Environment

The other day I was struck with reality in a battle of weight vs. survival...as always, I lost.

The other day, while volunteering at a summer camp, we decided to have a "cooking day".  The idea was fabulous; we would make salads, and pita bread snacks together with the children, and feast on it all together.

 I was working with a group of children going into second grade, so it is obvious that these kids are pretty young.  In the beginning of the day, one of the girls came up to me and informed me that she would not be eating the pita as it is fattening.  I was a bit taken aback and asked her why she cared whether the pita was fattening or not.  She told me that she was fat and she needed to go on a diet.  I was pretty bothered by this, and asked her if she thought I was fat to which she immediately answered yes (this ruined my argument to her that I eat everything I want and am still skinny due to the fact that I walk).  I didn't know what else to say to her, as obviously she was being raised in a way where she is way too self conscious about her body and society's opinion of body image.  By the way, the kid is not fat, or even on her way to getting overweight.

Anyways, to make a long story short, at the end of the day the child asked me what I do with my water bottles when I finish with them.  I told her that I re-use it until I am done with the bottle then I recycle it.  Recycle?  What's that?

I tried to give the ten second explanation of recycling and why we do it to a six year old, but by the end of three seconds she was bored and probably day dreaming about pita bread.

I must admit, I find it very perturbing to know that some children are taught from an extremely young age to not be comfortable with their bodies and must diet, diet, diet?when the parents have not even begun to teach their child of the importance of social consciousness within our world.  A six year old has never heard of recycling, but diets because she thinks she's fat?and that is becoming the norm, am I the only person who sees a problem with this?

by M.L.

 

My sister is a professor of Biology.  She does research in addition to teaching graduate students who are working for their doctorates.  Her specialty is – get this – the social behavior of spiders.  I always wondered why anyone would want to study the social behavior of spiders and to what purpose such knowledge could be put.  Well, something really unusual has come out of her research and that of her students.

One of my sister's students has been working on a project which is gaining tremendous interest in the field of agriculture:  using spiders on fields of crops instead of pesticides.

It seems that there are certain species of spiders – I have no idea of their names – that feed on the mites and insects which destroy food crops.  Letting loose a few thousands of these spiders in a field of wheat, for instance, will allow the farmers to stop using pesticides to control the destructive insects.

Think of how healthy this procedure could be!  It appears that there is already a certain species of bees, very tiny ones, being used in strawberry fields for the same purpose.  These strawberries are called "organic" berries, so when you are buying strawberries look for the little bee on the box.  You'll know that you are getting strawberries that have not been sprayed by pesticides.

It is not easy to convince the farmers of the advantages to using spiders for controlling insects as opposed to pesticides.  They have yet to realize that it is cheaper and healthier, but my sister and her students hope that it won't take long for them to understand.  It will open up a whole new field in bio-agriculture!  

 

The tourist industry better catch on to this quickly, before it all dissapears!

It looks to me like the name of the game is no longer eco- tourism, but global warming tourism.  The latest fad in tourism is brought to us by our very own?.icebergs!  Yes, let's hear a round of applause for this latest money making machine!

Thanks to the decision of some renegade icebergs, we no longer need to go all the way to the poles to experience their splendor, why, they have traveled the long and difficult journey, 2000 miles south, just to save us the hassle of going all the way to them!

Thank goodness for global warming ladies and gentlemen, for without which, many of us mere mortals would have never had the experience of floating icebergs, especially at such a close distance!  What, pray tell, could be more exciting!  The wonders of the world are coming right to us!

Funny how countries like Greenland are making a killing, and tourists like me are spending our dollars, to experience the literal destruction of our North Pole.  But it's so worth it, because, if we don't see it now, there will be nothing else to see?and we don't want to miss an opportunity like this!  It only comes once in a million years?well, not literally, last time was ten thousand years ago?but still!

Sometimes I wonder what those airheads are doing, wasting all of their precious time and energy trying to save the world?My goodness, if they got what they wanted, then I would have no melting icebergs floating 2,000 miles south, for my very own viewing pleasure!

From my Friend L.M.:

I suppose it’s an indication of our good intentions - we are destroying the planet by trying to improve it. On any day of the week you can see a new profession operating in the streets. He - it is usually a he - is involved in the beautification of our environment.

I call him a “Show, Blow and Go men”. He arrives, he blows stuff around and then he leaves. They are not gardeners, but rather external cleaners. They walk around with petrol driven blowers on their backs and holding the exhaust pipes in their hands, their function is to clean by blowing the dirt, leaves and dry grass from one property to the next. Besides the noise they generate which must inevitably lead to their own deafness, all they are doing is moving stuff around. Occasionally you may see one of them sweeping the pile of dirt they manufacture into a pan and then into a bin, but mostly they just blow it into the next door property.

So far so good, but they’re doing something much more harmful. Their blowers are lifting solid particles into the air and that’s the same air we breathe. Walk near to where a blower is operating and you breathe in a lungful of particles. Some of these are ‘heavy’ and have been lifted into the air by the blower. You breathe them in and they settle in your lungs.

Your lungs naturally produce a mucous to trap the particles and tiny hairs in your lungs wiggle to move the mucous and particles out of the lung. You may even notice something in the back of your throat, which is actually mucous. You get rid of the mucous by coughing or swallowing. If the particle is small and it gets very far into the lungs, special cells in the lung will trap the particles and prevent them from getting out. The result can be lung disease, emphysema or lung cancer.