Recognizing the value of efficiency

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

IN THE WIN COLUMN

Maryland Redefines Value of Energy Efficiency In a landmark decision, Maryland's regulators will now consider a broad array of societal benefits like cleaner air and new jobs when determining the value of energy efficiency.   READ MORE

Tell the feds: Don't make elders more vulnerable to abuse in nursing homes!

Arbitration clauses make elders more vulnerable to abuse and reward nursing home operators who allow abuse and neglect of residents. Tell CMS to prohibit binding arb clauses in nursing home admissions contracts!

CMS is still making rules and could prohibit predispute arb clauses in nursing home contracts.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/08/19/editorial-nursing-homes-take-away-right-sue/32033361/

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

Great stuff -- Salem Harvest garden party fundraiser

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."
>
> I hope you're having a great summer. Salem Harvest is, we even harvested strawberries this season, over 3,500 pounds donated. We're already up to 47,000 pounds total donated in 2015.
>
> Salem Harvest is hosting a fundraiser party, it's at a classic estate up in Fairmount area. Wine, small plates, Willamette University opera singers! Should be awesome.
>
> There's an invitation attached. If you would be so kind, please also pass it along to others you know who may be interested or post it on social media.
>
> Best,
> Rob
>
> --
> To feed the hungry by harvesting food that would go to waste
>
> Robert Easton
> 503.400.6618 x3
> reaston@salemharvest.org
>
> PO Box 483
> Salem, OR 97308

Just One Backyard: One Man’s Search for Food [feedly]

Just One Backyard: One Man's Search for Food
// City Farmer News

New book.

"We have all of the pieces of the puzzle that are needed to create sustainable food systems … we just need to put them together. It isn't a matter of choice, it is a matter of survival."

By Dr. Zahina-Ramos (Dr. Z)
He holds a M.S. degree in the biological sciences and a Ph.D. in geosciences.
Published Jan 2015

Sustainability is an entertaining and enlightening tale of how Dr. Zahina-Ramos turned his urban residential backyard into a research study to measure the many benefits of urban agriculture. This is no dry lecture based on puffed-up rhetoric. Dr. Z has skillfully accomplished one of the most difficult challenges- weaving heartwarming storytelling and scientific facts together in a way that even a novice can appreciate and enjoy.

The first half of the book takes the reader on a thoughtfully told journey through the history of food growing, from ancient times through the 21st century, carefully describing how our food supply has become dominated by an industrialized production system that is dependent on unsustainable practices and harms the environment.

By drawing upon historical fact, his family's experiences and stories told to him by food gardeners around the world, its eloquent message remains fresh right up to the end. The second half of the book gets down to the nitty-gritty of what sustainable urban food growing is and the numerous benefits it can give. Several chapters describe the social, environmental, ecological and economic benefits of urban agriculture in a way that has never been possible before- with hard numbers, rather than broad generalizations.

Even though the current unsustainable food system is fraught with problems, Dr. Z lays out solutions that can provide for the needs of the 21st century. The result is inspirational and empowering. This timeless work is destined to become the foremost book on the benefits from and necessity of urban food growing.

See the book.

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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

What did JK Rowling tell two aspiring authors on Twitter? - CSMonitor.com [feedly]

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What did JK Rowling tell two aspiring authors on Twitter? - CSMonitor.com
http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/2015/0816/What-did-JK-Rowling-tell-two-aspiring-authors-on-Twitter
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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

The GOP as the progressive party

For the last forty years, mind you, America has been moving steadily along an easily defined trajectory. We've moved step by step toward more political and economic inequality, more political corruption, more impoverishment for those outside the narrowing circles of wealth and privilege, more malign neglect toward the national infrastructure, and more environmental disruption, along with a steady decline in literacy and a rolling collapse in public health, among other grim trends. These are the ways in which we've been progressing, and that's the sense in which the GOP counts as America's current progressive party: the policies being proposed by GOP candidates will push those same changes even further than they've already gone, resulting in more inequality, corruption, impoverishment, and so on.

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The Archdruid Report
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.it/
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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

The Archdruid Report: The Cimmerian Hypothesis, Part Three: The End of the Dream [feedly]

Interesting reflection on the ingrained patterns of "thinking" of those trying to con the rest of us into a giant boondoggle bridge and other aspects of remnant Eisenhower-ism.

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The Archdruid Report: The Cimmerian Hypothesis, Part Three: The End of the Dream
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.it/2015/07/the-cimmerian-hypothesis-part-three-end.html
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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

A must read for all educators, parents, grandparents and politicians

Slim Chance
// Monbiot.com

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 12^th August 2015

...

Once you become obese, an article published in the Lancet this year explains, biological changes lock you in. Fat cells proliferate. The brain becomes habituated to dopamine signalling (the reward pathway), driving you to compensate by increasing your consumption. If you try to lose weight, the body perceives that it is being starved, and powerful adaptations (such as an increase in metabolic efficiency) try to bounce you back to your previous state. People who manage, against great odds, to return to a normal weight must consume 300 fewer calories per day than those who have never been obese, if they are not to put the weight back on. "Once obesity is established, … bodyweight seems to become biologically stamped in". The more weight you lose, the stronger the biological pressure to get back to your former, excessive size.

The researchers find that "these biological adaptations often persist indefinitely": in other words, if you have once been obese, staying slim means sticking to a strict diet for life. The best you can hope for is not a dietary cure, but "obesity in remission". The only effective, long-term treatment for obesity currently available, the same paper says, is bariatric surgery. This can cause a number of grim complications.

. . . Fat-shaming is worse than useless. Another paper found that the more weight-conscious people are, the more likely they are to overeat: the stress it induces is a trigger for comfort eating. As Sarah Boseley points out in her book The Shape We're In, "the diet industry … is one of the biggest frauds of our time". For the obese, temporary reductions in weight will almost inevitably be reversed.

... The crucial task is to reach children before they succumb to this addiction. As well as help and advice for parents, this surely requires a major change in what scientists call "the obesogenic environment" (high energy foods and drinks and the advertising and packaging that reinforces their attraction). Unless children are steered away from overeating from the beginning, they are likely to be trapped for life.

...Why do we have an obesity epidemic? Has the composition of the human species changed? Have we suffered a general collapse in willpower? No. The evidence points to high-fat, high-sugar foods that overwhelm the impulse control of children and young adults, packaged and promoted to create the impression that they are fun, cool and life-enhancing. Many are placed in the shops where children are bound to encounter them: around the tills, at grasping height.

...

This is the choice we face. To recognise that the only humane and effective means of addressing the obesity epidemic is to prevent more people from being hooked, by restricting the pushers. Or to continue a programme of fat-shaming, bullying and compulsory treatment, whose only likely outcome is unhappiness. Now ask yourself again: which of these two options is draconian?

www.monbiot.com

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"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

Q: Why Are We Letting Infectious Diseases Make A Comeback? - Digg

A: Because public health precautions and interventions require taxes, and the rich have become so brain damaged by their greed that they prefer the return of eradicated diseases to taxes, because think they can buy immunity for themselves and their children from the collapse of modern public health systems.*

http://digg.com/2015/tropical-diseases-united-states?utm_medium=email&utm_source=digg 

(* In this they are wrong, of course, but then history is mainly a litany of catastrophically stupid delusions of the rich and powerful anyway.)

"Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay."

Interesting new documentary: Special showing Wednesday 12 August: UNITY

A nice young person I met at the terrific "Cowspiracy" movie sent me some info on this, an intriguing movie from the looks of it:

https://www.facebook.com/events/750346865091785/