Tuesday, November 14, 2017

Trusting Technology

When the subject of overpopulation and climate change come up, a popular response in most people's mind is, "Technology will save us!"

Yeah.... no. We can't count on that. If pressed, I will say that technology has gotten us into this mess int he first place. Sure, we have great and awesome things provided by technology, and wonderful progress and longer life spans and blah blah blah, but for all our greatness, we still have asthma, we still die of starvation and water-borne diseases, we still see crushing poverty, and we're not a fuck-of-a-lot happier in life. We work too much or are unemployed. We struggle. How is technology going to save us? It only turns us further away from Nature, which really would save us, except that there are too many of us anyway.

I've been looking at blog posts from past years, and this one from 2014 still holds a lot of truth. Which also proves to me that we are progressing at all. But that's another post.

I came across an article way back then that spoke right about all this. Interspersed are my thoughts. The article can still be found at the link below but is too long to add here, so go to it if you wish, I'm highlighting the most salient parts. The rest is what I wrote 3 years ago, and is still true.

Grow-in-the-dark plants could spark the next Green Revolution

 http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/09/06/ozy-grow-in-the-dark-plants/15128899/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=usatoday-newstopstories 

Pretty much everything in this article annoys me. Science is awesome and glorious, but this is just one more example in a line of many ways we try to stick wads of gum in the holes of a wall that is gushing water and threatening to explode. Let us begin ...

The new Green Revolution might look a little like this: peach orchards heavy with fruit in the middle of January, dense rows of corn flourishing in sandbox-sized plots, and grocers stocking persimmons in the heat of summer.

Sounds amazing, right? Who wouldn't want that? Solve all the problems, right?

And it might start with the phytochrome – a crucial light-sensing molecule that tells plants when to germinate, grow, make food, flower and age. Scientists have mapped and manipulated the phytochrome's structure, aiming to alter the conditions under which plants grow and develop. Eventually, they want to insert these modified phytochromes into plants to trick them into growing, and bearing seeds and fruit – even when they're not supposed to.

"Manipulating." See, that's where it goes wonky for me. It can only be considered hubris to think we can improve upon Nature. "Trick"? Since when is it a good idea to "trick" Nature?

"We hope to create a toolkit of phytochromes that can eventually be used to control agriculture – how plants grow, when they flower, when they die," said Richard Vierstra, a plant geneticist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

"Control." Yeah, also such a good idea. Trying to control Nature.

Vierstra and his colleagues have only just begun making these mutants and inserting them into the sprightly mustard weed ...

Anyone else have a problem with the word, mutant? Let's see what else they want to do.

Plants "don't like" cramped conditions. "We have to engineer plants so they do like being grown that way…. There really is a need to re-engineer the phytochrome system."

No, no there really isn't. There is no need to do that.

Scientists could even trick phytochromes into ignoring growing seasons. The ratio of active to inactive phytochromes reflects the hours of day and night, indicating the time of year, which, in turn, tells plants when to sprout, flower, fruit or go to seed. But researchers could, for example, insert plants with phytochromes that stay active all year. 

What could possibly go wrong?

... it sounds so crazy it just might work. But when contending with a swelling population and shrinking arable lands, a no-holds barred approach might be exactly what's needed.

No, it just sounds crazy. Here's what else is crazy: realizing and stating that we are facing shrinking arable land, and calling the manipulation of Nature the right thing to do, instead of the obvious answer of not letting the population swell beyond what is sustainable! We are not sustainable now! We will be even less so at 8 billion. A no-holds barred approach? How about not needing to get to that point? How about that whole "arable land" issue? Science for the sake of science much? We live in a society of ignoring the cause of of the disease and instead scrambling to come up with little helps for the symptoms. That is exactly and all this is, and it cannot end well. Remember the commercial from the '70s, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." It's really not. In that case, ironically, they replaced her butter with some crap-chemical margarine made in a lab. She was not amused. She won't be now, either. That I can promise.

I am all for science. I love science. Science is awesome. But this is not progress. This is hurtling with eyes wide open into disaster. And don't insult me by couching it in "green revolution." I'm not falling for it. Technology will not save us. It might prolong this failed experiment called humanity, but it won't ultimately save us. Only Nature can, and we've turned too far away from her. She's done with us, and that might be the best all the way around.

Monday, November 13, 2017

How About Some Logic?

Population certainly is a fascinating topic to research. The camps are very clearly divided, and the yawning chasm between them seems unbridgeable.

One of the things I hear the most from those who pooh-pooh at the thought that we need to slow down the growth is that there's plenty of room. "We can fit the whole world's population in a space the size of Texas!" "There's TONS of room, we haven't come close to running out of space!"

I get what they are saying. There are lots of open spaces around me where I live. I've lived in jammed big cities, and I've lived in rural areas where you can go a day without seeing a person. Their argument does not hold for me. Let's think about it, let's apply some LOGIC to it....

Let's all imagine a group of people in a high school gymnasium. It is furnished and they have open access to the bathrooms, of course, and they have their meals there and watch TV there and get on their computers, etc. It's pretty much their whole world, they don't need to leave very often. Most everything they need is in there. Their water source is in there and it is plentiful for their needs - showering, flushing, washing clothes etc. There are four of them. They have lots of room, and they pick up after themselves, so it stays pretty clean. They live this way for, say, a month. Then, their numbers double. Suddenly, there are 8 of them. No big deal, it's still a pretty big space. But their numbers are going to double every month. 16 of them aren't so bad, and even at 32, people have room. By 64, it's getting a little crowded. The bathrooms are not as neat as they once were, because many more people are using them. Food is going more quickly. Hot water does not last as long, and it's getting harder to get a good shower in. Their allotted amount of water isn't going as far as it used to, and what there is, is getting a little gross. Not everyone can agree on what to watch on TV, either. There's a lot more trash around and less space to put it. By Month 6, it's 128 people. That's becoming quite crowded, uncomfortable, smelly, *inconvenient.* Imagine the numbers in a year.

Yeah, I based that all the way down to the most simplistic of examples. These people were in a finite system. Then again, so are we. Earth is a finite system, just a really really big one. There cannot be infinite growth in a finite system.

So when people say we have plenty of room, they are not taking into account areas that cannot support human life. They aren't taking into account the extremely tiny amount of fresh potable water available (which gets smaller all the time thanks to all the polluting practice more and more people have.). In fact,m there are SO many things that are not taken into account that it is hard for me to find a logical standpoint with which to debate. I can't debate with logic where logic refuses to exist.

Is it me?

No, I am not an expert here. I'm merely an observer. Sittin' here. Observing.

Sunday, November 5, 2017

Tuck In. Breathe In. Drift Off. Die Early.

I thought this piece from 3 years ago from my other retired blog was appropriate to dust off and post here. It has recently been stated that chemicals in the laundry products are bad for children. Yeah. Again, I wrote this 3 years ago, and it wasn't new news then. Can we stop swaddling our children in this crap? No wonder they are all sick in the body and brain. STOP. We are harming them because we want to smell like fake shit. And we are harming the environment by washing all this back into it.

STOP.

*****

"Soothing lavender scent for air and fabric." Because choking your skin and lungs with chemicals doesn't need to come in just one product, you gotta spread it around. Procter & Gamble has an entire line of products dedicated to an awesome night's sleep for you.

According to what they show in an ad, you start with Tide + Downy Sweet Escapes in Sweet Escapes scent, use Ultra Downy Infusions in Sweet Dreams scent, add Unstopables In-Wash Scent-Booster in Dreams scent, then make sure you toss Bounce dryer sheets in the dryer in Sweet Dreams scent. These are all conveniently packaged in a purple theme so you know they are all scented lavender.


Oh - and also spray Febreze Sleep Serenity Bedroom Mist before you get into bed.

Let's try to forget about the horrendous amount of plastic this group represents. Let's think about all these chemicals in which you are sleeping. Up against your skin. For like 8 hours. Absorbing into your system. Your children's systems. Your children who someday might have kids. Let's stop and think about all the chemicals sitting in everyone's system all the time now, and how many children are affected these days. How many have issues and sicknesses and cancer? Let's make a connection for once.

You know what else smells like lavender? Actual lavender. Made by Nature. Therefore natural. A little tiny glass bottle of actual lavender essential oil would not cost you as much as all this crap and would last longer anyway. When did we start getting suckered into all this stuff? Natural lavender has one thing in it: lavender. Below is a parting gift is one-third of a list of potential ingredients to make the stuff above smell like lavender. Enjoy:

(-)-(R)-.α.-Phellandrene
(-)-.α.-Fenchol
(-)-Guaiol
(+)-Tartaric acid
(+/-)-Pulegone
(1,7,7-Trimethylbicyclo[2.2.1]hept-2-yl)cyclohexan-1-ol
(1-Ethoxyethoxy)-cyclododecane
(2-Butoxyethyl)benzene
(2E,6Z)-Nona-2,6-dien-1-ol
(2E,6Z)-Nona-2,6-dienyl acetate
(3a.α.,4.α.,6.α.,7.α.,7a.α.)-3a,4,5,6,7,7a-Hexahydro-3-methyl-5-
methylene-4,7-methano-1H-inden-6-yl acetate
(4-Methylphenoxy)acetaldehyde
(4-tert-Butylphenyl)acetonitrile
(E)-.β.-Ionone
(E)-1-(2,4,4-Trimethyl-2-cyclohexen-1-yl)-2-buten-1-one
(E)-1-Ethoxy-3,7-dimethylocta-2,6-diene
(E)-2-Phenylpropenyl acetate
(E)-3,4,5,6,6-Pentamethylhept-3-en-2-one
(E)-3,7-Dimethylocta-2,6-diene-1-thiol
(E)-4-Decenal
(E)-6,10-Dimethylundeca-5,9-dien-2-yl acetate
(E)-Hex-3-enyl acetate
(E)-Non-2-enal
(E)-Oct-2-enal
(E)-Oct-5-en-2-one
(tri-)Acetin
(Z)1-Ethoxy-3,7-dimethylocta-2,6-diene
(Z)-2-Penten-1-ol
(Z)-2-Phenylpropenyl acetate
(Z)-3,4,5,6,6-Pentamethylhept-3-en-2-one
(Z)-6,10-Dimethylundeca-5,9-dien-2-yl acetate
(Z)-Hex-3-enyl 2-methylbutyrate
(Z)-Octadec-9-enol
.beta.-Caryophyllene alcohol
.Eta.-1H-Indol-1-yl-.α.,.α.,.ε.-trimethyl-1H-indole-1-heptanol
.α.,.α.,6,6-Tetramethylbicyclo[3.1.1]hept-2-ene-2-
propionaldehyde
.α.-Bisabolol
.α.-Methylcyclohexylmethyl acetate