1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Brittany Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.
7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.
This appeared on a friend's Facebook notes (seeing the title and knowing the friend in question to be a liberal, albeit one of the southern-US variety, I was overwhelmed with curiosity). He didn't take credit for creating it, but was also unable to remember the source; in any case, I thought it cute and funny. Of course, my thinking it "cute" is probably a big reflection on the fact that I live in a jurisdiction where gay marriage is legal; I might feel rather more strongly about it should I live in, say, California or New York.
(Side note: Interestingly enough, there is some evidence to suggest that homosexuality is not merely just another orientation that doesn't, or shouldn't, affect straight people -- it may be one of nature's ways of dealing with overpopulation. I couldn't find any direct research or scholarly articles dealing with this study, so it should be treated carefully, but found several references, including in the Hypography science forums, to a study done with mice [and possibly again with monkeys] that, given sufficient food and water but finite amounts of space, populations would exhibit higher rates of homosexual sex as space ran out. So maybe Russel Peters was dead-on when he observed that "we could use a couple of homos in India right now.")
I found myself reading the Fundies Say The Darndest Things website last night (which is about hilarious/disturbing things said by ultra-conservative Christians and Christian Fundamentalists, not maritimers dealing with especially high tides). The Fundies in question take swipes primarily at homosexuals and atheists/evolutionists, although they don't leave out Muslims, Jews, pagans, liberals, or women (at least the ones who vote, work outside the home, or get raped). The idea that homosexuality is a choice or a lifestyle to which one can be "recruited" or "converted" rather than a genetic predisposition is kind of taken for granted:
"The only solution we have to stop gays from recruiting other people is to cut off the source."
[On what to do about their son, who recently came out]
"I talked it over with his therapist, who had the ludicrous idea that homosexuality was unchangable and that trying to repress could lead to lots of psychological damage (I've dropped him and will try to be finding another therapist with more moral beliefs). I wouldnt be surprised if he's the one who's feeding my son all the homosexual propaganda about how its 'ok' to be gay. That, or how homosexuality has engulfed the media, making it seem 'cool' and 'hip' and how they were just another oppressed minority. You didnt have to worry about seeing two men making out on tv at my age! I dont want to sound like a fanatic, but Im worried what other effects will come out of this increasingly secular, immoral society obsessed with filth." [sic]
And finally, a guy who has never heard of gay people practising safe sex, or straight people contracting/dying of STIs, or what exactly causes cancer:
"*If* it's right, why do most, if not all, homosexuals die young of diseases
like AIDS, Hepatitis and Cancer?"
Now that we know that homosexuality is genetic, this raises the question of what is considered "natural" -- most people would say that "natural" implies that something appears in or is caused by nature, as homosexuality clearly is, evidenced by the fact that it happens not infrequently in the animal world, too. The only way that one could argue that homosexuality is unnatural would be to say that it is uncommon, by which token albinos, those with birth defects, and those with "outie" belly-buttons are all unnatural. (One Fundie suggests that "most afflictions like this are caused by sins committed while still inside the womb." So if killing gays is desirable, and I can find out that my baby is gay while the bun's still in the oven, would that justify an abortion, Fundies?)
The problem with the Fundies is that you can't argue with them on fair terms; they pick and choose which facts they accept or reject. They will swear up and down that "nothing good has ever come from 'science'", but the day an archeological excavation unearths the stable in which baby Jesus was born, they will jump for joy and point fingers, saying that this is just more "proof" that Luke's (highly historically inaccurate) birth narrative is true, word for word, as found in the KJV.
(The KJV, by the way, is frequently held up by Fundamentalists and the uneducated alike as being the only reliable translation, sometimes going as far as to say that the KJV was in heaven, with God, in English, since the beginning of time. All "real" biblical scholars consider the KJV to be laughably inaccurate and highly theologized. The KJV is to the original Hebrew and Greek what the hilariously mistranslated subtitles are to the Chinese kung-fu movie.)
I did some further reading on one of the websites from which a Fundie quotation was lifted. It made a pretty serious case about "modest dress", and how wearing a bathing suit or looking at people wearing bathing suits is basically putting yourself on the path to hell. And I realized something: I could probably build a comparably strong case for running around naked. After all, isn't clothing just superfluous ornamentation designed to hide God's glorious creation that is the human body? It would be pretty presumptuous of a good Christian to assert that man-made clothes are better than God-given skin, right?
So here is what I propose: next time you find yourself conversing with a Fundie, take the moral high road. Inform them that crying at the funeral of a Christian is a shameful display of weak faith, that you are only having so much sex because the Holy Spirit wants you to, and that God created gay people for a reason (just like all the natural disasters, wars, famines, etc) and that questioning God's will in doing so is not very Christian.
Although, if you meet this guy:
"There are a lot of things I have concluded to be wrong, without studying them in-depth. Evolution is one of them. The fact that I don't know that much about it does not bother me in the least,"
You might have just as much fun replying, "Oh, I know! That is how I feel about church," just to watch his head explode.
Showing posts with label now you know. Show all posts
Showing posts with label now you know. Show all posts
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Cheap and Environmentally Friendly
We all try to be a little bit environmentally friendly in our lives (well, those of us who aren't huge dicks, anyway). But sometimes, while the spirit may be willing, the wallet may be weak. Right now you are probably saying, "Rebs, I know what you are saying. I am under 26 and am gay for the planet, but being under 26 and all, I can barely keep myself in Ramen noodles and beer!" Ideal Reader, don't I have the same problem. The Good News is, you too can save money while being good to the earth! In fact, most of the common sense ideas were originally designed not to save the earth, but a few dollars.
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #1: Remember what you learned in elementary school.
This one won't save you much money, but it is free, or as we like to call it, budget-neutral. Do you remember learning about the "3 Rs" back in second grade? I don't mean reading, riting, and 'rithmatic, I mean reduce, reuse, and recycle. For example, you can REDUCE the amount of trash you produce by REUSING those plastic ziplock baggies and RECYCLING your pop cans.
Recycling is, unfortunately, not very profitable for most things. Even with all the neat things you can make out of old pop bottles (pullover sweaters!! who would have guessed?) it is still an expensive process. But new technologies are constantly being developed, with new applications being discovered for recycled materials. But one thing that is actually profitable is aluminum -- pop cans for example. Aluminum is pretty awesome as far as poor metals go, and epically recyclable.
One of the things you can do to improve your recycling quotient is to make sure you know what kinds of plastic can be recycled in your area. Most of us instinctively throw an empty yogurt cup or margarine dish into the recycling box, but what about shampoo bottles, or that Tupperware dish you accidentally left on the stove burner and burned a big hole in? Your municipality should publish a list of what can and can't be recycled, as well as instructions for sorting. Just call them up and ask for a copy.
If you are too poor/cheap/lazy to procure an extra recycling box, or if you live in a building where there are big communal recycling boxes in the basement, you can make your own. For example, use an empty cardboard box (2-4s work great if you are mostly recycling paper), and just dump the whole package in your recycling pile.
Get Rich, Hobo-Style: In all provinces and territories, empty beer bottles (and frequently other types of beverage containers) are refundable, usually at 10 cents per bottle. If you are drinking the cheap buck-a-beer stuff, this means that 11 cases of empties equals one free full one! (10 for the beer and 1 for the deposit.)
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #2: Reuse the stuff you buy.
Ziplock baggies are awesome. They keep your cheese from going all dry and hard in the fridge, and your egg salad sandwich from falling apart in your knapsack. They also keep your toiletries together and unexploded while traveling, and your large safety-pin collection from being scattered all over the bottom of your sock drawer. But the best thing about ziplock baggies is that one package can last upwards of a year if you take care of it. All you have to do is wash them out every now and again!
Glass bottles and old plastic containers are similarly awesome. Glass bottles, unlike the plastic ones, stand up much better to being washed-out and refilled while also not leaking crazy toxic shit into your drink. Plastic containers such as those used for packaging yogurt and margarine make great free tupperware (although their level of dishwasher- and microwave-safeness is seriously questionable).
There are tons of ways to reuse the stuff you buy. Things you should not reuse include toilet paper, condoms, and old science textbooks.
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #3: Buy stuff meant to be reused.
Rechargeable batteries, tupperware, lunch boxes, water bottles, and paper clips are all great ideas that we know we should use (even if we don't).
But ladies, you may be missing something that is environmentally-friendly as well as being budget-friendly and friendly for your use as well.
The DivaCup requires an initial investment, but it lasts about 10 years (or until you first give birth, if you haven't already, at which point you'll need a new size). Think of how much you spend on your period in a year, then multiply that by 10. The DivaCup can cost you as little as 30 cents per period, or less (depending on how much you end up paying for it). In addition, it is made of medical-grade silicon, making it hypoallergenic, super-easy to sterilize, and less irritating to your va-jay-jay than super-absorbent tampons. It's great for traveling, as it doesn't take up much space in your bags and you won't have to worry about running out of supplies. Best of all is that it produces no waste after the initial packaging. If you'll save money with this baby, you will definitely save space in the landfill.
Other environmentally-friendly period products include sea sponges, which are worn internally and last a few periods each, and cloth pads, which are worn just like disposable ones but last for ages. Both are washed between uses. If you think washing in between use is gross, go ask your grandmother what she used during the war.
If you are not totally ready to switch to reusable products, you can at least make your Aunt Flo slightly more environmentally-friendly by switching to o.b. tampons, which are tiny and have no applicator, yet are still extremely effective. According to their website, these little suckers generate 1lb less waste per year than your average applicator tampon.
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #4: Reuse stuff other people have already bought.
When was the last time you went to Value Village, Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or your other local thrift shop? I mean to buy stuff, not to drop off a garbage bag full of ill-fitting clothes you haven't worn in a year. Thrift shops are not the best place to go for up-to-the-minute fashion or a specific item, but they are great for staples like jeans or dress shirts/blouses, or the quirky or unique items. For homemade Halloween costumes, they are a great resource. The best thing to do is go with a few friends and a camera and make an afternoon of it. In between trying on wacky things that were very understandably donated, you'll likely find a few gems. Second-hand shoes are already broken in, and finding a classic item of clothing that fits you well is more flattering than a trendy overpriced item. It helps if you know how to sew, or have a friend who does; shirts, for example, are easy to take in for a better fit. Remember, things can be made into other things, too! Cool bedsheets, table cloths, and pillow cases make great skirts, shirts, and scarves. And if you don't mind mismatched sets, you can get an awesome kitchenware collection. No more drinking wine out of tumblers!
Church sales are another great place to look for things like kitchenware, books, records, and occasionally (though less often) clothing. They are often run largely by old ladies who undercharge for everything, and I challenge you to find Treasure Trolls or Moon Shoes at Toys'R'Us.
Another great resource for higher-ticket items is classifieds, like craigslist or kijiji. Both have free stuff sections too, if you are really poor, or you can try Freecycling. If your apartment is full of shitty secondhand stuff anyway, it may as well be as cheap as possible!
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #5: When it comes to packaging, less is more.
Buying in bulk has an advantage other than being less expensive. Larger sizes mean fewer smaller sizes, and thus, less packaging. Individually-wrapped items are almost always more expensive than their wrapped-all-together counterparts. 2L of juice and a 99-cent reusable sippy box versus 13 juice boxes? You do the math. Go ahead and buy bulk! Just make sure that buying in bulk isn't causing you to eat in bulk.
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #6: Don't pay more for processing.
Bottled water. Ugh. Don't make me say it again; we all know that bottled water is the hugest scam ever. There is a saying that bottled water started with some guy in France asking himself, "How dumb do I think Americans really are?" The answer, apparently, is dumber than he could ever have hoped or dreamed. If you are out somewhere with no water fountain in sight and you are dying of thirst, at least buy some apple juice or something in a glass bottle. That way, you are at least paying for some nutrients and flavour, and when you get thirsty again, you can refill your glass bottle with water at the nearest tap or fountain. The vast majority of tap water in North America and Western Europe is safe to drink, and if for some reason it isn't, there will usually be a sign nearby like "Don't drink this shit". If for whatever reason tap water gives you the heebie-jeebies, get a Brita filter. They are epically less expensive and environmentally devastating than bottled water. If you just like your water cold, for pete's sake put it in a Kool-Aid pitcher!
This section is great for talking to your grandparents about their experiences during the war(s). Back then, nothing was wasted, especially if they lived in Europe but even those living in Canada were saving everything to help the war effort. The Great Depression was another big saver; you might notice that your grandparents would never dare throw away leftovers and will wrap up and save the smallest crumb of food. (For a great example of this, read The Widows by Suzette Mayr. For one, Frau Schnadlehuber spreads bacon fat on her toast because just throwing out perfectly good fat is unacceptable.)
Very few items of clothing are ever thrown out at my grandma's house. If your underpants or bath towel are so old and worn out as to be indecent, the item in question will be cut up to make rags, which will be used to clean the bathroom, kitchen, and anything else requiring rags. No Lysol wipes here! Pine Sol? Screw that. Mix a little lemon or vinegar with water and put it in a reusable spray bottle -- this will clean 95% of anything that needs to be cleaned with a rag. Vinegar, baking soda, and hairspray are all part of her laundry stain-combating inventory. Why pay extra for commercial products when household remedies are much cheaper - and coincidentally, more environmentally-friendly? My grandfather, in the same vein, has jars upon jars of saved nails, screws, and other odds and ends in the garage, but that's a different story entirely ...
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #7: Garden.
This may or may not be a workable idea for you, depending on whether you live in a house with a backyard, or an apartment where all your plants are either smokeable or from Ikea (the plant equivalent of being a zombie). If you don't have a backyard but still want to garden, you can check out community gardens in your area -- bigger cities especially often have public areas where you can have a little plot, although sometimes there are restrictions on what you are allowed to grow (flowers or veggies -- although you might circumvent this by growing edible flowers).
Vegetables are the best thing to grow for a great combination of cheap and environmentally-friendly. Many vegetables also taste much better when home-grown, as things like tomatoes and corn start losing their flavour the moment they're picked. Tomatoes are especially good for home gardens as they are easy to grow, versatile in cooking, and tend to grow quite profusely (you'll be giving your neighbours tomatoes throughout the month of July). You can even grow them in large pots if you have a balcony or fire escape but no back yard. Other great backyard crops for southern Canada are cucumbers, green beans, chives, sweet corn, strawberries, raspberries, and zucchini.
A great, environmentally-friendly boost to your garden is fertilizer, such as dried cow, pig, or sheep poop, available from your local Canadian Tire for around $10-$15 per bag. Wait, you don't want to pay money for literal crap? Then maybe you should try composting. This involves a big black box in your back yard which you fill with basically anything that's biodegradable. Pure plant matter (fruit & veggie scraps, non-treated lawn clippings, leaves, dead flowers) works best, followed by table scraps and certain other kitchen matter (moldy bread, coffee grounds and filters, wet paper towels). Egg shells are compostable but tend to decompose at a much slower rate, so you might still see them in your flowerbeds when you spread your compost. Dairy and meat are also technically compostable, but not recommended as it's not very hygienic and tends to smell terrible and attract wild animals. Poop is also technically compostable but certain bothersome laws prevent you from pooping in a bucket and putting it in your garden.
If you can't garden, you can at least make the gesture and do number 8 ...
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #8: Buy local.
Ever notice how apples from Canada are cheaper than apples from Fiji? How tomatoes from Canada taste a lot better than the ones from Mexico? This is nature trying to tell you something.
Buying local is actually more environmentally friendly than buying organic, as not all chemical farming practices are bad. Buying organic strawberries from California instead of eating your own damned strawberries still means inflated prices and carbon emissions due to transportation, and strawberries that taste like nothing. Of course, if you live in Nova Scotia and you want to eat bananas, your locally-grown search might be, um, fruitless. You might have to make some dietary shifts. But, depending on where you live, there is probably a rich variety of fruits and veggies available. Go to weekend farmer's markets or buy from roadside stands and you can be sure you aren't buying anything grown more than 60 km away.
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #1: Remember what you learned in elementary school.
This one won't save you much money, but it is free, or as we like to call it, budget-neutral. Do you remember learning about the "3 Rs" back in second grade? I don't mean reading, riting, and 'rithmatic, I mean reduce, reuse, and recycle. For example, you can REDUCE the amount of trash you produce by REUSING those plastic ziplock baggies and RECYCLING your pop cans.
Recycling is, unfortunately, not very profitable for most things. Even with all the neat things you can make out of old pop bottles (pullover sweaters!! who would have guessed?) it is still an expensive process. But new technologies are constantly being developed, with new applications being discovered for recycled materials. But one thing that is actually profitable is aluminum -- pop cans for example. Aluminum is pretty awesome as far as poor metals go, and epically recyclable.
One of the things you can do to improve your recycling quotient is to make sure you know what kinds of plastic can be recycled in your area. Most of us instinctively throw an empty yogurt cup or margarine dish into the recycling box, but what about shampoo bottles, or that Tupperware dish you accidentally left on the stove burner and burned a big hole in? Your municipality should publish a list of what can and can't be recycled, as well as instructions for sorting. Just call them up and ask for a copy.
If you are too poor/cheap/lazy to procure an extra recycling box, or if you live in a building where there are big communal recycling boxes in the basement, you can make your own. For example, use an empty cardboard box (2-4s work great if you are mostly recycling paper), and just dump the whole package in your recycling pile.
Get Rich, Hobo-Style: In all provinces and territories, empty beer bottles (and frequently other types of beverage containers) are refundable, usually at 10 cents per bottle. If you are drinking the cheap buck-a-beer stuff, this means that 11 cases of empties equals one free full one! (10 for the beer and 1 for the deposit.)
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #2: Reuse the stuff you buy.
Ziplock baggies are awesome. They keep your cheese from going all dry and hard in the fridge, and your egg salad sandwich from falling apart in your knapsack. They also keep your toiletries together and unexploded while traveling, and your large safety-pin collection from being scattered all over the bottom of your sock drawer. But the best thing about ziplock baggies is that one package can last upwards of a year if you take care of it. All you have to do is wash them out every now and again!
Glass bottles and old plastic containers are similarly awesome. Glass bottles, unlike the plastic ones, stand up much better to being washed-out and refilled while also not leaking crazy toxic shit into your drink. Plastic containers such as those used for packaging yogurt and margarine make great free tupperware (although their level of dishwasher- and microwave-safeness is seriously questionable).
There are tons of ways to reuse the stuff you buy. Things you should not reuse include toilet paper, condoms, and old science textbooks.
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #3: Buy stuff meant to be reused.
Rechargeable batteries, tupperware, lunch boxes, water bottles, and paper clips are all great ideas that we know we should use (even if we don't).
But ladies, you may be missing something that is environmentally-friendly as well as being budget-friendly and friendly for your use as well.
The DivaCup requires an initial investment, but it lasts about 10 years (or until you first give birth, if you haven't already, at which point you'll need a new size). Think of how much you spend on your period in a year, then multiply that by 10. The DivaCup can cost you as little as 30 cents per period, or less (depending on how much you end up paying for it). In addition, it is made of medical-grade silicon, making it hypoallergenic, super-easy to sterilize, and less irritating to your va-jay-jay than super-absorbent tampons. It's great for traveling, as it doesn't take up much space in your bags and you won't have to worry about running out of supplies. Best of all is that it produces no waste after the initial packaging. If you'll save money with this baby, you will definitely save space in the landfill.
Other environmentally-friendly period products include sea sponges, which are worn internally and last a few periods each, and cloth pads, which are worn just like disposable ones but last for ages. Both are washed between uses. If you think washing in between use is gross, go ask your grandmother what she used during the war.
If you are not totally ready to switch to reusable products, you can at least make your Aunt Flo slightly more environmentally-friendly by switching to o.b. tampons, which are tiny and have no applicator, yet are still extremely effective. According to their website, these little suckers generate 1lb less waste per year than your average applicator tampon.
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #4: Reuse stuff other people have already bought.
When was the last time you went to Value Village, Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or your other local thrift shop? I mean to buy stuff, not to drop off a garbage bag full of ill-fitting clothes you haven't worn in a year. Thrift shops are not the best place to go for up-to-the-minute fashion or a specific item, but they are great for staples like jeans or dress shirts/blouses, or the quirky or unique items. For homemade Halloween costumes, they are a great resource. The best thing to do is go with a few friends and a camera and make an afternoon of it. In between trying on wacky things that were very understandably donated, you'll likely find a few gems. Second-hand shoes are already broken in, and finding a classic item of clothing that fits you well is more flattering than a trendy overpriced item. It helps if you know how to sew, or have a friend who does; shirts, for example, are easy to take in for a better fit. Remember, things can be made into other things, too! Cool bedsheets, table cloths, and pillow cases make great skirts, shirts, and scarves. And if you don't mind mismatched sets, you can get an awesome kitchenware collection. No more drinking wine out of tumblers!
Church sales are another great place to look for things like kitchenware, books, records, and occasionally (though less often) clothing. They are often run largely by old ladies who undercharge for everything, and I challenge you to find Treasure Trolls or Moon Shoes at Toys'R'Us.
Another great resource for higher-ticket items is classifieds, like craigslist or kijiji. Both have free stuff sections too, if you are really poor, or you can try Freecycling. If your apartment is full of shitty secondhand stuff anyway, it may as well be as cheap as possible!
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #5: When it comes to packaging, less is more.
Buying in bulk has an advantage other than being less expensive. Larger sizes mean fewer smaller sizes, and thus, less packaging. Individually-wrapped items are almost always more expensive than their wrapped-all-together counterparts. 2L of juice and a 99-cent reusable sippy box versus 13 juice boxes? You do the math. Go ahead and buy bulk! Just make sure that buying in bulk isn't causing you to eat in bulk.
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #6: Don't pay more for processing.
Bottled water. Ugh. Don't make me say it again; we all know that bottled water is the hugest scam ever. There is a saying that bottled water started with some guy in France asking himself, "How dumb do I think Americans really are?" The answer, apparently, is dumber than he could ever have hoped or dreamed. If you are out somewhere with no water fountain in sight and you are dying of thirst, at least buy some apple juice or something in a glass bottle. That way, you are at least paying for some nutrients and flavour, and when you get thirsty again, you can refill your glass bottle with water at the nearest tap or fountain. The vast majority of tap water in North America and Western Europe is safe to drink, and if for some reason it isn't, there will usually be a sign nearby like "Don't drink this shit". If for whatever reason tap water gives you the heebie-jeebies, get a Brita filter. They are epically less expensive and environmentally devastating than bottled water. If you just like your water cold, for pete's sake put it in a Kool-Aid pitcher!
This section is great for talking to your grandparents about their experiences during the war(s). Back then, nothing was wasted, especially if they lived in Europe but even those living in Canada were saving everything to help the war effort. The Great Depression was another big saver; you might notice that your grandparents would never dare throw away leftovers and will wrap up and save the smallest crumb of food. (For a great example of this, read The Widows by Suzette Mayr. For one, Frau Schnadlehuber spreads bacon fat on her toast because just throwing out perfectly good fat is unacceptable.)
Very few items of clothing are ever thrown out at my grandma's house. If your underpants or bath towel are so old and worn out as to be indecent, the item in question will be cut up to make rags, which will be used to clean the bathroom, kitchen, and anything else requiring rags. No Lysol wipes here! Pine Sol? Screw that. Mix a little lemon or vinegar with water and put it in a reusable spray bottle -- this will clean 95% of anything that needs to be cleaned with a rag. Vinegar, baking soda, and hairspray are all part of her laundry stain-combating inventory. Why pay extra for commercial products when household remedies are much cheaper - and coincidentally, more environmentally-friendly? My grandfather, in the same vein, has jars upon jars of saved nails, screws, and other odds and ends in the garage, but that's a different story entirely ...
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #7: Garden.
This may or may not be a workable idea for you, depending on whether you live in a house with a backyard, or an apartment where all your plants are either smokeable or from Ikea (the plant equivalent of being a zombie). If you don't have a backyard but still want to garden, you can check out community gardens in your area -- bigger cities especially often have public areas where you can have a little plot, although sometimes there are restrictions on what you are allowed to grow (flowers or veggies -- although you might circumvent this by growing edible flowers).
Vegetables are the best thing to grow for a great combination of cheap and environmentally-friendly. Many vegetables also taste much better when home-grown, as things like tomatoes and corn start losing their flavour the moment they're picked. Tomatoes are especially good for home gardens as they are easy to grow, versatile in cooking, and tend to grow quite profusely (you'll be giving your neighbours tomatoes throughout the month of July). You can even grow them in large pots if you have a balcony or fire escape but no back yard. Other great backyard crops for southern Canada are cucumbers, green beans, chives, sweet corn, strawberries, raspberries, and zucchini.
A great, environmentally-friendly boost to your garden is fertilizer, such as dried cow, pig, or sheep poop, available from your local Canadian Tire for around $10-$15 per bag. Wait, you don't want to pay money for literal crap? Then maybe you should try composting. This involves a big black box in your back yard which you fill with basically anything that's biodegradable. Pure plant matter (fruit & veggie scraps, non-treated lawn clippings, leaves, dead flowers) works best, followed by table scraps and certain other kitchen matter (moldy bread, coffee grounds and filters, wet paper towels). Egg shells are compostable but tend to decompose at a much slower rate, so you might still see them in your flowerbeds when you spread your compost. Dairy and meat are also technically compostable, but not recommended as it's not very hygienic and tends to smell terrible and attract wild animals. Poop is also technically compostable but certain bothersome laws prevent you from pooping in a bucket and putting it in your garden.
If you can't garden, you can at least make the gesture and do number 8 ...
How To Save The Earth And Money Idea #8: Buy local.
Ever notice how apples from Canada are cheaper than apples from Fiji? How tomatoes from Canada taste a lot better than the ones from Mexico? This is nature trying to tell you something.
Buying local is actually more environmentally friendly than buying organic, as not all chemical farming practices are bad. Buying organic strawberries from California instead of eating your own damned strawberries still means inflated prices and carbon emissions due to transportation, and strawberries that taste like nothing. Of course, if you live in Nova Scotia and you want to eat bananas, your locally-grown search might be, um, fruitless. You might have to make some dietary shifts. But, depending on where you live, there is probably a rich variety of fruits and veggies available. Go to weekend farmer's markets or buy from roadside stands and you can be sure you aren't buying anything grown more than 60 km away.
Friday, September 5, 2008
September Reading
Don't you just love the first day of school?!
It's the biggest thrill of my life.
Now that it's back-to-school time, the scholars among us are opening our wallets and dumping the contents of our bank accounts at the bookstores. And all of a sudden, we have about 84,000 hours a week more of reading to do than we did in the summer (a typical week only contains 168 hours, so you can imagine how distressing this is).
Those among us who are not scholars are laughing. Scholars, take heart. We'll SEE who's laughing at tax time.
My little sis is partaking of higher education for the very first time this September. And, knowing full well (but perhaps not realizing) that she would be doing much, much more reading than she is used to in the coming months, she asked me, her older, wiser, English-major sister, for books. That's right, she wanted to carve out some time to read the classics. In an attempt not to scare her off right away, I picked out two easy ones for her: Dracula and The Great Gatsby. Also, they were on sale, which in my opinion made them even better choices.
Couldn't we each carve out a little time to make ourselves a little better-read? It might not improve our chances of getting a job or make us any healthier, but it might make us slightly more interesting at parties, thereby increasing our chances of getting laid. So, I present to you my recommendation for your September reading list.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
You may have heard things about the Canterbury Tales which have scared you off. You may have even had a look at the original, which scared you so off that you've never considered reading it in its entirety. The thing about the Canterbury Tales is that it was written in Middle English (which bears no relation to Middle Earth). Some people mistakenly think that The Canterbury Tales is "Old English". Other people mistakenly think Shakespeare is Old English. What is actually Old English is Beowulf, and Old English is in fact so far removed from Modern English that it probably bears a closer resemblance to German, with a little Scottish thrown in. Shakespeare is Modern English. The Canterbury Tales is Middle English. Now you know.
Middle English, while still vaguely comprehensible to the Modern English reader, is rather hard to read through comfortably -- not unlike Trainspotting. For example:
It's the biggest thrill of my life.
Now that it's back-to-school time, the scholars among us are opening our wallets and dumping the contents of our bank accounts at the bookstores. And all of a sudden, we have about 84,000 hours a week more of reading to do than we did in the summer (a typical week only contains 168 hours, so you can imagine how distressing this is).
Those among us who are not scholars are laughing. Scholars, take heart. We'll SEE who's laughing at tax time.
My little sis is partaking of higher education for the very first time this September. And, knowing full well (but perhaps not realizing) that she would be doing much, much more reading than she is used to in the coming months, she asked me, her older, wiser, English-major sister, for books. That's right, she wanted to carve out some time to read the classics. In an attempt not to scare her off right away, I picked out two easy ones for her: Dracula and The Great Gatsby. Also, they were on sale, which in my opinion made them even better choices.
Couldn't we each carve out a little time to make ourselves a little better-read? It might not improve our chances of getting a job or make us any healthier, but it might make us slightly more interesting at parties, thereby increasing our chances of getting laid. So, I present to you my recommendation for your September reading list.
The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
You may have heard things about the Canterbury Tales which have scared you off. You may have even had a look at the original, which scared you so off that you've never considered reading it in its entirety. The thing about the Canterbury Tales is that it was written in Middle English (which bears no relation to Middle Earth). Some people mistakenly think that The Canterbury Tales is "Old English". Other people mistakenly think Shakespeare is Old English. What is actually Old English is Beowulf, and Old English is in fact so far removed from Modern English that it probably bears a closer resemblance to German, with a little Scottish thrown in. Shakespeare is Modern English. The Canterbury Tales is Middle English. Now you know.
Middle English, while still vaguely comprehensible to the Modern English reader, is rather hard to read through comfortably -- not unlike Trainspotting. For example:
When that Aprille with his showres swoot
The drought of Marche hath percèd to the root,
And bathèd every veyn in suche licoúr,
From which vertu engendred is the flour;
When Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Enspirèd hath in every holte and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe course runne,
And smale fowles maken melodie,
That slepen al the night with open eye,
So pricketh them natúre in their coráges:—
Thenne longen folk to go on pilgrimàges,
And palmers for to seeken strange strandes,
To distant seintes, known in sondry landes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Canturbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seeke,
That them hath holpen when that they were weeke.
The drought of Marche hath percèd to the root,
And bathèd every veyn in suche licoúr,
From which vertu engendred is the flour;
When Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
Enspirèd hath in every holte and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe course runne,
And smale fowles maken melodie,
That slepen al the night with open eye,
So pricketh them natúre in their coráges:—
Thenne longen folk to go on pilgrimàges,
And palmers for to seeken strange strandes,
To distant seintes, known in sondry landes;
And specially, from every shires ende
Of Engelond, to Canturbury they wende,
The holy blisful martir for to seeke,
That them hath holpen when that they were weeke.
- The General Prologue
As you may have noticed, this was in the 1380s, before Webster or the Oxford University Press, and people were not particularly concerned with standardized spelling. Also, pronunciation was a little different from what it is today. All this is enough to discourage the casual classics reader who is just trying to get laid. I mean, what the heck are "swoot showres"? Where is Engelond, anyway? And who is this blissful martyr fellow, if that's what he really is? (He's Thomas à Beckett. Look it up on Wikipedia.)
Modern-day Chaucer lovers feel your pain. And for that reason, translated versions of the Canterbury Tales are available! I just picked up a sweet illustrated hardcover copy at Chapters on sale for $20, but if you aren't quite as lucky, or aren't sure you'll like it $20 worth, you can find it in numerous places online, including here: http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm. And of course, like any true classic, you can always check it out on Wikipedia or Sparknotes.
I should point out that I am kind of an expert on the Canterbury Tales, having written no less than three academic essays on the topic. Well, okay, two essays and a short paper. On the Wife of Bath. Well, how many papers have YOU written dealing with the Canterbury Tales, hmm?
The Canterbury Tales is a classic, even despite the fact that Chaucer never actually got around to finishing it before he died. And here's something people rarely think of when they think of the Canterbury Tales: this stuff is comedy. It has all the sex, toilet humour, clever satire, witticisms, petty sqaubbles, and masterful storytelling of anything you'll see on TV this fall (and likely a great deal more of the masterful storytelling). Popular favourites are the toilet-humour Miller's Tale, the awesomely-unironically-racist Prioress's Tale, and the feministic Wife of Bath's Tale. But there are a few lesser-known gems, such as the epic Knight's Tale and the suprise-ending Shipman's Tale, of which Caryl Churchill must have been thinking when she said "You can't separate fucking and economics."
I say that the Prioress's Tale is "awesomely-unironically-racist" in the same way that Uncle Remus singing "Zip-a-dee-do-dah" in the Disney "classic" Song of the South is awesomely-unironically racist (see what I'm talking about here - number 2). It's so bad it's good. It's completely unaware of its own over-the-top hilarity, kind of like Micheal on The Office. As for the Wife of Bath's tale being feminist, well, most people will agree with me - but don't tell my TA from ENGL 2300 I said that, because she wrote a long-ass comment about calling a Chaucer character a "feminist" being an anarchronism on my first paper. If you're into the whole 1380s Chaucer-led feminism thing, you'll also enjoy the Franklin's Tale, as well as the Merchant's Tale if you're also into sublte satire. Hooray for January-May romances!
In summary, think of the Canterbury Tales as Aesop's Fabels meets South Park, except written during the reign of Henry IV. Before Joan of Arc. If nothing else, read it to illustrate the point that people have had basically the exact same sense of humour since forever.
As you may have noticed, this was in the 1380s, before Webster or the Oxford University Press, and people were not particularly concerned with standardized spelling. Also, pronunciation was a little different from what it is today. All this is enough to discourage the casual classics reader who is just trying to get laid. I mean, what the heck are "swoot showres"? Where is Engelond, anyway? And who is this blissful martyr fellow, if that's what he really is? (He's Thomas à Beckett. Look it up on Wikipedia.)
Modern-day Chaucer lovers feel your pain. And for that reason, translated versions of the Canterbury Tales are available! I just picked up a sweet illustrated hardcover copy at Chapters on sale for $20, but if you aren't quite as lucky, or aren't sure you'll like it $20 worth, you can find it in numerous places online, including here: http://www.librarius.com/cantales.htm. And of course, like any true classic, you can always check it out on Wikipedia or Sparknotes.
I should point out that I am kind of an expert on the Canterbury Tales, having written no less than three academic essays on the topic. Well, okay, two essays and a short paper. On the Wife of Bath. Well, how many papers have YOU written dealing with the Canterbury Tales, hmm?
The Canterbury Tales is a classic, even despite the fact that Chaucer never actually got around to finishing it before he died. And here's something people rarely think of when they think of the Canterbury Tales: this stuff is comedy. It has all the sex, toilet humour, clever satire, witticisms, petty sqaubbles, and masterful storytelling of anything you'll see on TV this fall (and likely a great deal more of the masterful storytelling). Popular favourites are the toilet-humour Miller's Tale, the awesomely-unironically-racist Prioress's Tale, and the feministic Wife of Bath's Tale. But there are a few lesser-known gems, such as the epic Knight's Tale and the suprise-ending Shipman's Tale, of which Caryl Churchill must have been thinking when she said "You can't separate fucking and economics."
I say that the Prioress's Tale is "awesomely-unironically-racist" in the same way that Uncle Remus singing "Zip-a-dee-do-dah" in the Disney "classic" Song of the South is awesomely-unironically racist (see what I'm talking about here - number 2). It's so bad it's good. It's completely unaware of its own over-the-top hilarity, kind of like Micheal on The Office. As for the Wife of Bath's tale being feminist, well, most people will agree with me - but don't tell my TA from ENGL 2300 I said that, because she wrote a long-ass comment about calling a Chaucer character a "feminist" being an anarchronism on my first paper. If you're into the whole 1380s Chaucer-led feminism thing, you'll also enjoy the Franklin's Tale, as well as the Merchant's Tale if you're also into sublte satire. Hooray for January-May romances!
In summary, think of the Canterbury Tales as Aesop's Fabels meets South Park, except written during the reign of Henry IV. Before Joan of Arc. If nothing else, read it to illustrate the point that people have had basically the exact same sense of humour since forever.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
All-natural = safe. Not.
Ah, the voice of reason. How sweet it sounds -- or in this case, reads.
Canada.com ran an article today which introduced the Environmental Working Group (EWG)'s new list of which fruits and veggies contain the highest number of pesticides. This seems like a good public information endeavor, no? Their project presents a bunch of fruit and veg, listing their "pesticide loads". Onions, for example, have a "pesticide load" of 1, whereas peaches have a "pesticide load" of 100. Wait a second, EWG, what exactly is a "pesticide load"? My first warning flag went up when there were no defined units. Does "100" mean my peach got a slightly-bigger-than-normal spray of a mild compound, or was it dunked in cancer-causing toxic sludge?
The article later clarifies that it simply means that there are 100 times the pesticides on your typical peach than on your typical onion. In other words, a "pesticide load" is an arbitrary unit of measurement which is next to meaningless. The fine author of the article in question goes on to interview a scientist who asserts the importance of real units of measurements to determine whether there actually is a risk associated with eating commercially-grown peaches.
Now, I must confess to being a little more informed and a little more biased than average on the topic of "chemicals", or at least as they relate to the chemical-versus-all-natural debate. I am the daughter of one pharmacist and the niece of another. I was given medication for most of the ailments I encountered as a child, and have been subjected to many pharmacological debates over family dinners. Thanks to the information I have absorbed from my mother, I know which kinds of OTC medications can be mixed with alcohol and with one another; I know which medications are okay to take before bed and which ones will keep you awake; I know the generic names of more drugs than I can count on my fingers. I can even identify the indications of several drugs based on their suffixes! As if this weren't enough, I have suffered from migraines since the age of six. I am pretty convinced: chemicals are my friend.
My mother, while being an advocate of dugs, is also a strong advocate of common sense. Whenever anyone (usually my hippie grandmother) trots out a new, barely-supported claim that too much such-and-such is bad for you, my mother will reply, "Yeah, well, too much water is bad for you!" She isn't making this up; water poisoning occurs when you drink way too much water way too fast, and your body's chemistry is altered due to the overwhelming amount of water compared to sodium and electrolytes in your system. Apparently, your brain is not a big fan of this kind of thing. In any case, you have little to worry about; you need to chug around 10 litres of water in the span of a few minutes, without eating or drinking anything else. And something tells me that the average person will probably feel pretty darned uncomfortable before they hit seven.
In another example of quantity over chemical, my mother has advised me more than once that I should never, under any circumstances, eat a polar bear's liver. Vitamin A, while crucial to good health in moderate doses, is present in such great quantities in polar bears' livers that to eat one would be fatal. Now you know.
This, however, does not mean that my mother the druggist nor I shun "natural" or herbal remedies. My mother always supplements the drugs she recommends with non-medication advice: cold clothes and dark rooms for headaches, heating pads for cramps, better diet for constipation. And she takes herbal remedies herself. Until ColdFX appeared on the market, there was always a steady supply of echinachea on hand for any colds or flus that might crop up in our family. (The reason we switched to ColdFX is that it can be safely taken all winter long; echinachea merely stimulates your immune system to go double-time, and if taken for more than a couple weeks, can result in "burn out".) I myself have conducted extensive research which suggests that a certain herbal remedy, when smoked, is an excellent painkiller. But please don't tell my mother that.
Still not convinced? Then please stop reading my blog, I only want smart people here. Nah, just kidding, you can stay. Provided you look at the following chart. This information doesn't really require a chart, but charts are kind of exciting.
I would like to add some weighty words in support of chemicals to beef up my argument, and thus I turn to Mr. Dave Barry:
On one final note, I would like to point out that I have somewhat above-average knowledge regarding peaches and pesticides as well. The summer after I graduated high school, I worked picking fruit for a sweet old Dutch couple. They grew, among other things, currents, raspberries, and peaches.
Now, picking fruit is not an intellectually demanding activity, and thus you tend to converse with those around you as you pick. The wife half of the sweet old Dutch couple once told us a story about a friend, another fruit farmer (peaches are rather a popular crop in the Niagara region) whose peach-growing neighbour elected to go "all-natural" and forego the use of pesticides on his peaches. The peaches became so gross and pesticide-infested that the friend-farmer was forced to secretly spray a row of the neighbour-farmer's peaches when he did his own, to prevent his own crop from getting nastied up. So really, we need to assess chemicals on a risk basis: would you rather have slightly pesticide-y peaches, or gross, wormy peaches?
Canada.com ran an article today which introduced the Environmental Working Group (EWG)'s new list of which fruits and veggies contain the highest number of pesticides. This seems like a good public information endeavor, no? Their project presents a bunch of fruit and veg, listing their "pesticide loads". Onions, for example, have a "pesticide load" of 1, whereas peaches have a "pesticide load" of 100. Wait a second, EWG, what exactly is a "pesticide load"? My first warning flag went up when there were no defined units. Does "100" mean my peach got a slightly-bigger-than-normal spray of a mild compound, or was it dunked in cancer-causing toxic sludge?
The article later clarifies that it simply means that there are 100 times the pesticides on your typical peach than on your typical onion. In other words, a "pesticide load" is an arbitrary unit of measurement which is next to meaningless. The fine author of the article in question goes on to interview a scientist who asserts the importance of real units of measurements to determine whether there actually is a risk associated with eating commercially-grown peaches.
"Just because something is there doesn't mean that it's doing anything. Amounts matter. Where is the information that the level of pesticide contamination that they're talking about has any relevance to humans? Where is any study that has shown that those amounts have any negative effect?"
- Joe Schwarcz, the director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society
Now, I must confess to being a little more informed and a little more biased than average on the topic of "chemicals", or at least as they relate to the chemical-versus-all-natural debate. I am the daughter of one pharmacist and the niece of another. I was given medication for most of the ailments I encountered as a child, and have been subjected to many pharmacological debates over family dinners. Thanks to the information I have absorbed from my mother, I know which kinds of OTC medications can be mixed with alcohol and with one another; I know which medications are okay to take before bed and which ones will keep you awake; I know the generic names of more drugs than I can count on my fingers. I can even identify the indications of several drugs based on their suffixes! As if this weren't enough, I have suffered from migraines since the age of six. I am pretty convinced: chemicals are my friend.
My mother, while being an advocate of dugs, is also a strong advocate of common sense. Whenever anyone (usually my hippie grandmother) trots out a new, barely-supported claim that too much such-and-such is bad for you, my mother will reply, "Yeah, well, too much water is bad for you!" She isn't making this up; water poisoning occurs when you drink way too much water way too fast, and your body's chemistry is altered due to the overwhelming amount of water compared to sodium and electrolytes in your system. Apparently, your brain is not a big fan of this kind of thing. In any case, you have little to worry about; you need to chug around 10 litres of water in the span of a few minutes, without eating or drinking anything else. And something tells me that the average person will probably feel pretty darned uncomfortable before they hit seven.
In another example of quantity over chemical, my mother has advised me more than once that I should never, under any circumstances, eat a polar bear's liver. Vitamin A, while crucial to good health in moderate doses, is present in such great quantities in polar bears' livers that to eat one would be fatal. Now you know.
This, however, does not mean that my mother the druggist nor I shun "natural" or herbal remedies. My mother always supplements the drugs she recommends with non-medication advice: cold clothes and dark rooms for headaches, heating pads for cramps, better diet for constipation. And she takes herbal remedies herself. Until ColdFX appeared on the market, there was always a steady supply of echinachea on hand for any colds or flus that might crop up in our family. (The reason we switched to ColdFX is that it can be safely taken all winter long; echinachea merely stimulates your immune system to go double-time, and if taken for more than a couple weeks, can result in "burn out".) I myself have conducted extensive research which suggests that a certain herbal remedy, when smoked, is an excellent painkiller. But please don't tell my mother that.
Still not convinced? Then please stop reading my blog, I only want smart people here. Nah, just kidding, you can stay. Provided you look at the following chart. This information doesn't really require a chart, but charts are kind of exciting.
| All-Natural | Synthetic, or "chemical" | |
| Safe and/or beneficial | Aloe vera, evening primrose oil, chamomile | ibuprofen, lidocaine, clotrimazole |
| Unsafe and/or highly poisonous | Poison ivy, hemlock, holly ... asbestos, mercury, perchlorates ... | Bisphenol-A, gasoline, phthalates |
| Not necessarily safe, but a lot of fun | Marijuana, magic mushrooms | MDMA, LSD |
I would like to add some weighty words in support of chemicals to beef up my argument, and thus I turn to Mr. Dave Barry:
"Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer."
On one final note, I would like to point out that I have somewhat above-average knowledge regarding peaches and pesticides as well. The summer after I graduated high school, I worked picking fruit for a sweet old Dutch couple. They grew, among other things, currents, raspberries, and peaches.
Now, picking fruit is not an intellectually demanding activity, and thus you tend to converse with those around you as you pick. The wife half of the sweet old Dutch couple once told us a story about a friend, another fruit farmer (peaches are rather a popular crop in the Niagara region) whose peach-growing neighbour elected to go "all-natural" and forego the use of pesticides on his peaches. The peaches became so gross and pesticide-infested that the friend-farmer was forced to secretly spray a row of the neighbour-farmer's peaches when he did his own, to prevent his own crop from getting nastied up. So really, we need to assess chemicals on a risk basis: would you rather have slightly pesticide-y peaches, or gross, wormy peaches?
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