Vocabulary Skills?

So I saw a link that said Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accused the media of “personal, salacious” reporting…

I have one question…

Salacious?

How does she know what that word means? Does she know what the word means?

I never saw any reporting done regarding Gov. Barracuda that was “sexually lewd or obscene” (which is the definition of salacious).

Maybe she thought her bumbling, stammering through the Charles Gibson and Katie Couric interviews was hawt…

The librarian look she sported for the interviews: very attractive…

The strident “mama grizzly” who shoots wolves from helicopters, while indiscriminately, and un-eloquently spewing hard-right, christian fundamentalist, anti-everything except-white-male rhetoric: very unattractive, actually the exact opposite of “salacious”…

I’m sorry, but she jumped into the fray and unfortunately made herself and her state the laughingstock of America…

Better to stay quiet and let people wonder if you’re an idiot than to open your mouth and confirm it for everyone…

Soft on Crime vs. Soft on Value

I was reading the newspaper today, during a quick little break and decided to delve into the comments for a few moments. Mostly because the teaser is so damned intriguing. The article is about three men who were shot in Seattle. The long and short of it is that someone shot them, and the victims knew the assailant. The police hadn’t quite found the assailant, but were looking.

Why I looked into the comments, I don’t know. But I found a few gems.

Harsher penalties is the answer. These gangsters are worthless liabilities to society and if they can’t understand what is expected of them then it is our duty to show them what is expected of them. The prisons are a cake walk for these habitual criminals. We have to turn our prisons into work farms and make these criminals regret being sentenced to “hard” time. Make them suffer through complete exhaustion.

and

And I’m supposed to care, why? Glad to hear they weren’t “innocent bystanders.” As long as they keep taking each other out without picking the rest of us off, let ‘em. Better to decrease the worthless population.

The emphasis in the above quotes is mine.

But statements like “worthless liabilities to society”, “prisons are a cake walk”, and “Make them suffer” aren’t exactly enlightened thoughts.

People might say that the persons leaving these comments are merely being hyperbolic – but I’d refute that. We have a myriad of proof that shows that people who are poor, minorities, and/or somehow not in the current mainstream are seen as worth-less. Unfortunately, the gentleman is right – when we stop viewing our neighbors and citizens as assets and truly expecting them to contribute to society as opposed to giving up hope and losing respect for them as humans – people become liabilities to society, liabilities that our strained society cannot afford to pay for.

Companies are laying off people at a breakneck pace – jobs are drying up, markets are shifting and terrified – and I’d say that a large part of the reason is because of our value system. We’ve forgotten how to value people. We’ve forgotten as a society to respect our neighbors.

Sentiments like “make them suffer through hard work” aren’t productive. They don’t do anything to enhance the person, or society. Hard work can be incredibly rewarding. Hard work IS incredibly rewarding. Ensuring that someone, who has already shown proclivities towards violence has a terrible time in prison isn’t going to stop crime. Rather it only “hardens” criminals. Forcing people to act like animals to survive isn’t the answer to eliminating crime. Forcing people to act like human beings is.

Prison is a necessary punishment. I agree that the person(s) responsible for the shooting should if convicted after a fair and impartial trial, should go to prison.

But lets’ actually ensure that the people in prison (yes, people) are productive to society. Let’s make sure that they have the skills, both technical and affective, to succeed in the general population once they are out of prison. Let’s make sure they never want to go back because they view prison as beneath them – not because they are rationally afraid of an irrationally brutal system.

We’ve added year after year to minimum sentences. We’ve added firearms enhancements to criminal penalties, we’ve cut back on the vocational and educational opportunities for incarcerated people for decades, fearful of being soft on crime – and all its’ done has made ex-convicts more desperate and fearful of going back to prison.

That translates directly into police having to deal with more desperate and hopeless people. People who act irrationally and in unexpected ways.

I remember sometime ago when I was working with the Fire Department. We went to a motor vehicle accident and upon arrival found a car, flipped over onto it roof, with bullet holes in random parts of the underside of the car. Shell casings littered the ground.

The people in the car were okay – two women and their three children. The youngest child was about 15 months old.

The bullet holes they reported, came from the man who after hitting them broadside and thinking he had hurt them badly, feared going back to prison – “Fuck that, I’m not going back” he was reported to have said multiple times, as he emptied a clip of bullets into their car.

Yes he should be in prison. But it’s wrong to ignore that fear – that fear that leads to more irrational violence.

They were lucky their car was a late model one with actual steel protecting them from the bullets. But others haven’t been.

Our criminal justice system woefully needs repair. You can’t rehabilitate people when they haven’t been habilitated in the first place. You can’t teach civics lessons in the colliseum with gladiators all around. You can’t learn peace if you constantly fear violence.

The only way we’re going to be able to truly be “tough on crime” is if we can figure out how to instill in inmates the true value of the wasted potential that unfortunately characterizes the lives of most of their lives…

We have to figure out how to value their humanity in order to get them to value others…

Without doing that, we’re doomed to repeating the same mistakes and expecting something different.

Didn’t somebody say that was the definition of insanity?

Solidarity

So this post is partially the product of a great deal of insomnia. It’s 1:16am and I still cannot sleep. Too many things on my mind, in addition to an overactive sense of night vision and night hearing (i.e. it’s neither dark enough nor silent enough for me to sleep)

But I’ve been hurting recently.

Every day I see these images of Palestinians suffering. I read these reports about how many Palestinians were killed and I cannot help but think that Israel is making a mistake.

Does Israel have the right to defend themselves? Absolutely.

Is what Israel doing in Palestine defense? Absolutely not.

Please don’t take this for anti-semitism, because it’s not. Excusing criticism of Israel merely as anti-semitism denigrates the torture and horrible oppression that Jewish people have undergone. Also, remember that Palestinians are actually included in the definition of Semitic people.

Israel should understand that you cannot fight violence with violence. In a boxing match both people end up injured, one person may win – but if a bout is too violent or prolonged, both fighters may be irreparably damaged – for life. Unfortunately, what is happening in Gaza is just that – it’s a prolonged battle.

But it isn’t the war, and just like the My Lai massacre in Vietnam entered the publics’ consciousness, this “incursion” into Gaza is beginning to be seen differently by the rest of the viewing world. It’s only adding anti-Israel fuel to the fire.

Ultimately, Israel only has so much political capital, and they are spending it rapidly, and unwisely I might add, on military solutions to something that can only be remedied politically. Much of Gaza is hopeless, which helps to explain their nihilistic election of Hamas. Hamas vowed to fight.

Israel also has vowed to fight.

What this conflict is, in reality, is a conflagration between fundamentalist Israelis, and fundamentalist Palestinians – with the larger body of moderate parties trapped in the middle. When the UN, Red Cross, and Amnesty International all ban together to either condemn or demand a country cease their violent actions, you know something horrific is happening.

Israel deserves to exist – without any doubt. But then again, Palestinians deserve to keep the land they’ve farmed and existed on for centuries. Palestinians deserve to have the chance to actually build infrastructure and viable governments.

When the Allies defeated Axis forces in World War II, they ensured that reconstruction was a major thrust of their post-conflict international policy. It’s what has made modern Germany, Italy, and Japan trade partners instead of terrorist supporting governments.

Israel, after their Seven Day war, should have probably forseen the writing on the wall. You don’t win enemies over by condemning them to an open air prison…Security in that region depends primarily on economic performance. Look at Saudia Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt. They are all stable, secular countries. They have definite industries that are supporting them – and they are investing in the development of additional industries to supplant the oil industry as it inevitably wanes and withers over the next several decades. The problem nations in the Middle East have no economic future. They live in poverty and apartheid.

So the blockade of foreign aid: Food, clothing, fuel, medicine – must stop. Starving a caged animal doesn’t make them more likely to respect or agree with you, it makes them more likely to lash out at you.

Israel – stop making the same mistakes that the US is making in Iraq. Build schools, roads, infrastructure. Become a supporter of a Palestinian state before its’ too late.

Otherwise they might succeed in eradicating the Palestinian people. But it won’t be peace that they achieve. Instead it will be War Crimes charges.

In other news.

Oscar Grant, a 22 year old father of a four year old was shot. In the back. While he was lying face down. On the ground…

After a fight broke out on a train between ten people, the BART police in Oakland were called to calm the situation. They arrived and separated everybody it looked like.

Well soon thereafter, Mr. Grant was made to lie down on the ground, face down (in the middle of a subway platform – which is not a good place to be), and was then shot in the back. The ricocheting bullet ripped through his lungs and eventually, several hours later killed him.

The indignity was worsened by the fact that immediately after the shooting, they handcuffed the poor man, while leaving him face down on the ground.

BART Police then confiscated as many cell phones and cameras as they could. But they didn’t confiscate enough.

Then when video of the shooting leaked, they tried a sorry excuse saying the officer probably mistook his pistol for his Taser. Which as we know is a crock of garbage. Much like the officer.

Soon after, the officer resigned, retained an attorney, and hasn’t spoken with investigators, nor has he made a statement.

He also, conspicuously, hasn’t been charged with ANY crime yet. Now, I’ve been told if you have a weapon there are two cardinal rules:

1. Don’t take your weapon out if you don’t plan to shoot something
2. Don’t point your weapon at anything if you don’t want to kill it.

I honestly cannot think of a justifiable reason that this officer would have to kill Mr. Grant. I just can’t. Even if it was all a terrible mistake, his carelessness, the reckless indifference to the safety of the person who he was taking into custody is criminal. Especially given his training as a peace officer, it is unconscionable that he even drew his weapon.

So, to the citizens of the Bay Area – protest. Peacefully. Write letters to everyone on the Oakland City Council, the Alameda District Attorney, and the California State Attorney Generals’ Office. Write letters to the Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority

To the Citizens outside of the Bay Area. Write letters to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and Oakland Chamber of Commerce. Let them know that as long as justice isn’t done, we won’t be shopping or visiting Oakland or San Francisco. Put the pressure on them.

I for one, am tired of being fearful of police. I’m tired of seeing people who look just like me getting killed in various altercations with the police. I’m sick of seeing Al Sharptons’ ass marching. I’m sick of Sean Bells, Rodney Kings, and now Oscar Grants. Again, if the police think that the way to keep the peace is by shooting, beating, and arresting innocent black people they are sadly wrong.

Both of these issues are connected by one thing. Completely unnecessary violence. Counterproductive violence. Senseless violence.

Can we please for once, stop the violence?

50 ways to Make Your City More Livable

For some time now I’ve been thinking of ways that individual citizens, as well as businesses and policy makers could collaborate and make an urban environment a much friendlier, safe, efficient, less stressful place. From reducing pollution, noise, crime, illiteracy, homelessness, unemployment – to increasing transportation, cultural events and traditions, educational attainment, and small business endeavors, these are the first 50 things that popped into my head as solutions/strategies for making your city or urban environment a better place…

50. Add trails for running and biking
49. Plant trees everywhere you can
48. Convince some people to replace their yards with vegetable gardens
47. Help artists, dancers, and musicians make a living by spending city money on commissions and performances
46. FlexCar or ZipCar
45. Separate large vehicles from the small ones
44. Help hunters in and around your city
43. Support your local farms – encourage urban farming co-ops
42. Make sitting on the sidewalk enjoyable
41. Get cars off the road – build subways, trains, ferries, and bike paths
40. Build more tunnels
39. Create business and industrial parks
38. Guarantee health care for citizens employed within
37. Make college affordable for your citizens
36. Reward efficiency
35. Citizen referendums on spending – not taxation…
34. Leverage technology heavily to improve urban problems
33. Use blogs to speak to affected groups
32. Clean, safe Public restrooms
31. Support food banks by giving money, time, or food every month
32. Create a city landscaping program for a persons front yard
31. Go vertical
30. Make it easier for taxis to do business
29. Put the Internet into every home…
28. Digital libraries instead of paper
27. Move utilities underground
26. Support urban farming
25. Support housing co-ops
24. Meld community centers with schools and museums
23. Create an Urban Corps- trade community service for tuition and college credits.
22. Build more bus and bike lanes
21. Make your public infrastructure low maintenance
20. Wage a gentle war on drugs
19. Require criminals to complete community service in order to leave county custody
18. Ensure the elderly aren’t displaced
17. Create regional centers of architectural and historical excellence
16. Widen the sidewalks, not the streets
15. Create a rich underground transportation infrastructure for companies.
14. Sharp tax breaks for living wage companies
13. Build as many pedestrian overpasses as possible
12. Encourage mixed income housing
11. Build magnet schools
10. Give substantial tax breaks to businesses that sponsor local little league and high school sports
9. Build shelters to get homeless people back on their feet
8. Give sales tax rebates to professionals whose presence improves the functioning of the city. Use this to recruit additional professionals.
7. Create housing surpluses with fiscal policy – use this to drive down rent prices, making the living wage lower
6. Ban smoking indoors and within 100 feet of public facilities
5. Establish “club shuttles” to curb drunk driving
4. Operate gun exchanges to get illegal weapons off of the street
3. Give civil service points for living within a high-density urban area
2. Make the cost of public transportation and biking tax refundable
1. Throw several festivals and cultural events every year.

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..

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!!!

Addictions

Addiction is one of the most costly diseases in America right now,  filling our prisons, and killing our children and parents slowly.  A generation of parentless children, and drifting, seemingly heartless walking dead has descended upon America.  From the opening paragraph you would think I would be vigorously anti-drug.  You would think I agree with America’s War on Drugs.  Well, maybe not.  The War on Drugs is the other Vietnam.  The other Iraq.  The other ill-advised “war”.  It serves only to justify the massive prison budget we maintain.  It serves only to justify the massive prison-industrial complex we allow – something that is tantamount to legalized slavery.  It is unfortuate our companies have tapped this unfortunate and disenfranchised labor pool.  I’m definitely a fan of mass murderers, rapists, armed robbers, embezzlers, arsonists, and drug dealers going straight to prison.  I’m also a fan of them working their asses off while in prison.  Just not answering calls for a major telecommunications company.  I’m in favor of them doing something a little more productive, engaging in some type of societal “investment” such as building parks, bridges, schools, maintaining jails, etc.  What I’m not in favor of is drug users going to prison.  The sad state of our decades long drug interdiction campaign is that of broken people, families, homes, and communities.  Today I walked through a small area of Brooklyn.  Brooklyn is an area that despite its’ recent fashionable resurgence is one that looks like a bomb hit it…the bomb in this case was crack.  Introduced by the CIA to fund another pointless war, crack spread through Brooklyn, Queens, really any place with a poor to middle class populace, and it just destroyed the collective consciousness that had managed to build itself.  Unfortunately it was also a brilliant economic boost for those on the other side of the epidemic.  Jails, prisons, police precincts exist because of the scourge of crack cocaine, methamphetamines, ecstasy, and other drugs that are smoked, injected, snorted, and sold routinely.  The economic toll this has on our country is absolutely staggering, and the strategy to reduce this toll is absolutely correct – reduce the market for it.  A drastically reduced market will serve to drive thousands of dealers out of business, one way or another.  Making penalties for dealing all drugs commensurate to the amount of drugs found regardless of the drug would do much to reduce the inequities of the current drug enforcement system.  Unfortunately, putting sick people behind bars will do nothing to curb their illness.  Their illness in this case is addiction.  Addictions are a serious psychiatric problem – NOT a personal choice.  We allow people who are addicted to cigarettes, alcohol, prescription painkillers multiple attempts to get clean without prescribed jail time – why aren’t we doing the same for people who are caught possessing harder illicit drugs?  Why aren’t we pouring money into non-criminalizing medical treatment programs that don’t destroy families indiscriminately?  These are some of my motivations for pursuing research that could help treat addictions.  There is a legion of people who, shaped by both their past experiences – social and pharmacologic – are completely unable to participate in society in a productive manner.  We owe it to them to lift them back onto their feet.  Otherwise we lose the right to refer to ourselves as a “society”

1 in a 100

I saw this quote today in the Seattle Times:Throwing Away the Key: Records show that for the first time ever, more than one in every 100 Americans — some 2.3 million people — is now behind bars. And that was before Rick Neuheisel started recruiting college-football prospects again.If you think about how much money it costs us to lock up the 2.3 million Americans – approximately 100,000 per year – you have the stunning number of 230 billion dollars per year. Isn’t there something wrong with that? Even if we agree they deserve to do something for society – can’t we teach them construction and use them to build schools? What about apartment buildings and soup kitchens for the homeless. Why are we spending that much money on our prison system?

Oh yeah – then I decided to look at the Bureau of Justice Prison Statistics -

At year end 2006 there were 3,042 black male sentenced prisoners per 100,000 black males in the United States, compared to 1,261 Hispanic male sentenced prisoners per 100,000 Hispanic males and 487 white male sentenced prisoners per 100,000 white males.

Wait – say what? 3,042 per 100,000? So there are six times more black male prisoners than white male prisoners in America? There aren’t six times more black males in America than white males.

This is getting ridiculous – am I the only person who feels like locking people who supposedly owe society up – and paying to let them torture one another? Now, I’m no idiot, but if a man isn’t taking any responsibility for his criminal actions before he goes to prison – the prison environment is only going to make his behavior towards society worse. Do people really think a young man who has to fight almost daily is going to be a calmer, more peaceful soul upon his release? Do people really think that giving a prisoner less of a taste of a good life, respect, and an actual part in society is going to encourage them to try to integrate into society? Why aren’t we using our people to the fullest? Why aren’t we using prisoners in a positive way to affect our society? I definitely feel that some people should be locked up – they should be in prison cells. That said, prison inmates should never feel the need to make a knife for protection. They should not need to join gangs for protection. They should not be given $40 and a bus pass upon release. They should be given a job, counseling, and some support. Just my two cents…

Africa, America, and Infrastructure…Strange Sisters?

So we just had a fascinating lecture about Global Child Health and Nutrition. The two are inextricably linked, and a number of diseases and disabilities are tied to malnutrition. But also to infrastructure deficiencies such as lack of clean drinking water and electricity. Now one might say – “well that’s government’s role to fund and develop adequate infrastructure for its’ citizens and their reluctance to do so just shows that they don’t want to help themselves.” While I don’t agree with that statement in totality – especially the assertion that governments in sub-saharan Africa do not want to help their citizens – I can agree with parts of it. A researcher recently brought to light the “3/97″ problem. There are at least two categories of research when it comes to therapies for simple diseases: efficacy and deployment/use. Improvements in efficacy are said to represent the potential(in Africa) of saving 22% more lives, and receive 97% of NIH funding focused on such improvements. Improvements in deployment and use of developed technology meanwhile receives only 3% of NIH funding while promising potential (in Africa) of saving 63% more lives. Unfortunately for Africans, this results in an inability to get meaningful and proven medical and infrastructure interventions to where they need to go. It is also unfortunate for us. On a domestic level – we have a major problem with health care costs in this country, and have to date been unable to rein them in. The American medical system is the tail wagging the dog. We face the same exact problem – deployment and infrastructure – as subsaharan Africa does. Educational infrastructure, and techonological infrastructure as well as health care infrastructure in both is drastically deficient. Spending to improve the deployment of simple measures such as childhood immunization, early testing and intervention for chronic non-communicable diseases such as in America will benefit many children, but also our economy – both by providing a steady stream of non-exportable jobs, and by lessening incidence of communicable disease and therefore health care costs. The same goes for Africa. And it is here where we realize the next dimension of our choices in research focuses. Researching things that will actually change not only our world and the world of countries that not only need us but are looking for help builds allies. Strategically, Africa is the place we need to have an absolute grip on in terms of the feelings about democracy and the United States. If Africa continues to experience the level of despair, exploitation, and global disenfranchisement that is has, it will begin to become a security risk for the rest of the world. Doing things that have the most bang for their buck in terms of foreign aid will work to build our standing internationally. Currently I think the strategies that are warranted in terms of foreign aid to Africa involve water. Fresh water. If we can ensure fresh water to more areas of Africa we enable them to feed themselves, and improve sanitation and hygiene.

But we also secure an area that is soon to be a contentious one – water rights and resources. In America we waste billions of gallons of water. We’ve destroyed fresh water rivers, lakes, and streams. We’ve done this in multiple ways, but at this point we need a sensible water policy. Otherwise we will soon have to deal with the drought and inhospitable environment, famine, and lack of adequate access to sanitation that many parts of Africa have.

Let me know what you think…it’s only a draft, I still need to cite some sources, etc…but it’s a start too…

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…