Back in '93, a deaf man by the name of Jamie Clark borrowed a quarter-million from his father and started an ISP in Ellicot City, MD. The servers were parked in a barn on a sheep farm.

I had a friend who worked with Jamie for a while, and a dialup account with ClarkNet. Everything was done on a command line, all text, no graphics.

When the Mosaic web browser came out, my friend invited me to visit ClarkNet to check it out. I found myself sitting in a barn one late afternoon, sitting at a console with a window view of sheep grazing outside.

Mosaic blew me away. I knew, then and there, it would be a transformational earthquake. It would change everything. And it has. The impact is still incomplete.

There were only 50 graphical websites in the world that day. A lot has happened since.

Jamie became one of the early dot.com millionaires when he sold ClarkNet to Verio. Wikipedia has a writeup on him here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ClarkNet

"I would say that purpose is not imposed from the outside; it is generated from the inside. We *make* our purpose. And there is a kind of dereliction of duty of us humans when we say that the purpose is to be imposed on the outside or found in some book written thousands of years ago. We live in a very different world than we lived in thousands of years ago."

- Carl Sagan

So I have this little whirlybird coffee grinder, picked up at Publix about six weeks ago. It worked just fine until last week, when the grind quality suddenly fell from fine to coarse. Then two days later it quit running at all.

I cleaned out the coffee dust residue, gave it another try and it ran again, then refused to run anymore. I told Debi I'll try returning it to Publix for an exchange, but since the box and receipt were long gone, I figured they'd balk and I'd just have to write it off.

Today, thinking I had little to lose, I decided to give it a solid whack and see if that helped. It did - it's running again, albeit with coarse results.

Clearly, as long as I continue to drink fresh coffee, I'll have to bump and grind first...

You've probably noticed food prices have gotten steadily higher over the past few years. You might have attributed it to inflation, or rising energy costs that seep into the cost of everything else.

And those have been factors, but the real driver has been cruising beneath the surface. It has gotten some attention, but it's about to get a lot more. Our demands for food and energy are now in direct competition, and something's gotta give.

Consider:

We are now seeing the highest grain prices ever. EVER. Wheat futures are knocking around the $10/bushel level. Corn is running $5/bu. Soybeans are looking to hit $14/bu. come summer.

Now, unless you're a commodity trader, these are unfamiliar prices and measures. We don't encounter them daily the way we do with gas and grocery prices. To put this in some context, these numbers have doubled over the past year or two.

Ever heard of carry-over grain stocks? That's what's left from last year's harvest when the new harvest gets started. Grain markets keep track of this because those carry-over stocks can be valuable in years when the harvest is poor, which historically happens now and then due to weather.

This year, the world supply of carry-over grain would meet demand for 54 days. That's the lowest it's ever been. EVER. And it's poised to shrink even further. Why? Because the U.S. is diverting more farmland toward corn production for energy and less for food.

Most of the corn we grow now goes to feeding animals used in meat production, i.e., cows.

2008 will probably see over 25% of the entire U.S. corn crop going to ethanol production.

That proportion will grow as the value of corn for energy exceeds the value for food. The proportion of corn sold for food will rise in price. More land planted in corn means less land available to plant other grains, like wheat and soybeans. They also go up in price.

Some countries - Russia, Argentina, Thailand, Vietnam - instead of buying increasingly expensive grain from elsewhere, they're shutting off exports and keeping what they grow at home. Countries that can't grow their own, like Japan, will feel the pain of higher grain prices more than others. Countries that can't afford the higher prices - Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Congo, Haiti - will feel more than pain. They'll be facing very real starvation.

So what's the solution? Get away from corn and move to cellulosic ethanol. Switchgrass and similar fast-growing grasses can thrive on marginal lands, offer a much better energy yield than corn, and generate far lower emissions in production and use than gasoline.

We don't have to jack up food prices, thin out our margin of carry-over stocks and starve people to create energy. Ethanol production from corn has got to go.

You want numbers? The Earth Policy Institute has got your numbers right here. And here.

"China faces a formidable challenge in fashioning a development strategy simply because of the density of its population. Although it has almost the exact same amount of land as the United States, most of China's 1.3 billion people (circa 2001) live in a 1,500 kilometer (900 mile) strip on the eastern and southern coasts. Reaching the equivalent population density in the United States would require squeezing the entire U.S. population into the area east of the Mississippi and then multiplying it by four."

- Lester R. Brown, "Eco-Economy", 2001

The current issue of Free Inquiry magazine has an interesting editorial by Tom Flynn that describes parallels between Ponzi schemes and national economies. Both depend on growth; both begin falling apart when growth slows, ceases or reverses.

Problem is, world population continues to grow, and we are already approaching hard limits on essential supplies like fresh water, arable land, and energy. This growth also extracts a price in terms of environmental damage, species extinction, and more frequent conflict over dwindling resources.

Growth has always been a constant in economic planning, a given, and there's no reason it wouldn't be - it's only been during the past 50 years that we've truly begun to appreciate how much an impact population growth is having on the planet.

Flynn wonders if it's possible to maintain our current standard of living without growth. Can we devise a sustainable, steady-state economy that is flexible enough to withstand fluctuations in available resources?

More to the point, I think - can a steady-state economy compete effectively when surrounded by growth economies?

The answer is obvious - of course not. Growth economies will be lined up for first shot at essential resources, through political power, purchasing power, or military power. The steady-state economy will be at the back of that line.

Which leads to two possibilities - either the competing growth economies are eliminated by forging them all together in a single world economy, or the familiar boom-bust cycle of growth economies will continue until resources are exhausted.

As long as our economic thinking is dominated by a competitive model, growth will prevail and resources will dwindle. A steady-state economy will require a large-scale cooperative model - and we haven't developed one that works yet.

Me, in Texas, at a park with April and Joffy.



It was that time of the year again - Dash and I share the same birthday, so we always get together in early November. Sometimes he comes to me, usually I go to him. This year I opted to take a couple of weeks off from work and drive out to Texas from Mount Dora, FL, with a stop in Mobile, AL to see friends.

Highlights and observations from the trip...

Driving is boring. Driving is relaxing. Driving, driving, driving...I've done so many road trips. I think driving works better when there's no specific destination in mind - you can go where you please, stop when you want, take your time. But when you have a place to go and limited time to spend there, then the driving becomes the monotonous interval you must endure, with bad air in the cities, roads that leave you feeling like a booblehead doll, and rising gas prices. (Prices went from $2.80 to as high as $3.15 in some places for regular unleaded in the two weeks I was on the road.)

On the other hand, there were some magnificent vistas along the way - wide open bays flowing out to the Gulf of Mexico, soaring bridges, sparkling city skylines, the stars of Orion lighting the way down a Louisana highway. That's why I drove this trip - I'd never been through the deep south and I wanted to see some of it. Not that you get much local flavor driving on the interstate - it's pretty much the same as everywhere else - but the landscape does change (as does
driver behavior - the most obnoxious drivers were all in Texas).

The patron saint of the interstates, Our Lady of Perpetual Construction, is very busy. Everywhere.

The first day out, I drove up to Mobile after working overnight. By the time I got there, I'd been awake for 26 hours. There were no problems, but I don't care to do that again.

Mobile, AL is a nice place, at least the part I visited. My friends Ashley and Cherrie have a beautiful house in a fine neighborhood, and we spent a fair amount of time at the local restaurants and coffee shops. I absolutely fell in love with
Izzy, Ashley and Cherrie's 2-year old daughter. When the dictionary defines cute, her picture should be there. Now of course when my children were toddlers, they were the cutest (and smartest, and most clever and lovable) kids on the planet. But they're not toddlers anymore, so Izzy now lays claim to the Cute Throne.

I haven't washed the truck yet, so it's still covered with dust from Texas and bugs from 5 states. At least I was able to clean the windows on the way back. Didn't see a drop of rain the whole trip.

There's a Woman Hollering Creek crossing I-10 between Seguin and San Antonio.

When I rolled into Seguin in the wee hours, my Sidekick had died, the Nokia was out of power, and I didn't have April's address written down. Lesson: never trust critical info to electronic devices. I also had her address in my Google mail, but no way to access it. Solution - stop at her alma mater, Texas Lutheran University, go to the student union, and borrow a student's laptop to get at my e-mail. At two in the morning. They were very friendly and helpful. Got the address and
was at April's place in 10 minutes.

Peanuts and apple juice are good snacks while driving. I brought along a cooler that did an amazing job of keeping the apple juice cold - after 12 hours it was still cold. Three blocks of Blue Ice is all it needs.

Didn't see too much of Dash - he's all about his girlfriend now. He borrowed my truck most of the days I was in Texas, and put 300 miles on it in 3 days. Came back muddy, too - wash it next time, hey? But he's looking good, thin and muscled from his construction work. He's dating his boss's daughter! But it's working out fine. We went over to Best Buy and got him a set of good speakers for his PC. They should be loud enough to annoy the neighbors, which is something every teenager needs. Took April out for a monster grocery shopping spree. She's probably stocked up enough to last 6 weeks.

April drives like a wild horse. Ok, I exaggerate - slightly - but she does make me glad seat belts exist. I hope my driving suggestions stick where her defensive driving courses haven't.

Went out to a car wash with April and Joffy. Joffy is a big fan of high-pressure water hoses, and his glee while spraying the car is a joy to watch. He's about, I'm not sure, 9 or 10 now. One small problem - April left her keys in the car as we got out, so we were locked out. I pulled out my shiny new AAA membership card and we called for lockout service. They said they'd arrive within an hour. Never showed up. In the end the staff of the car wash broke into her car for us. Took them about 90 seconds. Pretty sad when the car wash staff makes AAA look bad.



At least there was a roller skating rink nearby, so Joffy got to enjoy that and a picklesickle, too. (Pickle-flavored popsicle. No, I didn't try one. I feared being permanently puckered afterward.)

April schooled me on the value of the Gilmore Girls. I had to watch a few episodes (she has all seven seasons on DVD) before it really came together for me. It was also the best way to watch TV - no commercials. I hate sitting through 12 dancing midgets selling diapers every 12 minutes.

Almost ran over a dog in San Antonio - it was loitering around in the middle of a dark street, and I was nearly on top of it before seeing it. Was able to avoid it with a sharp turn, but it was very close.

Passed through New Orleans. I'd meant to bypass it on the way out and see it on the return trip, but I stayed on I-10 and was enroute to New Orleans before I realized it. So I went ahead and drove through it - the road takes you right past
the Superdome where much of the drama was - and from the parts I saw, the city looks vibrant, with few signs of hurricane damage. The parts of the city that really got whacked lie beneath the path of I-10, which is elevated through downtown, and the traffic was too thick to rubberneck. But most of the city looks fine.

The food! I certainly wasn't an extravagant spender on this trip, but eating out was the biggest discretionary expense. Ashley and I went to a Vietnamese Pho soup restaurant, a southern cooking place with fantastic fried catfish, and a very popular burger diner near his home. On our birthday, Beth and Harold took everyone out to a huge Tex-Mex restaurant in San Antoinio with great tacos. Later April and Dash took me to a restaurant where her roommate works, and we all had fried Cajun catfish there. We also hit a Chipotles, which is a sort of McDonald's of Mexican food, and they have a very scrumptious spicy beef taco that actually made me lightheaded. I want more, and thought we had one nearby in Eustis, but no - they're all down around Orlando. Rats.

Books. I left on this trip with just 3 books, and one of those was a borrowed book to be returned to Ashley. I came back with 13 books (would be 15, but I left two hardcover books picked up at a Mobile flea market behind at Ashley's. 10 of those books were paperbacks that Beth found in her parent's attic, relics of our lives in Minnesota 20 years ago. The five I bought on the road include:

1) Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changes the Bible and Why,
by Bart D. Ehrman
2) The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf
3) Red Lightning, by John Varley (science fiction)
4) What They Don't Teach You in Harvard Business School: Notes from a
Street-Smart Executive, by Mark H. McCormack
5) I forget - it was one of the titles I picked up at the flea market.

Oh, and I bought a couple of animal books for Izzy and Joffy.

I actually have two more boxes of books from the trip, but they aren't mine - they're among the boxes that Ashley and Cherrie generously held for me years ago. They stored half my library when I moved to Florida, and although I picked up most of them during a later visit, there were three boxes remaining that belong to Vicki and Maurisa that wouldn't fit in the truck. So now I can finally pass those boxes back to Vicki.

Apparently I leave a trail of books everywhere I go and they come back to haunt me.

The Nokia 770 - this trip was the first time I tried using it away from home for any length of time. And I have to say it disappoints. The hardware is good - it's a fine little device, and it elicits that "ooooh, shiny!" reaction from people when they first see it. But it's obvious the software development was rushed and not fully baked when the product hit the shelves. Performance is flakier than a oven-baked biscuit. I got mine cheap because Nokia had just released the next-generation product, the Nokia 800, and there's word they will issue a Sidekick-contender with a keyboard soon. But my recommendation - don't be tempted by the low prices for the 770.

New faces...I finally got to meet Ashley's close friend Chris Mety. I understand now why Ashley thinks highly of him - he's intelligent, professional, and thinks big-picture. We had a lively discussion at his place about peak oil, and later met again for lunch, this time dominated by a more low-brow chat about women :)

Also met several local deaf folks and one quite attractive interpreting student - girlfriend of one of the deaf guys we met - during our sojourn to the Mobile flea market. Ashley and I met up with Chris there, and as we conversed, other deaf people there just started appearing out of the blue. The hearing patrons seemed too bemused by our conversation to be annoyed that we were blocking most of the aisle while chatting. Ashley tells me that spontaneous gatherings of deaf folk like that in Mobile are pretty rare, so I was just lucky.

Had a few good conversations with Beth. One funny coincidence that marked this trip - Beth and I met at the beginning of the '82 school year at Gallaudet, but we never really started getting to know each other until she accepted an invitation to a party in my Krug Hall dorm room on Halloween night. April and I were driving back to Seguin on Halloween night, and it wasn't until I was telling her how Beth and I had gotten to know each other at Gallaudet that it hit me - on that evening, it was exactly 25 years since the relationship had started.

One snafu on the drive back...I stopped in Clearwater to meet up with Debi for dinner. Left Mobile later than planned and the drive took longer than expected. I arrived at her address at about 10:10 p.m. I haven't been to her place before. I'm tired, it's dark and I can't find a building number. But I'm at Park Blvd and 120th St. and there's a big apartment
complex there, Buena Vista. So I figure that's gotta be it.

I check the first building on the left, and hey, there's her apartment number. There's a doorbell (other doors didn't have one), which I figure is connected to flasher, and a barking dog on the other side of the door, which sounds exactly like her dog Poppy - at least to me it did. I know her dog well, I babysit it on the weekends.

So I ring the door and knock a few times. No answer. Bummer.

I have my Nokia with me, but I haven't had any luck getting a working wi-fi connection on the trip down. But in an apartment complex this big, I know there will be a few open wi-fi signals, so I start walking around with the Nokia to find one. And I did. So I stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes, got my e-mail, no messages from Debi.

So I think, ok, I'll go back to the truck and compose an e-mail to let her know I was there. So I went back to the truck to do that, but before writing the note I read some of a crazy discussion about the cow falling on the moving van.

Then I look up - and there's a cop standing next to the truck. I crack open the door and ask him what's up? Then I look around and there are FOUR cop cars parked out there, and they're all looking at me. Seems someone freaked out that a stranger was walking around the apartment grounds. As the cops told me later, someone tried to speak to me and I didn't respond - of course not - I wouldn't have heard them.

So I explained I'm deaf, I just drove in from Mobile to visit a friend, blah, blah, blah, and they accepted that, after eyeing the dusty truck and the luggage. They did ask me to leave, but that was ok by me, since I'd tried Debi's door twice and she was either out or asleep. Maybe I had the wrong apartment. Whatever. I fired up the truck and took I-4 back home.

The next day Debi come over to Mount Dora and we traded notes. Turned out I did have the right apartment, and she had gone to sleep just 25 minutes before I arrived. Uffda.

It was a fun trip, filled with family and friends and good food, good books, and too many cigarettes. Now that trip is over, I'm committed to losing the cigarettes, a task Cherrie has promised to nag me about. I still have a few packs left over from the trip. When those run out...

I would've liked to do more with April and Dash, but the budget only allowed for so much. So mostly we went out for meals, walked the dog, visited a local park, threw a frisbee around. It was nice to see April living on her own, with a pleasant apartment near TLU. Next time I see her, it'll be at Syracuse University in New York. And It was great to see Dash is working and learning the construction business. And now I've been through the South.

I do have one regret - I took my video camera along and never thought to get it out. Next time, for sure.

The return to work was lively. I was supervising on my first night back, and within two minutes after I entered, one of the patients blew up. I rounded up a co-worker and we went to deal with it, and the patient attacked me four times, shredded my shirt, punched my chest, and tried for my face, but I was ready for him and leaned back in time.

I had a crew of staff with me to pry him off when he got feisty. He pulled a phone off the wall and smashed it to the floor, overturned a watercooler, and remained belligerent for several hours - we had him in a hold twice. He settled down after his meds kicked in and went to bed.

In the morning the younger patients woke early, and we have one room with three little tornadoes, very energetic boys who gleefully wake all the other residents if they can, or play with electrical outlets, or try to climb out the emergency window, or throwing things around - it goes on and on. The next night was quieter, although the morning circus with the three boys was a repeat of the morning before. Just another day in a psychiatric institution.

Vacations never last long enough.

My son and daughter, April & Dash:

Imagine for a moment you live in colonial America. You know the Brits and Yanks are about ready to rumble, but you don't know exactly when.

Then Paul Revere blows through town hollering that the British are coming. What do you do?

1) Tell Maw and the young'uns to take shelter, grab your musket and charge out to join to local militia.

2) Jump on your horse and spread the word.

3) Take shelter with Maw and the young'uns.

4) Run like hell.

5) Yawn, ignore Paul, pop open another cold one, and go on reading about that shameless hussy Britney Madison.


Ok - fast forward. It's 2007. It's Paul again, but this time his name is Naomi Wolf, he's a woman, and her message is at least as urgent as Paul's was.

We're witnessing developments in real time as they occur against the background of our daily lives. We see them as distinct events separated by weeks, months and years. Precisely because we are living it, it's not always easy to clearly see a pattern, or even be sure a pattern exists. We're too close to the events, and only the distance of time can give us the perspective we need to see more clearly how things fit together.

But there is another way to discern patterns - by comparing the events of today with events in history.

Naomi Wolf is doing that, comparing what is happening in America today with historical democracies that were undermined. Naomi brilliantly lays out how it happened, how it can - is - happening here, and most importantly, what you and I can do about it.

She's consciously patterning her effort after Thomas Paine's pamphlets like Common Sense. She is a modern-day Paul Revere, and her message is too important to ignore.

Her warning rings clear in this conversation with Buzzflash. Read it - then see that Maw and the young'uns read it too. Then share it with the neighbors.

Naomi is not crying wolf.

Most people who know me have heard this story before, but I've never told it here...

Way back in the 80's, Dave and I were working together at a Target store near downtown Minneapolis, off Hiawatha Ave, I think. We lived out in a northeastern suburb, Brooklyn Park, and drove to work in his car. We had to be there early, so we'd get up at daybreak, bundle up against the winter cold, and trundle out to the car.

One morning we go out to the car, Dave gets in, closes his door, I get in, close my door, and...

BAM!

There's an explosion and then we can FEEL something hitting the backs of our heads. Something scattering in pieces, and immediately both of us are thinking there's only one thing behind us that would break up like that - the rear window. We both quickly duck down as low as we can, remaining very still, thinking the back window is shattered and some nutcase with a gun has shot it out.

So there we are, sitting hunched over in a freezing cold car, wondering what to do next. Getting out seems like an invitation to be shot. Not moving makes us sitting ducks. Neither of us are armed. We sit there, thinking. Eventually it dawns on us - if the back window were really shot out, wouldn't we be feeling a draft? And there wasn't one. Big mystery. So what happened?

Very slowly, cautiously, we raise ourselves back up to sitting, and glance around the car. In every direction we looked, we see brown spots...I mean EVERYWHERE, all over the car. They appeared moist. Some spots looked like...Coke Slurpee.

We glanced back and there it was - the Coke bomb.

Dave had left a can in the car - he would keep the stuff stashed everywhere - and it froze overnight. Frozen Coke is mostly water, and freezing water expands. This can had expanded to the point of bursting, and closing the car doors rattled it past the breaking point.

So now you know. You can bake cookies in your car during summer, and make Slurpees in the winter. Just take measures to contain the explosion. 

I just sent the following to several newspapers, my Senators and Representatives in Congress:

Lately there have been increasing indications that we are close to an armed confrontation with Iran.

It may, at this point, be futile to express opposition to going forward with such a conflict. Nevertheless, I will do what I can. I'm writing to ask that you do the same.

Here are three reasons to oppose an armed attack on Iran:

1) Unreliable Intelligence

We now know that much of the intel during the runup to the invasion of Iraq has been discredited. Claims that Iraq possessed WMDs and UAVs, among many other claims, were not borne out. The Bush administration's track record in this area suggests strong skepticism is essential.

2) Incompetence

Even if Iran is indeed as dangerous as the Bush administration claims, their dismal record of conflict management in Iraq and Afghanistan makes it clear it would be smarter to conduct such a confrontation under new leadership.

3) Blowback

One certain thing about war is that it will generate unintended consequences. We can reasonably expect some form of retaliation in response to an attack on Iran. Supporters of an attack will have these consequences on their conscience.

As a private citizen, there are a limited number of potentially effective measures I can take to oppose an attack on Iran.

You, as a congressman, are better positioned to influence events as they develop.

When all is said and done, that's what will matter most - did I do all I could to stop this foolishness?

The decision is yours. I urge you to act.

I've been writing and editing professionally as a sideline since 1985, but it's only recently that I've gotten serious enough to aim toward doing it full time.

For the past two and a half years, I've been writing the Employment Matters column at i711.com, nearly as long as I've been blogging at LiveJournal. The site provides video relay service, which is how most deaf people make their phone calls nowadays. I've always intended on mentioning the column here, but never got around to it.

The column is about deaf employment. It's a topic that affects everyone in the deaf community - the basic bread and butter issues of earning a living.

Since I began writing the column, the most popular article has been, ironically, about my day job - The World's Largest Private Deaf Employer. Prior to that, the most popular column has been The Ambassador Effect, which discusses how rare it is that hearing people ever meet, let alone interact with deaf folks.

Three other popular items include To Sue or Not to Sue?, which takes a look at litigation in deaf employment. How to Calm a Nervous Employer deals with managing expectations at job interviews and the workplace. The third is Happy Hour for Job Hunters - Deaf Professional Happy Hour, that is. Quite a few major cities have one each month now.

I'm also writing for the Channeli videoblog. I write the scripts, Lauren Teruel Ridloff translates them into ASL, then delivers them in her slick knock-your-socks off style. The videos are also subtitled for hearing viewers who don't know ASL. We're a great team, and she's begun contributing her own scripts too.

Most of the professional writing I've done over the years has been related to the deaf community in some way, which is perhaps why so little of my blog is about deaf issues - it's an outlet for other interests. I intend to continue writing about and for the deaf community, but I'm intent on expanding beyond that to other areas.

So I'll make my blatant networking pitch here: If you, your company, or organization - or someone you know - is looking for a writer or editor with experience, skill and ability to meet deadlines, let's talk.

The tags to your left here will give you some indication of my areas of interest and knowledge. My LibraryThing catalog will give you more of the same. Most of the stuff I've written here at LiveJournal is off-the-cuff, but it's a fair sampling of my style.

Ok, done with the pitch. The short version is, I simply enjoy writing and would love to be able to do it full time. Not everyone is afforded the opportunity to work at something they genuinely enjoy. I'm one of the few who enjoys that privilege, and I want more of it.

The future has arrived - it's just not evenly distributed.

                                                           - William Gibson

Spiegel, the German news magazine, has a fascinating interview with Pan Yue, China's Deputy Minister of the Environment. It is strikingly candid and blunt, quite unusual for Chinese officials. He cites brutal facts throughout, and is clearly working to draw attention to a serious and growing problem.

An excerpt:

SPIEGEL: Still, each year China is strengthening its reputation as an economic Wunderland.

Pan: This miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace. Acid rain is falling on one third of the Chinese territory, half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless, while one fourth of our citizens does not have access to clean drinking water. One third of the urban population is breathing polluted air, and less than 20 percent of the trash in cities is treated and processed in an environmentally sustainable manner. Finally, five of the ten most polluted cities worldwide are in China.

SPIEGEL: How great are the effects of this environmental degradation on the economy?

Pan: It's massive. Because air and water are polluted, we are losing between 8 and 15 percent of our gross domestic product. And that doesn't include the costs for health. Then there's the human suffering: In Bejing alone, 70 to 80 percent of all deadly cancer cases are related to the environment. Lung cancer has emerged as the No. 1 cause of death.


China's population growth has placed them at the forefront of environmental pressures, a window on the world's future. They are approaching or hitting the ceilings of available resources in several critical areas - water, fuel, food. How they deal with this will be instructive for the rest of the world.

Hopping over to the United Kingdom, we have an essay by Dominic Kennedy that claims walking to the shops damages the environment more than going by car. The essence of the argument:

"Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes."

Note: I am not advocating that people become couch (or mouse) potatoes!

The essay goes on to examine other forms of environmental calculus. It's very difficult to get a handle on the full impact of any given product or practice, because there are so many linked variables.

But all of them are rooted in one fixed fact - too many people chasing after limited resources. We can buy time by becoming more clever at using those resources efficiently, and developing alternative resources. We will do that.

But ultimately we will either learn to reduce and manage our own numbers, or war, famine and disease will do it for us. We *can learn* by watching what happens in regions under severe environmental pressure. Whether we *will learn* from those lessons remains to be seen.

When Jane Goodall was first studying chimpanzees in the Gombe region of Africa during the early sixties, the surrounding area was sparsely inhabited. In over four decades, that has changed, and now the park where the chimp community she studied lives is surrounded on three sides by humanity. Goodall recognizes that protecting chimps means looking out for the people around them, and thus supported this coffee venture for farmers in the area. The coffee is sold by Green Mountain, who have a track record for providing fair trade and organic coffee. This is a win-win-win deal - for the chimps, for the farmers, and certainly for the customer - it's great coffee. Hit the picture to order some.

There's a rocket launching at NASA in a few days - and my name is on it. Well, mine and about a quarter-million others...

It's the Phoenix Lander mission to Mars. It's scheduled to launch August 3rd, but of course delays can always occur, so we can only wait and see. And Mars is notorious for eating spacecraft - it's a bit like Charlie Brown's kite-eating trees - so we'll have to wait another 9 months after launch to see how the landing works out.

This one will go where no Mars lander has gone before, near the Martian north pole. It's mission - dig into the surface, seek out water, and - possibly - new life, if the on-board instruments can detect any. No civilizations - any little green living things will be cellular, at best.

I was lucky enough to catch the launch of the Opportunity rover several years ago. If I time my break right at work and the sky is clear between Mount Dora and the Cape, I may see this one too. If not, I'm off when the Shuttle is scheduled to launch 4 days later, so I'll see that.

Long before the launch, The Planetary Society invited the public to submit names for inclusion on a DVD. According to the Wikipedia entry, the Phoenix DVD is made of a special silica glass that can purportedly withstand the Martian environment, lasting for hundreds (if not thousands) of years on the surface.

The last few months, I've developed the habit of buying fresh-frozen seafood at my local Publix supermarket. I'll eat it a couple of times a week. It's pretty good stuff, and the per-meal cost isn't any more than a fast-food meal, but this is healthier.

But I've found it depends.

I got to thinking about warnings I've read on mercury contamination in wild-caught seafood and began wondering what I had. A careful check of the labeling shows the origin of the fish. Turns out everything in my freezer is wild-caught - coho salmon from the U.S, red snapper from Indonesia, flounder from Canada.

Then I hit the Net and did some homework. That led to a site called "Got Mercury?" that lists known averages for wild-caught seafood and provides a calculator so you can work out how much mercury you can safely eat.

Ideally, we wouldn't be ingesting any mercury at all - it's nasty stuff - but we live in a world where tiny pieces of everything get into our air, our water, gets stirred around and widely distributed.

So it's not a question of whether you'll be exposed to it - you will. But your body can tolerate many environmental insults, as long as the levels are reasonably low.

Bear in mind, however, that a developing embryo is much more sensitive to environmental hazards, particularly mercury, which is why you may have seen suggestions that pregnant women avoid certain fish known to have elevated levels of mercury.

So the question is, where's the tipping point between safety and toxicity? That's what Got Mercury aims to answer.

The mercury concentration values used for the calculator are averages from the United States Food and Drug Administration. What's surprising is the range of differences.

Tilapia, for example, is very low, while swordfish is very high. Generally, the higher the fish is on the food chain, the higher the levels of mercury, because mercury accumulates in fish that are eating other fish that are also contaminated.

So, from my freezer -

Coho Salmon - 0.014 parts per million (very low)
Flounder - 0.045 ppm - a little higher, but still low.
Red Snapper - 0.189 ppm - Hmmm.

I run my choices through the calculator and it tells me my usual consumption - 12 ounces each week - are fine for salmon and flounder. But the red snapper - my favorite - maxes out the safety level. If I were eating more red snapper each week than I do now, I'd be eating more mercury than considered safe.

Other interesting nuggets of info turn up in the list of mercury levels. Tilefish from the Atlantic comes in at 0.144 ppm, while the same fish from the Gulf of Mexico is at 1.450 ppm!

Canned light tuna comes in at 0.118, where as the fancier albacore canned tuna is at 0.357 - big difference!

Freshwater trout is super low, at 0.072, but ocean trout shows up at 0.256.

So as you can see, the spread of mercury levels is quite wide. It's worthwhile to check what you're eating, then think about how much and which kinds of seafood are your best choices.

http://www.gotmercury.org/

I caught the reading bug early.

My first lasting memory of school is from first grade, when Mrs. Shipman read us the first Boxcar Children book, chapter by chapter over several days. She was a good reader, the story was magical, and I wanted more of that stuff. But I wasn't patient enough to have more stories read to me, so I learned to read on my own. By the time I'd reached sixth grade, I was reading at the college level.

In Tarpon Springs, Mom made it a habit to take me and my brother out to the library regularly (thanks, Mom!), where we'd wander among the stacks and pull out materials at random. We also had a fair collection of books at home, many of them science-related. It was a literary smorgasbord - by trying all different kinds of books and subjects, I found the flavors I liked. We were also influenced by the times, growing up as the Apollo program was in full swing. Between that, the library and the books we had at home...

( Continued )

This is a map of the blogosphere. See that area tagged number 3 at the top right? That's LiveJournal.