I don't get it

How the hell are Ice Cream trucks profitable?

Low margins. Rising costs (fuel and food). General mistrust from consumers regarding cleanliness and safety.

Conclusion: they really are selling drugs.

Plus, it's the only possible explanation of the 10pm ice cream truck drive bys in my neighborhood.

Modeling and Modeling

The article linked above explains the shitty market in terms of its reliance on findings in 19th century botany and the presumption that acts in the market are random. Um... duh! My previous post about dealing with the delicate psyche of a beauty school student is not so unlike the conundrum of dealing with a fickle, emotions-based market. Is this really so surprising?

The article points out that risk models (quantitative computer models used by financial institutions to keep themselves out of just the hot water that they're in) failed to predict the explosion in the mortgage market. However, another kind of risk model, one I'm more familiar with, is one that is a little more qualitative. The kind of work I'm involved with looks at the risks to our society/environment via information about a company's impact on those parts of our lives, not pure, simple financial implications. The Christian Science Monitor has something to say about why funds like that did a little better amid all of this torture in the mortgage crisis. Kinda makes you think that those factors might indicate financial risk as well. Maybe the financial risk didn't come directly from the company, but how do you like having a saggy ass economy.

It's late. This is terrible. Sorry.

Treacherous...

When you sign up for a $20 haircut at Aveda Institute, you take a bit of a risk, so you take a deep breath and hope for the best repeating the mantra: it's just hair. it will grow back. i can afford to get it fixed.

Many have the theory that you just ask for a trim when you go for this $20 haircut in order to avoid disaster. However, we have to remember that we're dealing with people here, not just some Flowbee haircutting machine. You have to work with the (delicate) psyche of a beauty school student. In my opinion, one has to find the right balance between confidence and caution in order to make this work. Asking for just a trim starts the relationship with an air of mistrust, which is no way to begin if you want to survive.

1. Know what you want when you go in. Stylists at this level are not generally ready to create on-the-fly, even though they might try. Be firm, but gentle about what you want.
2. Instill a sense of trust.
3. Give compliments when they are due.

Otherwise, you might get what the woman next to me got: your hair stuck in a blow dryer! She asked for a trim, just a boring trim.

Let that be a lesson to you.

It's not a race. It's a race.

I wish we had a better shorthand term for the election. The linguistics involved with "running" a campaign or "race" make it all too close to sport -- to a game.

This is not a game. This is the future of our nation and the well-being of its people. We need a leader who is focused, determined, honest and willing and able to take a risk when necessary.

Barack Obama exhibits honesty, sincerity, and a willingness to express what he believes to be the truth, whether that is what people are asking for or not. You're not going to agree with every single decision that any of the candidates make. I'd much rather know where those points lie than to expect the candidate to do one thing when he or she does the other depending on what mood he or she thinks the American people are in.

A campaign shouldn't be about strategy -- it should be about honesty. How am I supposed to figure out which candidate I trust to lead my nation if all they are doing is strategizing to get my vote instead of telling and showing me who they are, how they lead, and what they believe in?

As a candidate your job, nay, your mission, is to accurately present yourself in order to help people get to know you as a leader and let them decide which candidate fits best with their own goals and beliefs. As incumbent, you listen to the people who chose you to lead them and help make the goals of those people real.

My goals for this nation include broad themes like equal access to education, freedom from persecution, fair treatment, clean environment, etc. For the most part, the democratic candidates agree on the goals, but where they differ is in implementation.

What's brilliant about Obama's campaign and leadership style is that he has delegated not only to his staff, but to all of us. He puts it on the American people to stand up and make a difference. He is already leading us by encouraging and empowering us to lead ourselves. That's freedom and equality in balance--not easy.

We have a lot of work to do. The current president and his administration have left us a big mess including a national debt that is quickly outgrowing even its larger-than-life Times Square home. We need someone who can delegate. We need someone who is running for office on principles -- on his or her own principles -- not running on what the "other guy" isn't doing right -- not running on what they think people want to hear. We don't have time or energy for simply attacking other candidates.

YES WE CAN! Sí, se puede!

Stuff (relatively) Wealthy People Like

There's a blog out there called "Stuff White People Like" which aims to poke fun at white people by waxing anthropologic about their quirky, illogical, or silly desires. (You can google it. I'm not linking.) However, these include wanting multilingual children, Priuses, modern furniture, and hating corporations. These are not the desires of white people. They are the desires of relatively wealthy people and I'm a little disgusted that it is encouraging people to conflate the ideas of being white and being well-off. Don't get me (entirely) wrong: it's funny and I find myself identifying with the posts. I'm just offended by the title and the "white" theme... am I just not getting it? Am I overcompensating for my own latent racism?

The Great Equalizer

Despite many differences in occupation, age, race, culture, politics, etc. in my neighborhood, the laundromat is different. Everyone is there to get down to business. Everyone is wearing their least attractive clothes (i.e. the things that don't need to be washed until next time). Everyone understands that you don't want them to see your underwear and you don't want to see theirs. Everyone has to deal with the same broken or stupidly programmed machines. Everyone has to watch the same stupid movies on the televisions. It's nice to have some unity and some neighborly bonding -- even if it's while you're avoiding eye contact.

Prospect Heights

I have a great neighborhood. There's a delightful mix of races, cultures, ages, income, classes, occupations, etc. Part of this mix is probably due to the rent control system in NYC which encourages people to stay in apartments indefinitely, because staying with that lease guarantees the initial rate or only modest annual increases. So sometimes, when you move into a neighborhood that's an old stronghold for other ethnic/cultural/socio-economic groups, you feel like an impostor reaping the benefits of lower rent (though not as low as your neighbors' who moved in earlier).

It's admittedly a little odd when old ladies at the grocery store call me "mami," but it 's endearing and I love it. Maybe one day that will roll off my tongue too. I'm thinking about going over to the bodega (corner store) to watch the news in Spanish with the shop keeper, but I'm not sure how well that would go -- especially since I'd need nearly everything translated since they talk so fast.

Energy Policy

I find that many pundits separate energy policy and food policy, but end up categorizing them as two major concerns of our era. Are they really so different? They're even similar linguistically. When was the last time you talked about being hungry in terms of having an "empty tank" or needing more "fuel"? Are these not terms more often associated with cars?

It seems to me that we should think of these things as two parts of one whole. We need food to give our bodies energy and fuel. We need energy to produce this food--energy produced from fossil fuel, wind power, solar power, natural gas, nuclear power, and, of course, other food.

Petroleum products not only help to generate much of the food that we eat, but they actually make their way into our food. And if you think of it again, you realize that food (corn, sugar, seaweed, etc.) are being made into fuel. At that point, it all seems to come much closer together doesn't it?

Food is just the edible form of energy... not that you didn't already know that.

Speaking of things you already know: Read Michael Pollan's new book In Defense of Food. It tells you a bunch of stuff you already know, but actually might convince you to take action (like quitting high fructose corn syrup and other processed foods).

State of the Union

Well, if I'd had any money for beer, I would have played a drinking game for President Bush's last State of the Union address, using the word "terror" or any of its derivatives as the trigger for tipping the cup. If I had done this, I would be too drunk to write this post right now.

Also, did anyone else notice the absence of the word "war" in the speech, despite the fact that most of the speech was about the war in Iraq? I believe he referred to it as the "mission." Sick.

Oh, and did you know that Nukular Power doesn't have any emissions? (just tons of toxic waste that we don't know how to safely dispose of and steaming hot water runoff that damages fragile ecosystems)

Can't someone at least teach him (and his daddy) how to say the word?

I'm sure I have other commentary, but will save it for later.


A final note on my budget: I was afraid that I might have accidentally under estimated the amount of money I spent over the course of the month, but upon review, it looks like I actually over estimated the amount, so I did have the money to buy beer after all.

On Budgeting

So how's it going, this budget? Let's put it this way.

Yesterday I asked myself, "Why in hell did you buy so many damned potatoes?"

Yeah, January's budget is spent. Plus $1.

Anxiously awaiting February, where I've reduced my budget to about 75% of January's budget. I have a secret savings project.

I really want a beer.

Market ... oh irrational market

The Market is a funny thing. It (whatever it is) reacts to things like fear and excitement. The stock (and bond and futures and other things that I have no hope of maybe ever understanding) market reacts to feelings, actual real human feelings. So a recession or something like it is a product of people's collective feelings about the future and current value of any given thing. However, the actors in the system (investors and consumers) also react to things that happen in the market, like the changing price of fuel or the change in relative value of the S&P 500. So is it all just made up and a product of one big huge psychological disorder? Sounds like it to me. Luckily, one big thing might change soon, and that's the leadership of this country. I think we need one big giant psychologist to help us out of this muck. Anybody up for it? This probably makes very little sense unless you are in my mind. Maybe I'll unpack it better next time. For now, I'm off to bowl in Manhattan.

25 Going on Self-Help Guru

No, I don't think I have it all figured out, but I feel like my time of late is often consumed with actively trying to and sharing those trials, successful or not, with others. Food choices. Waste disbursement. Getting organized (or habitual) enough to find my keys. Budgeting. Is this part of quarter century development or is it just me? And if it is quarter century development, I guess I'm a late bloomer...

Systems

Natural systems are complex but they are typically extremely efficient. Manufactured and managed systems often have inefficiencies and redundancies and other problems. Those that mirror the natural system often work better.

Take curbside recycling programs for example. In New York City, residential recycling is required and separate types of bags are necessary to distinguish recyclables from trash. There are fines involved for noncompliance, but they aren't really a deterrent. For the most part, this works because people are accustomed to sorting their recyclables and the system is pretty easy to comply with. However, the system is dependent on people acting in away that might be contrary to their nature and has to be enforced (which is an inefficiency -- enforcement is not a part of recycling, after all). In Curitiba, Brazil, recycling is voluntary. Homeless folks and recovering alcoholics sort trash and are paid in food and transportation vouchers. The proceeds from the products recovered goes toward social services to help the people who sorted it in the first place. Two thirds of the city's daily garbage is recycled. That's not two thirds of the daily recyclable materials, that's two thirds of all garbage. According the the New York Department of Sanitation's 2006 annual report, NY recycles 12,200 tons of garbage per week, but its total refuse (incl. recycling) collected for the week is 84,000 tons, so that's about 15%.

Which one do you think works better?

You should read about grass farming and all the symbiotic systems that farmers like Joel Salatin use on a daily basis to exploit cattle's natural propensity for acting like cattle and chickens chickens and pigs pigs (for that matter grasses grasses and grubs grubs too, but you'll have to read more Omnivore's Dilemma for that). You should read about Terracycle, the company that gets paid for its raw materials.

It's really kind of amazing and I'm not the only one that thinks this.

Part of this post talks about the complexity of systems, but underlying it all is really the concept that you can't change people's motives. And sustainability really isn't a catchphrase -- it's a necessity.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Three principles guide my reasoning on corporate social responsibility.

1. You can't change people's motives (mostly)
2. Systems are complex and can't (usually) be solved with one-size-fits-all simple solution
3. Sustainability isn't just a catch phrase

Different motives (or values), like I discussed in a recent post on food, can drive toward the same goals if carefully examined. For example, many people are driven by goals like a healthy place to live for themselves and for their progeny. Companies, driven by returning shareholders value (which is conventionally defined in terms of currency), are motivated by cost reduction and increased revenue. These goals can all be met with similar means. For example, a more sustainable environmental program would require it, on a fundamental level, to be more efficient. A more efficient system would by virtue of being less resource dependent, be less expensive in terms of currency as well.

Systems are complex. We learned from Michael Pollan that just switching to organic isn't going to do either of the things it purports to do: increase your health and decrease your environmental footprint. This is because many foods labeled organic are still produced on factory farms, processed with fossil-fuel-intensive machines, mixed with preservatives, packaged in unnecessary packaging, and shipped long distances. Eating local foods grown using non-industrial methods often can be much less environmentally destructive. However, as we learned from Sarah Murray, it's not just local either. A system that works with its resources rather than against them is more likely to be efficient and take into account the multi-faceted reality of life. Finding ways for multiple parts of a complex system to work in a symbiotic way is a beautiful thing. It's harder and it takes more time (think: evolutionary) but we're complex creatures and have created ways to adapt our modern simplistic ways back into the complex systems we came from. (I'm thinking nomad, to agrarian, to urban ... and back)

The definition of sustainability isn't CFL light bulbs and compost piles (well not necessarily). Sustainability means returning resources to the system in a way that is usable to future generations so that the system continues to thrive. Sustainability isn't as selfless as it sometimes is made out to be. Why do people have children (on a fundamental, evolutionary level)? They have children because they need to sustain themselves and once they get to a certain age, they might need some help with that. The American system isn't as family-oriented as others, but things like pensions, nursing homes, Medicaid, and Social Security are institutionalized versions of the younger generation paying and caring for the older generation--it's another product of specialization. In addition, those children, grandchildren, and other successors pass on the memory and legacy of their predecessors. It's a beautiful system and not at all selfless, though when changing a diaper or giving up a convenience to diminish waste, it can feel that way.

So if we can convince (or remind) corporations that their goals aren't necessarily in conflict with "social responsibility," maybe the world would be a better place. Our propensity towards specialization keeps us from seeing a bigger picture sometimes -- keeps us from seeing ourselves in the larger scheme and therefore disconnects us from the larger "system." As other measures of sustainability (like carbon footprints, community involvement, and employee satisfaction) gain value, maybe the way corporations view sustainability and return will change.

Budget

I thought budgeting was unnecessarily limiting and just too hard to manage. However, I've been watching my friend and her budget and she seems to have less anxiety about spending money than I do, which is not what I expected. This is because she knows what she has and what she can spend and therefore if she wants to spend $50 on a manicure, she knows that she won't have to forgo something more important.

The other problem as I saw was management. I wasn't sure what categories to use and I didn't see me cataloging them well. I don't want to get into the business of downloading my bank statement data all the time and I really can't see myself writing everything down or (worse!) keeping receipts. So I found a techy solution.

I use iGoogle as a homepage so that I have easy access to weather, news, my calendar, email, and other things. So I looked for a gadget to add for expense tracking and found one. It is perfect for my needs. It has 10 categories and tracks your spending and automatically totals everything and compares to previous months/weeks.

So, now I'm on a budget. It's based on my previous salary, so hopefully I'll be saving some money too.

Convenience

I can't believe I didn't include that in the set of values in the last post. It is the value that is highly sought after (especially in the US) and also often runs contrary to the other values. How can we have convenient food that is not packed full of unnatural preservatives in packages that destroy the environment? That will probably be the most difficult to overcome.

In many ways, convenient food could be less wasteful. For example, peeled carrots weigh less than their unprocessed counterparts and therefore take less fuel to transport. Does that make up for the machines that cut them? Do they have to then be kept in more packaging and/or liquid to stay fresh? Not sure. But maybe things like this can strike a balance.

Motives

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think so. There has been a recent dramatic shift in the way people think about food in this country. While, that's probably the case, there are definitely several different motives for these shifts and they all seem to relate to the amount of information available. Here are some that come to mind:

1. Environmental Impact of the process and delivery
2. Health/Nutritional value of the food
3. Food safety (E-Coli, mad cow, lead, pesticides, etc.)
4. Community support (in the form of local farms, co-ops, markets, etc.)
5. Variety of food (exotic, variety for nutrition)
6. Monetary cost (to consumer)
7. Support of economies in need (not always local)
8. National security (having an adequate supply of food lest the entire world embargo us)

Sometimes these values can be mutually exclusive (e.g. 4 and 7) but they don't always have to be. I just finished reading Movable Feasts by Sarah Murray. It is an interesting tale of several food items and how they are moved from their place of origin to our dinner plates.

It's clearly a book written by a talented travel writer. But she also takes the position that long-distance travel is a good thing for us and for the world -- mainly focusing on the variety and supporting economies in need arguments. However she attempts an environmental argument as well. Part of it is completely valid in my mind and we should all consider it as we have more information about where our food comes from and we're making decisions about which of that is aligned with our values. That argument is that it is sometimes more energy efficient to import food from elsewhere than it is to grow it closer to home (with heated greenhouses, for example).

Her other argument for the environmental benefit of shipping food long distance is that driving to the farmer's market uses more energy than shipping the food in a container ship (per capita). However, she leaves out that driving to the grocery store where you buy the container-ship-provided goods uses the same amount of energy (presumably) as the grocery store. So it falls short of convincing.

Where Michael Pollan's book Omnivore's Dilemma helped me to see that it's not just organic (which has its problems) that's good, but also local, Murray's book helped me see that it's not just local either.

Making decisions about the food we eat is extremely complex if we're trying to account for the different values laid out at the beginning of this post. However, the industry is learning that we want more transparency about sources and things are getting better. If you're concerned about the food you eat, maybe you will consider asking your grocer and/or favorite brands more about the sources of the food.

Fire the Litter!

It's obnoxious to me that people litter and spit on the sidewalk, in the subway, and in other public places. This morning I was nearly spattered by some dude's phlegm and spittle because he was standing in the doorway of the train (also annoying) and attempting to spit between the train and the platform. On my way home I saw this sign ironically lying on the floor of the car and thought it was fitting. Not only does litter cause fires which delay trips, but as far as I understand it, litter also clogs drains, which in NYC causes floods in the subway and disables the system, as we learned this summer.

There's really no excuse for this. There are plenty of garbage bins in the subway system and on the streets of New York. You don't need to throw stuff on the tracks and we shouldn't see trash and gum on the sidewalks either, but we do. I realize it's a free country, but the tragedy of the commons prevails I guess. If it's easier (and free) to let someone else clean up your mess, then you will.

I choose to self-regulate and mitigate my negative externalities if I can help it. At the risk of sounding preachy, I think you should too. Do you think we could come up with a cap-and-trade market for litter? I would make so much money.

Food Bill

The article I suggested in an earlier post is actually a really nice summary, in case you haven't read it yet. It tells you all of this issues on the docket and gives you the skinny on each side's argument. There's also an interesting set of interviews linked from that page if you have half an hour to listen. These links below are to the same article with a mini-summary from me.

• Crop Subsidies
  
• Should we continue to use tax-payer money to subsidize commodity crops? If so, should we make some changes to the structure? What about tariffs?
  
• Qualifying for Payments
• Should big agri-business benefit from subsidies or should there be a cap that only supports smaller farmers. And if so, what should the cap be?
  
• Conservation Programs
• Paying farmers not to farm the land, paying them to clean up the land, paying them to use more environmentally beneficial practices
  
• Food Stamps
• Providing subsidies to food consumers (as opposed to food growers/producers)
  
• International Food Aid
• How should we structure giving food (or other goods/money) to foreign nations in need of aid? Is giving out food the right answer? Is our subsidy system shutting out third-world farmers?
  

Disclaimer: I am not an expert. I have read a few books and articles and seen one very interesting documentary. However, as a consumer in this food system, I think it's my right to speak out about it. Feel free to comment and/or correct me where I'm wrong.

Basically, the problem as I see it, is that we subsidize based on the needs of a previous generation and because we have different problems than they do, the process needs to evolve if we want to ease the problems we're seeing today.

What are our problems?

• obesity
• diseases associated with obesity (heart disease and diabetes to name a couple),
• environmental degradation
  
• economic imbalance
  

Much of this has to do with the fact that we subsidize commodity crops which aren't actually food until processed (generally using chemicals). Because we subsidize these commodities, we're encouraged and therefore inclined toward eating and feeding our livestock things that we and they haven't evolved to eat. For us that means things like high fructose corn syrup and any number of preservatives, flavorings, dyes, and sweeteners. For cattle and other livestock that means eating corn (the commodity kind, not the sweet delicious goodness that you buy on the cob).

These manufactured food items for us mean that our diet is much less varied. Our bodies are designed, for better or for worse, to get a large array of nutrition which typically comes from many sources. When all of our food contains corn products or is unnaturally raised on corn, this diminishes the variety even when we think we are eating a variety. Plus it supports an economy based on only 5 main crops: corn, soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton. I also tend to think that our ready-made meals (which are largely corn- and soy-based) break down some of our community bonds that come with gathering, preparing and eating of food, but this article is long enough and I don't need to get into that here.

For livestock (keep in mind that I know most about cattle), this corn-based diet is destructive because their digestive systems are designed to process grass. Remember in 1st grade when you learned that cows have 5 stomachs and you thought that was amazing? Well it is pretty amazing. They are able to turn grass into protein in that system--no small feat! It is also beneficial for them to actually graze in a pasture and get some exercise and get some relief from their own waste. However, instead of letting cows do what cows would likely do on their own, we trap them in confined areas where they are encouraged to eat (literally) tons of food that they normally wouldn't touch--all while standing in a slurry of their own manure. This diet and the unsanitary living conditions combine for a negative effect on the health of the cattle. So, instead of having healthy, happy, grazing cattle, these factory farm systems choose to continue this practice and just feed the cattle antibiotics to treat infection. I think we all know where too much antibiotic leads us. Nowhere good.

It's also interesting to know that the government's meat quality ratings are at least somewhat based on having a good "marble" to the beef. Marbling means that there is visible fat in the meat. So our government is promoting fattier meat. It comes as no surprise to me that the same thing that is making our cattle sick and fat is the same thing that makes us sick and fat.

Another underlying issue to the whole debate is the notion of the small family farmer. At the beginning of the Depression, nearly 50% of people were involved in small-scale farming, now only 2% of our population is working on family farms. There's an argument that since we have had so many advances in technology and efficiency, why support the old system? The people who argue against family farms also call it a romantic notion.

Romantic doesn't have to mean wrong if you ask me. I think it would be pretty awesome if when I visit my uncle's farm in Iowa that I would be offered freshly picked food from the farm. However, aside from a small garden which you could have in a suburb, all there is is chemical-heavy #2 corn, which is not edible by humans. It's more complicated and complex to have a food system that is based on small family farms. We wouldn't have 5,000 identical ears of corn or apples or heads of lettuce in our grocery store, but we might actually be able to get all of our nutritional needs met through our food and not have to worry about supplements and pills and antibiotics etc. in order to be healthy.

What a world would that be?

Farm Bill

Yes, I know it sounds weird and country of me, but PLEASE read about the Farm Bill. It's apparently gaining momentum in the senate and we have a DUTY to be knowledgeable about it. I would summarize it for you, but I'm afraid I'm remiss in my reading of it as well.

Food is something that we can take for granted especially in this country, but it is not to be taken lightly. It is a basic element of our daily lives and therefore critical to our health and well-being. We often blindly eat whatever comes in the box or tray or bag not thinking of where it comes from or what has happened to it on our way to our plates. It's so easy to do that. I do it. But we shouldn't. Not only because of what it could do to us personally in the short or even long term, but what it can do to our shared environment, the people who grow it, the economy, and many, many other systems and players.

So please, read something about the farm bill and see what the senate has in store for us. And then maybe contact your senator and tell her what you think.