Dreams a.k.a. intrinsic distractions

I read magazines.

Mostly because they trigger my dreams. They trigger my aspirations. They trigger my wants… My hopes…

I’d like to build things that challenge our current ideas about whats correct in the built environment. I saw a flat-roofed monolithic home located in Sweden in the middle of the latest issue of Dwell magazine. It sits in a prairie, ringed by low, sparsely flowered shrubs and tall pine trees. It is a monument to glass and concrete, juxtaposing a concrete slab roof and floor/foundation with crystal clear glass walls.

It sparked something for me.

Although the house was large I could instantly see it as a treehouse. I could see several of these structures, some made to appear cubic, hanging effortlessly from trees – connected by small skybridges…a modernist version of Swiss Family Robinson…

I thought about the roofs of these homes, they could be gently sloped food gardens, irrigated by rain water or mist. The “floors” appearing to hang, housing infinity edged pools for people to swim in. Decks with easy to manicure grasses could provide a space to recreate, listen to music, barbecue, or lie in a cool breeze. The vertical edges of the decks could provide space for landscaped plantings to both hang and project outwardly – the plants could provide a counterpoint, both contributing to a natural aesthetic, but also providing privacy – dampening noise and obscuring visual lines of sight.

Where plants wouldn’t provide an adequate blockage of visual/auditory sightlines, screens made of an opaque material that absorb sound could be strategically hung. They could grow moss and vines, and would provide both shade, additional privacy, and could solidify the green aesthetic.

Where would these homes go? In the middle of a greenbelt – in an area where native species could live on the ground.

What’s the benefit of placing the homes “in the trees”? Why such an unconventional use of space? How would it work?

Well, first, by placing the homes in the trees, a fundamental goal of the project is realized – more greenspace for people inhabiting the homes. There are additional benefits – reduced noise and light pollution due to the sound and light dampening properties of the tree foliage. The susceptibility of the home to wind/storm damage is minimized by trees on the outside of the “neighborhood” serving as a buffer to the elements. The issue of property drainage and land erosion is negated by leaving more land in a forested state than otherwise possible – having the trees around keeps the land adequately drained in the event of a major storm. Leaving the home in the air also clears the ground for more ecologically friendly uses – and removes a large heat sink from the home – the ground…This should make the home easier to heat in the winter time. By designing the home to be passively cooled, the energy savings should be impressive.

By keeping the size of the homes to a comfortable minimum, a good number of homes can occupy a small plot of land, with a minimum of land paved over. The unpaved land can be used in a variety of ways – as space for gardens, agriculture, habitat for small animals…The unpaved land can be partially cleared, and planted with hardy grasses to allow cars or bicycles a closer approach to the homes, although maintaining normal parking a moderate distance away encourages families to walk a short distance twice daily. Finally, by maintaining the land the way nature intended it, minimizes impacts and actually makes the home a more integral part of the landscape.

Instead of using the trees as the foundation for the homes, I would utilize concrete pillars, that resemble trees, and utilize “cut-throughs” of the homes to accommodate trees into the design of the home. The pillars would be reinforced concrete tubes lined with steel and carbon fiber, sunk into the ground on a footing – the lumen of each tube would serve as a conduit for utilities – water, electricity, cable, phone, sewage – although many of the utilities would be self-generated or collected on-site.

Something that at first might seem like a drawback of the project – the small house size – would later emerge as a benefit – the small house size makes the homes easier to heat and cool and ultimately more efficient. In addition, the homes being elevated helps to keep ground pests out of them. The long walk from the ground – via bridges to the homes would serve as ample points for pest control – allowing rats and mice to be trapped and released elsewhere…

Garbage and recycling collection could be done at central sites – with garbage and recycling being treated as a sort of dry-sewage – being disposed of via shredding and pressurized air blowing it through tubes to a central processing facility where it could be baled and disposed of…

I estimate that these homes would be more expensive to build than normal – although the extra expense would be passed on in terms of long-term savings to operate and maintain the home. In addition, the opportunity to live in an idyllic park-like setting would be unparalleled and very intriguing. Finally, the homes although more expensive could serve as a testbed of simple low-tech solutions to common problems (heating, cooling, electricity, water, sewage) that afflict poor tenants and homeowners in rural housing. The expertise gained in designing and building “homes that float in the sky” could be passed down to volunteers who work to build low-cost tree-housing developments in rural communities.

This is why I have a difficult time studying medicine…not enough dreaming to do just yet…

Waste Not Want Not

I was shocked today when I read a story in Reuter’s talking about the propensity of Briton’s to waste food. Some of the more shocking finds were:

* Briton’s wasted about 6 billion tonnes of food annually.

* Stopping the waste would result in a CO2 emissions reduction of 18 million tonnes annually, the same as    taking 1 in 5 cars off of the roads in Britain.
* The amount of discarded food would fill London’s Wembley Stadium EIGHT times.

Now I’m no saint as far as wasting and throwing away food, and I’m not at all suggesting that this is a problem that is limited to only Britain, but I couldn’t help but think about the implications of this seemingly harmless habit.  Everytime you throw away food, you are a) driving up the prices for everyone else and b)keeping good food out of the hands of people who probably need it. Like homeless people.

You are also driving up the price of oil and adding to carbon emissions.

I never even thought about the latter two as consequences of not eating your lima beans…

It makes me wonder if there could be a better way to prevent that type of waste from occurring.  Something like smaller packaging, purchasing food in bulk in a futures type of manner.  Local food co-op purchasing.

One of the things that I notice that I’ve wasted is eggs and canned vegetables.  Both of these are heavily packaged foods and no single person is going to eat an entire can of jalapeno chilies.  It just doesn’t happen.  Now that isn’t to say that you might not NEED an entire can of jalapeno chilies from time to time, just usually if you make something like chili and you make enough for yourself for the week, oftentimes the packaging size is incongruous with how much you are going to actually need.

It’s the classic hot dog/hot dog bun package conundrum.  Hot dogs packaged in groups of 12, buns in groups of 8.  Either way you end up purchasing WAY more of something than you need.  It’s “good” business, unintelligent economics.

So how can one solve that problem?

Reusable food containers.  Stop dispensing milk in disposable cartons.  Start putting milk in nalgene bottles.  Start making small, standardized, lightweight, leak-proof containers.  Start putting things like milk, yogurt, eggs, flour, bread, and processed vegetables and fruits in them.  Make grocery stores the place of packaging instead of the factories.

How does that help?

Well, for one it cuts down on the amount of space and equipment and energy that is dedicated to packaging in food processing plants.  That has immediate price benefits for not only consumers but also for food manufacturers.

Secondly, it reduces the amount of energy used to transport and refrigerate packaging.  If packaging is 2-3% of the weight of many foodstuffs, there is a large amount of energy that goes to refrigerate it.  There is also a large amount of energy that goes to transport it from place to place.  Imagine if we could reduce the amount of energy output/CO2 emissions by 2-3% with one policy solution.

Another thing that happens, is by putting packaging in the domain of grocery stores, you give businesses an incentive to encourage consumers to recycle.  If you put packaging in the area of the grocery stores, you not only lower the costs of their inputs, but you also give them the power to near permanently lower the amount of packaging turnover…

By doing this, you reduce not only the amount of energy and money that goes toward making packaging, but also the amount of energy and money that goes towards eliminating packaging.

It’s an interesting thing because it almost makes me wonder why our government hasn’t seen fit to tackle this problem.  I’d think that Republicans, with their family values and business/economics “accumen” would be all over this problem.  I’d think they would be trying to cut fat everywhere they could, both in businesses and in consumers – use terminology that they like – tax breaks for grocery stores who would implement recyclable packaging equipment into their locations.  Tax breaks for food manufacturers/processors who want to transport food in less packaging/do less packaging in their locations.

Another reason this would be good business?

By marketing the change in processing location as a strategy/tactic to reduce consumer prices and make food sales more environmentally sensitive/benign you tap into a LARGE reservoir of consumer sentiment and worry.  You motivate consumers to shop at your locations (even if it means driving farther).  You differentiate yourself from the competition in a meaningful and long-lasting manner.  You derive a great deal of “halo effect”.  The lens through which you are viewed is seemingly cleaned off.

Want more business?  Want more profits?  Want less costly food?  Want less pollution? Want less costly transportation bills?  Want less legislative oversight and control?  Want a better brand?

Waste Not Want Not..

I’d like to…

Program an addictive video game that teaches clinical knowledge. And then play it in order to study for boards.

Establish a program of victory gardens that supplies people with pots, soil, seeds, and the tools they need in order to tend small crops of vegetables. I’d then like to take half of the food and donate it to food banks.

Program a document system that combines a webpage with a spreadsheet, database, and a regular word processor. All online.

Be a trauma orthopedic surgeon. And an immunologist. And a physiatrist. And a psychiatrist. And a pain medicine specialist. Really I’d just like to combine these fields to treat people who are in large amounts of pain that restrict their ability to move around productively.

Own an apartment building. The top floor would be my penthouse and the roof would be my garden. I would include a pool at the bottom floors and garden rooms.

Own a coffee shop that turns into a bar at night. It would have flowers everywhere and would feature tango for five to ten minutes every hour. There would also be take-out.

Sleep regular hours…

Tunnels and Roots

I’m fascinated with what makes a city feel liveable. What makes a particular neighborhood or street desirable to live on. How does the built/fabricated/manufactured environment contribute to detract from ones’ health and well being. How does architecture and infrastructure really interact with people?

I have a hypothesis about the built environment as it relates to property values.

We as people who tend to form tight-knit tribes like to have our own space that is as natural as possible.

Most people don’t ever move off of the land that they were born on. Their kids play in the same trees as they played on. They die in the same bed that their parents die in.  That is the majority of people on this planet.

In America though, we move every few years – maybe once a decade.  Kids go to school, the playground, kids move schools every few years.  People change jobs, they go to grad school.  They get married.  They move cities for their jobs.  They transfer to the corporate office so that they can be in the better job.  They buy house after house after house.

But people always seem to want that cozy home.  The one that feels good to come back to.  The one that feels safe.  Quiet.  Spacious.  Private

Some of the things that accomplish that within a city are the positioning of windows.  If your windows don’t look into any other windows, suddenly your home is that much larger, because you don’t have to think about visually disturbing your neighbors, or your neighbors visually disturbing you.  It is as if your home becomes larger by extension.  Windows, are like tunnels that connect your home to the outside.  Only they control the level of connection you have to the outside.  If you have large windows, you have a large connection.  Smaller windows are more isolating, which sometimes is what you want.

Windows also affect noise and air quality in a home.  Which is why views of things that dampen noise, air pollution, and protect the privacy of a person are typically high-value view objects.  What do I mean by this?  Real estate values are higher for a home with a lakeside view.  The lake accomplishes a few objectives.  It dampens sound, both by establishing a physical barrier, but also by actually absorbing/reflecting sound waves.  Sound travels very well through water, but so long as homes don’t abut the water, they are typically isolated from sound that enters the water.  Also, the physical barrier the lake establishes protects the privacy of the home.

Trees are something that take up less space and accomplish many of the same goals.  Trees reflect and absorb (although to a lesser degree than water) sound, keeping the area quiet.  Wind rustling through trees tends to provide a natural white noise that dampens other less desirable aspects of an urban environments’ soundscape.  Trees in the form of a “road tunnel” typically disperse car noise.  They also make the area seem to “breathe”.

There are studies that have shown that a view of nature – i.e. trees, water, plants, animals – is correlated to a reduction in cumulative stress as measured by blood pressure and pulse.  Reductions in stress are associated with longer life span, increased intelligence, and reductions in mental illness.

Another thing that trees do, is add a nominal amount of shelter to the neighborhood environment, outside of the home.  When one drives down a tree-lined street, there is a point in which you seem to “enter” the street.  It’s where the trees start overlapping one another.  It serves psychologically as an extension of one’s home.  It is a signal that one is in a safe territory.

It is exactly this last point that makes the idea of a concrete jungle such a misnomer.  The phrase originates to express the wild and unmanageable environment of a city.  Which is in many senses the case.  Unfortunately, a jungle is an extremely hospitable environment to a person acculturated to it.  Cities, as they are currently built, however are not hospitable environments to people regardless of their acclimation.

Unsuccessful or even absent noise abatement projects, errors in zoning (i.e. Downtown Seattle nightclubs vs. Downtown Seattle condominiums), lack of investment in park infrastructure, lack of investment in public/mass transit infrastructure, lack of stringent building and HVAC noise codes for large institutions, complete coverage of streets with impervious concrete all work together to change the urban environment from one of efficiency, to noise-filled tense heat islands.

We need to see nature integrated more into urban development if we ever hope to make our cities attractive enough to discourage urban sprawl and low-density development that acts as a threat to our current way of life.

Eco-Chimneys, Waste Towers, Algae, Moss and Bioremediation

We do a lot of things wrong in this world.  I’m flying to the West coast right now, and a few minutes ago the pilot told us we would burn 5,000 gallons of fuel in the process.  It makes me feel sorta bad because in all reality this is a pleasure trip that is only making our problems with greenhouse gases worse.  But I digress.  There are concepts floating around the sustainable architecture world that can help us do something right our “gas” problem.  Like “Beano for your Pinto”, there are ways of capturing the carbon dioxide that we pump into the air, and absorbing it in order to reduce our carbon problems.  Eco-chimneys were one concept that I saw, and they looked extremely interesting.  The basic premise is that powerful fans pull air from the lowest part of the road where the majority of cars aim their exhaust.  Suctioning this layer of air off and compressing it, they then deliver it to a chimney of sorts that is populated by a ton of plant life.  There are hanging vines that physically absorb a large quantity of the heat, reduced the thermal pollution produced by the exhaust, and then there are membranes filled with algae that take light and carbon dioxide and other noxious fumes and use them to make whatever it is that algae make.  What comes out of the chimney is drastically better for the environment than what comes out of a multitude of car tailpipes.  At least that’s the premise.

Algae are powerful little suckers, they can be genetically modified to overproduce something, they are easy to grow (water + sun + almost any organic fluid), and they are cheap.  In our case the thing they may one day be tapped to overproduce is biodiesel.  The organic fluid may be a slurry of our urban waste – sewage, food scraps, organic material that is biodegradeable may be utilized to make biodiesel.  I think it beats growing corn and fermenting it to make ethanol.  All that’s necessary is a large pond with access to the sun…and algae, and pipes to supply the pond with sewage.  It’s a long way off – scientists haven’t quite attained yields of biodiesel that are commercially viable, but isn’t there some way we can push this kind of thing to the forefront of scientific development?

In all, I think both of these ideas speak heavily for the idea of bioremediation – we need to figure out a way to economically “re-format” our waste streams to be compatible with our environment.  If we can figure out species that like to eat things like plastics and tin foil – or if we can figure out a way to make them more palatable to bacteria and what not, we can ultimately save ourselves acres of landfill space, and tons of economic destruction and harm.  If we can get the organisms to recycle for us – a sort of “cold fusion recycling” we can continue on our stream of consumerism and overpackaged goods, while hopefully altering the consequences for our environment, and ultimately our health.

It’s starting to look like living near power lines cause cancer, vaccinations might prove harmful in ways we never knew they could, exhaust fumes and particulates cause asthma, noise and lights at night in our cities disrupt our sleep cycles, pig brain mists can cause our immune system to attack our brains, our farmed meat isn’t as healthy as wild meat, lack of exercise due to sitting for hours on end, smoking causes cancer, we have trace amounts of an incredible number of pharmaceutical products in our drinking water that may play havoc with our bodies, and watching too much television makes us stupid.  Our environment, especially in urban areas is killing us – and not so slowly.  Many of these problems have very pragmatic solutions that just take initiative, and bioremediation of our most pressing problems holds an incredible amount of promise as a pragmatic and economically sensible solution to the environmental and climate problems looming on the horizon.

Urban Agriculture: Health and Security – Part I

I’m reading the book Omnivore’s Dilemma right now.  It’s absolutely an amazing book, and his chapter about Polyface Farms, a 550 acre sustainably run farm, committed to local food sourcing has me absolutely transfixed by its’ efficiency and output.  I’ve found myself wondering how one could produce as much food as he does in an urban area.  It’s honestly helping shape my opinion of commercial farming – making me think that in a sense it is wrong.  I feel that biodiverse subsistence farming is a much better option unless you place constraints on the ecological impact of large-scale monoculture.  I read a statistic that says agriculture is responsible for 1/3 of our fossil fuel use in America and transportation is responsible for another 1/3.  We use massive quantities of energy to raise, harvest, and transport food.  But there are many alternatives for raising and harvesting food, and there are many alternatives for the transportation of food as well.  Our country has without a doubt suffered a huge loss of biodiversity, something which will undoubtedly make our food sources less robust and more vulnerable to disease, pestilence, or natural disaster.  Food security is the same thing as national security.  In addition, our current agribusiness principles do not properly account for differences in food quality (nutrition or microbial safety).  Unfortunately the market is differentiated solely on price.  And there are producers out there that do not want to include information as to the manner that their animals have been raised including a) where they were housed, b) the way they have been slaughtered and butchered, c) the way they were fed and kept healthy, d) the lifestyle they led including amounts of exercise and what pathogens they were exposed to, and e) how fast they were grown up.  I’d like to think of a way that I can manage to incorporate concerns of locality, microbial/parasitic safety, nutritional value, and environmental and economic sustainability into a system of agriculture for urban people.

With 50% of our people in America in cities (don’t quote me on that…) we need to figure out a way to include them in our food decisions and give them accurate information that will help them make long term decisions.  People would like to vote with their dollars and I am a proponent of that.  The first thing I propose is a marketing panel for livestock – they should be required to submit information about their feedstock sources, pharmaceuticals they have received, slaughterhouse ratings, and macro/micro-nutrient profiles.  I would also like to know the distance the meat traveled…This promises to be a long series of posts as I research this topic…hold on to your seats!!!

Bike Messengers and Your Groceries

Imagine this scenario: You head to the local grocery store on your lunch break – you throw some fruit, vegetables, cereal, milk, and spices into a small basket and swipe your credit card. You hand the basket to the clerk and walk out of the store with what you want. Meanwhile, the clerk takes the basket to the back of the store – and your groceries get bagged and boxed. You head back to the office and get back to work. You head home a few hours later and when you get there – in your entryway is a package – filled with your groceries, temperature controlled and happy as a clam.

Delivery of groceries can work. It will work better if there is a brick and mortar store for customers to go to and pick their food themselves. It will work best if there is transit to and from the store that doesn’t require the shoppers to carry their groceries on a train or bus back to their homes. It will work best if there is a flexible delivery system and a method to get the groceries back as soon as possible and at as low a price as possible. This is why I suggest bikes. Bike messengers can cover a great deal of area in a limited amount of time. Dropped off at a key intersection by a panel van full of groceries and riders, a highly flexible and low emissions delivery network can be planned and realized in real-time. By updating the queue of groceries to be sent out every 15 minutes, there can be optimized routes and groceries delivered as quickly as possible.

But why? Well, simply this – if we can manage to encourage people to walk to the grocery store, or ride their bike, or ride the train to the store instead of driving their cars, we can increase the market for mass transit. Most people drive to the grocery store with little time, and they only want to get the groceries back in their car as quickly as possible and get back home. But they have to plan out a time to go to the store – they can’t do it during their lunch hour without getting in their car. They can’t have their groceries delivered at a time of their choosing.

But if it’s possible to offer this, wouldn’t people take a store up on the offer of delivery? Especially of canned and boxed goods. And since they wouldn’t need to necessarily come to the store, they could order online from the store. Delivery could be done quickly from a neighborhood store. My thought is that one van delivering the groceries of 200 people throughout a day is better than 200 individual car trips to and from that grocery store. What do people think?

What is green building? What’s important? Part I

Pitzer has three green dorms, recycled steel, materials sourced within 200 miles of the construction site, and storm/rainwater reclamation, low flow toilet, drought resistant plants, and solar panels all combine to make ecologically sustainable living a reality as opposed to a pipe dream. Hearing about it got me thinking about what would makes intelligent, sustainable, green design. Perhaps I’ve missed some things here, but I feel like developers, construction workers, and businesses that at least pay attention to these major categories will have taken a substantial step forward in terms of designing and developing products and places that do no further harm to our environment and urban spaces.

1) Transportation – We have major problems in America with transportation and its’ ecological and environmental impacts. Minimizing the use of transportation services should be paramount in terms of how we redefine the built environment. As loads of construction materials come, loads of construction debris should leave on the same truck – headed to a LOCAL place where the debris is disposed of LOCALLY. Also, sourcing materials should take into account the delivery distance. Locally available materials and labor should be utilized when possible. The ultimate goal is trimming every ounce of fat off of the transportation needs and costs and mileage. Distance driven = pounds of CO2 in the atmosphere.  Another thing that minimizes transportation is the decision about where to build – since this will influence the behavior of the occupants.  If the building is close to services such as schools, parks, hospitals, dry cleaners, etc… Then people will be less likely to drive.  If the building is close to work and there is a reasonable way to get to work without driving and paying for parking and the hassle of driving – most people will be less likely to drive.  If the building is far away from these things however, suddenly people have a huge time incentive to avoid driving.  This is the reason that condominiums in the middle of a city go for so much money – they pay off with convenience.

2) HVAC Design – We humans all at some point need heat, ventilation, and air conditioning. Summer and winter in New York have convinced me of this. Unfortunately, our buildings are designed for heating and cooling, when ventilation would be appropriate. Our buildings aren’t flexible and dynamic enough to cool one room and heat another adjacent room, while keeping both rooms well ventilated with plenty of new, fresh air. My thoughts on this (I’m not an engineer at all) is that central heating and air conditioning are probably the most efficient thing around (environmentally and cost wise) because you have one air conditioning unit and one heating unit. The challenge is to then mix the correct proportions of warmed air, cooled air, and fresh, untouched air. The mix changes depending on the humidity and temperature of the fresh air. The mix changes depending on the temperature and humidity of the rooms surrounding the room in question. These are all measurable quantities, and why we don’t have software that integrates and takes this into account in apartment buildings and homes, I’m honestly not sure… Other simple measures that can control heat gain in the summer are window overhangs, deeply inset windows with white (heat reflective) paint – and light colored walls inside the home.  Another thing that helps absorb heat – radiant flooring and heat exchangers.  Living roofs also help with the heat gain by providing an enormous amount of insulation to the roof, the part that would traditionally absorb a great deal of heat…doubt that claim?  I defy you to get up on an asphalt roof that has been in the sun all day on a moderately warm day – it is extremely hot.

3) Lighting design – I have one word…no two…windows, blinds…More windows means more light, and blinds can be used to control the heat gain from the sun. We need more in depth design theory on how to design electric lighting to complement natural lighting and take over gradually for the setting sun. We need lighting that is low power, turned off automatically when it isn’t being used, and lighting that brightens and dims depending on the task. We need to be able to control lighting when we are away from home, we need to be able to turn on ALL of the lights in an emergency (both at home and at work). And this needs to be something that people never actually think about. Once again, computers can do this – they can measure levels of light in a room and keep them steady, they can encourage people to both open their windows and put down their blinds in order to control temperature, or can utilize the solar heat gain to heat their offices instead of putting their blinds down. There are a multitude of ways that central, computer controlled lighting can contribute to greater efficiency in terms of lighting. Also, I believe light bulbs that last longer are obviously better – less to throw away, less to maintain, better for the environment.

In part two I will address water usage (which is a HUGE issue) , waste reclamation and recycling, low-emission/non-toxic materials, and building siting.  I’m not too sure how many parts this will have – but it shall be more!!

Vegetarian Jesus Milk

I love soy milk – it took some time for me to get there, but I truly enjoy drinking and using soy milk.  I wouldn’t say over regular milk because I just haven’t drank regular milk in a long time – but I really do enjoy eating cereal with soy milk.  Unfortunately I’ve realized I like it fairly watery – I’ve watered down my Zen Soy Milk twice now – I’m going to start calling it Jesus Milk because it started out as half a gallon and its’ been extended to almost 3/4 of a gallon…it just keeps getting thicker.  I wonder why that is exactly… I wonder if evaporation has anything to do with it although I seriously doubt that…

In other news, I’m vegetarian (pescetarian actually) and have been for over a month.  One day after what would have been my 8th year anniversary with the fire department I turned over a completely new leaf – not only do I feel that vegetarianism is a socially and environmentally  sensitive way to eat, I ended up seeing a PETA video that absolutely shocked and appalled me – especially now that there is the huge storm of controversy about sick beef from “downer cattle” in California that was going into school lunches (the cattle had to be pushed with forklifts onto the kill floor) and the outbreak of a suspicious neurological syndrome that was linked to the compressed air brain removal system in a Minnesota pork processing plant – I feel like its’ a healthier way to eat, and in that way its’ more socially conscious – if I’m not sick, I’m not tying up valuable medical resources that can go to those who need them.  And lastly, albeit possibly the most important thing – while I don’t find eating meat wrong per se, I do find profiting from their torture absolutely abhorrent.  After seeing that video I was reminded of the treacherous Middle Passage, where African slaves were piled on top of one another, barely given enough to eat, in the dark, nausea and excrement going everywhere, being beaten into submission , chained and shackled, wasting away in a fucking boat.  I would like to think of those years as the Dark Ages in humanity – but apparently we haven’t quite made the transition to the “Light Ages”.   I’d rather eat tofu and seafood (pretty hard to torture a fish right?) than a cow or pig that never quite got to see enough sunlight, was forced to eat, injected with hormones and antibiotics, never exercised, had a huge infection or sore right before it was slaughtered.  I’d rather eat vegetables that I can wash than animals that seem contaminated for some reason.  I won’t eat meat unless I know the animal it comes from, unless I know how it was slaughtered and how it was butchered. I won’t eat meat unless I know it had a natural diet – one that consisted of grasses, not wheat so that it would “fatten” up.  I need to know that the money I spend on meat isn’t going to torture animals and make slave owners rich. It may seem extreme for me to say it that way, but it seems extreme the way I see it…That said, I do agree, meat is delicious…but my conscience isn’t worth a steak, much less a tough and greasy hamburger…