A month ago I didn't know NAID existed. After attending the Pow Pow in Browning, Mt last weekend I can't believe I missed it the last 56 years. The kids will be with me the next time I attend. They need to witness it. Most of us probably do.
Good piece on NDD on this morning's Today episode on NBC. Just a couple of bullets to tease the video:
Glacier National Park is amazing. Never seen anything quite like it
wsj this morning says that soaring food costs increased the number of hungry people by 122 million around the world.
Though by how much is still under debate, most acknowledge that the biofuels industry/research shares at least some responsibity for this.
My opinion is that this fact shouldn't preclude further research on biofuels as a net positive alternative to oil, but it may get worse before it gets better.
Simple truth is thy we still can't escape the fundamental natural laws that exist. Every action still produces an equal and opposite reaction. Newtons laws are still valid.
Pretty easy to use ok iPhone. What about pictures?
Given the environmental & especially the economic times (i.e., gas prices) I was looking at public transit bus routes this morning (again). And it turns out there's an Express Bus that comes close to my home (Park & Ride is two min from the house) and ends two blocks from the office. Timing of the routes is perfect. The route itself is nearly perfect. And round trip the cost is only $3.50. So what' the problem? For $3.50 I can drive to work (in my Prius) and back 2.5 times!
In my case, I'd use a bit less than 2 gallons of fuel to drive to/from work for a 5-day work week. So let's say that's $8. To take the bus every day for a week would cost me $35. So I'd be losing $27/week in order to take the bus and keep my car off the road.
Okay, I do drive a Prius, so my pain doesn't apply across the board, right? That's what i figured, but I was wrong.
Looking at the same route but driving my wife's minvan (roughly 18 MPG in the city), I'd still lose money. Using her vehicle would require 5.5 gallons of fuel, costing approximately $22, still $13 less than taking the bus!
Now, I recognize that by riding the bus i am removing one vehicle -- though a highly efficient one -- off the roads. The small emissions footprint I did have would be gone, and I understand that every little bit counts. Even so, if we're going to ask folks to sacrifice, then there has to be a good enough pay off to justify that sacrifice. For me, that sacrifice will have to come from somewhere else. I guess I should re-look at the failed bike experiment, regardless of the near-death-experience-is-about-to-happen feeling I had for most of that "adventure."
Technorati Tags: efficiency, energy, environmentalism, Inconvenient-Truth, InconvenientTruth, sustainability
Each year in early July I return to the "Protest" playlist on my iPod. Dylan. Seeger. Springsteen. Young. Marley. Joplin. Baez. Bright Eyes (all of them aren't old or dead!) and the like.
I don't turn to this list because I hate America, though she surely has her problems. Not at all. Rather, I turn to these voices because they stand for what is great about America and why I love the country in which I live.* I was, after all, Born in the USA. For me these voices stand for what the 4th of July itself represents -- independence of voice and the protesting of that which prevents independence.
Few things irk me more than when a person's patriotism is called into question if he/she dares to question the decisions of our government, especially during times of war. By their very acts, the original American Patriots themselves were protestors of the highest order, pushing back against their own government. Many fought and died for that cause. And in my mind they were also fighting for my future ability to conduct my own protests, should they become necessary. A few times they have, and I'm grateful to have had that option.
I'm also grateful for Bob, Pete, Bruce and Neil. They remind me what those Patriots stood for 232 years ago and for what I should be standing now.
* Yes, I know all of them aren't Americans -- but all of them found a voice in the US.
Yesterday was the first time this summer i've put more than 10 gallons of gasoline in my car and therefore the first time I've ever spent more than $40 to fill up my tank. It hurts. Four dollars for gas -- I seem to remember its being about $1 when I first got my license -- seems like an awful lot. And I recognize that for some, $4 gas can sometimes mean choosing between dinner and driving to work. I get that.
And as a result i get why some are supportive of exploratory drilling off the coasts of US states. I get that, too. But there's a fundamental problem with that drilling that these advocates fail to address (at least to my satisfaction). The problem is that even if drilling were to start tomorrow, it'd still be roughly July 4, 2018 before the first seeds from those pumps bore any fruit. And as a result, today's price of gasoline would very likely remain largely unaffected.
Ten years is a long time.
We went from Kennedy's:
I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. (May 25, 1961)
to Armstrong's
That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind (July 21, 1969)
in just over eight.
It's my belief that we'd be much better served in the long term to focus efforts over the next decade on moving away from oil dependence rather than looking for more of it nearer our own shores. And since there would be no immediate advantages to off-shore drilling anyway (and many, many potential negatives) ... I guess i don't see how we could reach a different conclusion.
Even so, reaching such a conclusion can't be done lightly. For there is much at stake in our decision and much work to be done to make our decision a fruitful one. And yet, I think it's the only decision we can make, painful as it is right now.
Technorati Tags: energy, environmentalism, Inconvenient-Truth, InconvenientTruth, science, stakeholders, sustainability
I’ve recently come to a conclusion about my parenting abilities that is at once tremendously deflating and very encouraging: our kids learn more, have more fun and build better skills – cognitive, emotional, social and physical — when we stay out of their way. We don’t have to micro-manage our children like new hires ready to climb the corporate ladder. Turns out that’s a good thing. In fact, it’s amazing what can happen when we manage to let our kids be kids.
I don’t know when the term “helicopter parents” was coined to describe the moms and dads who hover over their kids and transport (hover, transport = helicopters, get it?) them from event to event and activity to activity in a what’s-best-for-our-kids mentality that has led to 6 year-olds needing day planners and 7 Habits training. Worse still, I don’t know when I became one.
My wife and I have an inside-joke-funny-only-to-us refrain we often use to describe the “inappropriate” behavior of our kids. “He/She is acting like a 6/5/3 year-old again!” Our children are, respectively, six, five and three years old.
The irony of the statement serves as an important reminder that our kids are in fact, still kids. What’s non-obvious to those who aren’t parents of young children (and more troubling to too many of those who are) is how often we forget that.
Fortunately, reminders come daily, if children are allowed to give them. Don’t believe it? Try this: send your kids out to the backyard or to the local park to play on their own, with their siblings and/or with other kids who happen by. That’s what we did, while watching surreptitiously through the window, um, I mean “cooking dinner.” The results are fascinating to me. At our house, the odds of choosing dirt and a stick-shovel over a soccer ball must be 10 to 1.
What’s so interesting is that it has everything to do with interest rather than athleticism. In fact, our oldest did play soccer last fall. And while “we don’t keep score” at this age, every parent knows our team was undefeated. And most likely, they would correctly guess that our son was the team’s leading scorer, netting more balls than the rest of the team combined. He’s really, really good. (And he has really, really good genes, with a mom and uncle who both starred at the Division I college level.)
That’s what makes it all the more remarkable that he’s more interested in starting a grub worm farm with discarded garden pests than he is with challenging his mom to a shootout.
Why? And why is that a good thing?
Truthfully, I don’t know why it’s the case that kids like digging in the dirt so much. But my belief is that it has something to do with this fact: humans are of nature and from nature, and it is natural to investigate those relationships to our environment. I am certain, though, that such an environmental investigation is a very good thing. For starters, such an investigation results in a deeper understanding of ecological and biological systems (you have to actually feed those grubs, you know!). And as with so many things, deeper understanding results in deeper appreciation and deeper affinity for those systems and builds an increased sense of responsibility for their health.
Speaking of health, the American Academy of Pediatrics last year published a report suggesting that free play is “essential for helping children reach important social, emotional, and cognitive developmental milestones as well as helping them manage stress and become resilient.”
Similarly, Dr. Stephen Kellert of Yale University argues that “play in nature, particularly during the critical period of middle childhood, appears to be an especially important time for developing the capacities for creativity, problem-solving, and emotional and intellectual development.”*
And if that isn’t enough, recent studies affirm previous research that suggests that digging in the dirt is good for your allergies, too. Multiple studies suggest that exposure to germs actually helps to strengthen and build a child’s immune system.
All of these studies are so important to understand because so many parents are scheduling the child out of their children in an attempt to make them healthier, safer, smarter and more successful. They are most definitely making these choices for all the right reasons. Unfortunately, they are too often making bad choices and adding tension to already stressed families when it isn’t warranted.
But alas, there is hope! There is an antidote to Helicopter Parent Disorder and a path out of Over-Scheduled Kid Syndrome and (yes, I just made up both HPD and OSKS). And that path leads right out your backdoor. Get out of her way, and let your 5 year-old be 5 (she’ll be really good at it!). Let her get her dress dirty. Don’t be offended if she prefers mulch, dandelions and a grasshopper over piano lessons, T-ball, and her brand new doll house. Show excitement over the grime under her nails (even if you have to fake it the first time or two). And let yourself be amazed by the creativity she’ll show out there. She’ll be happier and healthier for it. My bet is you (and the rest of your family) will be happier, too.
*Kellert, Stephen R. "Nature and Childhood Development." In Building for Life: Designing and Understanding the Human-Nature Connection. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2005.
Technorati Tags: agriculture, children, education, engaged, environmentalism, farming, food, Inconvenient-Truth, InconvenientTruth, kindergarten, learners, parents, science, students, sustainability
Consumers cut driving but not diets: poll | Reuters :
Nearly half of respondents to a Reuters/Zogby poll of likely voters in the presidential election later this year said they are driving less to compensate for record U.S. gasoline prices, which hit a record average of $3.80 per gallon on Tuesday according to travel club AAA.
But only about 8 percent of the 1076 respondents in the national poll said they were eating less generally to cope with rising food prices, the poll said.
If financial hardship (pay now) can't stem the eating tide, I wonder if eventual health hardship (pay later) has even a slim chance of curbing our appetites. My guess is that the Slim chance we have of Americans slimming themselves is more likely a Zero chance. At least if we continue to do things the same way we are now.
According to the CDC,
In 1990, among states participating in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 10 states had a prevalence of obesity less than 10% and no states had prevalence equal to or greater than 15%.
By 1998, no state had prevalence less than 10%, seven states had a prevalence of obesity between 20-24%, and no state had prevalence equal to or greater than 25%.
In 2006, only four states had a prevalence of obesity less than 20%. Twenty-two states had a prevalence equal or greater than 25%; Two of these states (Mississippi and West Virginia) had a prevalence of obesity equal to or greater than 30%.
One problem of course is that whole foods are more expensive than processed foods that seem to be at the heart of our western diet and the obesity issue in general. Big Ag, of course, is one big tractor to be turned in a new direction. Even so, we can't afford -- now or later -- to wait to start wresting some control of the steering wheel.
Technorati Tags: agriculture, children, education, efficiency, energy, engaged, environmentalism, evangelism, farming, food, Inconvenient-Truth, InconvenientTruth, obesity, parents, science, sustainability
