Book Report: No Impact Man

Steady J's mom clipped an article from Time Magazine and mailed it to me some weeks ago. The article, titled "Cash Crunch: Why Extreme Thriftiness Stunts Are The Rage" discussed the recent emergence of projects publicized by blogs (resulting in book deals) concerning among other things, not riding in a car, not purchasing any new clothing other than underwear for one year, and spending $1 on food per person per day for one month. I found the article pretty amusing, especially when it explained how it is no longer fashionable to "flaunt bling", however, it is fashionable to flaunt a "monk-like existence". Well, I can't say that I'm flaunting anything with my blog other than the fact that I hate the U.S. energy policy, my pants are too small and I really like jars.

The idea that "deprivation experiments" are something new is fascinating. My guess is more that it is a trend to deliver report of the experiment via blog, and not the fact that people are trying to live differently than the norm. Back in the late 70s when my dad was a student at University of Alaska, Fairbanks, he and his roommates and friends (in the dorm) decided that grocery stores were overrated and they were only going to eat what they could catch. I should mention that they were all up there to study wildlife and biology and other such outdoorsy related subjects which meant that they had an idea of what was available for eating. I should also mention that most of them grew up in the paved valleys of southern California. Anyway, after a week of living off of voles and other small rodents caught by snares, they decided that grocery stores were actually ok. What's hilarious to me is that my dad didn't think his experiment was all that strange. I think my dad figured that college was the time when everyone was trying something new. And when he would tell that story, he would always end with a substory about the guy living down the hall who had covered his entire room and bed with moss. Moss guy was the real oddball!  Today, if a group of college students tried eating rodents or covering their rooms with moss, you bet they would have a blog about it, and they would end up on The Today Show and inevitably there would be a reality tv show about them after a few months. I guess what I'm saying is that these experiments are nothing new, it's just the way they are hyped that is new.

By some odd coincidence, the Time article made reference to, No Impact Man, a man named Colin Beaven who spent a year of his life NYC trying to have as little environmental impact as possible. He kept a blog about he and his wife and infant daughter's experience and wrote a book about it that came out last year. There was also a documentary made about the project. My friend Mary (of the lightning jar fame) had mention No Impact Man to me a few days before, and with two seemingly random references to the same work in a matter of days, I figured it was time to read his book!

Unlike my reading of Not Buying It, I could really relate to Colin Beavan, despite the fact that he lives in Manhattan and is married with a small child. He wrote about his reasons for wanting to live with the least amount of environmental impact as possible and made a logical plan to do so. He was honest to the fact that his lifestyle as a writer allowed him certain flexibility that would probably not be possible for many other people. He was also quite truthful in admitting the areas that he and his wife could not find to work around, such as how to find olive oil or coffee made within 100 miles of Manhattan. I found it highly amusing that Beavan wrote of reading Not Buying It, and had the same comments and criticisms I had. Despite the overwhelming title of No Impact Man: The Adventures of a Guilty Liberal Who Attempts to Save the Planet And the Discoveries He Makes About Himself And Our Way Of Life In The Process, which initially turned Steady J off, even he could relate when Beavan spoke of using an old peanut butter jar as his coffee mug; a look which Steady J has pioneered on the west coast.

Beavan made lots of great points and links in his book that I could explain here, but I won't because I'm hoping that a lot of you will go out and read his book, or check out his blog, or even watch the documentary (which I have not seen). I'm just going to close by highlighting a few of the main points from his book that made me stop and think.

       Number 1: Beavan theorizes that mechanical devices and technology have taken the rest periods our of our lives. Before cell phones, Ipads and travel coffee mugs, people were forced to sit for periods of time without distraction and constant connection, allowing them to rest their brains and bodies. There would be lapses between stressful times because you were not always tethered to work or other people. If you wanted a cup of coffee and you were out on the town, you sat quietly in a coffee shop and were able to rest your mind, and you were not interrupted by a phone call, text or email message. Beavan mentions research that reflects that people today are no happier than people several generations ago, in fact, they are less happy, and he wonders if we can really consider ourselves to be an advanced society if technological advances are not increasing our overall enjoyment of life.

      Number 2:  Products are designed to become obsolete (ie, break or be deemed out of style) in order to keep people buying. This makes me mad and I think it should be illegal since it causes so many unnecessary things to be created that end up in landfills after a few years. This started in the 1920s when things began to be commonly made by assembly line, as opposed to hand made, and really took off in the 1950s.

     Number 3: TV is a bigger time suck than people realize! Over the course of his project, Beavan teaches himself to cook with ingredients he buys from the farmers market, learns to make yogurt, sauerkraut and bake bread. All his friends want to know where he finds time to do it. The answer is that the first day of the project his family gave away their big flat screen television. The average amount of tv that Americans watch is 4.5 hours per day. Without a television, he and his wife have 9 hours a day back in their lives to devote to cooking healthy food for their small family. It doesn't take 9 hours a day to cook food, so their excess time is spent playing with their daughter, or talking, or riding bikes or playing board games with their friends who stop by for some home cooked food! They become slender and healthy from their increased intake of great food, and decreased time spend sitting around watching tv. I may never have a tv again!

"No, You're Weird!!!!!"

Something new: A travel story!

I had to travel to Houston for a meeting and decided to fly out of Eugene for the first time ever since it would be way more convenient for Steady J to drop me off and pick me up. Eugene has quite a nice airport, with a little cafe, gift shops and even "USB charger ports in the chairs!" as the TSA agent who checked my ID and boarding pass exclaimed when I told him it was my first time using that airport. "What a gem", I thought, "I'm coming back here!" And then the other TSA Agent took my toothpaste and my excitement was crushed.

I probably pushed the envelope a bit by throwing my semi-new full size tube in my backpack when I was hurrying to get out the door. When I was packing the night before, I'd realized that my travel size tube was in my desk at work. And I had no idea where my travel size deodorant had disappeared to. "No sweat", I figured. The TSA Agent in Portland had previously allowed my almost finished full size tube through with no issue. Apparently, he was incompetent, but quite accommodating which is not the optimal mix for a TSA agent.

The woman running the x-ray scanner had my bag pulled for a hand search by some pimply string bean fresh out of school. This was extra entertaining considering that I was the only person in the security line and there were six TSA agents. I guess I beat the Monday morning rush. Anyway, the youngster pulled my toothpaste and said it was not the approved size. Toothpaste is apparently not allowed in quantities greater than four ounces, yet my full size deodorant caused no red flag, which seems odd since that stuff melts down to a vast melty goo. The agent went on to say that my bag would have to be rescanned and they would dispose of my toothpaste for me. All I could think of was the plastic tube and the mix of diatomaceous earth and fluoride going into the dump!  "Can I leave it and pick it up tomorrow?" I asked. "No, we don't have that capability" was the reply. The agent asked if I could check my bag, which was a good suggestion, but I was under strict orders that the files I was carrying had to be kept on my person and I was not going to schlep 10 pounds of scholarship applications and transcripts without a bag to keep them in.

My backpack was rescanned and right before the toothpaste was pitched I asked "Can I squeeze out most of the paste so I just have enough in that tube to use for the next two days?"  Ol' pimple faces response was, "we'd have no way to know how many ounces would be left in the tube." And then I excitedly said, "But if the tube is eight ounces and then I squeeze out half of it, that would leave four ounces, and then if I squeeze out three quarters of that, I'd have one ounce!" And I was smiling with my brilliant use of logical estimation! And the young one was going to let me do it! Until he looked at the female who had scanned my bags and she shook her head back and forth. She told me to go to the travel shop and see if they had any four ounce containers for sale. I replied, " I don't buy anything new." and both agents looked at me like they couldn't decide if I was an idiot or a really incompetent terrorist who was running out of stories.

In a last attempt to save my toothpaste I asked them to wait while I searched my bag for a container. I thought there might be a film canister with vitamins in it floating amidst my change of underwear and hair straightener. All I could locate was a plastic freezer bag that had previously housed my toothbrush and toothpaste. I held it up inquisitively to the TSA agent and he said, "that would be kind of weird" and threw my toothpaste away right in front of my eyes. I wanted to yell, "No, you're weird! You're a WASTER AMERICAN! A Person who thinks everything is disposable and gives no thought to the resources used to make products!" and then slap him. But I didn't. I figured an angry outburst a 7am would put me on the TSA crazy list, and I really needed to get to that meeting. I had to settle for sitting at one of those fancy USB chairs while I fumed about being called weird and tore into a package of peppermint gum to chomp out my frustration and cover my breakfast breath.
                        
                             "You're weird!"
                                            "You're weird!"
                             "You're weird!"

Those words flowed through my head with each chew, alternating between being directed internally and back at the TSA crowd. I was super miffed and then I noticed the TSA comment cards and decided that they deserved a piece of my mind. When I was almost done filling out the card, I realized I had written, "Your agents threw away my toothpaste and then said I was weird!" as my complaint and felt like a total 8th grade loser. I folded up the complaint card and put it in my pocket to use as future scratch paper.

As I sat there waiting for my plane to board I started to wonder if this project is making me become a fundamentalist in my crusade against waste. I came to the conclusion that if I am worked up to the point of wanting to berate a TSA agent for being vigilant in their job, I am probably well on my way to being a "fundo" for my cause. And that doesn't actually trouble me that much. What does trouble me is the fact that I stand out so much in the general public for being conscious of waste. I am definitely not the norm. More people should be this weird.

The Fizzle Bizzle

Facebook today announced that they've extended a new application, the Gross National Happiness app, to users in countries around the world. This "app", which I had never heard about until this article, identifies status updates of users and uses the information to classify the "emotional state of users" by country. Apparently in the trials in the US and a few other countries, it was found that Gross National Happiness increases when people are enjoying  holidays, but decreases when we're all sad over celebrity deaths, like Michael Jackson or when our favorite team loses the Super Bowl. This Facebook, or Fizzle Bizzle (as my friends and I like to call it) article made me think more about Facebook and its purpose. 

Facebook to me, has gone from a seemingly organic way to connect with friends and acquaintances, to a way for companies and corporations to collect data on potential customers. Ever wonder where that fun quiz about your likes and dislikes came from? No, not some creative college student's basement. Try a market research company. It's much easier to collect data from consumers when you don't have to survey them in a grocery store or by cold calling. I'm often surprised the detail of information people will provide online surveys that seem to have no creator and are floating freely around Facebook. People will answer questions about their living arrangement (alone or with people), their income, education level, work place, hours of work, pets, names of family members, favorite foods, music, movies, books, etc, all because some quiz is supposedly going to provide insight into their personality as a result of their painstaking answer to the question, "Do you prefer Cheetos or Doritos?"

Cheetos.

And now Facebook is publicly going beyond the quiz for market research. It is mining our comments to determine our emotional well being. (How does FB get around obtaining Informed Consent from users?). Interestingly, I foresee targeted advertisements to citizens of certain countries based on the average emotional state of its users. This is where I think the process is flawed (and I'm kind of happy about it). If Facebook is going to use a text reader to look for words indicating emotional state, such as "awesome" or "tragic", how will it take sarcasm into consideration? What if my status is,  "It is so awesome that my cat took a shit on my jeans!" (That is pretty much a real status update from my friend B.A.) Or, even more fascinating is the fact that sometimes people write status updates that are more a reflection of what they think other people want to see, and less about what they are feeling. People write, "Happy Thanksgiving! It's going to be a great day with family!" when they really mean "I don't feel like cooking for these ingrates."  How does this app taking lying into consideration? Or people just reflect on things that they don't care about, or don't really mean anything. "Happy Friday!". Does that mean I'm having a Happy Friday or does that mean that I hope to have one or I hope other people have them? Or does it mean that I just can't think of anything to say?

How is the Fizzle Bizzle going to handle magic like that? I like to think they won't be able to since I am not a fan of this data collection, but something tells me that they are probably working on some program to identify sarcasm. This Facebook app is actually based on the research of a person at the University of Oregon (small world!) looking into Computer-Human interaction. And now I have a new mission for my lunch break - track down the author and ask him about sarcasm since his article does not mention it! See for yourself: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1753326.1753369.

Idiocy for Convenience

Gulf coast, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that your water is polluted with oil, your sea life will probably die and obliterate your fishing jobs and tourism industry for many, many years, and your environment will be forever altered. I'm sorry that you are screwed.

The Feds say they will reprimand the parties responsible. But how do you reprimand a whole country? It was not British Petroleum that was the root of this disaster. It was us. Fuel companies like BP will continue drilling for oil and ignore the potential for disaster as long as we still line up like fools to buy oil and gasoline and plastics to feed our lifestyles. It was us. We have destroyed an ecosystem and economy because of convenience and inability to consider change. It was us. Oil is rising from the earth at a rate that no one can manage to estimate correctly and it appears that it will keep a flowing for an undetermined amount of time. It was us. Eleven people died because of our thirst for oil. We all contributed to their deaths by giving a company no reason to slow down and ensure their workers safety and structural integrity of their equipment. We demand crude oil, ignoring the ever increasing price, and who cares if it is risky. It was us. And I feel guilty. And I feel sad. And every time I listen to the news or read an article about the oil spill I get so angry I begin to cry because I have no power to help the wild creatures in the path of the spill, or the people whose livelihood is dependent on a stable gulf.

And then I speak to a person from my Vanpool who works for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and she mentions the highly toxic hydrocarbon Benzene, which is found in gasoline and can easily leech into your skin, and how it seems strange that gasoline attendants don't wear gloves or face masks. And I think about all the people outside of Oregon who actually have to pump their own gas and I wonder if they ever realize the risk of cancer they face when standing in their business casual with their hands on the nozzle. And I remember a few weeks ago when Steady J suggested using a little gasoline as a cleaning solvent, the same way that I've heard other people suggest it over the years. Scanning the 12 pump gas station by my house the next day I see one tiny little posting above a sign regarding wheelchair accessibility that reports that gasoline is found to cause cancer in laboratory animals. And I realize the full extent of the idiocy of our fossil fuel system, which destroys our environment, sucks our piggy banks dry and in the end kills us.