posted by jim | April 30, 2009

Bleach is not considered green, but used judiciously it needn’t be considered a reason to turn in your green card. My first encounter with using bleach as an antibiotic was when I scraped the top of my foot on barnacles in Portugal. I was traveling and though it hurt pretty bad I didn’t treat it. I wound up with a nasty infection. A family I was staying with put my foot in a pail and added a touch of bleach. I was a bit taken aback, but the treatment worked impressively well. It was only later that I remembered bleach was recommended to clean needles for HIV infected drug users that I appreciated its antibacterial qualities.
Now a study recommends bleach baths (only minor amounts of bleach) for pediatric sufferers (I don’t see why it wouldn’t help adult sufferers, as well). Take a look. It’s minor cost and big payoff makes it an important addition to the utopian medicine cabinet. It also reduces the need for antibiotics and perhaps reducing the spread of MRSA. 

photo by Care SMC; some rights reserved.

 

CHICAGO— It’s best known for whitening a load of laundry. But now simple household bleach has a surprising new role: an effective treatment for kids’ chronic eczema.
Chronic, severe eczema can mar a childhood. The skin disorder starts with red, itchy, inflamed skin that often becomes crusty and raw from scratching. The eczema disturbs kids’ sleep, alters their appearance and affects their concentration in school. The itching is so bad kids may break the skin from scratching and get chronic skin infections that are difficult to treat, especially from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

Researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine have discovered powerful relief in the form of diluted beach baths. It’s a cheap, simple and safe treatment that drastically improves the rash as well as reduces flare-ups of eczema, which affects 17 percent of school-age children.

The study found giving pediatric patients with moderate or severe eczema (atopic dermatitis) diluted bleach baths decreased signs of infection and improved the severity and extent of the eczema on their bodies. That translates into less scratching, fewer infections and a higher quality of life for these children.

The typical treatment of oral and topical antibiotics increases the risk of bacterial resistance, something doctors try to avoid, especially in children. Bleach kills the bacteria but doesn’t have the same risk of creating bacterial resistance.

Patients on the bleach baths had a reduction in eczema severity that was five times greater than those treated with placebos over one to three months, said Amy S. Paller, M.D., the Walter J. Hamlin Professor and chair of dermatology, and professor of pediatrics, at the Feinberg School. Paller also is an attending physician at Children’s Memorial Hospital.

The study will be published in the journal Pediatrics April 27.
(more…)

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posted by jim | April 29, 2009

 

It’s Spring. Hopefully the morels are coming up in a wood near you. Morels are one of the easier mushrooms to identify-but there are look-a-likes that are poisonous. The stem and mushroom itself are hollow, but to really learn to collect edibles go with experienced gatherers. If you live or are visiting the New York City area consider a foraging tour with Wild Man Steve Brill. Some mushrooms will make you ill or are poisonous if uncooked (including morels) so please do your research, but don’t be bashful the rewards are delicious.
We adapted a recipe from the Cafe Flora cookbook for our morels. Ideally this recipe would take about a pound of Morels for four people, but you can spice up the dish with as little as half a pound.
3 tablespoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 cup French green (Le Puy) lentils
1 cup of Forbidden rice (adds to the chewiness of this recipe). If you must substitute try 1/2 cup short grain brown rice and 1/2 cup wild rice. Use enough water to cook the rice (whatever the rice calls for)
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup of roasted walnuts, toasted
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley (best from your garden)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano or 1 teaspoon of dried oregano
1 teaspoon pimenton (smoked Spanish paprika)–really try to get this spice. It is well worth it!
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of cracked peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon of turmeric
1/4-1/2 cup feta cheese (parmesan would also work well)

 

 It was a hot day so I took our toaster oven outside to roast the mushrooms and walnuts (this can reduce or eliminate the need to use your air conditioner by moving the heat outside). Set the oven at 400 degrees and put the mushrooms on a broiler pan with about a tablespoon of olive oil. The mushrooms should roast for 15-20 minutes and the walnuts for 10 minutes so add the walnuts after 5 minutes.
Cook the lentils and rice together in water with the bay leaf. Bring to a boil then simmer on low heat for about 30 minutes. Chop parsley. When lentils and rice are ready, mix in other ingredients and serve. Serves four. I recommend a hearty red wine. In combination with the smokey paprika and earthy mushroom flavors, this recipe is a killer.

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Tags: Add new tag, DIY Food, foraging, Morels, mushrooms, recipe

posted by jim | April 23, 2009

The Washington Post recently interviewed Kate Heyhoe for her new book Cooking Green. She introduces a couple of new words Cookprint and Ecovore-I think you get the idea, but see a portion of her interview for clarification. 

She also talks about ways to save electricity (and of course money) in the kitchen. Two of hers are also favorites of ours-our induction stovetop is our new best friend. Induction stove tops cook with less electricity, less chance of fires in the kitchen, and just as well as electric or gas in my humble opinion. The other kitchen saver is the Toaster Oven-which you could easily score at freecycle or craig’s list, I bet. We’re also considering a convection oven.

photo by clayirving; some rights reserved.

Cookprint is the entire chain of resources used to create the foods you eat, including water and land, and the waste produced in the process. Carbon footprint measures carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Shrinking your cookprint includes saving water and energy, as well as reducing waste and emissions.

Being green is all about making choices. An ecovore looks at the total impact of food with fluidity, not rigidity. Our food choices are, at any given time or in any given place, in constant flux, because of changes in ecosystems, economics, and technology. Ecovores eat foods that are in harmony with the environment, both currently and for the foreseeable future, locally and globally. An ecovore’s diet pivots on a series of judgment calls based on conditions at the time and place. This season’s local salmon may be sustainable, but next year it may not (and would then not be part of an evocore diet, even though the food is local). And conversely, as we make progress, what casts a carbon footprint last week may not be an issue tomorrow. World hunger matters, too. In a global rice or corn shortage, an ecovore picks a different food to eat.

@ Earth Day Food for Thought: Shrinking Your ‘Cookprint’ – A Mighty Appetite @ Washington Post.

Toaster ovens consume a fraction of the fuel of a standard oven, which I call the Humvee of the kitchen. Standard ovens waste about nine percent of the fuel they use; most of the heat goes into the walls of the oven, the air, and your kitchen; not into cooking the food. Toaster ovens take less time to heat up and cool down, and their smaller capacity uses less fuel. Today’s better toaster ovens are well designed to roast chickens, cook pizzas, and broil as well as a standard oven does. New models are coming out every season, so check with consumer sites to see which perform best, and opt for convection models which cook more efficiently. In general, the lower the price, the poorer the performance, but mid-range models are typically fine.

Any kind of cooktop that seems promising on a green front?

Induction cooktops are coming down in price, and you can buy single portable induction burners if you don’t want to shoot for a whole cooktop.

@ Earth Day Food for Thought: Shrinking Your ‘Cookprint’ – A Mighty Appetite @ Washington Post. 

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Tags: cooking, Cooking green, ecovore, Food Off the Shelf, induction stove top, toaster oven

posted by jim | April 22, 2009

William James, father of American psychology, tells of meeting an old lady who told him the Earth rested on the back of a huge turtle.
“But, my dear lady,” Professor James asked, as politely as possible, “what holds up the turtle?”
“Ah,” she said, “that’s easy. He is standing on the back of another turtle.”
“Oh, I see,” said Professor James, still being polite. “But would you be so good to tell me what holds up the second turtle?”
“It’s no use, Professor,” said the old lady, realizing he was trying to lead her into a logical trap. “It’s turtles-turtles-turtles, all the way!”
-Robert Anton Wilson, Prometheus Rising

So whether you believe Global Warming is real or false, whether you believe the earth was formed 10,000 years or 4.5 billions years ago, whether you believe you are star stuff or god/ess stuff, whether you believe the earth is a fertile ball floating in black space or on the back of a turtle, I wish you a happy Earth Day–that is, if we can keep it.

photo by mao lini; some rights reserved.

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Tags: agnosticism, earth day, faith, Prometheus Rising, Robert Anton Wilson, William James

posted by jim | April 21, 2009

Few vegetables are as forgiving and abundant as potatoes. My green shoots are just coming up a couple of days ago. The potato was a generous gift of my brother-in-law–actually he gave us many potatoes but this one started to develop shoots and I held on to it until I could put it in a pot (I found my pot abandoned by the side of the road). Use as big a pot as you can afford (or scavenge)–maybe even a garbage can–if like me you don’t have very much land. Potatoes don’t require very rich dirt. Just keep covering the shoots as they come up. I’m using compost-so I fill as fast as the worms can eat my garbage. You can use any organic potato that you like. Non-organic potatoes are typically sprayed with chemicals that inhibit their desire to sprout. I got mine in the dirt earlier this year. I think next year I will start them indoors in February and see if I can get an earlier crop. The potato is truly the utopian comfort food.

photo by Tony Austin; some rights reserved.

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Tags: DIY Food, grow your own, potato, utopian food

posted by jim | April 21, 2009

 My first experience with Youth Hostels was a hostel in San Francisco. The door on the address had a sign suggesting we check at a local bar if no one answered. Someone did answer our knock however. My wife and I followed him up to a room and to be honest the thin mattress on the floor didn’t look appealing-never mind the cats that went scurrying from the room. On a recent visit to Colorado I couldn’t help notice the write-up on a youth hostel in the town where we were staying it sounded a lot different from our first experience but my wife was unmoved. But we’re both reconsidering after taking a read of this New York Times article on Youth Hostels. Hostels are more family-friendly, more age friendly to older travelers, and you no longer have to feel like you need to enter carrying a heavy back pack.

The world of hip city hostels, who cares if your room has nothing but a bed (often a bunk), a simple bath (a shower with no bath products) and a small cupboard with no hangers? Common rooms, meanwhile, are often minimally — but stylishly — furnished with Scandinavian-style sofas and tables.
Countering the lack of amenities, there is usually an eclectic bar, a 24-hour Internet cafe with Wi-Fi, group tours around the city, entertainment (D.J.’s, live music and karaoke nights), kitchens where you can make your own meals or a restaurant where you can buy one — all providing a built-in social life for travelers.

Hostels across Europe have undergone a transformation over the last decade. “There has been serious quality improvement in the hostel movement,” said Johan Krüger, head of communications for Hostelling International, a consortium of youth hostel associations in over 80 countries that operate more than 4,000 hostels.

“Though hostels have always had the big shared dormitory-style rooms, we are now seeing more demand among travelers for double or single en suite rooms,” Mr. Krüger said, adding that hostels had grown even more popular in the midst of the recession. In 2008, Hostelling International had a 14 percent increase, to 1.4 million bookings, on its Web site, www.hihostels.com.
@ In Europe, Hostels Branch Out From Young Backpackers – NYTimes.com.

Check out these other sites for additional information:
hostelbrokers, hihostels, and hostelworld.

photo by kokorowashinjin; some rights reserved.

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Tags: community, hostels, intelligence increase, Knowledge, Travel, youth hostels

posted by jim | April 19, 2009

Robots, Recycling, and Solar–pretty cool. This link was sent to me by a local robotics group. You may be able to use scavenged parts to build these little ‘bots. I’d like to try this as a relatively benign way to scare the birds away from my berry bushes. Listen closely for the info on how to get your pdf instructions by subscribing to Make magazine at iTunes. Probably a good introduction for beginners and kids to robots.

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Tags: beam bots, recycling, recycling electronics, robots

posted by jim | April 17, 2009

I hope to stress Synergies as an important tool in the Utopian Toolbox. Ernest Callenbach the author of two Ecological Utopias: Ecotopia and Ecotopia Emerging, discusses his idea of what he calls the The Green Triangle from his still relevant 1997 article in the quarterly In Context.

“The three points of the triangle are:

The principle that relates these three points is: Anytime you do something beneficial for one of them, you will almost inevitably also do something beneficial for the other two – whether you’re hoping to or not.

For example, let’s suppose you decide to take a step to improve your health, like eating less fatty meat and dairy products. This will of course decrease your chance of circulatory disease; it may even make you stronger and give you greater endurance. But, since meat and dairy products are relatively expensive, you will save quite a bit of money; moreover, you will also help the environment – since meat production is a very land-intensive and damaging use of our farm resources.

But the interesting thing is that you can start at any point of the triangle. Thus, let’s assume you do something beneficial for the environment, like walking or bicycling instead of driving your car. You cut down pollution emissions, you reduce smog and lung damage, you decrease acid rain, and you may postpone the greenhouse effect. But you’ll help your health because you get more regular exercise, and you’ll also save money on gas, oil, and car depreciation.

Some people are skeptical about good things stemming from thrift, which is an American virtue that has gone out of style temporarily in the well-to-do layers of our society, but the third point of the triangle is actually just as potent. Anytime you do something beneficial for your pocketbook, like not buying an expensive gizmo whose manufacturing expends a lot of energy and uses a lot of raw materials, or taking an expensive trip that turns a lot of petroleum into atmospheric pollution and noise, you’re also helping the Earth. But you’re probably also doing your health a favor since you’re less stressed out to earn the money to pay off the gizmo or trip; and not pouring a lot of emotional energy into interacting with the gizmo leaves time and attention for other human beings and the kind of spontaneous improvisation and fooling around that our species evolved to be good at.

If you apply the Green Triangle to your everyday life, examples of delightful synergistic effects can be found everywhere; you come out with many delightful new perceptions. Some cases: Low- or no-cost fun with other people is almost always more ecologically and financially benign than hard work and heavy consumption; evidently evolution did not commit an ecological error in making us playful. (Making us willing to live by clocks is another story.) Exchanges outside the cash economy – trading massages, for instance – don’t have monetary ramifications you have to worry about, whereas if you pay for a massage, the money may go into a bank, and you know what they do with it. Growing or making your own is usually cheaper and healthier, as well as more ecologically benign. Fun, isn’t it? So go triangulate!”@ Ernest Callenbach – The Green Triangle via In Context

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Tags: Ernest Callenbach, Food, Green Triangle, Health, synergies, Transportation, utopian toolbox

posted by jim | April 16, 2009

Détournement- (See also Culture Jamming)

In détournement, an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different message, often one opposed to the original. The term “détournement”, borrowed from the French, originated with the Situationist International; a similar term more familiar to English speakers would be “turnabout” or “derailment”…via Wikipedia

See Adbusters for a current examples of détournement.

via utopianeconomics » Lingua Utopian .

The language of revolution and liberation is also the language of marketeers:

…McDonald’s new “premium salads” with the Paul Newman dressing. I read in the business pages that these salads are a big hit, but even if they weren’t, they’d probably stay on the menu strictly for their rhetorical usefulness. The marketers have a term for what a salad or veggie burger does for a fast-food chain: “denying the denier.” These healthier menu items hand the child who wants to eat fast food a sharp tool with which to chip away at his parents’ objections. “But Mom, you get the salad…”
-Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

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posted by jim | April 16, 2009

It’s Spring. Sex is in the air, and in my eyes, and in my nose. Pollen is the price we pay for all this plant procreation. I’ve gotten pretty good about wiping my hands after touching things outdoors, rinsing my face. It is nice to see that the common sense idea of rinsing inside the nose can be just as effective. Nice, too, for the Utopian Economist that using a neti pot can be so cheap, doesn’t require a trip to a physician, over or under the counter medication-or at the very least reduces the need for meds. The New York Times discusses how a couple of small studies have confirmed the effectiveness of this ancient device. 

 

photo by hamron, some rights reserved.

 
 

One benefit is that irrigation can clear nasal passages without dryness or “rebound” congestion, which occurs when overuse of decongestants leads to dependence and irritated tissue.

In one independent study in 2008, researchers examined a group of children with severe allergies. They found that regular nasal irrigation with a mild saline solution significantly eased symptoms and helped reduce the need for steroid nasal sprays. A 2007 study at the University of Michigan looked at 121 adults with chronic nasal and sinus problems. Over two months, the scientists found that those treated with nasal irrigation reported greater improvements than those treated with a spray.

@ Really? – The Claim – Nasal Irrigation Can Ease Allergy Symptoms – Question – NYTimes.com.

 
 

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Tags: allergies, Health, nasal congestion, nasal irrigation, neti pot