More Fantasticness!

We Are What We Eat: Fulfilling Jamie Oliver's TED Wish

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:00:32 -0800

The TED Prize Yesterday my sister excitedly told me to check out the newly announced TED prize wish: Jamie Oliver, the chef, has asked:

“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”

(The TED Prize winner gets $100,000 and a wish to change the world which TED and anyone can help fulfill.) The reason she was particularly excited was that only the previous night my mother and I had been having another impassioned discussion revisiting one of our pet wishes, approximately the same: that more people learn how to cook and eat healthy, vegetarian food, particularly vegetables and legumes. My mother and I were concerned about health, but also about the environmental and ethical implications of a diet high in meat and processed food. While Jamie wasn't particularly advocating vegetarianism, and it is possible to eat vegetarian and still eat too much fat, sugar, salt, and processed food, it is true that a diet which is high in legumes, whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables is necessarily going to have both fewer poison calories and less meat. That's better for health, better for the planet, and more compassionate. So this is a train I can happily get on. (Skip down to my first contribution: local and national resources you can support and use.) I just watched Jamie give his TED talk, it's pretty good:

He focuses on the United States partially because we are exporting our way of life, and he believes that if we make the U-Turn the world will follow. He outlines the extent to which our collective diet is poisoning us and draining us of resources. He notes how three pillars of modern American culture (Main Street, The Home, & Schools) all systematically promote this poisonous diet. His wish is that we take a similarly three-pronged approach to change society: lobbying supermarkets for better information and governments for better regulation, teaching each other to cook and reviving the culture of cooking in the home, and teaching our children about vegetables and cooking in schools. As a former teacher I cannot agree strongly enough. Teenagers love talking about--and eating--food but most American teenagers--even the relatively prosperous, eco-aware, gourmand ones I was teaching---do not know how to cook. As a chemistry teacher I noticed that the students who knew how to cook had an immediate leg up on chemistry, a deeply helpful extra reservoir of experience and intuition to draw upon when building mental models. So just as a science educator I advocated cooking education. (I feel that gardening is a similarly vital foundation for life sciences education. I was really gratified by the successes of the gardening program, a previous incarnation of which I had worked on as a student, and have been particularly inspired by news of my former students delving into urban farming since then.) But the lack of cooking education also concerned me because I realized many students were going to go away to college without the skills to cook for themselves, and that just didn't seem right--it really felt to me like we were failing them in some crucial way. It's far too easy to load up on processed foods that are high in fat, sugar, salt and starch (Tater Tots! aiee) in cafeterias, setting up cravings that will haunt them for the rest of their life. I had learned how to cook as soon as I could reach all the controls and my mom thought it was safe to teach me. She taught me to cook with confidence and a flair for improv, reading cookbooks for inspiration, not marching orders. Her funny mnemonics and cheerful fixing of my little errors are some of my favorite memories of being a teenager, and we still trade recipes we've made up. Watching Jamie's video, I am almost gut punched by the notion that generations of Americans have lost out on the deeply meaningful experience of learning to cook from their parents and guardians as teenagers. To me it's almost the essence of growing up. Every child should have the joy of one day cooking and feeding their parents a tasty dinner. In terms of addressing the direction of Main Street, we can start with Jamie's petition (I've added a badge to the More Fantasticness sidebar.) Besides creating a movement building organization, Jamie made a really good point about supporting existing projects. So I thought I'd highlight some I either knew or have found, mostly local to the Oakland/Berkeley part of the Bay Area. You'll notice there's a lot of gardening mixed up with the food education below. That's because some of the best healthy-food curricula has a gardening component, and because in my experience just a little bit of contact with vegetable gardening or garden fresh produce automatically creates an appreciation for healthier meals. Resources: East Bay Projects West Oakland didn't have access to fresh produce, so its residents started a cooperative grocery store, Mandela Foods. Another source of fresh produce for West Oakland's kids is the nonprofit City Slicker Farms. The Oakland Unified School District has a Garden Council that community members can get involved with to support garden-based food curriculum, and the City of Oakland has a community gardening program. Bay Localize is supporting a rooftop garden at E.C. Reems Academy of Technology and Arts in East Oakland. Helen Krayenhoff's 2010 Calendar (still 88% useful!) supports Oakland school garden programs. OUSD may have more healthy food options in its future with help from the Community Alliance with Family Farmers and the national groups Farm to School Network & School Food Focus, according to the website Oakland North. Berkeley's Ecology Center has community and school garden programs you can get involved with, and Farmer's Markets you can shop at. (There are also great farmer's markets you can shop at in Oakland & Contra Costa.) and I'm not sure what's the status of Berkeley's School Lunch Initiative, since it's first grant from the Chez Panisse Foundation apparently ran out last year (SFGate article), but I'll try to find out. UC Davis works with Alameda County to support garden-based nutrition. There's also Urban Youth Harvest in Oakland, which rescues delicious garden fruit from a rotten fate. National Organizations Nationally (besides ">CAFF, Farm to School Networks & School Food Focus noted above) you can support Growing Power Inc, whose founder, Will Allen, won a MacArthur Genius prize in 2008 for his vision of urban food renewal. In my humble opinion, the easiest way to educate yourself about our crazy food system is to read about it. The godfather of food system writing is Berkeley's own Michael Pollan, who has many books on the subject. There's also Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. You can watch Supersize Me on Hulu for free. I haven't had a chance to read Raj Patel's Food Rebellions, but it looks interesting. Cookbooks, etc. Some of my favorite cookbooks are: Lord Krishna's Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking by Yamuna Devi Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking Cooking from An Italian Garden Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special Everyday Greens: Homecooking from the Celebrated Vegetarian Restaurant Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and more recently The Complete Tassajara Cookbook and the wonderful Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. Bittman is really great and if you haven't watched his hilarious NYTimes blog and video series Bitten/The Minimalist, you haven't lived. (Try mashed potatoes with greens or the sweet potato salad.) Make Your Own Post Like This! Make Your Own Contribution! If you're not in the East Bay and don't know where to start, you could probably construct a post for your own blog with links just like mine above with a little searching and calling around--try starting with farmer's markets, local university gardening extensions and local science education centers. Spread the information around to your community network and solicit support for the community groups doing the heavy lifting! Have casual dinner parties and deliberately healthy potlucks. (Spring is coming! Which means, picnics!) Spend some time with a kid who wants to learn how to cook showing them the kitchen ropes. Share recipes and patronize healthy restaurants. I for one will try to volunteer more with local organizations and share more recipes, both virtually on this blog and, more vitally, by feeding my friends. I think this is potentially the easiest TED wish I've ever thought of contributing to, and I hope you will too. (Contact TED here.) Please also send me information about any organizations you think I should update the post with. Coolio I cannot leave you without including the best cooking video ever: Coolio makes delicious spinach: Bon Appetit!

Ozge Samanaci: ART!

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:01:37 -0800

Yesterday I went to a wonderfully stimulating and lively talk/discussion by Berkeley professor Greg Niemeyer about the internet as an oral medium; I'm still processing it and won't do it the injustice of trying to summarize it here. A happy side benefit, however, was that I met Ozge Samanaci for the second time (the first time was at a lecture by recent MacArthur prize winner Camille Utterback a few weeks ago), and this time I managed to write her name down correctly and find her website, Ordinary Things (ordinarycomics.com) and I like it! She has a daily webcomic journal of water color collage drawings, and they're lovely and unique and thought-provoking. I also particularly like this one and this one, but the website is very much worth a long deep visit.

WANTED: Carpooling Application

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 23:18:47 -0800

Either this exists or someone should make it. Now! Pretty please? (I.e. please tell me what it is so I can get my sys-admin to set it up/install it or please build it.) It's very common for workplaces to have commuting employees who commute from clusters in the surrounding areas. If employees have very set routines, then its easy for them to form carpooling teams. If, however, there's a fair bit of variety in their routine--when they want to arrive, when they want to leave, how much room they'll have in their car b/c they might have to bring something big to work---then it becomes hard to form regular carpooling teams. Many such workers might not really settle on what the next day is going to look like until shortly before bedtime the previous day (having checked evening email, finished their dayplanning, consulted with significant others or family). At that point it's very impractical to go down the roster of uncommitted but interested proximate commuters, cold-calling to find a match, hoping to avoid waking early sleepers or babies. What would be really useful would be the ability to simply notify some central database of carpooling irregulars with one's particulars (location, earliest leave-the-house time, desired arrival time, earliest-leave-work time, desired end-time, willingness to drive, available seats), go to bed, wake up, and check one's phone for match results and instructions. (I.e. "yes, you drive, pick up Yvette (address) then Kumar (address), Kumar must leave work by 5pm)" or "no, sorry, no one can carpool with you today.") Is this really too much to hope for? The future is now! Realistically this probably isn't going to do much for me, b/c my workplace isn't big enough, but it might help, and the probability of it helping would increase with the size of the workplace and the number of its neighbors. What I've found so far are a website called Ridesearch.com and a Facebook application called Zimride, which I think is commendable. However, I think these are the wrong venues for a lot of people. They're not focused enough. I know that my fellow employees are unlikely to register for either of these. They'd be particularly warying of giving Facebook their cell phone number. But they might go for somethig sponsored and hosted by our employer. Also, I'm slightly wary of using Facebook or the web to vet whose car I'm getting into, and these just search too wide a field. It's true that Zimride recognizes the need for one-time carpool matching. But it appears it doesn't quite do the geography matching/morning text-message one-time on-demand arrangement I'm talking about.(Maybe I'm just bitter because neither of these found a match for me--so I can't really test them. But that' my point!) There are plenty of ways to arrange steady, long-term carpools. I'm looking for a tool for the commitment-phobic. Maybe Ridesearch.com or Zimride could provide company-specific version, much like Google produces Google Apps for companies to use internally? I also found a webpage for an Australian server-side program that sounds more geared towards long-term arrangements. Anyway, pointers/wholesale creation would be much appreciated. Please pass on to your faorite Web 2.0 experts or engineers in case they can find it or build it.

Yarn Squid

Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:04:36 -0800

Asad sent me this, and I thought it was awesome. Happy Holidays everyone!

The Birth on the Eighth Day of the Moon

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:15:56 -0800

Vasudhaiva Kutumbukam. The whole universe is one family. The half moon is hurtling over the surface of the planet, and just as each earthly meridian loses complete sight of the sun, a joyous noise rises up in commemorative greeting--a dark dungeon, a trek through the midnight rain, and so much moonlit joy at the arrival of that Sweetest Little Prince, . . ..if it so pleases you, please have a very Happy Shri Krishna Janmastami!

Octosquid!

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 05:09:29 -0800

This is kind of old news now, but better late than never: A new species of squid has been found off the coast of Hawaii that has eight arms. The discoverers called it an "octosquid". [Honolulu Star Bulletin article] It isn't actually a cross between an octopus and a squid. Rather, it's a member of the squid genus Mastigoteuthis, but of a previously unknown species. Wikipedia now has an octosquid article which explains that most squid have eight arms and two tentacles, but this one does not have the tentacles. (I never knew that there was a difference between arms and tentacles! I just thought that squid had ten tentacles.) The Wikipedia article also points out that this is actually not so unprecedented. Squid in the family Octopoteuthidae also have eight arms and no tentacles. In fact, there are already a couple of species called the Ruppell's Octopus Squid and the Dana Octopus Squid. But it's still fun. :)

Cthulhu the Wifi Hub

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 13:59:55 -0800

I went to see Live Free or Die Hard last night, and the bad guys hack the computer systems of the country. The problem with computer hacker villains, though, is that they just don't present the kind of visceral sense of danger that an action movie needs.

So here's my attempt to depict my networking hardware with a sense of menace. :P

(More thoughts about the movie in my flickr post.)

Octopus As Bottle-Opener

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:58:17 -0800

One like this would be handy to have around the house.

John Edwards Tells Us: Your Country Needs You

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 12:06:27 -0800

When Saheli told me our little brother Ben Brandzel had chosen to work for John Edwards's campaign, I knew I wanted to learn more about Edwards. I was impressed by reading and viewing his speeches, and by his efforts to urge Congress to stand firm in ending the war on Iraq. On Thursday I attended Edwards's Small Change For Big Change event at San José State University. We generally expect politicians to tell us what they will do for us. What moved me most was not what John Edwards promised us, but what he asked of us. John F. Kennedy famously said: "Ask not what your country can do for you---ask what you can do for your country." It's been a long time since I've heard a public call to sacrifice, yet this is precisely what constitutes leadership. John Edwards OneCorps is not just a campaign organization, but also puts these ideals into action: "John Edwards One Corps members aren't waiting until the election to help build the one America we all believe in - we also engage in local service projects and issue advocacy to start transforming America today." For instance, the Orlando One Corps is holding a Canned Food Drive today. When Edwards called us to action against poverty and disease, in America and around the world, he said we could not just stand by: "We're better than this." The beauty of this statement is that if, looking through the jaundiced eyes of cynicism, we evaluate it as a vote-getting strategy, we can only conclude that he wouldn't think it is a vote-getting strategy unless he actually believed that we are better, or aspire to be. I was particularly heartened when Edwards said, "Instead of spending 500 billion dollars in Iraq, ...suppose America led an international effort to make sanitation and clean drinking water available in the Third World." This is a cause that is dear to my heart, as Saheli noted when she mentioned my frequent touting of WaterPartners International. Improving sanitation and access to clean drinking water has enormous leverage in the effort to eradicate global poverty and disease. It doesn't require new ideas or technology, simply our will to make it happen. As Peter Singer wrote in the New York Times Magazine last December, we can achieve not only this but all the Millennium Development Goals, with little hardship to any of us. I hope that Edwards's vision will catalyze this movement. Afterward I met Edwards briefly and asked him about maintaining America's scientific and technical leadership, specifically through the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. He said that funding for these agencies should be "significantly enhanced", and apologized that he wasn't able to give me more specifics right at that moment. I look forward to learning more about what he proposes from his campaign. ToastyKen saw Edwards speak on Wednesday, and blogged about it. Crossposted to Mind Without Borders.

Get out the vote

Wed, 23 May 2007 18:25:14 -0800

Much like voting on the backsides of the quarters that fill one's pockets, MUNI is soliciting feedback regarding new bus shelters that will dot San Francisco's streets. Until I saw this page, I had not idea that MUNI was also called the SFMTA. We have an MTA? That sounds soooooo Boston or New York. As for my opinion, I think 1H and 2D1/2D2 tie as the biggest sight blights. I'm also a bit disheartened by the use of glass throughout the proposals. Isn't there some other transparent material they can use, since the current Muni shelters seems to have unfortunate encounters with ruffians toting baseball bats?

Mother's Day for Peace

Sat, 12 May 2007 18:22:43 -0800

Now here's something I didn't know: During the Civil War, a woman named Ann Jarvis mobilized women to help tend to the wounded, and she campaigned for a "Mother's Day for Peace". Julia Ward Howe, author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, was inspired by Jarvis and wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation in 1870, a call for disarmament. They wanted mothers everywhere to raise their voices and speak out against the violence that was killing all their sons.

So maybe this Mother's Day, instead of sending your mom a card, you should tell her to get off her lazy ass and go war protesting! ;) Okay, I'm just kidding. In fact, Ann Jarvis had a daughter, Anna Jarvis. After her own mother's death, Anna Jarvis campaigned for a Mother's Day to celebrate our mothers. She succeeded in making Mother's Day a national holiday in 1914.

Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the holiday to become commercialized, and she quickly became disillusioned. Starting only a few years after its national recognition, Anna Jarvis actually spent the rest of her life campaigning against her creation.

So this Mother's Day, let's try to express our respect for our mothers with more than just a greeting card. And when soldiers die, let's think about the people that the violence hurts the most: their loving mothers.

Training Camp for Rookies

Mon, 30 Apr 2007 17:56:03 -0800

I don't do cute. I don't do crying babies. But every once in a while, the fantasticness of cute, crying babies infiltrates my cold cold heart. (Link via BoingBoing.)

Playing Chopsticks

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 10:43:34 -0800

In belated celebration of Earth Day, I want to add this item to my environmental to-do list: Carry around a pair of chopsticks, to conserve wood by avoiding the use of disposable chopsticks. China, a country that uses 45 billion pairs of chopsticks a year (that 35 pairs/person in China per year), placed a tax on them last year. Though, this has been on my radar for years, in terms of conservation, Zha Jianying's essay from last week's New Yorker brought forth the human rights concerns, as well. The essay focuses on the author's brother, a political prisoner in China. I realized that there was a good chance that each time I use disposable chopsticks, I support China's prison labor system, when she wrote, "[My brother] has also refused to take part in the manual work that all prisoners in his unit are supposed to do: packing disposable chopsticks and similar chores."

Blame Canada?

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 11:48:42 -0800

The Virginia Tech Massacre has caused a lot of people to debate issues of gun control, campus security, and, in some cases, foreign students in America. I was particularly appalled, however, by this attempt to blame the shootings on the teaching of evolution and the legalization of abortion. Yes, that's right the Virginia shootings are the product of "bann[ing] God from science classes" and "the killing of the unborn". I gave it a bit of thought though, and I wonder - is this any different than using the VT massacre to justify your position on gun control, or the need for more psych services, or whatever you think can be done to prevent horrible tragedies like this from occurring in the future? Of course, we need to base our policy decisions on events in the real world, and particularly salient events can be the catalyst for major policy changes. But how soon is too soon to start the discussion? And is there any discussion that is so far afield (Prayer in public schools? The war in Iraq? Illegal immigration?) that it becomes pandering to use the VT situation (or any tragedy) to bring awareness to it? How far is "too far afield"? PS. I am sure it goes without saying that my heart goes out to the many people that have been affected by this tragedy. And yes, I may be guilty of what I am accusing others of, above, using the VT situation to start my own discussion. Is it the same, or different?

God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 15:20:57 -0800

I just noticed that several of my friends have as their away message farewells to Kurt Vonnegut. "Oh no!" was my immediate reaction. "So it goes," said Rishi. Indeed. So sad. that I never met him. At the end of 8th grade my English teacher, Neil Davis, gave me a copy of Cat's Cradle as a "graduation" gift. It totally blew my mind, and I consider it my introduction to contemporary literature. Years later, Slaughter-House Five reads and rereads so painfully well. I believe it was Freeman Dyson who said it's the only book anyone needs to read about the firebombing of Dresden, and others have gone so far as to say it's the only book anyone needs to read about war. I doubt Vonnegut would have accepted that, but what a work! I'll never forget the earnest mother's cry in the beginning--you were only babies!--and the Tralfamadorian gospel: He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections. But my favorite book of his will probably long be Bluebeard---such a visually magnificent plot. Aaieee. I cannot even think of something to say, and am simply becoming watery-eyed. Why haven't I read more of his books? Why didn't I go find him? Such a clever, creative man, who provided insight and inspiration to all us like-minded weirdos. God bless you, Mr. Vonnegut. Rest in peace.