripped off by online scammers, including tablets made with some quite nasty binders and fillers. Is it worth it?

Cell Pwn "Dangers"

Taking a shot at Dr George Carlo now. Yes, I'll wait until you've watched this whole boring clip...

The thing is, is that I've worked with radio transmitters since I was 15, and have absorbed thousands of kilowatts, a few hundred watts here, a few kilowatts there, and have cancer-free fingers.

(Radio techs when tuning in aerials or transmitter finals stages invariably are close to generally high-power radio frequency [RF] equipment and most of us have at some stage expereinced a nasty "RF burn" where the radiated energy arcs across and burns a neatly cauterised hole, generally in one's finger cos that's the bit closest to the antenna or output stage of the transmitter.)

I can't see quite the phenomenally lethal effect Dr Carlo claims - after all, most phone handsets can only output between 0.5 and 2 watts, and I've been in proximity to 25 to 5000 watts as part of my job, for around 14 years.

The good Dr tries to make (bad) analogies that seem to demonstrate that he actually has little knowledge of the phenomenon of electromagnetic radiation, and my favourite malapropism is his analogy of the radio signal ("passing right through - the human body can't see it") as a clothesline, and then you go and put data on it and that's like putting clothes on the clothesline. Bullshit Dr Carlo.

He seems to think the data has some magical power that can increase the transmission. Look at it from this point of view, people - the batteries in a cellphone can only output a certain amount of power, over 50% of that power is going to be wasted as heat (ever notice your phone gets warm after a long conversation? Well that is power that *didn't* get radiated as a radio signal) and that means that no matter how you try to slice and dice it, there can't be more energy than that in the radio signal.

It may well be that because the signal is held close to the brain when the phone is in use and radiating, it could cause cell damage and cancer. Certainly, statistics seem to bear that out, and it's maybe worth your while to consider a headset for your phone so you can keep it away from your brain. But bear in mind that a bluetooth headset is also a transmitter, and you'd be sticking that inside your ear... While a low to medium cellphone user might not ever experience a tumour cause dby cellphone use, playing it safe and using a wired headset can't hurt.

But back to Dr Carlo's clumsy and somewhat inappropriate analogy. A clothesline is not "invisible" to human flesh and is nothing at all like a radio wave either. Unless you're whipping it up and down or sideways in lovely long waves, and then try standing near a peak that's whiping back and forth and tell me if it would be any worse if there were clothes on the line.

Try this - ride a motorbike full tilt into a clothesline with or without clothes on it, and either way it's not going to end well. So if the radio wave is going to do damage, it will do that damage whether it has clothes on it, data on it, or silence on it. Okay - there may be a way that imposing data (which has a square wave shape) on the signal might generate more harmonics - but as any good RF tech will tell you, if you have a harmonic then your signal power is getting divided between the signal you want to send and the harmonic. If you have a lot of harmonics, then your pitifully small amount of power you can suck out of the battery has to be divided up between all the harmonics and the desired signal equally, so you're going to have minute amounts of signal at each harmonic.

Next - that signal has to radiate in all 360 degrees, your head will intercept maybe 100 degrees worth, so about 1/3 of that small amount of power. move the phone three centimeters further away from your ear and your head will only intercept maybe 70 degrees (about 1/5th) of the signal, etc. Move it further away, say 6cm, and that drops down to maybe 25 degrees, or 1/12th of whatever radiation is coming out of the antenna.

That's why a headset is a good idea, no matter what. It gets the danger (if it is a danger) away from your delicate brain to the point where radiation from the cell handset is minute.

But the funniest thing I still think is the "clothes on the line make it dangerous" analogy, in other words it's the data that does the damage. If that were so, then being hit with a phonebook with all blank pages shouldn't hurt at all, while a full phone directory's worth of data printed on the pages would make it lethal...

Food Do, Food Don't.

An article on the "future of food" - I look on this with the same kind of horror as I do when I see lists of additives (as you can find in the Body Friendly Zen Cookbook in the appendix) and or these mushrooms served by a supposedly healthy restaurant.

Why? Pasta that cooks in 90 seconds is either being subjected to sterilising type heat or else is made in a different way to permit full cooking in a minute and a half. Either way it's not going to be an ideal food. And the sauce is in a sachet, totally brilliant idea except that - well, it needs to be preservatived up beyond belief to prevent lawsuits, and is not likely to be good for you either.

And no, I'm not advocating raw vegetables as a basis for diet - our ancestors first started cooking and processing certain vegetables for a good reason. They were KEEN observers and noticed that certain foods were just better for them when heated or processed in some way. Or lasted longer, or had some other survival benefit. Notice our ancestors had to be survivors or we might very well not be here today... %)

In fact, this article documents a few points I've already made in The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook, namely that we NEED certain processing and certain foods. Once again fats emerge as a key concept, and I can expand on the following paragraphs, where the italic smaller font is my comments:

"Studies at Ohio State measured blood levels of subjects who ate servings of salsa and salads. When the salsa or salad was served with fat-rich avocados or full-fat salad dressing, the diners absorbed as much as 4 times more lycopene, 7 times more lutein and 18 times the beta carotene than those who had their vegetables plain or with
low-fat dressing." (There's a bit more to this, of course. A full fat dressing can be any of a range of oils, but in my research, olive oil has always been of the most benefit generally, and an oil rich in vitamin E such as grapeseed oil, about 2 or 3 times more effective again, than just vegetable oil. The best oil for extracting the lycopene, for example, is 1/4 grapeseed and 3/4 olive oil, used for cooking instead of other fats. It's also possible to add another fat for specific flavouring, but the base should always be that olive/grapeseed mix.)

and that's just for one group of compounds... I've found that almost three years after my win over prostate cancer, where I used the diet exclusively to reverse my prostate cancer, and then stuck loosely to the principles of the diet ever since, my PSA levels first dropped from 4.2 to 0.8 and have never climbed above 1.0 again since. That puts my prostate health at around the late 20's to mid 30's - and I'm 51.

So if just a bit of consideration of your diet can do that much for you, think what you can achieve if you put just a bit of effort into it. And avoid 90second pasta dispensed by some grotty machine on a street corner...

Polyunsaturated fats - not great, actually.

Sticking to less of the supposedly healthy oils might just save your cojones. (Or your prostate - but close enough, would you let anyone with a knife near either unless it has become dread necessity?)

Poly-and-mono-unsaturated fats are generally thought to be healthy for one, and it's again to balance that we should direct our attention. 25g of fat is supposed to be our limit, with 50g being about where I'd call it a day. Mind you, 50g is about 7mm (3/8") to 1cm (1/2") of a slice off the smallest face of half a kilo (about a pound) of butter. A few tablespoons of olive oil, to be sure.

Thing is that a pack of take-away fries or fish and chip shop chips can easily have all that fat stuck to them and soaked into the potato. Add a piece of fish or a burger and you're eating the next three days' worth of fat allowance.

The supposedly ideal approach used to be to avoid fats. Avoid animal fats especially, in favour of these newfangled poly and mono unsaturated fats. And now comes the kicker - to the average human palate, the two biggest components of flavour are - you guessed it - fats and sugars, closely followed by saltiness. Prod at the greasy salty baconburger in the sickly sweet bun you're eating and ponder that for a moment...

Diets have traditionally been regarded as bland because they have little flavour. In my diet book though, I still recommend balance. And dietary studies bear it out. The reason we crave the "flavour" that fat gives to a food is because we need it. Same for the sugars and salt.

That's why I recommend a balanced diet, an aware attitude, where you know that you need only stick to sensible limits in order to let your body work efficiently.

One word of warning - if you eat processed "diet" meal packs as seen in many supermarkets, you deserve all ill health you're going to get. LOOK - I mean, really look - at the ingredients list and then look them up in the Additives list in the diet book and realise that all the other things they do to your body come at a price - your body will start to "hoard" precious nutrients in an effort to cope with the damage - and how does that help your diet or your health?

I just find it so interesting that EVERY article which has a tip for healthy eating and living recommends precisely what I do. Save yourself the price of the book if you like, but be aware that I've now been on the principles outlined in the book for over three years and actually lost some weight, have had no further trouble with my prostate.

I've also experienced a reduction in the signs of guttate psoriasis which used to make my legs itchy and splotchy red as well, and my blood sugar and insulin levels are normal.

I've experienced a drop in testosterone levels, which is not alarming and in fact is beneficial, and it seems that over the three years, my digestive system has also returned to much more normal operation, no wild acid refluxes and IBS like symptoms.

And I LOVE my flavourful food and my cooking, across just about every style of cuisine known to humanity. Even if you aren't ill with any of the modern diseases caused by poor diet, you should take a look at the book.

Cos by then we won't need them

Audi - great ideas - later...

Calculate The Energy Savings

Quick link - to USA Energy Star pages which contain information relevant universally.

"Global Climate Change" followup

I mean, has anyone thought seriously about what any global climate change will entail? In a past article I said that any climate shifts will have disastrous results.

Analyse: In South Africa, there seems to be no mention of drought and famine until around the same time as we seem to think global warming may have started, which unsurprisinlgy enough, was a century or so after we started digging up fossil fuel and burning it in copious quantities to fill our energy needs to industrialise.

It seems reasonable to link the two, that climate changes of what appear to have been relatively minor magnitude, caused rather a large change in the condition and lifestyles of South Africans. You can't tell me that it's just a case of out of control breeding, because that just doesn't sweep over a entire continent for no reason...

To continue that analysis, then. When you think of South Africa, besides the famines, what is the other symptom of the region that springs immediately to mind? Did you say violence and inhumanity?

People will go to incredible lengths to ensure that their DNA passes on into the next generation, including rationalising murder and genocide as "culling" or "they deserved it" or any number of other such sops to our conscience. Wars are fought for religion, and religions are collections of people who want to survive as a group as well as individually.

Even without the incredible pressure which global climate change will bring to bear, we don;t actually have a period of recorded history in which there wasn't a war going on somewhere.

Project: The current trend to failing crops and food production forward a few more years. Which demographic in their right mind will send food and medical aid to a third world country when their own children in turn are starving and ill?

Think: About the incredible havoc and destruction of human lives that are taking place in South Africa with conventional weapons and explosives. Project that forward to a point in time when a developed nation with a massive armoury of WMD decides that their best chance is to reove some of the competing populations of the world.

Think: In Russia, that flashpoint is much closer than in Australia, even though we are in a drought of epic proportions. The United States also are reaching a point where their large population is makiing demands on the land, food, and medicine economy which can't be sustained for too many more years, and the population there is swelling from illegal immigrants and birth rate.

Act: Reduce your footprint. Carbon, greenhouse gas, energy (heat) release, footprint from overly processed and transported food, from the amount of trees that have to be felled for new building and for farmland, the amount of energy that has to be expended to dig the metal of your next car out of the ground and form it into a car, the amount of noxious and toxic byproducts that have to be produced to produce the plastics and electronics and throw-away disposables you use each month.

If every person that owns one kept their car for an extra year and used it less each year, the impact would be huge. If every person who purchases a steak bred on farmland that would be better off growing lower impact foods switched a couple of meals a year to that lower impact food, that too would make tons (literally) of difference per person.

Think: About: It...

Maybe Call It "Global Climate Change?"

- would that make it clearer to the ostriches?

Some people will go to extraordinary lengths to stick their head in the sand. Especially about things like global warming...

Our previous Prime Minister spent his entire record number of terms in office denying that greenhouse gases existed, that global warming existed, or that we needed to do anything about it. He apparently also thought that petrol companies were fair and honest and didn't need policing, and that the entire Australian population was composed of creatures of the IQ and mentality of sheep and could be lied to over and over without cottoning on...

I'm sad to say that on the latter matter, the Australian masses almost always proved him right...

But for years now one other person has been conducting a one-bigot campaign against global warming activism. He uses his humour email list to conduct a campaign that, if he stopped and really thought about it, would have him heading for the fallout shelter instead of spouting inane little digs.

Here's a quote, about a snowfield in Hohenfels, Germany: "Looks like they don't have any Global Warming either.Mother Nature seems to want to make it perfectly clearwho is in charge and who is full of BS." (BTW Hohenfels means "high rock" or "high cliff" and is a skiing spot I remember from my childhood as being a good snowfield. So he's even baseing this snide sideswipe on on a fallacy.)

All of the last several years he has been posting photos of unseasonally cold weather around the UA and the world and saying "See? No global warming here!"

And in the process, he's been ignoring the one thing that scares intelligent people everywhere and is forcing ever faster changes in our behaviour and abuse of the ecosystem: Life is delicatley balanced, a shift of just a few degrees in either directon will be disastrous.

Also, weather is a closed system with really only one energy input, being the energy from the sun. When we unlock the energy that used to be stored beneath the ground in the form of fossil fuel, we are effectively releasing ancient energy into a delicately balanced system. In addition, we're also disturbing that delicate balance by changing the composition of the atmosphere and the way that the atmosphere retains the energy of the sun.

Therefore, if the weather starts heading for extremes of cold, we had better prepare for the rebound in the other direction. As in, for example, a record drought in Australia, which we have been experiencing for over twenty years and which is affecting the world economy. Want to see global warming in action Herman? Come visit Australia and see what were once viable and productive farmlands fallen into drought-stricken baked mud flats.

Arguing about the semantics of the words "global warming" at a time like this is a bit like fiddling while Rome burns, or wandering around your empire in a brand new suit of nothing.

The rest of us, do something now to halt the changes, do our bit, and we may come out of the "Global Climate Change" with most of us still intact...

Coughaesthetic

Oh and here's one from a flu far far away an in the past:

It happened that I was working at Channel Nine in the Store at the time, and I had the flu and a nasty cough. The nice chemist had given me a Chemist's Own Brand (read - "cheapie") orange flavoured cough syrup which I kept on my desk to save the day, but neither it nor Panadol were helping me. In fact, I was so fluffy-headed from the flu that it would take me one to two hours to book in one delivery of stock items.

By the afternoon I'd generally start coming around a bit more and by knock-off time I was usually alert and awake enough to drive myself home. Then came the fateful morning when I arrived at my desk and the bottle was empty. I figured "I'll get one at lunchtime" and I proceeded to plough into the work for the day. And had it all finished by midday.

So at lunchtime, I headed for the chemistand got another bottle of the Wonderful Orange Elixir and sat it on my desk- throat sooooo sore, - took a Panadol and a measure of WOE and settled in to breeze hrough the last bits of outstanding work. - Only - I was back. Back to doing everything in a somnolent state. Back to doing everything in a s-l-o-w somnolent state where I forgot what I wanted to do, generally taking careful note of how fucked up everything was, and then not finding any way to get back in sync again.

Turns out my body doesn't like Codeine very much, and especialy it doesn't like Codeine with Paracetamol. So every day I'd arive pico bello, take my medicine and end up a zombie.
So another thing to watch, codeine snd panadol.

Read your labels, check interactions, and preferably know what makes you react badly.

Skinflint Skim Food.

You ma have watched Current Affair last night, and heard about the "adulteration of our milk" with a thing called "permeate." I can honestly say that I have been lucky enough to have milk fresh from a farm, and thus have something to compare supermarket milk to.

I can therefore also say that there IS a difference. You can see that supermarket milk is more transparent ("thinner") than fresh minimally processed dairy milk. No it doesn't taste the same, but then all processing of milk alters the taste from the rich bacteria-laden brew that comes out of a cow's teat. Some of that is actually beneficial.

Adding permeate is just adding back what's left after extracting most of the useful parts of whey, which is in turn wat's left of milk after extracting the most useful parts of milk for making cheese. So yes permeate is a long way down the ladder from milk, and shouldn't be there - but at least it's not going to be any more harmful to your health than milk. And in some cases the thinner milk is actually good, such as in baking.

So really, permeate should go into the bread instead of full cream milk, thus reducing the cost of bre... Hang on, that's right, bread already uses he minimum amount and form of milk possible, adulterated by whatever the bakeries use to stretch the milk as far as possible...

Adulteration of food is nothing new. Frederick Accum was among the most vocal and active of anti-fraud activists, back in the early 1800's no less. He used a then still fairly high tech medium - he published a book - to actually name the merchants and manufacturers, and they shut him down with legalities and innuendo. Today, you still notice manufacturers shutting down sites where the public are encouraged to name and shame, and more importantly, you still notice that adulteration of food is taking place, just that the handling of it takes a different form.

In Accum's time, he noted with some grim glee that each of the primary foodstuff and pharmacy manufacturers were poisoning one another in a circular spiral of karma and bad digestion. He didn't need to specifically note however that this was also true of the general consumer too, the person whom all these adulterations eventually filtered down to, en masse.

Today we find that as each manufacturer uses some technique to stretch their ingredients, we lose once. Then because most of those ingredients in their turn come from a source that has already diluted or adulteratd these basic building blocks, we're losing out in a geometric progesssion...

But times have changed.

Where in Accum's day it was a case of slip in whatever you could and bank on the public's ignorance to not recognise poison in their food when they encountered it, our time is a time of disclosure.

Nowadays it's a case of slip in whatever you can, disclose as little of the true nature of the additives or find some loophole to allow you to remain within disclosure law as you can, and bank on the public's ignorance to not recognise poison in their food when they encounter it...

In Accum's day, there were as yet few additives. (Which are nowadays produced mostly by laboratory processes from waste products from another manufacture stage.) The reason was that there were then no processing plants able to manage this process. There were none, because the energy that ws needed and that we would soon unlock in the form of electric power from fossil fuels was not yet available, along with the spike in the production of poisonous emissions and greenhouse gases that would march hand in hand with the exploitation of fossil fuels.

In our day, we have added more illnesses and cancers to our repertoire than at any other time in the development of the world, not a mean achievement by any means. And do I think that the increase in additives, onset of pollution and huge increase in the incidence of cancers and other illnesses is all coincidental? What do you think?

Once again, I can never overtstate this enough - manufacturers could not get away with this shit if it wasn't for one very important group - US - the buying public. If we don't use every avenue open to us to bring these greedy companies to heel, they will continue to poison us. It's that simple. Check products carefully. Read labels, and at all times keep yourself aware of the latest deception being practised on us by nitpicking loophole seekers.

This is the price of keeping your own health, and the health of your family and people you care about. Let someone else forge the pioneering work of attempting to assimilate these poisons into the human genome...

What IS a Healthy Lifestyle, Anyway?

Hmmm so fit and healthy people like Lisa Curry Kenny get heart problems despite (or perhaps because of) her training and active life. There's no justice in the world, so the important thing is to take lessons from the injustices - in this case, that exercise and healthy living can make you very very sick.

Okay okay that was unfair - it should read "that exercise and healthy living can make you very very sick if it's not part of a balanced lifestyle and diet." Exercise is commendable but please don't overdo it, and remember that balance in all things is far more important for your health.

Prostate Cancer Risk Reduced By Green Tea

. . . with a caveat: While this article makes perfect sense, due to the known antioxidant properties of green tea (when prepared right!) there is the caveat of evolutionary pressures.

If you're not of Asian extraction, then probably your body has NOT evolved to take advantage of the precise properties of green tea as the Asian bloodlines will have evolved to.

That said, you will probably not suffer any ill effects from downing a cup or three of green tea a day. Also of course, green tea should not be the one and only prong in your plan of attack, you should also follow the other guidelines of The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook because the balanced approach and proper use of the foods will be far more beneficial than just trying one thing.

Last thing - this is not just for prostate cancer prone people - many cancers could be avoided by following a better diet, and the The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook has a lot of tips for keeping a healthy diet.

No Fleas, yet No Pesticides

The easiest way to kill the fleas harbouring in the carpet of the house from where Tiddles scratched them and the little bugger bred and multiplied? "Quick Henry - the Flit!" is not the answer. Nor is getting the pest man in with his goggles and mask and his jolly toxic sprays.

Latest research seems to say - vacuum the little sods. Kills them dead. Apparently. Hell, I say - why stop there? Vacuum Tiddles too!

Honey, could you please check the fuel rods?

Yeah they're coming in thick and fast now, for no readily discernible reason. Here's another way to live off grid and probably get paid for contributing to the grid in fact: Toshiba's personal nuclear reactor...

If this is not a hoax, it will probably be quite expensive for the average householder, but for motels and roadhouses and office blocks, it could be an answer to the cost of powering from the huge, expensive, polluting, and ugly Grid, the power network that has to span almost every city, town, village, highrise, factory, farmhouse, and homestead in Australia to supply the all-important energy needs of those places.

Actually, you may find that suburban streets could probably band together and set these up, the output at 200KW is enough to power about 90 toasters or 220 refrigerators, so if you go figuring it out, about 10 - 20 houses average usage.

Contrary to my title above, these things are sealed and pretty much maintenance free. And if you buy one you'd better hope so too - I hate to think what a 100,000 hour service would cost otherwise...

This is the kind of technology that, while entrenched power monopolies would love to be able to malign and create FUD around, will end the global warming cycle. 10,000 of these deployed around Australia will take away the need for several hundred megawatts worth of generator plant burning dirty fuels, and (more inportantly) take away the need for grid-supplying power cable runs across tens of thousands of miles as we currently have.

Aside from returnng material like aluminium and copper to the stockpile, this clears visual pollution, traffic hazards, and the need for surge power capacity that we have to currently build into the grid. Combined with houses supplying some of their power with cheap wind and solar electricity, the need for surge capacity will largely disappear.

Once again - tell your local Member about it, write about it, bring it to public attention - we can make Australia an example of how to do it right.

Cheap Cheap Solar Cells Hit Manufacture Stage

Have to give out this link - these are going to revolutionise a variety of solar electric technologies. How about your house covered in solar panels for $3000 instead $15000?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/technology/18solar.html?ex=1355634000&en=091b06819623f9d0&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

LATEST NEWS:

• http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/green-tech/cheap-solar+power+everywhere-nanosolar-powersheets-go-on-sale-really-are-cheap-335096.php
• http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9835241-54.html?tag=newsmap

Additives? Just say NO!

The evidence against additives keeps mounting up. I'm very glad I take the stance I do against additives and adulteration of whole foods, because if just one person more starts reading and taking note of the labels of the foods they eat, I consider that a victory and am glad to have given one more person a chance at healthy life.

In The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook, I think I made that point, and at the risk of saying it again - it takes our bodies hundreds of generations to adjust to new foods. Even if the human species is evolving at a faster and faster rate, it's not going to be possible for YOU personally to "evolve" to adapt to additives and preservatives and other crap in your food.

Personally, I check every tin, every packet, and every sachet the first time I encounter it during shopping, and if the ingredients aren't listed or the list is made hard to figure out, or if the list looks like a chemistry experiment in progress, it goes on my ignore list. If you're at all concerned about your health and the health of your family, you'll do the same.

The best way to survive the next few decades will be to eat minimally processed whole foods, cook the food yourself, and remember that what our ancestors were eating 7,000 to 12,000 years ago is what we are just becoming adapted to now...

Another Biodiesel Problem, Solved!

With this breakthrough, biodiesel has become fun again! Now that Rice University boffins have found a way to digest the major slimy slippery waste byproduct into another fuel, (ethanol,) there is no reason to avoid biodiesel any longer.

I don't know about you, but I played with biodiesel despite having no motor to test it in, and what really stumped me was the litre of slippery glycerin that is left behind for every 11 litres of oil you crack into diesel.

Because larger players have been getting into making biodiesel, the demand for glycerin has decreased sharply, one might say... Being able to sell or give it away to an ethanol refinery would solve the major problem, once a month/year/whatever you can have your waste glycerin removed and turned into something useful!

According to the article, each litre of glycerin digests into almost a whole litre of ethanol, meaning there will be little waste to worry about, and I'm betting that the waste there is, will be something that is easily biodegradable, being just the waste from bacteria digestion.

I'm thinking here - car engines run on petroleum, and are not really suited to running on ethanol. Old diesel engines were not really made for biodiesel, either. But once the advantages of biodiesel became apparent, diesel engine manufacturers got wise and now there is hardly a diesel engined domestic car that doesn't claim to run on it.

Similarly, petrol distributors have been adding ethanol and methanol to petroleum, and slowly car manufacturers have changed engines so they will run on these augmented fuels.

Now here's another thought - diesel engines were also NOT designed to run on neat vegetable oil, yet some are capable. If a diesel engine could run on a blend of vegetable oil and biodiesel, then you could say that 15 litres of vegetable oil will make 13 - 14 litres of useable biodiesel blend, and 1 -2 litres of glycerin, which, according to the story I linked to, will become 1 -2 litres of ethanol.

Negligible waste - now that is something to aim for!

The beautiful thing is, that we know that car engines, both petrol and diesel, are capable of running on these alternative and much cheaper and cleaner fuels, so put pressure on car manufacturers. The best way we can do that is by avoiding products with pansified petrol-only-sipping engines or fussy-fossil-diesel-thanks motors...

So pressure away - it will finally be YOU and YOUR CHOICES that determine the future of the world.

No, THIS is the Most Bastard Marketing Evah...

Aside from this article I posted a few minutes ago on telemarketing with a new twist, I'd say what I found yesterday has to take the cake:

Went to my chemist the other day to pick up a script, and noticed another piece of genius marketing. Do you suffer from cracked heels? If you do, then you know that it's partly hereditary, parly down to footwear, partly to weather. And you probably know the name NS-8 Heel Balm.

So there's a cardboard display on the counter full of NS-8 bottles, and beside them, a stack of pink thongs. (Known as flip-flops to our Podean siblings. Yeah, rubber beachwear for your feet.)

And this is brilliant marketing because? Well, because the one type of footwear guaranteed to bring on dry cracked heels is - thongs. As you sweat, the sweat collects between your foot and the rubber and doesn't dry, and breeds the fungus that is one of the other causes of cracked dry heels.

Just when you thought you'd seen everything...

Food "Unbelievably Coupled" With Body Chemistry. Well Duh!

Look - this one should already be obvious by now, but it bears repeating, often - You Are What You Eat. I know this story is only tangentially related by one reference to the topic, but it shows how what should be the most important thing you take home from an article is often just one line, one concept.

"The food you eat is so unbelievably coupled with your body's chemistry," said Richard Mathies, who described his new technology in an article published Thursday in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

If Richard was the only person saying that, you could be excused for not picking up on it. But the fact is that almost every article you ever read on health and nutrition mentions this central tenet. You Are What You Eat.

The Body Friendly Zen Cookbook is based on this tenet. You Are What You Eat. Yet we still go out and allow someone to sell us foods laced with additives that are known toxins and poisons...

We let them lie to us about it, because it's either cheaper for us, or easier for us. We Are What We Eat. We eat foods that are described with lies, that are lies. Lying to ourselves that it's not really that bad for us, becomes easier every time...

If I look even in my refrigerator I can find a lie right away. The carton of milk reads "Low in Fat, High in Taste." That's bullshit of the first water, right there. First of all, the flavour we perceive, is fat. You want to make something tasty to homo sapiens, add fat. It's how our tastebuds and brains are wired. So if the milk is low on fat then it isn't high in taste, at all. And if you find it tasty, it's fatty, you can depend on it.

The other exhortation on the carton, is "Perfect Balance. Dairy Goodness." Need I go back to the last paragraph? If the fat has been removed then the milk is no longer in "perfect balance," nor is it "dairy goodness" any more. We Are What We Eat.

Yet we buy it because of those slogans and all the "research" that has been done proving that watering down milk by up to half strength, skimming off the cream, and adding stabilisers and preservatives, all makes the milk "better."

Despite vastly improved medical resources, we have more illnesses, cancers, inflammatory diseases, and immune system illnesses per capita now than we ever had. We Are What We Eat.

Our greatgrandparents boiled the milk, and succumbed to flu and illnesses related to lack of hygene, but had almost none of the modern illnesses. They Were What They Ate, Too.

I can't stress this enough. Our bodies have for millenia evolved to be able to use the foods at our disposal, and that NEVER included additives and preservatives and semi-toxic colourings, nor chemical splitting of foods, nor "enhancement" of foods by adding totally unrelated vitamins and minerals and "secret ingredients" to them.

Get smart, get Body Friendly, and avoid additives like the Plague. If you can, try growing some of your own vegetables and herbs. Over at the Zen Cookbook site, I'll soon be posting a series of projects for growing fresh vegetables yourself, and other projects. But do your body a favour and start giving it a chance...