Sydney wants green to be the dominant colour in its massive New Year’s Eve fireworks and festivities to herald in 2009. Read more here.
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About Me
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
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I for one would love to see a greener cleaner Sydney, but seriously ‘purchasing carbon friendly power’ to offest the NYE fireworks. Sound like a bit of political spin and waffle to be saying what they think the community may wish to hear. How about some real action, some real initiatives, something that will have a far reaching impact on Sydney and the world… maybe, just maybe Sydney could lead the way and become famous for it’s more enviromentally friendly lifestyle.
Gurr the Toy Maker
On 8-13-05, we set out from Sacramento County to hike the little-known Bassi Cabin loop trail. The hike is a symphony of coniferous forest, running water, and glacier-polished granite. I was joined by my friend Gurr–a large handsome Border Collie mix–and Kanako, a young woman who responded to my posting of the outing on a local Yahoo hiking group.
As Kanako and I walked down through the trees, Gurr ran ahead to be certain that there were no ferocious Golden Retrievers in our path, stopped to sniff the shrubbery, ran back to check up on us , and then ran forward again. When we came to some large Jeffrey pines, we turned off the trail for the short cross-country leg of our adventure. In a few minutes, we came to the creek. Gurr promptly jumped into the water, and when he came out, we walked downstream for about 200 m, before crossing over. We followed a game trail to Bassi cabin, which is still occasionally used by the Bassi family.
The cabin itself is fairly ordinary, but the backdrop is gorgeous. The steep face of a gigantic granite boulder, flanked by conifers, towers over the cabin. About 100 m past the cabin, Kanako and I sat down by the creek for lunch.
Unlike humans, Gurr thinks that a lunch break is for playing fetch. He prefers to fetch big sticks, rather than small ones, because the heavier sticks give his neck muscles a better workout. Gurr managed to find a nice piece of wood of the right weight. Then, to my surprise, he started chomping down on one end. He is not normally a very chewy dog. When Gurr has excess energy–which is most of the time–he usually runs, swims, or digs. But the wood chips were flying, and I wondered what he was up to. My question was answered a few minutes later, when Gurr brought the wood chunk to me, knowing that I would throw it for him. Initially, the wood chunk was too large for Gurr to grip comfortably in his mouth; so he chewed a handle on one end!
Before Jane Goodall’s pioneering study of wild chimpanzees, most of us believed that tool-use and especially tool-making were exclusively human activities. Goodall was intrigued when she first observed a chimp poking a stick into a termite mound, waiting a minute, pulling out the stick, and then licking off the termites.
Gurr’s toy-making is one notch above chimp termite-fishing. The canine craftsmanship had nothing to do with high-priority survival, and everything to do with lower-priority preparation for play. As an indicator of cognitive function, toy-making trumps tool-making. In terms of intelligence, chimpanzees have nothing on Border Collies!
Here’s a link to a Gurr photo (from a different hike).
http://tinyurl.com/p7g9p6
Larry’s outdoor climate history laboratory
The last Ice Age killed off all of the coniferous trees in Finland. After the ice sheet retreated, trees from elsewhere–like the Scots Pine–gradually colonized the vacant niche. On a smaller scale, the same thing happened in many high mountains of the Earth’s temperate regions, including the Sierra Nevada Range of California. We can learn a thing or two about climate history from Alpine dendrology.
Round Top Lake, at 9340 feet elevation in the Northern Sierras near Carson Pass, is my favorite place for informal climate history research. White Bark Pine trees grow in tight clumps around half of the lake. Here’s a link to a photo from Kevin Gong’s website.
http://tinyurl.com/n9bzxg
The pines in any given group are nearly identical genetically; they reproduce asexually. A new tree trunk will grow outward from an existing root system, and then curve upward. The seeds that do sprout can’t endure the harsh Winters at that altitude.
Walking along the trail, one can see a small gap between the pines near the lake and the ‘normal’ ones farther down. Question: After the last Ice Age, how did the pines reach the lake in the first place?
Answer: At some time after the last Ice Age, the Northern Sierras were somewhat warmer than they are now. The pines sprouted from seeds at that time.
Several years ago, I was surprised to see a knee-high pine seedling a short distance outside the half-circle of pine clusters hugging the lake. However it did not survive.
If the Northern Sierra climate heats up in a big way, I’d expect individual seed-sprouted pines at Round Top Lake to eventually supplant the clumps of small trees. Over the last thousand years, the clones have been gradually accumulating random mutations, which would put them at a competitive disadvantage with their surviving seed-sprouted progeny. When I see isolated pine seedlings that grow to 6 feet in height, then I’ll believe that the Northern Sierra climate is the warmest that it’s been since before the last Ice Age.
Naturalist Jeffrey P Schaffer devoted a couple of pages to Round Top Lake in his hiking guidebook, The Tahoe Sierra.
I emailed the photographer several days ago, and have not received a reply yet. If worst comes to worst, we could use one of the many Google-search images that don’t illustrate the main point of the article. With luck, we could get permission from one of these photographers to run their picture. Or we can simply link to the Round Top Lake photo at Kevin’s website. Of course, this is assuming that the article passes muster with you.
How Natural is Veganism?
by Larry Fields
Vegans claim that their eating plan, which emphasizes nutrient-rich foods from plant sources, is more healthful than the modern omnivorous diet, which includes animal foods. Can the eating habits of our Stone Age ancestors shed some light on this claim? Their diet was certainly natural, but were these early humans vegetarians?
Scientists have studied isotopic ratios in ancient human remains, in order to estimate the relative contributions of animal foods and plant-based foods to the Paleolithic diet. The conclusion: Stone Age Homo sapiens ate a mixed diet, comprising both categories of foods. However this does not answer the question: Was the composition of the Paleolithic diet optimal for health? It’s possible that our distant ancestors ate what they enjoyed when it was in season, and stoked their internal furnaces with readily available calories at other times, as fast-food aficionados do today.
Nutritional science, coupled with a common food-related phobia, can give us a better handle on the larger question. But first, let’s consider an oddity of Vegan psychology.
Many self-identified Vegans are militant. Not only is meat murder, but if you disagree with that premise, you’re not an ethical person. The intolerance suggests that in their heart of hearts, many Vegans have serious doubts about what they’re espousing, which they dare not admit–especially to themselves. Fanaticism facilitates compartmentalization of the psyche. The True Believer part of oneself–which aspires to a higher morality that does not permit killing or otherwise exploiting animals, and which may also be engaged in “saving the planet” from evil omnivorous humans–must be protected, at all costs, from contamination by the pesky rational part.
Morality aside, a small minority of people are genuinely grossed out by the thought of eating animal-based food of any kind, and are attracted to Veganism for that very reason. For other Vegans, the memes that give meaning to their lives are saying one thing, while their bodies are sending very different messages. How so?
For optimal health, one must consume adequate amounts of all essential nutrients. Take Vitamin B-2. B-2 is found in meat, eggs, cheese, milk, and in some plant-based foods. If you switch to a Vegan diet, you can easily compensate for the decreased B-2 by eating more fresh leafy green veggies. So far, so good.
Zinc (Zn) is a bit trickier. Meat is an excellent source of Zn. Men who switch to a Vegan diet, or to a lacto-vegetarian diet, can partially compensate for the decreased dietary Zn by taking cold showers and decreasing their sexual activity.
For vegetarians in general, would eating more whole grains give adequate Zn, without excessive calories? Not necessarily. Some of the minerals in whole wheat, for example, are in the form of phytates. Zinc phytate is essentially insoluble in water. In this respect, food composition tables are misleading, because they do not take bioavailability into account. Another source of uncertainty in the tables is sampling error. Zn concentrations in plant-based foods reflect Zn concentrations in the soil where the food was grown.
If you’re planning to go Vegan, or even lacto-vegetarian, please do your homework first. Here’s a reasonable starting point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_nutrient
When your investigation is well underway, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn that protein quality is not the biggest issue in a well-planned Vegan diet. Soybeans, for example, contain complete protein.
The limiting nutrient in a Vegan diet is Vitamin B-12. If we modern omnivores did not take supplements of any kind, we’d get essentially all of our B-12 from meat and dairy products. Unlike most other water-soluble vitamins, B-12 can be stored in the human body to some extent.
Therefore if you go Vegan AND 100% Natural–as in growing ALL of your own food on your own organic hobby farm–it will take several painful years for the Pernicious Anemia to kill you. That’s why many Vegans, who aren’t eager to earn premature Darwin Awards, take B-12 supplements. Or they incorporate commercial breakfast cereals that have been fortified with B-12 into their diets.
What about seaweed and fermented soy? These items sometimes test positive for B-12. So what? Sometimes people test positive for party drugs that they’ve never taken. Most measurement techniques commonly used in analytical chemistry have limitations: interferences, false positives, false negatives, etc. A number that pops out of a chemical instrument is not necessarily the word of God. I’d be more confident in a B-12 claim for a plant-source food if it was backed up by independent tests, using two or more different methodologies.
Who knows? Genetically modified B-12 lentils may become a reality some day. Until then, it’s caveat emptor on any Vegan B-12 claim.
Our evolutionary cousins, gorillas, are semi-vegetarian in their native habitat. When their usual diet, which includes some insects, fails to satisfy their B-12 needs, they get around that nutritional bottleneck in an interesting way: coprophagia. Why? Some bacteria in the large intestine synthesize B-12 from plant-based food. However by then, it’s too late for primates to absorb this vitamin from the GI tract. Thus for gorillas, some creative recycling is in order.
I’d advise Naturalistically-oriented vegetarians, who equate the eating of meat–or even dairy products–with murder, to give serious consideration to the gorilla gambit. If this doesn’t work for you, then it’s time to reevaluate your aversion to popping pills, or to eating “factory food”.
Of course, it’s possible for Naturalistically inclined lacto-vegetarians to grow and raise all of their own organic food, without having to worry about Vitamin B-12. Millions of people in India have been doing that for centuries.