Friday, November 30, 2007

Trip to Dalian

It took me a while to put captions on all the pictures, but I finally did it. Here are pictures from our trip to Dalian, China last week. Enjoy!



(Tip: click on the icon shaped like a person in the lower right-hand corner of the photo viewer above and you will be able to access a full-screen slideshow. Just click on the link for "Dalian". Also, clicking on the speech balloon icon will turn off the captions over the pictures.)

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Think Globally...

Recently I've been thinking about the benefits of "buying locally". Last Saturday I went to our local grocery store about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. I picked up some pork meat, and then gradually getting closer to home at each stop, went to the vegetable stand (which sells local vegetables at much lower prices than any of the super markets) to get veggies, and then a bread shop (run out of a local home which sells fresh baked breads using mostly organic ingredients). I brought my own cloth bags to do the shopping so didn't return home with any unneeded paper or plastic, and the whole trip was done on foot in 20 minutes. I know not everyone is as lucky to have these things within walking distance, but we all make choices that can affect that situation, and there are plenty of other things that individuals can do.
The thing is, a lot of web sites these days suggest "Ten things you can do for the environment!" and whatnot, but I find that most of the things just don't apply to me. For example, an environmental NPO I keep an eye on is now running a campaign to wash 3 out of 5 laundry loads with only cold water, and they give a percentage of energy (and money) you will save as a result, stating that water heating accounts for approximately 19% of total home energy use. Well, in Japan, many residences - particularly, mine - use cold water to wash clothes for 5 out of 5 loads. For a warm water cycle, we reuse the (basically clean) bath water using a pump that runs the water from the tub to the laundry machine. As for clothes driers, Japan has no laws against line drying and many, many people do this. In New Hampshire, a man is fighting local laws that prohibit use of a clothesline (listen to story here) but I don't even own an electric clothes dryer. And I don't feel like I'm particularly missing out on anything.
Of course there is still plenty that I can do to help do my part for the environment, and there are times when the weather report makes me wish I did have a clothes dryer, but all this still makes me realize how wasteful we have all become. Most of the suggestions are for how to cut down on what is primarily wasteful behavior; it's not enough, it's nothing that actually improves the environment. The hope is that if we can specify options that help cut people's bills and makes them feel better about themselves, thus connecting environment and economy, we are headed in the right direction. Unfortunately, the direction we are facing is not quite where we want to be headed.
The IPCC, the UN panel which recently won the Nobel Prize, recently released their 4th assessment report saying that irreversible damage to the environment has been done and we can expect temperature rises and a rise in sea level over the coming centuries no matter what - even if all CO2 emissions were to stop dead in their tracks - so it's time to start considering "adaptation", (listen to the 4 minute broadcast online here). Of course there is so much more we could be doing as members of the human race, but maybe the IPCC realizes that it's just not going to happen. One can only hope that the world makes some real headway in the talks that will start in December in Bali, Indonesia on what to do as a follow up to the Kyoto Protocol.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Harold Washington

Back in the early eighties, there was still a lot of civil strife in the City of Chicago. Things had possibly come to a head with the assassination of Martin Luther King, but that was hardly the end of it. What really marked a turning point in Chicago was the election of the city's first black mayor, Harold Washington.
Harold Washington passed away from a heart attack 20 years ago this month, on November 25, 1987, at the age of 65 and to commemorate his legacy, WBEZ public radio ran a feature called "Harold". You can hear the program free online at This American Life (www.thislife.org) through their November 9th episode #84.
One of the things that struck me as I began to listen to this episode was how much Chicago has changed over the past 20 years. Back when Washington was elected in 1983, the black and white areas of the city were still very much segregated. The unemployment rate in the black neighborhoods were some 25% and the projects were referred to by city officials as "the colonies". One alderman featured on the WBEZ episode said that the pressing issue in those neighborhoods was cleaning it up, literally, by trying to figure out what to do with all the garbage. But of course, at that point in time, before Chicago had any curbside recycling programs or "blue bag" projects, we all thought our social problems of race and gender were the pinnacle of civil movements. And it's true; we can't move on to issues that require cooperation and citizen involvement if massive portions of our society are externalized.
So now that environmental issues have been pushed up to the forefront, does that mean that we have reached a point in civil society where equality amongst humankind is finally recognized? Well, with the two leading Democratic candidates for President being a black man and a woman, and people putting accepting these candidates as viable ones, it certainly gives one hope.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Please Yous English

Mayor Stranczek of Crestwood, IL has held office since 1968 and will be retiring at the end of this year.

Gadgets: in with the new...

Bought any new electronics recently? People are often stumped when it comes to what to do with their old devices. Of course it's great if you can pass something along to a friend (in need, a friend indeed), but that's not always an option. Popular Mechanics has been running a series called Know Your Footprint where they give a lot of info and tips on conservation and recycling. Since eWaste is becoming a big problem, consider donating your old desktop or notebook computer, printer, peripherals and software. If you're in any of the 50 States or Canada, all you have to do is follow the steps shown in the image to the left, and to do that, click on this link:
Link to cristina.org

Of course, you're not limited to this single organization. The US EPA, for starters, lists nearly two dozen partners in their eCycling program. Many times all you have to do is take eWaste to a retailer, such as used ink cartridges to Office Depot and just about any electronic item (except televisions) to Staples. Check out more of the EPA eCycling partners HERE.

Lastly, this Thursday - November 15th - is America Recycles Day so give some thought not only to recycle on that day, but to buy recycled content products if you go shopping.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Brain exercise

In the book Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, a dystopia blooms from the mind of Crake, a biotech genius who creates a hybrid lifeform to replace humans. When Crake was younger, he and a playmate, Jimmy, used to play a game where they would list the scientific classification of species for fun: Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, subphylum, Class, subclass, Order, suborder, Family, subfamily, Genus, Species.

Given the difficulty of remembering this order as is, a popular mnemonic is:
Do Koalas Prefer Chocolate Or Fruit, Generally Speaking?

I tried to think of my own, including the sub-categories as well, and came up with this:
Demure Kings Play stalemate Chess strategies, Oligarchies step in, Formalize sovereign Gentry Snobbery.

Mnemonics, however, are probably better when they are simple and quirky, i.e. koala food preferences. Anyone want to try their hand at it? Leave a comment :)

Monday, November 12, 2007

Dear Austin Powers, this bird is a real common shag!

For your amusement, a random piece of information I ran across at work today.

The European Shag or Common Shag (Phalacrocorax aristotelis) is a species of cormorant. It breeds around the rocky coasts of western and southern Europe, southwest Asia and north Africa, mainly wintering in its breeding range except for northernmost birds. In Britain this seabird is usually referred to as simply the Shag.



Pictured: A young European shag (source: Wikipedia)

Saturday, November 10, 2007



The Economist magazine is endearingly uncouth in its coverage of demographic issues concerning world population and resource depletion. Here is a brilliant response to one of the outstanding quotes from that article. See below:

SIR —

You write that "if women decide to spend their 20s clubbing rather than child-rearing, and their cash on handbags rather than nappies, that's up to them." Your liberal and tolerant viewpoint towards us is of course very flattering. However, had you even passingly acknowledged that some women may spend their 20s neither clubbing nor child-rearing, but working, and their money on neither nappies nor handbags, but on down-payments for a house, that would have been still more edifying. To save women from being merely mothers, only to make them merely consumers, is a view of women's liberation that belongs to the 1960s, not to today's world.

Eleanor Burgess
Boston, Massachusetts

For more responses to the Article and links to an article The Economist published as a follow-up, go to the following link: www.footprintnetwork.org

Friday, November 09, 2007

No detergent = Not only clean clothes

A package arrived last night containing an order J and I made over the weekend. Inside was... well, how to describe it... Maybe it's best to provide a pictureIt's called the "Eco Saturn" and will clean your dirty laundry without soap or detergent. I had recently read about a similar product in Leo Hickman's book about Ethical Living ("A Life Stripped Bare") and wanted to see for myself how this worked. According to reports, and the image posted above, this will save money in water, electricity and detergent amounting to 15,708 yen a year, which is roughly $140. This little ball of joy only cost about $35, so I figured what's the cost in trying it.
There's no doubt the thing is pretty funny looking, but apparently it contains 7 different kinds of little ceramic balls inside that do the trick, such as anti-corrosive/anti-fungal, alkali, minus-ion, and infra-red substances. Yeah, it all makes about as much sense as the ingredients on a shampoo bottle at this point, but I'm hoping the little space ball will prove to be as good as it promises. Instead of using laundry detergent, we'll just throw in the eco-saturn and run the machine. It has an additional effect of keeping steel laundry machine drums from corroding as well. Stay tuned as we will be doing laundry this weekend and try to clean our clothes and the environment at the same time.
And if you really want to consider Eco-geekdom, consider that in Japan most laundry is only done with cold water (saves a lot of electricity), or we often use a bath pump that takes the hot water from the bath tub (relatively clean water as you wash outside the tub and only soak in the water). The rinse cycle is done with clean cold water from the tap, so it's all a very sanitary process if combining bath and laundry seems strange to anyone. Also, baths use significantly less water than showers do (unless you are in and out in under 3 minutes, but then why not just run through a sprinkler real quick) since the water is not left running for periods without really being used. Sadly, most homes in the US are not set up for this, although I have heard of people jerry-rigging a similar set-up. One blogger even boasted of pumping used bath water to his toilet tank, which is some kind of cross between nature lover and DIY enthusiast. Stories like that make you wonder what aliens in outer space might be doing, say, on Saturn.
;)

What is Lycanthropy?

In my work, I am often doing various searches online to find the definitions of things, or delving into a Thesaurus to give some versatility to the syntax of terribly boring reports. One of the perks of this is that I often come across pretty interesting, though trivial, bits of information. The other day I came across this word: Lycanthropy. Apparently this is a Greek word meaning "wolf-man" (lykoi anthropos) and refers to "a psychiatric state in which the patient believes he is a wolf or some nonhuman animal.
With the observation of Halloween just past, it seems all too appropriate to apply this term to what happens to many children on that day. It may be all-in-fun, but there were a few years where I dressed up as something that just felt so right (maybe it was the actor in me) that I felt quite lycanthropic (although somewhat ashamed to have embodied Bugs Bunny)! Truth be told, when I was about 8 years old, I felt quite comfortable while under the influence of what could be known as peiratês anthropos (arrr, pardon me Greek matey!).

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Bath Nation

I don't think any other country has quite as much fun in the bathtub as the Japanese do. The Japanese suggest 12 home bath brews, one for each month of the year.

This month, November, is the "mikan-yu", or tangerine bath.

This is about the time of year that the Japanese start eating this small citrus fruit and spend the evening sitting under their kotatsu (low, heated tables) watching television. So maybe it's no surprise that the sweet aroma of the mikan fruit would find its way to the bath waters. According to a Japanese website, Yu-no-Kuni (meaning something akin to 'Bath Nation'), one should take the peels of about 20 mikan and dry them. Then wrap the dried skins in a cotton gauze bag (or thin towel) and drop it in the bath.
And just to show you how seriously the Japanese take bathing (move over rubber ducky), take a look at this graph:

The graph is from a study done by the Tokyo Gas Company to measure how well the skin holds heat in the bath. In regular bath water, represented by the lower, blue line, the skin heats up by only a fraction and then loses that heat rather quickly. In comparison, with a tangerine bath, the surface of the skin gains nearly 3 degrees Celsius (about 5 degrees Fahrenheit) and maintains heat for about 50 minutes. Amazing research and I hope the scientists all took a long, hot bath after they published their results.
But there's no need to make a science project out of it. Enjoy some tangerines (mikan are also known as satsuma oranges) and save the skins for the bath. Mikan skins even have a special name in Japanese - chinpi - and they can be used to make a cleaning solution too. Boil 400cc of water and 4 chinpi and then have at it. I suppose you could even use it to clean the bath tub.