Incredible Visions

The Price of Oil:Solutions for Children

niransab — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:17:57 +0000

Yesterday I saw a news clip about G8 Asian powers urging an oil production hike

AOMORI, Japan (AFP) — Eleven nations that guzzle nearly two-thirds of the world’s energy called Sunday for an urgent hike in global oil production as host Japan warned the world could plunge into recession….
In a joint statement, they called for boosts to their own production and asked major oil producers “to increase investment to keep markets well supplied in response to rising world demand”.
The European Union’s energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs warned that high oil prices were a fact to be reckoned with and that major economies needed to come up with alternative energy.

“The era of cheap energy seems to be over and no economy should gamble on a potential return to low prices,” Piebalgs said.

What incredible wisdom-if there is not enough - ask mom and dad for more. The “end of oil” has been a long time in coming. Peak oil production had been predicted, ridiculed and discovered again. But,none of this wisdom reached politicians or car manufacturers. Standards for emissions were relaxed as the new gas guzzlers (SUVs) came into being.

However, people voted for these same politicians, people chose to buy and drive SUVs. Oil consumption and energy squandering continued and continues in spite of a very predictable drop in production capacity. And yet people still whine that there is magically oil left in the ground. We only need to pray to the oil fairies (insert:deity of choice, or science) and it will be delivered.

What is needed is a fundamental shift in perspective. We can not continue consuming the earth as we are for mere convenience. If you want to argue this point - think about styrofoam, plastic utensils, and all the useless garbage filling landfill sites, food production for animals and cars(ethanol) while there is global food crisis. The cancerous growth of unmitigated consumption has to stop voluntarily or (I suspect) involuntarily.

I think that the search and use of alternative fuel (ie:solar, geothermal,etc) is flawed without a change in perspective. The common criticism is that these technologies can not meet our current energy demands. That is absolutely true. However, the earth can not sustain our current energy demands. The only solution lies in lowering our energy demands. Any other solution is simply childish.

Dead Ducks:The Envirornment and Making Clean Oil

niransab — Sat, 03 May 2008 15:56:44 +0000

Title: Dead Ducks: The Environment and Making “Clean” Oil

500 hundred ducks landed in a Syncrude toxic tailings pond 75 km north of Fort McMurry. Only 5 were strong enough to even try saving, of those, 3 have survived. The tailings pond contains water that is used to wash the oil from the tar sands. The contaminated water contains a mixture of heavy metals, sands and residual oil. Birds that land on the pond are quickly coated, loose their waterproofing and drown.

Syncrude claims it was caught unprepared by the winter weather…

The company has said it normally has bird deterrents deployed on the three-kilometre-wide lake of waste from early spring until late fall. But the noisemakers and scarecrows were not in place because of the harsh winter weather last week, officials said.
Ruth Klienbub, a Fort McMurray bird watcher, told CBC News she has been seeing migrating birds all month.
“Everyone knows when migration happens. This has been documented for a century. They should have known better,” she said.
Kleinbub said the company should have had its deterrents, such as sonic cannons, in the field much earlier.
“The birds were here the first week of April,” said Kleinbub, a member of the Fort McMurray Field Naturalists and a director of the Federation of Alberta Naturalists. A birdwatcher, she said she saw waterfowl returning to the area three weeks ago.
“I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that they weren’t ready.”
Syncrude says it started deploying sonic cannons about a week ago, but had not been able to put anything out on the pond before the late spring storm.
Kleinbub said there’s no reason to stagger the deployment of the cannons.

The behavior of the ducks should have been predictable, especially for a company doing this for 30 years.

The unusual cold weather last week was bad timing for the large numbers of migrating waterfowl that annually pass through the area on their way to the Peace-Athabasca delta, said Colleen Cassady St. Clair, an associate professor of behavioural ecology and conservation biology.
“Those tailings ponds with the warm effluent in them become extremely attractive to them as rest sites.”
Oilsands operators have known for years that tailings ponds are attractive to waterfowl. So they should have expected the birds to show up after the late storm, she said.
“It would be a bit surprising if there wasn’t also an extra effort to get all their equipment operational.”
If there was one pond that didn’t have noisemakers set up yet, it would be expected that the ducks be more attracted to that site, she said.

The relevant government agencies had to learn about the incident from an anonymous phone call, 2 hours before the company called the incident in.

Gaudet said a company operator first discovered the ducks around 9:30 a.m. Monday. The report was called in to the company’s environmental office, then relayed to the province’s fish and wildlife office by noon. The province had already received an anonymous tip about the ducks by that time and had left a message with Syncrude, Gaudet said.
The company was supposed to call Alberta Environment immediately.
When asked why Alberta Environment wasn’t called right away, Gaudet said the company called the regulators it thought were best suited to handle the situation.
As for the timing of that call, Gaudet said: “Our initial activity is to get out into the field to witness and assess, and then to get to Alberta Environment or Fish and Wildlife or Sustainable Resource Development immediately to report it. I think, in this instance, a couple of hours to verify the numbers, to assess the situation, to get my environmental team on the ground was well worth it. I’d hate to be reporting in an unsubstantiated or a minor event that needs a major response.

I wonder why the anonymous phone call was made. Why was it anonymous ?

The secrecy of the call would suggest that this incident had happened before. People do not make anonymous calls the first time an unforeseen tragedy occurs.
It was rather serious in nature; if the caller could determine how serious the incident was on his/her initial survey, why did it take the company more than 2 hours to “assess” the situation. I suspect they were assessing the need to admit the truth.
The company was planning on not reporting the incident. More importantly, there were serious repercussion for the caller if the company found out.

What is interesting is the story not being covered. this incident has been portrayed by the company as one unfortunate tragedy. It was created by an unexpected storm. However, the behavior of the ducks was entirely predictable, and the occurrence of the storm should have spurred the company to get the sonic deterrents in place even sooner. Given that birds had been seen migrating over the last month, not having deterrents in place even before the storm came makes no sense at all.

There is also the matter of the anonymous phone call and the two hour “assessment”. I strongly suspect that Syncrude has been indulging in insufficient self policing in the matter of meeting environmental regulations. the anonymity of the call speaks to a culture of secrecy in the company and the fact that it took 2 hours to contact the appropriate agencies (the caller apparently did not need two hours to determine the seriousness of the situation) suggests that the company was assessing other things such as the the ease of a coverup. If this truly was a one time incident, I suspect the anonymous call would not have been made. A one time incident could simply be portrayed as an error in judgement.

The premier of Alberta’s response…

“Thirty years ago, Syncrude pioneered the bird aversion strategy, the research. For 30 years things went well, then one incident. That’s what’s being used by (the Liberals) to go and try and damage the reputation of the Department of the Environment, and of a company, and also this legislature.”

But two days later , likely realizing that the public was not that enamored with his staunch support for Syncrude, and his comment about 30,000 birds dying in wind turbines…

At the Alberta legislature Wednesday, Premier Ed Stelmach promised a full investigation into the incident.
“I can assure all Albertans that we’re going to pursue this matter very diligently,” he said.
Stelmach, when asked how the incident will be viewed in the United States, expressed confidence in the government’s actions.
“This gives us an opportunity to tell not only our American trading partners but all the world that we mean business when it comes to the rules and regulations we have in place with respect to protection of the environment,” the premier said.

Update on Bisphenol A and Plastic Toxicity

niransab — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 15:55:35 +0000

It seems that our exposure to Bisphenol A, may be much greater than was previously assumed. Bisphenol A is an endocrine disrupter and can have a drastic effect on the endocrine system, especially in infants and children.

David Biello writes an excellent article in “Scientific American”:Plastic (Not) Fantastic: Food Containers Leach a Potentially Harmful Chemical

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found traces of BPA in nearly all of the urine samples it collected in 2004 as part of an effort to gauge the prevalence of various chemicals in the human body. It appeared at levels ranging from 33 to 80 nanograms (a nanogram is one billionth of a gram) per kilogram of body weight in any given day, levels 1,000 times lower than the 50 micrograms (one millionth of a gram) per kilogram of bodyweight per day considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the European Union’s (E.U.) European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

This seems all well and good, the levels in human urine are less than the arbitrarily defined level deemed harmful by the EPA. I say arbitrarily defined as the more subtle, affects of Bisphenol A (sperm counts, developmenal anomalies, cancer rates i.e. non-lethal effects.) were examined. However, almost ALL urine samples had Bisphenol A. Further, it seems that humans can degrade Bisphenol A quickly.

Studies suggest that BPA does not linger in the body for more than a few days because, once ingested, it is broken down into glucuronide, a waste product that is easily excreted. Yet, the CDC found glucuronide in most urine samples, suggesting constant exposure to it. “There is low-level exposure but regular low-level exposure,” says chemist Steven Hentges, executive director of the polycarbonate / BPA global group of the American Chemistry Council. “It presumably is in our diet.”

A recent report in the journal Reproductive Toxicology found that humans must be exposed to levels of BPA at least 10 times what the EPA has deemed safe because of the amount of the chemical detected in tissue and blood samples. “If, as some evidence indicates, humans metabolize BPA more rapidly than rodents,” wrote study author Laura Vandenberg, a developmental biologist at Tufts University in Boston, “then human daily exposure would have to be even higher to be sufficient to produce the levels observed in human serum.”

The CDC data shows that 93 percent of 2,157 people between the ages of six and 85 tested had detectable levels of BPA’s by-product in their urine. “Children had higher levels than adolescents and adolescents had higher levels than adults,” says endocrinologist Retha Newbold of the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, who found that BPA impairs fertility in female mice. “In animals, BPA can cause permanent effects after very short periods of exposure. It doesn’t have to remain in the body to have an effect.

So if humans can truly breakdown Bisphenol A faster than rodents, the amount of Bisphenol A detected in the bodies would have to “10 times what the EPA has deemed safe”. The younger the person, the greater the higher the level of Bisphenol A. Presumably, the greater the damage as the endocrine system plays a vital role in development.

But other studies since 1976 have shown that small doses (less than one part per billion) of estrogenlike chemicals, such as BPA, may be damaging. “In fetal mouse prostate you can stimulate receptors with estradiol at about two tenths of a part per trillion, and with BPA at a thousand times higher,” vom Saal says. “That’s still 10 times lower than what a six-year-old has.” In other words, children six years of age were found to have higher levels of BPA’s by-product glucuronide in their urine than did mice dosed with the chemical that later developed cancer and other health issues.

To avoid Bisphenol A, avoid canned foods and do not use products with recycling symbols #3,#6,#7(plastic baby bottles). Also adding heated liquids to polycarbonate bottles causes a spike in Bisphenol A leaching. How toxic does this make the household electric kettle ?

If canned goods or clear plastic bottles are a must, such containers should never be microwaved, used to store heated liquids or foods, or washed in hot water (either by hand or in much hotter dishwashers). “These are fantastic products and they work well … [but] based on my knowledge of the scientific data, there is reason for caution,” Belcher says. “I have made a decision for myself not to use them.”

Testing the Nikon 70-300 mm VR at the Edmonton Valley Zoo

niransab — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 07:37:30 +0000

Title: Testing the Nikon 70-300 mm VR at the Edmonton Valley Zoo

Posting has been slow as I am studying for an acupuncture course. Today, I took a break to test out the Nikon 70-300 mm VR zoom. I was interested in getting this lens because it was reputed to be sharp, especially under 200mm. The VR technology was interesting, but I was not hoping for too much.

I visited the Edmonton Valley Zoo. The zoo is very small; it was even smaller today as many exhibits had been closed for the season. Unfortunately the zoo tends to feature exhibits with a lot for wire cages, and sometimes plexiglass in such poor condition that it makes viewing difficult(tiger, arctic fox exhibit). On the plus side, there were so few people at the zoo, that the animals were quite interactive. The Tiger would follow me around from window to window. If you held your hand out at the window, he would then come up to the window for a “rub”. The wolves would rush down to the fence and look at any new combers that would pass by. The Calgary zoo has much better exhibits;they are pleasing to the animal and the photographer. But, I have never seen the animals at the Calgary Zoo at all interested in the viewing public.

Edmonton Valley Zoo 1/5/08 11:33 PM

Unfortuneately, WordPress will not allow any Piccasa code to display a flash slideshow.

All photos in the gallery were taken with the the Nikon 70-300 mm VR, except for the Burrowing Owl which was taken with the Tamron 90mm. All shots were handheld, and used available ligh, and curve adjusted with slight unsharp mask applied(except the burrowing owl picture). The Nikon 70-300 mm VR did well. It is not as sharp as the 90 mm prime, but I did not expect it to be. The VR technology worked really well as the Kookabrough was shot at 1/6s and 70mm and the Peregrine falcon was taken at 200 mm, f5.6 and 1/13s. There is some softening of the Koobabrough picture, but given the shutter speed and the fact that it was handheld, it has acceptable sharpness.

Overall I liked how this lens performed; it focusses quickly. I am impressed with the low shutter speeds that the VR enabled me to use. I wonder how well this lens would perform with the new DR which is supposed to have excellent high ISO quality ?

Harper Goverment Shows Leadership by Doing Nothing

niransab — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 18:05:30 +0000

Steven Harper managed to dilute the agreement at the Commomwealth talks from a proactive statement to a statement of hope that one day things would be better, just not now.

Commonwealth leaders agreed to a much watered-down agreement on climate change after Prime Minister Stephen Harper resisted any reference to binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions.

The agreement, announced at a news conference Saturday afternoon was a setback for other Commonwealth members, led by Britain, who had called for binding commitments for greenhouse gas reductions in the statement.
Instead, the statement speaks of “a long term aspirational global goal for emissions reduction to which all countries contribute.”

The Harper government does not see climate change as a ecological problem. They are treating it like a political problem - where the mere appearance of trying to do the right things are enough. Despite the mounting evidence, the Conservative are still debating if the main cause of global climate change is caused by human activities (and also if the world is round).

Steven Harper is showing some real leadership. He is making decisions for the supposed economic health of Canada by maintaining the status quo. However, a true leader has to make provisions for the future and in this case if here are no measures taken for what could happen, our children will not have a future. The potential long term devastating effects of massive climate change far outweigh the transient economic setbacks a generation or two will have to suffer.

There is a great deal of crying about other countries benefitting economically by not having to follow any targets. China and the USA are not part of the commonwealth, so they are not included in these talks. India is.

The earlier resolution would have committed developed countries to binding targets but not developing countries. Canada argued that the deal was unfair because it excluded India, a Commonwealth member and one of the world’s biggest polluters.

However, to show leadership, one must pave the way not wait to see who takes the lead. As for economic advantage, climate change should be factored into the cost of every good and service. In the current subsidized agriculture, oil, and transportation culture of our times, this does not happen. If there are enough countries that have agreed to meet emissions targets, then there might be enough political power to impose tariffs on those countries who produce without regard to targets to offset the true ecological costs.

The only way for countries to start to curb their emissions is to have definitive goals. Without deadlines and goals things remain in the Neverland of wishing. It is with these guidelines that changes in subsidy structures, and new technologies will be developed to meet stricter guidelines, otherwise there is no economic incentive to change. Unfortunately, when there is ecological incentive, it will likely be to late to change and governments will not have the resources to think about the future having to fight the emergencies that will result(flooding, drought, starvation, etc…)

Canada and Australia had been the lone holdouts against an earlier resolution that would have included such targets — and the Australian government has just been defeated in an election.

SYDNEY, Australia — Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a humiliating defeat Saturday at the hands of the left-leaning opposition, whose leader has promised to immediately sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and withdraw Australia’s combat troops from Iraq.

I think it is time that Mr.Harper be given the same dose of reality.

How Not to Eat oil

niransab — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:59:07 +0000

I did not comprehend our utter dependance on oil in food production. I have been listening to “The Ominvore’s Dilemma”, by Micheal Pollan. The beginning of the book discusses the utter dependance of animal feed and processed food on the abundance of corn. This is probably slightly different in Alberta, as there is more wheat than corn, but the ideas are the same. The diagram below illustrates the entire convoluted relationship. The book is worth a read or listen for a deeper understanding how we are essentially eating petroleum. Plastic pollution makes this statement more literal.

What I was struck with was the need for petrochemicals. I had always thought that fertilizer was something that was used to improve production, but with careful farm practices and enough organic compost, it was an unnecessary evil. The purpose of fertilizer is to provide nitrogen. The only other source of nitrogen is form the air, either from lightening strikes or fixated by bacteria living in the roots of leguminous plants.
With the Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixation process, the fertility of the earth was no longer restricted to the nitrogen content of the soil.

also called Haber ammonia process, or synthetic ammonia process, method of directly synthesizing ammonia from hydrogen and nitrogen, developed by the German physical chemist Fritz Haber. He received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1918 for this method, which made the manufacture of ammonia economically feasible. The method was translated into a large-scale process using a catalyst and high-pressure methods by Carl Bosch, an industrial…

Since the major source of the ammonia is from natural gas, the major energy input in modern agriculture has shifted form primarily solar to petrochemical. Cheap corn or grain is then fed to livestock. In the case of steers, it reduces marketing time form 4 years (on only a grass fed steer), to 18 months. The time saving comes at a cost of antibiotic resistance, poor cow health, water contamination, rise of pathogenic e.coli. The energy cost of switching from grass to grain means moving into an even greater energy balance. Pollan estimates it takes nearly a barrel of oil to raise a steer to market.
Our current food producing systems are highly dependent on cheap energy at all stages , production, processing, and distribution. The story of corn is illustrative of this dependance. But, it also illustrates something deeper.

In our mechanized, factory inspired culture, we have lost the knowledge of what it truly means to survive. As a culture, we have created our own environments, our own rules and our own food, abstracted from nature. It is this abstraction from what is real that will be fatal.

The real danger of the modern food production system is that it disguises the nature of our food. It takes an animal, with bones, feathers, and life and compress it down into something completely abstract, like a chicken nugget. Pollan describes the ingredients of a chicken nugget. There is some chicken meat in it, but it is more an abstraction of fat, and salt around some breast meat, with added chicken flavour (why do you need to add chicken flavour to chicken meat ?) coated with petroleum products (butane) and other suspected carcinogens. This tasty combination is perfectly fitted to be eaten quickly with fingers and has no nasty bones of shapes reminiscent of the beast it came from. Not unlike the cuts of meat in beautiful wrapped plastic are one step removed from the butcher shop, where the meat at least arrived whole.

People realize on an intellectual level that there food comes from living creatures, plants or animals, but I do not think they realize this on a visceral level. The creation of processed food has seduced us with our own ingenuity. We can preserve our food longer and need not be concerned about the vagaries of nature. Food wil always be plentiful thanks to our ingenuity in reaping bounty from the land.

But, of course this has nothing to do with reality. Ultimately, food production relies on the delicate interaction of sun, soil and rain. We have been able to “fool the system” with intensive farming, added pesticides and fertilizers, but ultimately we are losing quality and health(the health of the land and our own health) and trading it for quantity.
We are just beginning to understand the complexities of macro-nutrients and micro-nutrients and our vegetables. Vegetables grown on organic, small scale farms in polyculture tend to taste better have better nutritional value in addition to having less chemicals used to grow them. This type of careful, slow, productive farming can not meet the needs of the industrialized food system.

But, is the industrialized food system meeting the needs of society in the long term ? Industrialized farming as it is currently leaves the soil poorer quality, creates vegetables that are of lower nutritional quality and require tremendous inputs of petroleum. Industrialized meat production has introduced greater levels of cruelty all in an effort to unnaturally produce meat. In times past, people were growing food, not commodities, and animals not “meat on the hoof”.

The shift from raising animals to growing meat occurred as a result of trying to place biological systems into an industrial machine. The path to where we are today and where we came seems long and tortuous, yet each step was made to meet the logical of the machine. After learning about animal production, seeing slaughter plants (chicken, pigs, cows) and viewing feed lots, I was subtly disturbed. Certainly not disturbed enough to stop eating meat - that had to wait another 6 or 7 years. But, I felt that things were not quite right.
What did I really know though. I was raised in the city and loved meat. The casual cruelty - overcrowding, farrowing crates, indoor housing stinking of feces and ammonia, mutilation (pigs, chickens), cows sitting in pens of dirt and feces, chickens being raised so quickly that they would die even if they could live longer , layers crammed in cages, never seeing the sun and dying after their production fell. The terms “meat on the hoof”, “protein conversion units”, summarize the worst of reductionist meat farming. Everything seemed so wrong, but I thought this was the way things were done and not too many other people had any objections to it. Or at least objected enough to stop eating meat.

My eventual response was to stop eating meat, especially after reading [“The Food Revolution”}(http://www.foodrevolution.org/). But, Pollan, describes a different way of farming on Joel Saldin’s Polyface farms.

Joel Saldin grandfather was a man who saw that the road carved by experts was unsustainable and ultimately crafted to support industry rather than farmers. He believed enough in his own knowledge, and understanding to return to older, slower methods of farming, with some added innovations that made grass-farming and raising animals more important that slotting into the industrialized food producing machine.
Joel Salatin, calls himself a grass-farmer. The by-products of growing grass properly are cows, pigs,chickens and rabbits.

The family raises “salad bar beef,” a natural, grass-fed beef production system with intensive rotational grazing, premium chickens and turkeys on pasture, pastured rabbits and turkeys, feature “pigaerator pork,” whereby the pigs root around to create compost, and layer chickens that are moved around the farm in an eggmobile. As if that’s not enough, there’s the on-farm processing of chicken broilers that the whole family participates in and cutting of firewood from their forests for cordwood sales. A band-saw generates revenue from lumber and custom sawing.

The key to Polyface farm is rotational grazing. Cows graze on the grass enough to stimulate growth and fertilize the fields with manure. Chickens follow Note (Joel Saladin goes his own way), 14 Oct 2007, 05:08the cows, aerate the soil with their scratching, remove any parasites from the cow feces and in turn fertilize the land with nitrogen rich feces. The movement of cows and chickens is highly dependent on the quality of the pasture and what the land can support. By mimicking a natural eco-system, the use of antibiotics, and de-worming is eliminated.

Joel has spreadsheets of data in an effort to understand what his land can support. This type of farming calls for more time, more understanding and a dependance on seasonality. This type of intimate understanding of the land would likely be found with traditional hunters or farmers having to grow crops without the addition of petroleum products. This is the essence of farming, learning to live the land and to use the qualities of nature to help things grow rather than trying to enforce human will depleting the land of its nutrients, beauty and ultimately its live giving qualities.
The farm is viable economic enterprise.

Polyface Farm’s retail sales plan worked and dispels the popular myth that farming families can’t make ends meet. Their diversified operations, structured as a non-public corporation, gross over ,000 a year, netting about ,000 before paying four full-time salaries of family members and apprentice stipends. Some of Polyface Farm’s premium products command retail prices two or three times more than typical grocery store prices, and others approximate typical name-brand prices.

It is quite possible to raise meat and eggs in an humane manner, that enriches the land and is economically viable. The Salatin’s farm is almost an entire ecosystem. There are still inputs of chicken and pig feed. But, without the use of pesticides, antibiotics and fertilizers the dependance on oil is markedly reduced. Joel Salatin wants to create a local food economy. This is the only way for farming to remain sustainable, and accountable.
In the buzzword of the day, sustainable economic production is the only way societies are going to remain secure. The most important unit of this economic production is secure, sustainable food production. Weaning ourselves off the energy of petroleum back to the sun is the only way to regain this control.

Little thought has been given to trying to sustain our population with farming and transporting practices that limit or eliminates the need for petroleum additives and the assumption that animals need to be treated like meat production units rather than being allowed to express their natural physiological tendencies.

Our modern thinking has molded itself to the machine and the wonders of factory farming. To be sure these advances have given us material abundance at fire-sale prices. Modern defenders would argue we need to continue current production methods to ensure cheap, abundant food for everyone. But, that is not the true cost of things.

Our current farming practices require more energy to grow food that the energy gained by eating this food. The high energy costs of petroleum fertilizer, and pesticides and the incredible distances food is transported have created a monolithic system of energy drain. Agricultural subsidies promote overproduction and falling commodity prices and hide the cost of production.

The true cost of production is never realized. What is the environmental cost of oil extraction or protecting oil production. What is the cost, of continuous monoculture with its needs for fertilizer, heavy irrigation requirements ? What are the health costs of eating food with pesticides, nutrient and taste poor food ?

What are the social and moral costs of raising meat production units rather than treating animals with respect. In the reductionists view, the method of animal production is completely separate from the way business treats the population. Using a holistic approach, cruelty from animal production flows into other areas of life.

It was not that long ago that humans were rounded up and shipped in railway cars for slaughter. Lest the holocaust be thought of as an abbernt event, it is important to remember Rwandan, Sudan, Darfur, Iraq and Afghanistan. Our society can not admit to itself the casual cruelty of modern meat production, so myth of the family farm lives on. It is also the reason for plastic packaged body parts and the creation of the chicken nugget - they are abstractions that meat truly comes from living creatures kept in happy conditions. It is this distancing from the truth of the matter that creates the blissful ignorance of modern society and allows degradation and slaughter of human and animals to continue.

The notion of animals as meat production units also fits in with the ideas of workers as a commodity. It ignores the underlying relationships between people and between people and animals. But, farms like Polyface comes back to an older notion of balance and respect. The farm allows animals to root, dig, forage, interact and enjoy the feel of the sun. What the animals consume is returned to the earth and the land does not carry anymore animals that it can tolerate. On Saladin’s farm the chicken blood and bone and viscera that are left after processing on site are composted. This is as close to a natural ecosystem the the human mind can create. I suspect that those companies(and countries) that value their workers and spend money and energy providing an education and an environment that fosters interaction and dialog rather than rules from the top down will produce more and “live” longer.

The life that we have created on never-ending resources and oil has led us to the factory production of food, goods and people. There is great emphasis placed on uniformity and control and no value given for valuing the relationships between people and animals. In this quest of uniformity and security, we have created improvised food, lacking taste and important micro nutrients, mercurial fashions and cheap goods that will not last, and improvised citizens whose goal is to accumulate as much wealth as possible without any real thought to spiritual and mental development.

The era of the free lunch (cheap oil) is coming to an end. We have to return to a more sane, sustainable, and ultimately enriching method of food production and of life. The first step is to stop drinking the kool-aid and find out what the real cost is. The second step is to make those changes or support those companies heading the right direction.

How the Harper Government Knows Everything About Climate Change

niransab — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:28:41 +0000

In a move that is classic for the Harper government, funding for climate research has been slashed.

Last year

Forty per cent of this year’s budget for climate change programs has been slashed from the departments of Natural Resources and Environment, CBC News has learned.
The cuts include the much-advertised One Tonne Challenge, 40 public information offices across the country and several scientific and research programs on climate change.

In fact, the Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network has been shut down.

The Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network (C-CIARN) was established by Natural Resources Canada in 2001 with the mandate of promoting and encouraging research on climate change impacts and adaptation, as well as promoting interaction between researchers and stakeholders.
C-CIARN successfully met the mandate that it was given when it was created in 2001, and on June 30, 2007, the network closed.
The Harper government has claimed that the C-CIARN had met its mandate. But, there was also a question of funding.

The foundation has received $110 million in federal grants since 2000 and will continue to finance research projects until 2010, while seeking additional government money.
But a spokesman for Environment Minister John Baird last week questioned whether they were managing their funding properly.
“The question one has to ask is, if CFCAS has spent the $110 million it received from the government already, why have they run out of money three years before the end of their allocation?” wrote Garry Keller, Baird’s director of communications, in an e-mail to CanWest News Service.

…Gordon McBean, a climate scientist who is the volunteer chairman of the foundation, said the organization still has money, but that it could shut down in a few years if it doesn’t get more funding for new projects.
>”I’m quite concerned because they never ask us,” said McBean. “They have never allowed us to give them a briefing on what we do … They don’t acknowledge our requests.”

Scientist are surprised at the rate of climate change. It is occurring (faster than predicted)[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5303574.stm}. Given that the scientists are surprised, I am not sure how the Harper government can claim that the C-CIARN has fulfilled its mandate of climate research. The C-CIARN had research that was used for the IPPC(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Cange) report. This was the same report that for which the IPCC was co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore.

This is the real reason for clamping down on climate research. It has gotten public attention. Public attention means that the Harper government will have to undergo public scrutiny on its lack of any concrete plan to address climate change. The funding cuts come at a time that the Harper government has made election winning, $60 billion dollars worth in corporate and personal tax cuts. Harper has once again taken his direction from George Bush. This is an echo of the Conservatives’ Afghanistan policy, where muzzling the press is the best response

Without adequate research, we are unable to determine what is actually happening with the climate. As the news gets ever more dire and the evidence more conclusive, government will have to set policies to meet the crisis. But, the Harper government would rather take the route of not knowing. Not knowing means not doing - business and pollution as usual. It is not as if resource are tight, after a $60 billion dollar tax break, how tight could they be ?

I thought that any reasonable government would have to acknowledge the problems and challenges we have to face. It is not as if the research is tenuous, although even at this late stage, debate is rife by a minority of oil company scientists. What I did not count on was the incredible power of cognitive dissonance. In spite of increasing evidence that the climate is in serious trouble, the Harper government takes the route of ignorance. Not knowing is better that actually making the hard decisions to change.

Our “leaders” are unable to change the direction of our society. Leadership has to come from the people. Without this internal leadership we will end up like Easter Island. Decimated on a deserted Island with no trees and a lot of large stone statues that stare back with the folly of its creators.

Product of Canada or not

niransab — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 17:42:49 +0000

Title: Product of Canada or not

I watched the CBC Marketplace epsiode “Product of Canada, Eh?”. In the episode, Wendy Mesley tracked down the origin of food products with the “Product of Canada” label. But, just because the label says product of Canada,this is not necessarily so.

Under current federal regulations, goods can be stamped with a “Product of Canada” label if 51 per cent of the production costs are Canadian. For example, companies can label their juice Canadian by adding water to imported fruit concentrate and bottling the product.

I would like to know where my food comes from, not where the most money was spent on processing the food. With increased concerns about global warming and attempting to buy food that is not covered in diesel, it is vital that people know where their food comes form. Admittedly, I have not tried the 100 mile diet challenge; I still buy rice, bananas and the odd mango, but I like to know if my food comes from countries that do not respect their citizens(Indonesia), their local environment or have ongoing health concerns(China).

Whatever the reason, the origin of one’s food should not be a mystery. I feel the same way about knowing if I am eating genetically modified foods, but I am left in ignorance on both counts by the deliberate deception by manufacturers and collusion by the Canadian government.
After watching the show, my trust in the label “Product of Canada” has been seriously eroded. I am not sure the food that I am eating supports local farmers or ever Canadian farmers, or if the process of growing or harvesting the food meets minimum health standards of Canada. This is not such a trivial concern as the recent melamine, pet food scandal revealed. The gluten that was contaminated was human grade, so it would not have been such a big leap to have entered the human food chain. But, what I dislike the most, is that the food that I thought was Canadian is not really.

I do not think that we will be seeing any solutions from governments or manufacturers. There is too much vested intrests in promoting the illusion of the Canadian origins of food. The only solution is to support local food networks and local producers.
We recently bought a carton of free range eggs from Sunworks Farm. I had a chance to talk to the producer and see pictures of his operation. The eggs were more yellow, tasted more yolky, and had thicker whites when cooked(compared to PC free run eggs).

The description on the President’s Choice Free Run Eggs states:
“These Canada Grade A eggs are exclusively for free run hens. These hens live in an open concept, weather-sheltered barn environment, where they are free to roam, feed, roost, nest and perch.”

So this means that they live in a barn and are free to move around - but, how free is free ? With Sunworks farm, the poultry are pasture fed but in the winter they are housed in a barn. I at least saw some pictures of how the animals were raised and know exactly what I am purchasing. With Superstore (a Loblaws subsidiary) I am not so sure.

Governments and manufactures have proven that truth in advertising is not a concern. There is no freedom to learn what is in your food, who makes your food and how it is made. If any of this is a concern, buying from the producers is the best way to gain control of your food, support the local food web, and reduce your carbon footprint.

Death and Truth in Aghanistan: A Doctor’s Account

niransab — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:25:47 +0000

Dr. Kevin Patterson wrote a personal account of his 6 week tour in Afghanistan in Mother Jones magazine. The account is gripping, and well written. It captures the pain, futility and true cost of war.
A portion of this account dealt with the death of Cpl. Kevin Megeney.
Corporal Kevin Megeny died March 6, 2007 of a “friendly” fire incident, he had volunteered to go in December. He was motivated by a desire to help.

“He believed in the mission we are carrying out in Afghanistan today,” Cpl. Bowden, dressed in beige fatigues, said in a eulogy that mixed humour with raw emotion.
“That was his reason for serving. That was his reason for going. He believed that he would make a difference. He wanted to help.”

The account of this young soldier’s death is very graphic and hard to read. It is hard to read because Cpl. Kevin Megeney has become more than a statistic, more than another coffin ceremony. The last moments of Cpl. Megeney’s life have been described, not in attempt to shock or horrify but to understand the last sacrifice of this soldier. I did not find the descriptions particularly horrid, but they were real. Coming from a medical background (animal not human), I have been there , but certainly not to the same emotional level. A controversy arose after the publication of the article.

Members of Kevin Megeny’s family were upset by the graphic description of his death and the lack of express permission to use Kevin’s name.. Even singer, Loreena McKennit, entered into the debate:

“The real issue of this story is not that gruesome details of war were divulged, but rather that a soldier and his family’s privacy was invaded,” Ms. McKennitt wrote in a posting on Mother Jones’s website.
“Hopefully, Dr. Patterson secured the permission of the soldier’s family to disclose his identity. If not, this is a deeply regrettable breach, not only of his own code of ethics as a doctor and quite possibly in his duty to the Department of National Defence, but significantly to the privacy of the soldier and his family at a time of exceptional vulnerability.”
Mother Jones did not expressly seek the permission of the Megeny family before publication, but they did make them aware of the article before publication.
…what The News failed to report (in part because it didn’t talk to us or Dr. Patterson) in its initial article was that I spoke to Cpl. Megeney’s mother at length by phone and that even after reading the article, some members of the immediate family wrote us to thank us for publishing the article and Dr. Patterson for doing all he could to try to save Cpl. Megeney. Here’s the response that I posted on our website after a few people who’d read The News article wrote in to express their outrage:
As the co-editor of Mother Jones, I would like to make a few things clear in regards to the part of this story that involves Cpl. Kevin Megeney. First, we sent a letter to Cpl. Megeney’s parents, uncle, and sisters, ahead of publication, informing them that this 7,000 word diary of a doctor’s month of service at Kandahar Air Field did contain a scene involving the tragic death of their son. That it was written by a doctor present when Cpl. Megeney was brought in for emergency surgery, and that it would likely be disturbing to those close to him. We offered to send it to them or any intermediary they would like if they thought it would be too disturbing to read it themselves.

I then spoke with Mrs. Megeney by phone at length. She assured me that the family would like to see the article, and that she was a nurse and would read it before any other members of her family; she said it would help to have closure to know more about what happened. We heard from other members of the family who also wanted to read it, and some whom, after they did, expressed the desire to write to Dr. Patterson “to express my appreciation to him for exhausting every effort to save [him].” They asked that we link to Cpl. Megeney’s memorial site, which we were already planning on doing, so our readers would have a chance to express their condolences [they’ve since asked that it be removed. See below].

As to the question of anonymity: The death of Cpl. Megeney was an extremely well covered story in Canada. There was no way to write about the incident and not have it be instantly clear to any member of his family or any member of the Canadian press, or anyone who’d followed the story who we were talking about simply by omitting his name. So we felt it would be false anonymity at best. Doctors can and do publicly talk about how patients die when the story is already in the news—consider press conferences following tragic accidents. And there was certainly nothing in this account that disparaged Cpl. Megeney, who served his country admirably and died in a tragic accident.

This was an extremely emotional story to work on. The account of Cpl. Megeney’s death was particularly poignant, but there were many other stories in there of death and injury to soldiers and civilians that are hard to read. But in our opinion for the greater public to live in denial about what happens in a war does a disservice to those soldiers who serve and the civilians who are affected.

The correspondence that Mother Jones provides does not depict a family uniformly opposed to the article. Comments to the article indicate that members of the family were appreciative of the article and of Dr.Patterson’s efforts.

I have spoke to the family concerning this issue, and once again the media has made a complete mess. They are very appreciative for the efforts the medical team put forth to try and save their family member. The only issue concerning this article was that they would have wanted to see it before it hit the stands. THATS IT!!! They have not asked Mother Jones to pull the article and I see by peoples comments its actually the general public saying to pull the article. Not them. But the media loves to stir the pot, and in this case they did a good job….Posted by:Barb from Nova Scotia onAugust 4, 2007 2:55:39 PM

How far does doctor - patient privilege extend ? Does it extend beyond death ? Certainly Dr. Patterson’s account while gritty, does not reflect badly on Cpl.Megeney. I am not qualified to discuss the ethics of the situation. But, if most of the family , especially the immediate family thought that the article was a service to Cpl.Megeney, I fail to see any controversy. With the title “Doctor’s gory tale angers soldier’s family”, any thought of balance coverage is immediately abandoned, and the thrust of the article is to stir emotions rather than cover a story.

The news articles covering Cpl. Megeney discuss the immediate circumstances of his death, how Cpl. Megeney believed in what he was doing and the support the community has given the family. While this is truthful, to an extent, I think these articles do a poor service of what is actually happening in the war.
Dr. Patterson’s account of the war in general and in Cpl. Megeney’s death in particular are suffused with a sense of bravery, despair and futility. Could the account of Cpl. Megeney’s death been given without revealing his identity ? Yes. But, I think the account would have been lost like any other tragic statistic. A sad incident floating in an impresonal void with nothing to root it to the people back home. By, revealing Cpl. Megeneys name, the whole incident becomes that much more real - this is somebody’s son, nephew, friend. He has really died and there are real people feeling the pain of his death back in Canada.
This, in the end is what war is really about. There is no glory just blood and more blood. The main stream news just can not or will not cover this aspect of the war. This would be bad for the hometown readers, bad for recruitment and ultimately “bad” for the troops because we are “not supporting them” by truthfully telling the world what war and life is really like.
It is this very truth telling I think that has gotten that has prompted DND to limit what civilian doctor contractors may release.

Stung by the publication of a magazine article by one of its doctors that includes the graphic description of the death of a Canadian soldier in Afghanistan, the Department of National Defence has changed its contracts with civilian physicians, warning them not to release sensitive information and to respect patient confidentiality.
The military has launched two investigations of Dr.Patterson.
“One conducted by the military police will determine if Dr. Patterson disclosed classified information about the Megeney case, while the other investigation being conducted by the military’s health services branch will determine if Patterson breached any medical codes of ethics and conduct by writing the story.”

It is interesting that the Canadian military has launched into more investigations of Dr.Patterson. At the same time, several months after Cpl.Megeney’s deat , there has been no official word on the outcome of the investigation into the circumstances of his death. With doubt and controversy arising from the U.S Ranger, Pat Tillman’s death, the Canadian military is likely trying to avoid any appearance of a quick investigation and coverup.
The delay in any official response , the rapidity in launching two new investigations, and the tightening of any information leaks (leaks that do not affect the security of Canadian soldiers, but might affect the way Canadians perceive the mission in Afghanistan), is cause for speculation that there is more left unsaid in this story.
Once again, as it has before, the miliatary and the government of Cadana is trying to control the information that is leaving Afghanistan. They are doing it not to protect soldiers, but rather to protect the image of the military, the mission and the Harper government back home. Propaganda by omission.

War is dehumanizing, brutal and cold. To provide a clean and sanitized view of this insane activity is to perpetuate the myth and the glory of war and to live somewhere outside of the truth. Why was it that the Bush administration did not want pictures taken of anonymous flag draped coffins of its returning soldiers ? Tto so spare the families — how can one coffin be differentiated from another, but rather to spare the sensibilities of a delicate public that ware really kills and it kills people that we know.
Dr. Patterson’s article is well written, informative and packs a tough emotional punch, because it does not hold back or preach the platitudes of war. To truly support the troops does not mean blind acquiescence to all that they are ordered to do.
We should be informed of the conditions these men and women have to work in and appreciate how tough the job is. This means not shying away from the truth about the plain horridness of war, the fate of Afghani civilians , the torture of detainees. Anything less than a full understanding of what is happening in a war fought under the Canadian banner is an abdication of the duties of citizenry. Any organization - the government, military and news included - that decides that certain truths are harmful, not because it endangers the troops but rather because it endangers the image of the government on the military brass, is an institution that is betraying the ideal the troops are supposedly fighting for. Such an institution is no friend of democracy.

Using the TrackMan Marble Fx with Mac OS X

niransab — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:37:45 +0000

I have been trying to use my decade old Trackman Marble Fx . This is a great deal less stressful than the traditional pronated (plams downward) position. I had tried a standard USB adapter. The iBook had no idea anything was connected. The death of my Marble Trackman Wheel forced me to go from casual search to active hunt, or continue using the dreaded mouse.

I needed a converter not an adapter to inform the system that a ps/2 device was connected. I briefly tasted success with a $50 converter advertised at Memory Express’s website. The server was puzzled as the computer listed the part available, but none were to be had. The server’s puzzlement extended to condolences but no actual reordering. I am not sure what they are teaching the kids in the store these days to let a $50 sale disappear.

It worked out well as I bought a $14 Sabrent USB to 2-Port PS/2 Splitter Cable Converter . This worked beautifully. I was using the trackball in minutes, without any need for additional drivers. It lasted a day.

I really missed the scroll wheel. I had no idea how much I used the thing. I tried to use streemouse, to see if I could emulate a scroll, but was not successful. However, I am using a newer model of the trackman wheel, also ordered from Tiger Direct, which is a ergonomically better than the older model. It places my hand in a more supine position, although less so than the Marble Fx, but I have the scroll wheel back.

I like using trackballs, because I am not picking something up and driving all over my desktop. With two screens this becomes even less fun. I am not really sure why mice seem popular and trackballs seemed to have languished. Logitech’s current line up of trackballs is quite inadequate. What is the point of a wireless trackball ? Anyway, I am glad to be using a trackball again.