Somehow, I got it in my head that I needed an environmentally friendly (at least partially recycled) spatula – I didn’t want to buy another cheap plastic utensil when so much old plastic is going to waste. It was much harder to find than I’d thought, I didn’t find any such options at cooking stores, TJ Maxx or Whole Foods. Even online, it was tough – apparently high temperature withstanding and recycled don’t go so well together.

I finally found an option online (Green Street), then I had to find a shop that sold it, which I finally did (online only). Since I was ordering online, I thought I’d best order a bunch at once to save on the shipping environment impact, so I bought a few as gifts (4 spatulas and 2 large spoons). When I got the box, however, it was 20 inches long by 12 inches wide and 5 inches high – WAY bigger than needed (they could’ve fit diagonally in a box less than half as big – the spatulas were only a little longer than 12 inches and the spoons were shorter).

Here’s a pic of the last two utensils with the box:

———————almost 2 feet long ———————-

I don’t think intentionality is nearly as important as most people think.  Rather, it is actions that really  matter.  Actions affect others and the world, regardless of intent.

I heard in the news the other day that Turkey is having a fit because France has made it law that people in France cannot deny that Turkey committed genocide against the Armenian people. The newscaster went on to say that Turkey admits to killing a large number of Armenians, but steadfastly denies that it was genocide.  Is the term “genocide” really so important that it can make the historical slaughter of large numbers of an ethnic group significant or not?

This is the same with so-called “hate crimes”.  If you attack an individual for reasons specific to that individual or for reasons of convenience, that is somehow substantially different than attacking an individual due to some bigotry of the group that individual happens to belong to?

I can see that intentionality matters in terms of regular accidents (e.g., a car crash in icy conditions), but in terms of war or other acts of violence, intentionality should be irrelevant, but is instead used by as complete justification, as if a lack of intent to specifically kill the individuals who died completely excuses “collateral damage” in the case of missiles, drone strikes, carpet-bombing and other weapons of mass destruction.

That said, a mindful intentionality can help reduce the negative effect of one’s actions. If one deeply considers the effects of one’s [unintentional or habitual] actions, then one can change behavior to minimize unintended negative effects.

The 17th Conference of Parties (COP 17) for the United Nations attempt to address Climate Change was an Epic Fail.

Basically, rich countries (including the USA) declined to consider any legally binding efforts and what good ideas were discussed were decided to try to agree to in 2015 (not to take effect until 2020).  Also, the Kyoto Protocol (the only global legally binding environmental treaty) is expiring next year and Canada, who failed to meet their agreed-upon standards is exiting the Kyoto agreement without paying the fines that they would owe, so even that treaty has proved ineffective.

Here are some links with details:

• Climate Activists: Durban Deal is “Very Weak” Agreement, Lacks “Ambition, Equity“
• COP 17 ends: Earth, and Africa, still headed for disaster

What does this mean?  We cannot count on world governments to help with environmental destruction at the global level – we need to focus our efforts locally and individually.

What can you do?

• Conserve materials - use less, reuse more and if you cannot reuse, be sure to recycle or compost.
• Conserve energy - change your habits to use less energy and institute efficiency enhancing measures in your daily life.  Walk more, use gasoline power less.
• Use renewable energy - choose renewable sources of electricity and heat sources whenever possible (e.g., hydro-electric, wind, solar).
• Invest in green technology (e.g., if you’re buying a car, make sure it gets high mileage and emits little pollution) – be sure to research before buying.
• Advocate – speak up about the efforts you are making to conserve resources and share information with others that will help.  For example, you could work on instituting a recycling program at your workplace.

As an athiest, I don’t like to bash religion, which I think is mostly benign, but it does sometimes seem like the believers in a benevolent omnipotent god are promoting hate in roundabout ways.

Some weeks back, I overheard a news story about the earthquake in Turkey. They were talking about how a small family (mother, baby and grandmother) had survived the collapse of their building (their couches had provided space for them to lay) and were found alive after a day or two.  They were interviewing a man who was some kind of cousin or something and he said it was a “miracle” – that God had specifically saved them.  I was shocked – over 300 people died in that Earthquake and this man was saying it was a “miracle”?  I’m glad those 3 survived, but that’s a small relief, nothing close to an act of god – unless, of course, God is (mostly) hate and destroyed hundreds of people.  Calling a tragedy a miracle simply because it was less than 100% deadly is promoting hate.

The other recent thing that struck me was that I found that the Salvation Army believes that homosexuality is not a choice, but that it is a sin and homosexuals must not act on it. I already knew they opposed homosexuality, but what surprised me was that they realized it is not a choice and still opposed it. So, basically, God chose to torture some people with a sexual attraction that is sinful and must be avoided at all cost, while others may freely enjoy heterosexual sex (within context of marriage) as they desire.  So, again, God chooses to hurt some and please/save some.  That’s not benevolence; that is hate.

I never could countenance the idea of some omnipotent, omniscient and benevolent god – it just doesn’t make sense in our complex world.  While I can see how some people might choose to ignore or rationalize all the suffering in favor of some pleasant dream, I can’t see how some stoop to incorporating random suffering into this concept – a benevolent God who crushes some (literally or figuratively) while saving others?   No, that’s just hate.

I can imagine that there’s some divinity in all of us – a spark of creation. That life is precious and that death is part of what makes life precious.  But there can’t be some benevolent conscious being pulling strings above our heads, affecting all that happens in this complex and often tragic world, a being who afflicts so much and yet is the ultimate positive.  A force of good would not wreak random tragedies – it would not punish innocent children by having them be born poor, without healthcare or an outlier of normal cultural and legal protections (e.g., transgender) – it would not elevate other children by having them be born into riches or normal (e.g., able, cis-gendered, heterosexual) and have the world tipped in their favor.

I think this talk of miracles and people born into sin is just another way of people justifying their own privileges.  This way, they can take credit for their incredible luck, without having to feel responsible in any way for the disadvantageous effect their privileges might have on others.

• No need to worry about all the gay kids who are bullied and commit suicide; God wanted us to be heterosexual.
• No need to worry about those crushed by acts of nature – God specifically saved my family.
• No need to worry about those struggling with 3 jobs and no healthcare – God gave us trust funds and a two-house, two-parent-plus-butler-and-nanny family.

Yes, we can feel sympathy for the poor suckers who are spurned by our God, but we, we are special – God has special plans for us.  He gave us such wonderful things and we deserve them.  There is no kyriarchy - we who have power and privilege were simply meant to.

twisted by faithful
slaughter equals miracle
divine mystery

For the entirety of this short century, Americans have dealt with misfortune: dot.com bubble burst and mini-recessions, terrorist attacks, extreme law enforcement response, two extremely long-running (and basically unwinnable) wars, other military conflicts, numerous natural disasters (e.g. Hurricane Katrina) and some unnatural ones (BP oil spill, the budget crisis) and, of course, the world economic disaster that was the sub-prime mortgage crisis, from which we’re still reeling.

This time of hardship should’ve seen the rise of exceptional leaders, but instead has resulted in extreme partisanship, obstructionist politics and a great number of incompetent or completely stymied and powerless politicians.  Yes, there may be a few great leaders out there, but in the sea of incompetent or selfish leaders, the great ones are effectively blocked.

Americans have lost trust in our politicians.  The banks  and automobile companies get bailouts and the CEOs get raises, oil companies make record profits and still receive tax subsidies, but the American people get foreclosures and rampant unemployment while many local governments face bankruptcy.  Moreover, the politicians lie with impunity about nearly everything under the sun, in their mad scramble to compete with each other and get elected for the next term.

We need to trust our leaders – the first step is for them to be held accountable for the things they say.

That’s why I created this petition (on White House site, due Nov. 12, 2011):

Promote Accuracy and Accountability in Political Speeches/Campaigns

We citizens expect our elected representatives and candidates for office to present accurate statements with regard to factual events and information (along with their opinions and viewpoints) in public speeches and campaign materials. However, some candidates and elected officials present “factual” material to the public that is inaccurate or missing crucial detail, and therefore misleading.

We ask that regulations be established requiring federal representatives and candidates to be held accountable for their public statements in the areas of: voting records (their own and those of others); economic data; science; and history. Statements found to be demonstrably misleading would require correction in a forum of equal or greater public exposure than that in which the statement was made.

The recent Occupy Wall Street (and accompanying “Occupy” movements in various cities, such as Occupy Boston) are amazing.  Protests are ephemeral – an afternoon, maybe a few days, just a blip (if even mentioned) on  the news radar.  But the Occupy movement has been able to persist, not unlike the protests in Egypt and other areas of the Middle East.

It’s like people finally had enough, enough of obstructionist politics, of government always helping corporations, letting business and profits drive government.  It’s like other people have been thinking along the lines of my “People VS Profit” post and decided to stand up.

It’s an open secret that our “free market economy” is only free for the corporate interests.  They get to profit with abandon, using workers as if they were unfeeling robots, often not even caring much about customers, as long as both profits and stock prices keep going up. About 99% of us are left to manage on our own – and those who are not extremely privileged are more-or-less screwed.

If “business” destroys the land near you or poisons your health or destroys small businesses or hires people at wages so low they need food stamps, it’s all good, as long as the business contributes to our national GDP.  Why is the measure of our economy all about aggregate revenue and never about wages or well-being of individuals?

I think people are tired of this broken system – they want financial reform, they want political reform – they want a system by the people and for the people, not a system based on profit and greed.

Live long and Occupy.

I don’t understand why adult human beings consider it normal/healthy to eat fluids intended for infants or fetuses of other species.

Eggs are embryonic fluid (albumin + yolk) intended for a microscopic organism to grow thousands of times in size into a baby reptile, bird, amphibian or fish.

Milk is infant formula. Human breast milk is meant to help babies develop into semi-autonomous children.  Likewise for cow udder milk – intended for mostly helpless newborn calves.

How the unwilling donor animals are treated is sad, but regardless of the treatment, how can these fetus/infant fluids be deemed healthy for daily consumption by adults?

Eggs & animal milk are both over-full of protein, fat and cholesterol – far more than any adult needs.  Did you know that excess protein is converted into fat?  And that overconsumption of protein can cause kidney stones and leech calcium from bones?  And  that overconsumption of fat and cholesterol can lead to heart disease?  Did you know that USA is #1 in heart disease (primarily due to overconsumption of fatty animal products like milk and eggs)?

{Their} Mother Knows Best

take other species’
reproductive secretions
how can you eat them?

More extreme weather is clearly a sign from God to fundamentalists to “cut it out“.  Hurricane Irene ransacks the entire East Coast just days after a severe earthquake shook a number of East Coast states and only a few months after a record number of tornadoes swirled about the country (e.g., devastating Joplin, MI).

Obviously, God is tired of the haters, hating on birth control, evolution, homosexuals, government and everything else the fundamentalist zealots (of all religious stripes) love to hate.

This is a clear message of “Can’t we all just get along?”

You know what?  It works - in times of severe weather, neighbors actually help each other and don’t concern themselves with each others’ bedroom habits or fight about rituals or philosophy – they just work to help each other get by, clear the debris and get things functioning again.  But how soon we forget these lessons.

picture from behind my building – a tree downed power lines and blocks my through street (Aug. 29, 2011)

The current political debates, around the debt ceiling, budget deficits and Obama’s leadership are laden with vitriol and zealotry, but are especially frustrating because of the two elephants in the room which never get addressed.

Pretense of colorblindness as concerns our president. Obama is our first non-white president in a country which had widespread race-based slavery less than 200 years ago and widespread legalized racial discrimination until about 50 years ago and which still enjoys a widespread, if subtle, institutionalized racism which exhorts “whiteness” as the norm and regularly punishes those who do not adopt white styles of dress, speech and culture.  Non-whites make up a ridiculously high percentage of the prison population, people living in poverty and people affected by the latest recession.

It is utterly absurd to pretend that race has nothing to do with the difficulties faced by our country and by Obama as leader of this white-normative nation.  If I could ask for one bold change to Obama’s rhetoric, it would be for him to start openly and honestly addressing the race issue.  White racists like Glenn Beck have been calling him “racist” and other epithets for (despite what artificial reasons they cite) taking what is “supposed to be” a white man’s job.  Pundits and press frequently claim that Obama is an “elite liberal” which certainly does not reflect on his political record (filled with centrist and compromise positions), but does reflect his existence – as a black president.

How can we have a meaningful discourse on Obama as president without touching on the effect his race is having in his efforts to lead the country?  How can we unpack the Tea Party and Republican/Conservative and, yes, to an extent, Democrat/Liberal backlash against Obama without discussing race?

President of (y)our Animosity

Audacity Pope
Facilitator Rancor
Ignore (not) Color

Entitlements reform. This concept is both hilarious and infuriating as meant by the people who are pressing hardest for it.  Essentially, it is the people who’ve gotten the biggest handouts saying that people who get the smallest handouts deserve nothing at all.  What is a trust fund or inheritence or having college paid for completely by someone else (e.g., parents) if not entitlement?  What is getting a cushy job without even an interview at a parent’s business if not entitlement?  What is making money through the privilege of owning something (e.g., property, stocks, business) and paying a lower tax rate on your money’s income than many who labor for their wages (you can get a rough idea of how the static capital gains tax compares to [top] income taxe in this chart) if not entitlement?

Politicians who are pushing for so-called entitlement reforms are the same ones who voted against ending oil subsidies (i.e., corporate welfare), even though oil companies have been making extremely large profits even during the recent Recession.

Entitlement Reformers (waggle golden fingers)

Accumulation
Cross-generational Spread
Luxury Spoon-Fed

Ladies who expect male dates to pay for everything up front (1st date and beyond) should expect that those men will in turn be expecting things. Perhaps sex, perhaps housewifey things, but certainly some level of sublimation.  After all, who would pay for something (that is not charity) and not expect to gain something from their purchases?

If women are serious about gaining equality, it means everything. All the boons of being a “helpless” woman fall away, including the financial ones and all of life, including romantic life, must be balanced.  Those who expect to get things without paying, get what you’d expect – debt.  Have fun cooking, cleaning and primping for your gentle-man, entitled ladies.

Chivalry Seesaw

privilege prickles
benefits mask detriments
pay in other ways