Eyeballs Roll, Bikes Rock

Today my ophthalmologist told me that since February my prescription has changed. So, just in case, I asked, "You mean it got worse, right?"

"No, actually, it got better. What have you been doing differently?"

The bike. It's the bike. I can't believe it! Yeah, maybe I've changed my diet or my work habits a bit since then, but the only real, significant change is the bike. I've read about eye exercises and other things you can do to improve vision, but like all exercise, it's hard for me to do it just for the sake of doing it (even with a goal in mind). However, if I work it into a utilitarian purpose, life will change. And that's what happened. I'm getting toned arms, toned legs, toned butt, toned core, and toned eyeballs... and all from my 9-mile R/T daily commute and weekend getaways. Are you convinced to start a 2-wheel commute yet?

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.

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!

Find 35 Minutes

You must. Because there is a speech out there worth listening to. Listen while you're cooking dinner or getting ready for work or download it to your ipod and listen to it on the train. Or read it.

Never have I heard such a soberly delivered speech incite me to action more strongly.

Yes. I'm talking about Obama's speech today on the topic of race -- but really on the topic of unity of this nation -- a consistent theme along his path to the presidency.

Like my objections to the blog mentioned in a previous post, he encourages us to divorce the idea that race is something that defines our differences:

"For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past . . . it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans . . ."

He's made the case (or the reminder, if you will) that "legalized discrimination" through generations of exclusion from property ownership, unions, police and fire departments and other means of amassing wealth has caused a divide between black America and the rest of America, and that a lack of other community bonds and services have exacerbated the problem.

He talks about deep-seated resentment in both the white and black communities. How both are destructive unless dealt with in an honest, progressive way.

And like he continues to run his campaign, he encourages all people to make small steps. You don't have to become a large scale community leader to make a difference. You don't have to donate the maximum to the campaign. You don't have to make politics your second job. You don't even have to write a blog post about it. You do what you can, because you can, and because there's only one place to start.

Even if you're not voting for Obama, please vote.

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?

Green Consumerism, Investing, Living, etc.

I think it's not just me. And I think it's not just the people I work and am friends with. I think that people all over the country and the world are starting (and continuing) to seriously reconsider some of the ways we choose to live. That's a good thing. However, like any mass movement, the mass-ive version is less attractive than the original idea -- it gets a little watered down.

Sometimes that's a good thing. Not everyone can wear haute couture (because we can't all look like 14 year old girly boys forever), but nearly everyone can wear prêt-à-porter. Likewise, not everyone is ready to commit to keeping a worm bin and going off the grid, but they can make changes like recycling, switching to CFL light bulbs, and turning off the water while they brush. When great masses of people take small steps, it's as or more powerful than when a few take some giant leaps.

All of this focus on the environment is welcome in my book, but it has its limitations. What is the environment if not the place where we (and many other forms of life) live? The thing that environmentalism, as it is typically defined, leaves out is the social system.

Environmental factors like carbon emission, chemical pollution, energy use, etc. are relatively easy to measure with the tools of science and therefore easier for us to attach numbers to and wrap our minds around. However, those factors don't exist in a vacuum. They exist in a very messy world of societies, states, emotions, and other human realities. Social issues like poverty, community unity, education, justice, labor rights, and diversity are not so easy to measure. Sure we can get data on these issues, but they're much messier and more interconnected. Plus, improvements might take a while to show up in the numbers. But this doesn't make them less important. Just because science/math can't test for them as individual variables doesn't mean that they don't exist.

That's why I like the concept of sustainability. It's not as limiting to "green" things as our typical definition of environment. But if we start using that word to replace just the scientifically measured side, we'll miss something.

If you're interested in other concepts of what we call environment, No Impact Man has some great posts about the philosophy behind what he calls "human health, happiness, and security." He also has some great things to say about bringing the environmental discussion home -- to air pollution on your street -- not just polar bears trying to find icebergs.

I clearly need to read more fiction.

Departure

In a departure from my usual electricity-saving choices, I tried something I've always conceived of as wasteful and stupid today. I went to the tanning bed. That's right I got naked, up-close, and personal with a plastic bed filled with ultraviolet light for 10 minutes. And you know what? It was a departure in more ways than one. I was hot and sweaty, and except for the lack of sand in my swimsuit, felt like I was at the beach. Ok, that might be a stretch, but on a snowy February day in New York City, it was kind of nice. The funniest part was the surprise I experienced when I saw snow outside...

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).

Compost Craze

I keep hearing little peeps from friends and family who are saying things like "Hmm, I really don't see that grapefruit peel in the trash the same way anymore. I keep thinking that it would make excellent worm food. How many worms did you say you have? Do they multiply? Does it stink? How do you harvest it?"

Oh I encourage you! The worm bin makes you feel super wholesome... and if you want to feel a little less wholesome, think about it this way: worms are hermaphrodites and therefore have both sex organs -- they can do anyone! And from the looks of the baby worms we have, I think they do!

I'll find and post some more practical tips soon. I'm just happy that it's catching on without any direct attempts to convert people.

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.