Portland tram and more from Michael Pollan

The Portland tram is running! It's only the second commuter tram in the U.S. Read about it here.

And Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma that I've previously posted about, has written an excellent albeit long article, "Unhappy Meals," for the New York Times Magazine. An excerpt:

What would happen, for example, if we were to start thinking about food as less of a thing and more of a relationship?

In nature, that is of course precisely what eating has always been: relationships among species in what we call food chains, or webs, that reach all the way down to the soil. Species co-evolve with the other species they eat, and very often a relationship of interdependence develops: I’ll feed you if you spread around my genes. A gradual process of mutual adaptation transforms something like an apple or a squash into a nutritious and tasty food for a hungry animal. Over time and through trial and error, the plant becomes tastier (and often more conspicuous) in order to
gratify the animal’s needs and desires, while the animal gradually acquires whatever digestive tools (enzymes, etc.) are needed to make optimal use of the plant. Similarly, cow’s milk did not start out as a nutritious food for humans; in fact, it made them sick until humans who lived around cows evolved the ability to digest lactose as adults. This development proved much to the advantage of both the milk drinkers and the cows.

“Health” is, among other things, the byproduct of being involved in these sorts of relationships in a food chain — involved in a great many of them, in the case of an omnivorous creature like us. Further, when the health of one link of the food chain is disturbed, it can affect all the creatures in it. When the soil is sick or in some way deficient, so will be the grasses that grow in that soil and the cattle that eat the grasses and the people who drink the milk. Or, as the English agronomist Sir Albert Howard put it in 1945 in “The Soil and Health” (a founding text of organic agriculture), we would do well to regard “the whole problem of health in soil, plant, animal and man as one great subject.” Our personal health is inextricably bound up with the health of the entire food web.

In many cases, long familiarity between foods and their eaters leads to elaborate systems of communications up and down the food chain, so that a creature’s senses come to recognize foods as suitable by taste and smell and color, and our bodies learn what to do with these foods after they pass the test of the senses, producing in anticipation the chemicals necessary to break them down. Health depends on knowing how to read these biological signals: this smells spoiled; this looks ripe; that’s one good-looking cow. This is easier to do when a creature has long experience of a food, and much harder when a food has been designed expressly to deceive its senses — with artificial flavors, say, or synthetic sweeteners.

Note that these ecological relationships are between eaters and whole foods, not nutrients. Even though the foods in question eventually get broken down in our bodies into simple nutrients, as corn is reduced to simple sugars, the qualities of the whole food are not unimportant — they govern such things as the speed at which the sugars will be released and absorbed, which we’re coming to see as critical to insulin metabolism. Put another way, our bodies have a longstanding and sustainable relationship to corn that we do not have to high-fructose corn syrup. Such a relationship with corn syrup might develop someday (as people evolve superhuman insulin systems to cope with regular floods of fructose and glucose), but for now the relationship leads to ill health because our bodies don’t know how to handle these biological novelties. In much the same way, human bodies that can cope with chewing coca leaves — a longstanding relationship between native people and the coca plant in South America — cannot cope with cocaine or crack, even though the same “active ingredients” are present in all three. Reductionism as a way of understanding food or drugs may be harmless, even necessary, but reductionism in practice can lead to problems.

Looking at eating through this ecological lens opens a whole new perspective on exactly what the Western diet is: a radical and rapid change not just in our foodstuffs over the course of the 20th century but also in our food relationships, all the way from the soil to the meal. The ideology of nutritionism is itself part of that change. To get a firmer grip on the nature of those changes is to begin to know how we might make our relationships to food healthier....

And his recommendations:

1. Eat food. Though in our current state of confusion, this is much easier said than done. So try this: Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these.

2. Avoid even those food products that come bearing health claims. They’re apt to be heavily processed, and the claims are often dubious at best. Don’t forget that margarine, one of the first industrial foods to claim that it was more healthful than the traditional food it replaced, turned out to give people heart attacks. When Kellogg’s can boast about its Healthy Heart Strawberry Vanilla cereal bars, health claims have become hopelessly compromised. (The American Heart Association charges food makers for their endorsement.) Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign that they have nothing valuable to say about health.

3. Especially avoid food products containing ingredients that are a) unfamiliar, b) unpronounceable c) more than five in number — or that contain high-fructose corn syrup.None of these characteristics are necessarily harmful in and of themselves, but all of them are reliable markers for foods that have been highly processed.

4. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible. You won’t find any high-fructose corn syrup at the farmer’s market; you also won’t find food harvested long ago and far away. What you will find are fresh whole foods picked at the peak of nutritional quality. Precisely the kind of food your great-great-grandmother would have recognized as food.

5. Pay more, eat less. The American food system has for a century devoted its energies and policies to increasing quantity and reducing price, not to improving quality. There’s no escaping the fact that better food — measured by taste or nutritional quality (which often correspond) — costs more, because it has been grown or raised less intensively and with more care. Not everyone can afford to eat well in America, which is shameful, but most of us can: Americans spend, on average, less than 10 percent of their income on food, down from 24 percent in 1947, and less than the citizens of any other nation. And those of us who can afford to eat well should. Paying more for food well grown in good soils — whether certified organic or not — will contribute not only to your health (by reducing exposure to pesticides) but also to the health of others who might not themselves be able to afford that sort of food: the people who grow it and the people who live downstream, and downwind, of the farms where it is grown.

“Eat less” is the most unwelcome advice of all, but in fact the scientific case for eating a lot less than we currently do is compelling. “Calorie restriction” has repeatedly been shown to slow aging in animals, and many researchers (including Walter Willett, the Harvard epidemiologist) believe it offers the single strongest link between diet and cancer prevention. Food abundance is a problem, but culture has helped here, too, by promoting the idea of moderation. Once one of the longest-lived people on earth, the Okinawans practiced a principle they called “Hara Hachi Bu”: eat until you are 80 percent full. To make the “eat less” message a bit more palatable, consider that quality may have a bearing on quantity: I don’t know about you, but the better the quality of the food I eat, the less of it I need to feel satisfied. All tomatoes are not created equal.

6. Eat mostly plants, especially leaves. Scientists may disagree on what’s so good about plants — the antioxidants? Fiber? Omega-3s? — but they do agree that they’re probably really good for you and certainly can’t hurt. Also, by eating a plant-based diet, you’ll be consuming far fewer calories, since plant foods (except seeds) are typically less “energy dense” than the other things you might eat. Vegetarians are healthier than carnivores, but near vegetarians (“flexitarians”) are as healthy as vegetarians. Thomas Jefferson was on to something when he advised treating meat more as a flavoring than a food.

7. Eat more like the French. Or the Japanese. Or the Italians. Or the Greeks. Confounding factors aside, people who eat according to the rules of a traditional food culture are generally healthier than we are. Any traditional diet will do: if it weren’t a healthy diet, the people who follow it wouldn’t still be around. True, food cultures are embedded in societies and economies and ecologies, and some of them travel better than others: Inuit not so well as Italian. In borrowing from a food culture, pay attention to how a culture eats, as well as to what it eats. In the case of the French paradox, it may not be the dietary nutrients that keep the French healthy (lots of saturated fat and alcohol?!) so much as the dietary habits: small portions, no seconds or snacking, communal meals — and the serious pleasure taken in eating. (Worrying about diet can’t possibly be good for you.) Let culture be your guide, not science.

8. Cook. And if you can, plant a garden. To take part in the intricate and endlessly interesting processes of providing for our sustenance is the surest way to escape the culture of fast food and the values implicit in it: that food should be cheap and easy; that food is fuel and not communion. The culture of the kitchen, as embodied in those enduring traditions we call cuisines, contains more wisdom about diet and health than you are apt to find in any nutrition journal or journalism. Plus, the food you grow yourself contributes to your health long before you sit down to eat it. So you might want to think about putting down this article now and picking up a spatula or hoe.

9. Eat like an omnivore. Try to add new species, not just new foods, to your diet. The greater the diversity of species you eat, the more likely you are to cover all your nutritional bases. That of course is an argument from nutritionism, but there is a better one, one that takes a broader view of “health.” Biodiversity in the diet means less monoculture in the fields. What does that have to do with your health? Everything. The vast monocultures that now feed us require tremendous amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides to keep from collapsing. Diversifying those fields will mean fewer chemicals, healthier soils, healthier plants and animals and, in turn, healthier people. It’s all connected, which is another way of saying that your health isn’t bordered by your body and that what’s good for the soil is probably good for you, too.

I have moved to San Francisco and other odds & ends

Well, after residing in San Francisco for ten months, I finally decided to put down some roots and had all of my furniture and other belongings shipped down from Portland last Friday. Whew! I'm living in a sea of boxes. Nothing like trying to squeeze everything from a two bedroom house with a full (and I mean that in both senses!) basement into a one bedroom apartment. I see a big garage sale in my future!

TASTY VEGETARIAN FARE

Last night I had a great dinner at Millenium here in SF. I've always been a little dubious about the notion of spending much money for a vegetarian meal, but I'm now a believer. So delicious! I have a distinct suspicion that I'll be back there soon.

MOVIES

I've seen some good movies recently that I wanted to recommend. In particular, I really enjoyed The Queen and Notes on a Scandal. Helen Mirren was excellent in the former. And I was surprised by how much emotion I felt watching the video footage of Princess Diana. It has been easy for me to forget how much grace she had and how she connected with people. Funny, I remember vividly getting up that morning to watch her royal wedding to Prince Charles, right down to the commentary of Peter Jennings.

On DVD, I enjoyed both Happy Endings and Imaginary Heroes.

NOTES FROM THE OIL DRUM:

Thoughts on Ethanol after Bush's State of the Union Address

The electric wheel, a breakthrough in car efficiency

AND FINALLY, some State of the Union humor. :-)

Harry Bingham IV

My friend Sam recently shared with me some information about Harry Bingham IV. Bingham served as Vice Consul in Vichy France during World War II and defied official U.S. policy and granted visas to 2500 Jewish and other refugees. He was subsequently disciplined and eventually lost his job in the diplomatic service.

In 2002, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised Bingham "constructive dissent" and presented his children with a posthumous "courageous diplomat" award. Bingham is now being honored with a stamp.

Here's the background on Bingham that Sam sent me:

Who was Harry Bingham and why is he getting a stamp?

... Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a posthumous award for "constructive dissent" to Hiram (or Harry) Bingham, IV. For over fifty years, the State Department resisted any attempt to honor Bingham. For them he was an insubordinate member of the US diplomatic service, a dangerous maverick who was eventually demoted.

Now, after his death, he has been officially recognized as a hero. Bingham came from an illustrious family. His father (whom the fictional character Indiana Jones was based) was the archeologist who unearthed the Inca City of Machu Picchu, Peru, in 1911. Harry entered the US diplomatic service and, in 1939, was posted to Marseilles, France, as American Vice-Consul.

The USA was then neutral and, not wishing to annoy Marshal Petain's puppet Vichy regime, President Roosevelt's government ordered its representatives in Marseilles not to grant visas to any Jews. Bingham found this policy immoral and, risking his
career, did all in his power to undermine it.

In defiance of his bosses in Washington, he granted over 2,500 USA visas to Jewish and other refugees, including the artists Marc Chagall and Max Ernst and the family of the writer Thomas Mann. He also sheltered Jews in his Marseilles home, and obtained forged identity papers to help Jews in their dangerous journeys across Europe. He worked with the French underground to smuggle Jews out of France into Franco's Spain or across the Mediterranean and even contributed to their expenses out of his own pocket. In 1941, Washington lost patience with him. He was sent to Argentina, where later he continued to annoy his superiors by reporting on the movements of Nazi war criminals.

Eventually, he was forced out of the American diplomatic service completely. Bingham died almost penniless in 1988.

Little was known of his extraordinary activities until his son found some letters in his belongings after his death. He has now been honored by many groups and organizations including the United Nations and the State of Israel.

The "ice pick" lobotomy

In the fall of 2005, I was listening to a documentary on NPR entitled "My Lobotomy." The documentary chronicled the efforts of Howard Dully to learn why, at age 12, he had been given a transorbital lobotomy in 1960.

Dully's story, and the story of the procedure itself, was not only shocking but also so moving that I had to pull my car to the side of the freeway to finish listening.

To read more and to listen to the documentary, click here.

Court oversight for the NSA domestic spying program

As reported in the Washington Post today:

The Bush administration said yesterday that it has agreed to disband a controversial warrantless surveillance program run by the National Security Agency, replacing it with a new effort that will be overseen by the secret court that governs clandestine spying in the United States.

Family Jewels returns

If you're in San Francisco between February 14th and March 17th, you've got to see Veronica Klaus in Family Jewels. This one woman show is "the comprehensive account of Veronica Klaus’ real life adventure of her transformation from Midwestern small-town schoolboy to Bay Area Diva, a personal revolution from 'husky' boy to 'voluptuous' chanteuse."

I saw Family Jewels last spring... the first week after moving back to San Francisco from Portland. When I spoke to Veronica after the show, I thanked her for reminding me why I had returned!

Full details are at Veronica's website.

Ethanol and robotic warrior follow-ups... and birthday wishes

I wonder if anyone is following these stories that continue to intrigue me... maybe you're all tired of hearing about them. :-)

First, a couple of articles on ethanol as a gasoline replacement. (See my original post on the topic.) My concern here is simply that politics is behind the huge subsidies of ethanol, a fuel whose benefits are not all that clear cut. A waste of money most likely, and potentially worse: complacency in the public and Congress because "we seem to be doing something about the addiction to oil problem."

• From the November 27th issue of The New Yorker, "Deal Sweeteners." An excerpt:

Congress is paying billions in subsidies to get us to use more ethanol, while keeping in place tariffs and quotas that guarantee that we’ll use less. And while most of the time tariffs just mean higher prices and reduced competition, in the case of ethanol the negative effects are considerably greater, leaving us saddled with an inferior and less energy-efficient technology and as dependent as ever on oil-producing countries. Because of the ethanol tariffs, we’re imposing taxes on fuel from countries that are friendly to the U.S., but no tax at all on fuel from countries that are among our most vehement opponents.

• From the January/February issue of Sierra, "Corn-Fed Cars."

And secondly, Steve Featherstone wrote an article for the February issue of Harper's about "The Coming Robot Army." Not available online yet... (But see my original posts one and two from May 10 last year.)

QUOTE FOR THE DAY (for Antonio :-)

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

-- Helen Keller in The Open Door

And for Mom...

Happy Birthday!!!

Moving from SF to L.A.? Don't bother.

That is, staying put makes sense if you're willing to wait 25 million years. :-) Check it out, and make sure to check out the interactive graphic on the left.

As long as the sheep are happy...

An interesting cluster of stories around some research on sheep being conducted in Oregon, how it was misinterpreted, and the underlying relevance to homosexuality in humans. Check out Andrew Sullivan.

For more on the story, including information about Oregon Health & Science University's research, just Google "gay sheep".

Two thousand seven begins

Well, it's the seventh day of two thousand and seven. Wassup?

I'll be 41 this year. Forty was fine; I don't like the look of 41. Maybe it's just that it's a prime... I don't like how indivisible it is. :-)

And had dinner the other night with my friend Bette who said that he prefers years ending in even numbers along with 0, 1, 5, and 9. That leaves 2007 out in the cold. On the other hand, Bette, a long-time curmudgeon (Hi, Bette!), seemed more upbeat than I did, so who knows?

Still, I think something shifted for me yesterday. I took some steps to bring some clarity to the murkiness of last year's career and financial choices. And somehow, things that had really been getting me down seemed a little less weighty. Nothing really changed except my perspective, which in the end, is probably the only thing that ever really does change.

I've been spending more time with old friends lately; I'm reminded of a great quote from Gail Godwin, the writer:

One is taught by experience to put a premium on those few people who can appreciate you for what you are.

Now I don't know if my old friends really appreciate me, but at least they've been around long enough to have at least made their peace with who I am.

MY FRIEND SHAYNE has been selecting an annual "theme for the year" for almost a decade. This year his theme is "Taking it to the next level." I've been thinking about what that means for me.

I'm finding myself feeling very "in between" these past few weeks: in between young and old. In between my software engineering career and the new one (life coaching and fitness training). In between the habits and pursuits of the past 14 years which have been so fun (though draining, too) and whatever follows when one finally moves on from the hyperstimulation of clubland. (Told Bette I was going to start the Post-Clubbers Club :-)

None of these transitions occur all at once. Or do they? In 2002 Bette and I were waiting for the airport shuttle outside of the Wyndham Palm Springs. It was New Year's morning, and we'd been dancing to Phil B. a couple of hours earlier; our plan was to catch him again that night at Mass in SF. I asked Bette if he had a guess as to how he would know when he'd been to his last circuit party. Would he know immediately? Would something so awful happen that he'd just never go back? Or would it only be in retrospect that he'd realize that he hadn't been to one in several years, and probably wasn't going again?

I don't remember if he had an answer; my guess was that something would occur and I'd make the decision not to go again. Now, five years later, I suspect it will be more of a gradual fade out, with the time in between growing longer and longer until, well, it just doesn't happen again. I had been planning to go to L.A. for NYE with Tommy and Ken this year, but backed out two days before I was to drive down. Instead I opted for a lavish dinner party followed by an all-night pajama party. Smaller events fit my mood better, and I didn't even find myself second guessing my decision at the last moment. Hmm.

I spent Christmas at Teddy's with old friends, and since then I've slowly begun to be reminded of the possibilities of life. I've lived in my apartment since March, but everything I own has been in storage in Portland. I finally scheduled a move date to get my stuff down here; I already feel more grounded. There were times in the past month that I really questioned my return to SF. Now I see that there was a lesson in coming back: I tried the old stuff and fell into old patterns; it didn't work out too well. I got, at last, that it's up to me to figure out what's next. I know a lot of people in similar situations: getting older, remembering the certainty of life a decade ago, now figuring out what to do going forward. Some of them seem to be doing pretty well, and I'm trying to learn from them. Others are floundering a bit; I'm learning from that, too. I lay in bed one night a couple of months ago, thinking that my life was in shambles. But in thinking about other people's lives, I realized that one could say the same thing about almost anyone. And as we say in the Wisdom Course, "this is what your life is like when it's working." :-)

TEN YEARS AGO I WENT TO PUERTO VALLARTA for the first time. My VP at Oracle had given the division a week off; James and I flew south for our first vacation together. Now I'm going back, in April, for nine days with friends. The accomodations are free; I'm using miles for a first class ticket. Doesn't get much better than that.

Ten years ago I also met Teddy, my Christmas day host. I know because I ran across some old emails while looking for something else. One was Bette's write-up of Gay Pride '97, which James and I missed as we were down in PV at the time. The other was written a couple of weeks later. The emails were interesting for two reasons. First, OMG, how did we ever live that way?!? How absolutely crazy! Nothing today in SF compares to the go-go-go environment of the mid- to late-90s. God, was it ever fun! But maybe too much fun, lol.

Second, the emails were interesting because here I am ten years later, still hanging out with many of these folks: Tommy, Bette, Michael, Madison, April, Pakalika, Teddy, Shayne...

Ms. Godwin was dead-on with her quote. All of you people from the Joy Luck/Universe days: thanks for being there then, for being here now, for trying to figure it out alongside me. Love you!

BITS & PIECES THIS SUNDAY MORNING...

Polar bears

Hussein's execution

Nixon the pianist

Movie of the week: Ship of Fools

Richard Rohr: Utterly Humbled by Mystery

I don't usually get much out of NPR's This I Believe segment, but my friend Jack sent me a link to "Utterly Humbled by Mystery." Check it out, it's a good one.

Proverb for the day: It pays to be honest, but it's slow pay.

More on ethanol as an automobile fuel (updated)

Matthew Wald wrote a great article on the potential of ethanol as a gasoline replacement. "Is Ethanol for the Long Haul" is published in the January 2007 issue of Scientific American . His conclusion: as long as it's made from corn, no.

He also noted the absurdity of Congress' passing laws subsidizing domestic production of ethanol from corn and preventing the importation of ethanol made from Brazilian sugar cane, ultimately resulting in higher fuel prices for Americans.

UPDATE

See also this post on ethanol from one of the blogs I read, The Oil Drum.