Genetically modified

Mushroom

I'm usually pretty frugal when it comes to grocery shopping: I go for generic chocolate, for instance, and I follow the prices of basic staples (flour, milk) at the two grocery stores nearby with a zeal that borders on religious fervor. I tend to buy in-season produce, and store fliers get perused thoroughly should there be a sale item that we need (which is rare).

But I shell out for Braeburn apples. If I'm in the weekly farmer's market, it'll be Royal Gala or Fuji apples. Granny Smith apples will do in a pinch--it's more about the crunch, though I'll confess to having a sweet tooth.

Braeburn apples are only 50 years old, discovered as an accidental seedling in New Zealand, and hypothesized to be a cross between a Granny Smith and a Lady Hamilton. Most of the apples we know today, such as the Golden Delicious, Royal Gala, and Jonagold, are comparatively recent additions to the apple family tree, arising mostly as accidents or freak mutations in established orchards in the twentieth century. Cortlands, Romes, and Granny Smiths are amongst the few that have been cultivated since at least the nineteenth century.

I mention this because it seems that public opinion is still largely against GMOs--Genetically Modified Organisms. HRH the Crown Prince of Wales is still actively campaigning against them, and most people recoil at the thought of "Frankenfoods". Their fears aren't entirely unjustified: I still remember scientists marveling (completely oblivious to the horrible PR spin) that they were thinking of inserting a gene, "borrowed" from deep sea fish, into tomatoes so that the plants could withstand the frost better. The gene encodes a protein that prevents ice crystal seeds from forming--pretty nifty, if you ask me--and thereby keeps fish blood liquid.

But really, there's no difference between genes that have been modified by selective breeding and genes that have been modified by a scientist hovering over a petri dish. The only difference is time. And money. Lots of both, if you want to do it the old-fashioned way; lots of one if you want to pay a scientist to develop a strain of corn that will make a better popcorn.

So to suggest that my favorite Braeburns aren't genetically modified and the apples that have their own insecticides "built in" are, is to be completely oblivious to the fact that civilization would not exist were it not for people genetically modifying plants and animals since the dawn of time. (Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel makes this abundantly clear) Humans have been making cows bigger, chickens lay more eggs, dogs more friendly, horses faster, grains heavier...you get the point. None of what you see in the supermarket exists in the wild, from whence it came.

Next: GMOs and the organic agenda

Crazy

In 2006 I was kinda sorta hijacked into psychiatric treatment. By "kinda sorta" I mean that the psychiatrist actually came up to the medical school where I was doing my PhD research at the time and dragged me all the way to the psychiatric hospital, where I then proceeded to spend an hour every week, talking about life, the universe, and everything.

The diagnosis was major depression, and I was also put on Lexapro. It worked, though I don't think I'll ever be completely out of the woods--I still "crash", for lack of a better word, but far less often than I used to, and for far shorter times.

But sometimes I have to wonder: where would I be without having gone through treatment, and knowing what it's like to be well and truly okay? Is it "real" if I'm only well and truly okay with the aid of prescription medications and/or St. John's Wort? What's better for you in the long run--to be unmedicated and so distraught you spend the entire day in bed (or worse--I've never gone much farther than sleeping all day), or to rely on pills for the rest of your life? Am I really who I am now, or is it just the meds talking?

You can go crazy thinking about questions like that. For me, I've decided that sometimes functionality, rather than "naturalness", is the best measurement of "better".

Here we go again...

Sometimes I feel like I should title this blog "Everything the Greenies tell you is wrong". Except that, well--I actually do care about the environment. But what bugs me most about many green blogs is that they simply don't make sense.

Today's MSN article about conventional versus soy candles is a case in point: the idea is that burning conventional, paraffin-based candles are more toxic than burning candles made of soy wax. At first glance, this seems plausible--after all, paraffin is derived from petroleum, and we all know how it feels to be stuck behind a diesel truck inhaling the noxious fumes.

But then, ask yourself: what exactly is wax? All waxes are collections of long-chain alkanes and esters, varying only in the details of structure and the lengths of the chains. Soy-based wax, for that matter, doesn't even exist--it has to be manufactured, from soybean oil, using the same hydrogenation process that produces trans-fats.

(And here, I must digress for a moment on the lovely irony that the very people who say that eating trans-fats are terrible for you, would advocate burning them)

In other words, the chemical composition is more or less the same, and if we're talking about combustion, the end products are--wait for it--exactly the same. In other words, you'll get a lungful of chemical smoke no matter what you burn. In other words, if you want to avoid toxins in the air, don't burn stuff.

The only valid point the article makes is that there could be lead in the wick. According to some, 30% of candles have a lead wick (lead in the center of the wick). That would be very bad. But the study that the statement was based on makes no distinction between the usual paraffin candle and the plant-wax based candle. So to assume that all 30% of paraffin candles contain lead wicks, while all plant-wax based candles do not, is still a logical fallacy.

Ex-president Bush was often criticized loudly for ignoring the science and sticking to his agenda, especially on environmental issues. This just goes to show that the knife cuts both ways...

Two random discoveries

I made two random discoveries this weekend, although in hindsight neither were that remarkable. The first one isn't really mine; it was a tip from Wise Bread that was just simply irresistible: using bar soap to clean your bathroom (and, I suspect, anywhere else that needs it). It does, in fact, work the way Myscha says it does. It really is that quick and simple and wonderful, and AMAZING. I'd post before-and-after photos of our sink, but you probably don't need to know what we keep around it.

The other random discovery arose as I was building this:



It's two shelves for the balcony garden; the top one will hold the tomatoes, and the bottom one will hold the zucchini and cukes. It's pretty big; it's almost 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide (not exact dimensions), but it's almost finished--not bad for an afternoon's worth of work.

Anyway: because it's going to sit outdoors, the (cheap-ass yellow) pine* needed a water-repellent stain. Now, if you're like me, you tend to avoid projects that involve a lot of brushwork, because you're an absolute klutz with a brush, and worse than a pre-schooler when it comes to getting paints everywhere. But this couldn't be avoided, and so, with a heavy heart, I started staining the wood.

Needless to say I did, in fact, get the stain everywhere. However, our balcony really doesn't look any more stained than it did when I went in, thanks to...sunflower oil.

Organic chemistry is about two things: carboxyl groups and "like dissolves like". I honestly don't have an application for carboxyl groups yet, but I've used the "like dissolves like" to great effect, especially when cleaning. Generally speaking, the rule is that water-based compounds require an aqueous medium to remove, and oil-based compounds require--you guessed it--an oil-based medium.

Strictly speaking, the solvents in oil-based stains are not oils, at least not in the typical structure. But they are certainly hydrophobic enough to be mostly dissolved in oils.

So, for this project, if I saw a fresh drip, I'd dribble a little sunflower oil onto it, and watch it come right off. It doesn't work as well once the stuff is dry, though, so you still have to be vigilant. But it smells tons better than turpentine, and you don't have to feel terrible about the environmental effects--though, make no mistake, huge quantities of whatever oil are bad for the environment, but small quantities of turpentine are definitely more detrimental than small quanitities of sunflower oil

*Pine comes in two types: yellow and white. Yellow pine is notorious for: knots, splintering, and cracking. Try to avoid it if you can.

What's your version of "happy"?

According to most people, I'm deranged:

I don't want a big house. I don't want a pool. I don't want a fancy hi-fi set. I don't want a fancy car (at this rate, I'll be lucky to get my license), or lots of shoes.

I want a small farm, in the middle of nowhere, where we can keep chickens and a cow or two, and perhaps a goat to take care of what the chickens and compost heap can't handle. Where I have a writing career and can sell the occasional photograph. There are other details, but you get the picture--quiet life in the country.

It took me a long time to come to this conclusion, because I like so many things: I like living in the city, having places to go and things to see and restaurants to eat at. I liked my room when I was living with my parents; I liked their house, and the neighborhood it was in. I like being close by the train station and just a hop, skip, and jump away from a city like Paris.

But I love making things grow: I see it as a special challenge, to coax and wheedle a tiny speck of seed into a plant--which I did manage, for several plants (I maintain that it was not my fault that the cats killed them). I enjoy raising and caring for animals; I love being surrounded by nature.

The point is, happiness is not something that's easy to find. It's not something that's easy to get, either. You'll know it when you figure it out, because it'll be something you're willing to suffer hell and high water to get.

Why not?

One of the blogs that I follow, Science Based Medicine, is quite interesting and very informative. It is also surprisingly pathetic, in that the very people who write about how wonderful science is and how stupid complementary and alternative medicine is (CAM), have absolutely zero inclination to just try things and see for themselves what happens. I.e., the bloggers on that site seem to completely lack the intellectual curiosity that, in my opinion, basically defines science. Or perhaps they don't, but you wouldn't know it.

A particularly memorable argument involved breathing techniques. I don't particularly care for what they claim to do (energize, refresh, or whatever), but it is perfectly reasonable to assume that how you breathe can influence your state of mind. It's why we tell angry people to "take a deep breath" and calm down. It's why nervous and jittery runners tend to get stitches more often. I listed a few of the exercises--which basically induced a mild state of hyperventilation, which as anybody knows makes you feel a tad loopy. The truly pathetic thing? The person wouldn't even try it. Breathing!

Which I find kind of ironic: you blog about science, and yet have no curiosity to investigate plausible claims?

I'm almost always willing to try new things. I have my limits, of course--the things have to make sense, at least. Just the other day I read that newspaper is a great glass cleaner. Guess what I'm going to do this weekend?

I've tried going vegan (didn't work out, though I'm still a vegetarian), making my own cat food (still doing this) and laundry detergent (this, too). I've tried different furniture polishes on our pseudo-antique furniture, settling on olive oil (Pledge for when the stuff needs a really good shine). I've experimented with ways to kill aphids, and how to keep basil alive. I've tried several different things on cuts--honey is my favorite.

Science is all about systematically trying out what's only slightly plausible, within reason. Right now, I'm currently running an experiment which, according to the current paradigms used, shouldn't work, but since the actual experiment has never been done before, we'll just have to wait and see what the evidence says (actually, I didn't want to run the experiment, but since I'm just the tech, well).

If you don't try something, you'll never figure out what works, why it works, and how to make it better. I'm always looking out for tips and tricks to: save time, save money, save effort, do things better, do things faster, eat healthier. Most of these tips and tricks are useless to me--no such thing as coupons, here--but every now and then, I find things where I think, "Hey, that might work."

It's why we now have the Heap, our affectionate nickname for a box of potting soil and kitchen scraps which will hopefully turn into compost over these next few weeks, and I'll be raising tomato plants well into the summer. There's a first time for everything, and the first step to the first time is having an inquiring mind.

Pets au natural

I've never been able to understand why people who think about GMOs, certified organic produce, free-range eggs--people who drive Priuses, use canvas shopping bags (ours are made of something like Tyvek), recycle, and have programmable thermostats, will think nothing of feeding their pets Purina.

I'm talking mostly about dogs and cats, of course. But the same is true for most other pets: why do people feed generally-species-inappropriate diets?

You don't see wolves at the zoo being fed kibble, which should, in my opinion, ring a few bells--if wolves are, essentially, wild dogs, then why shouldn't they be fed kibble? If they're not, could it be because kibble isn't actually a good food for dogs? And ditto for cats, and tigers.

Links here and here deal with raw diets for cats and dogs--it's all been written, and I'm not going to go into the supposed benefits for them, in part because I myself do not believe many of the claims. I do believe that raw diets have dental benefits--Shadow's teeth are still as pearly white as they were the day I got her--and that they are healthy and at least as good as if not better than prepared foods, when done right. I do not believe that a raw diet will cure diseases such as renal failure, although I do believe that they can mitigate the effects for quite a while. I am skeptical of claims that it helps mitigate behavioral problems, but willing to give the benefit of the doubt in most cases--but not because of "toxins" or any of that crap. I do not believe that feeding a raw diet is without risk--for me, with my biochemistry background, it's pretty much a practical application of my undergraduate degree, but for others, who have not bothered to look up things like the urea cycle online, it can be difficult to separate the information from the misinformation out there.

But I do believe that feeding a species-appropriate diet, or as close to it as one can get, is, in fact, what is best for one's pet. We humans have come a long way since the days "food safety" meant "let the other monkey eat those berries first", so it's hard to say exactly what a "natural" diet is for us. This is not to disparage the modern diet--nutritious and plentiful--but to point out that for humans, culture and environment are far more important dictators of what we eat than they are for animals, who not only are completely dependent upon their environment for their food, but also cannot be said to have any culture.

Pet food companies make a killing out of selling "Natural" stuff, but if you look at the ingredients' list, well--good luck finding any of that stuff outside of a chemistry plant. Some of the better companies actually do sell pet foods made of meat--and I don't want to know how much that costs, especially when the cost of adding one portion of meat to the weekly grocery list is so low.

That's the other thing: feeding a raw diet doesn't have to take a lot of money. It can, if you like buying those hamburger patties filled with "wholesome goodness". But my cats get mostly chicken, or whatever's cheap that week, and a bit of canned food if the drumstick is unusually small. It works out to about 1 euro/day to feed them, which is actually less than feeding them a brand name cat food.

If done properly, I do believe that feeding a raw diet is better than any brand of dog or cat food out there. Going natural, for them, makes as much sense as it does for you.

Disclaimer: I do not make any money from any of the pet food websites that I have linked to. They are merely the most prevalent brands that I can think of, and most likely to be universally available.

New Year's Resolutions Update

This is the Tweeb; I adopted her from a rescue two years ago, and occasionally I'll send her foster "mom" an email titled "State of the Tweeb". Now, though, she'll get to headline the state of my New Year's resolutions. Follow me as I track my ups and downs:

1) Switching to CFLs: I've only managed to switch out 3 bulbs so far. More are coming, but we've recently decided to look into buying lamps for our bedroom, so I'll hold off on switching the bedroom lights until we do.

2) Eating more organic produce: Unforunately, this is winter, and produce is normally priced higher. Organic produce, doubly so. But I have made the switch to free-range and/or organically-raised eggs. The labels here are kind of confusing, but I've decided that free-range is more important than certified organic, because less stressed chickens means less salmonella. Plus I've always felt that humane treatment is more important than not using chemicals.

One thing I have been doing is taking note of where the produce is coming from. Eating locally and non-organic is probably better than eating organically but not locally.

3) Not buying clothes: I've succeeded so far in avoiding the purchase of all things clothing, but I'll need new socks soon.

4) Balcony garden: Our balcony has been cleared. It awaits but a few shelves and stuff that I'll tack together over the next few months, and spring should see the start of a beautiful crop. Assuming that I don't kill any of the plants...

5) Photography: Still haven't resumed this to the extent I would like. In part, this is because we've been busy remodeling the kitchen. In part, this is because the recharageable batteries I've been using have been charged one time too many and have decided to quit, and I've yet to bite the bullet and pay for new batteries and a new recharger (grr).

6) Selective use of chemistry: Yep. So far, so good. Except today, when I had to get new laundry detergent--I hadn't anticipated running out of the homemade stuff in the middle of starting a second load. Well, we'll make more tonight, and keep the store-bought stuff for emergencies...

7) Maintenance: Kind of. Our record for cleaning out the dishwater trap is abysmal, but I've been taking careful note of the pressure in my tires, and I've patched up a pair of pants.

8) Turning things off: Got power strips that can be turned off for the TV, lights, DVD player, sound system. Getting better at nagging :-)

9) Canning stuff: This is actually the boyfriend's forte. He loves doing it. Now, it's mostly marmalades, as oranges and grapefruits are in season.

10) Yoga: Yes and no. It's actually remarkably easy to get up at 4:30. Slightly less easy to do yoga. But I've found that going from M-F is about as much as I can take of it.

Pitchers and basins

We're remodeling our kitchen. Yesterday we took out all of the cupboards and shelves. Today we've patched up some of the walls. Tomorrow we'll give it a paint job and remove the fridge and stove, and Wednesday the appliance guys move in and put up a new kitchen.

When we took out the cupboards, we had to turn off the water to the entire apartment (like all decent plumbing systems, it's now refusing to come back online all the way), which meant that for the better part of the day we had no running water at all in the apartment, which makes washing hands rather tricky.

Or rather, it would, but for a pleasantly fortuitous home decor item I purchased a few weeks ago: an old pitcher/basin set, the kind that farmhouses without running water used for sinks.

I bought it because it was beautiful--simple, aesthetically pleasing, if an armload to carry back. But it got its turn to function this week, as a supplementary sink, for when the bathroom sink just won't do.

It's quite interesting to muse upon the fact that, years ago, you couldn't see a house without a pitcher and a basin set. And now, you can hardly find a house with one.

Bring your own lunch--without plastics

Living green and living cheap are not always one in the same—to whit, organic produce. Easily costs twice as much at the supermarkets, here, which is why I prefer to hit the farmer’s market instead. Except at this time of year, not only are the prices still exorbitant (it’s winter, and the produce at the organic stands are not only organic, but local, too), there’s also very little else that’s affordable except mushrooms and herbs. Which make a fantastic combination, but one does not live on mushrooms alone (although they do taste great stir-fried).

But living green and living cheap are, for the most part, mutually compatible goals: bringing your own lunch, for instance, is a great way to save the environment and tighten your financial belt. You can choose what you’re eating, and most likely you’ll have a hard time coming up with worse crud than what’s served up at the local fast food joint—which is none too green itself, if you believe Eric Schlosser’s reporting.

There is, however, one point of contention with going green by packing your own—the plastic. It bugs the living daylights out of me to have to use plastic sandwich baggies when everything else I do (going vegetarian, reusing and recycling what I can, turning off the lights, etc) attempts to be as environmentally friendly as possible. And I’m none too fond of Tupperware or its ilk, either—inadvertent liquid sculpture is only an art form if it doesn’t set off the fire alarms.

Most days I bring sandwiches, anyway. Not for any lack of imagination on my part—simply because at 5:30 in the morning there’s not much time for very much else. And while I know there are Tupperwares specifically designed to hold sandwiches, I simply abhor the thought of having to go out and buy it—it means yet another plastic box cluttering up our cabinet, and it’s anybody’s guess how long it’ll take my boyfriend to lose it, as he’s done with the last two lunch boxes I bought for him. Besides, our kitchen is getting renovated soon enough, and having more crud in it is the last thing we need.

I’ve come up with two solutions, one for sandwiches and other things that have to be wrapped, and one for a Tupperware analog for foods that must be heated:

1) Tupperware analog: glass jars. I personally use peanut-butter jars (which are still made of glass in this neck of the woods) but there’s no reason to think of that as the one-and-only. If you can’t stand the thought of eating out of a jar, keep a plate/bowl and spoon/fork in your workplace, and wash those as soon as you’re done.

2) Sandwich baggie substitute: butcher paper. Obviously this won’t work quite as well with things like tuna salad (which, in my opinion, you’ve got to be nuts to bring, anyway—salmonella, anybody?) But this should be.

We can’t ever completely oust the role of plastics in our lives, but minimizing its use is just good sense. You’ll help reduce our dependency on foreign oil, reduce your exposure to phthalates (which are de environmentalist rigeur at the moment) and toxic compounds (given off when plastics are heated to melting), and maybe save yourself a couple bucks in the meantime. Besides, glass jars are essentially free, extremely durable (as long as you don’t drop them), completely unstainable, and infinitely reusable.