Does carbon-eating cement deserve the hype? – A process for manufacturing cement which sequesters CO2 (instead of releasing it) has been recently hyped. Chemistry looks dodgy though, and the company (Calera) is not forthcoming with details, or even a gross inputs/outputs for their miracle black box. Caveat emptor. (tagged: carbonclimatetechnologycement )
The Case Against Breast-Feeding – Backlash against the relatively new social imperative (in the west) that women must breastfeed to be good mothers. I think the real issues are that we haven't structured our society and its expectations to meaningfully accommodate having children and equitable peer spousal relationships. I agree there's something broken, but I don't think it's breastfeeding. And I feel like it's another example of the Newtonian hangover… we're so used to being able to figure things out authoritatively, a la Newton, that we almost don't know how to deal with planning around and purturbing complex systems like the climate, or ecologies, or economies, or agricultural systems, or genomes, or nutrition… which we depend on, but don't understand fully (and because of their chaotic nature, may never understand fully. We're used to Apollonian systems, but actually we live in a Dionysian world. (tagged: sciencefoodchildrenhealthbreastfeedingsociety )
OK, I didn't read the whole article, but I know what the woman's problem is who feels shackled by breastfeeding – (at least) one too many children! She claimed nirvana from nursing her first two for a whole year, why didn't she stop there? I only had one child, mainly because that is more than this earth needs, but also because 3 years of constant, uninterrupted mothering and 6 years (still counting, but getting pretty far between) of breastfeeding was all I could hack. I'm a huge believer in the benefits of breastfeeding, and even she admits at least a slim margin of benefit. Do the world a favor, and only have the number of children you can parent whole-heartedly. Yes, many of us who believe that directly from the breast is best find our spousal relationships and ideals of equality a bit stressed for a while, but this is temporary, if not illusory, and equality is a sticky beast – in our family it involved cycles – mom stays home and ties to baby for 3 years, dad stays home or works part time around school being main parent for 3 years and counting. Not so elegant a rundown as the Apollonian vs. Dionysian (which I love).
I talked to my sister (who is a La Leche League organizer) about this article, and she had her own litany of reasons why this article is broken. She pointed out that co-sleeping made night-time parenting a non-issue for their family, and that the LLL breastfeeding source book is probably a much more exhaustive literature review than what the Atlantic author did (albeit obviously a review with a bias… just like it sounds like the Atlantic author had). She also pointed out that in a lot of places (like Fresno anyway) new mothers are given basically no support or incentive to even attempt breastfeeding by the medical establishment. They can’t even possibly have the problem this upper middle class New Yorker is having. She admitted that the equitable division of parental/spousal labor, and American housewife isolation are serious problems, but again, I think this is much much more indicative of our having structured society in a broken way, than of something being wrong (or even sub-optimal) with breastfeeding.
Wow. Six years? He’s going to remember that, which might be interesting socially. Our mom stopped around 4 I think – or at least, there were 4 years between us, and there wasn’t any overlap. I don’t really have any memories of it (but I do remember when my sister was born). And her dad (a doctor) disowned her temporarily for it. Ah, society.
I wish I could take the credit for the Apollonian vs. Dionysian, but it’s really Michael Pollan’s trope. Imitation, flattery, etc.
PACE Lives! The Federal Housing Finance Administration is taking public comments on Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs, at the insistence of California's 9th Circuit court of appeals. Here's what I told them:
Property Assessed Clean Energy financing programs, as have been initiated by many states and local governments, are a potentially transformative financing mechanism, enabling property owners to make good long term investments in energy efficiency and behind-the-meter renewable energy production. They address a market failure, in that buyers often do not appropriately integrate a property's energy costs into their price assessment. So long as the state and local PACE programs are
Climate Denial Instruction In Schools Corporate interests are pushing a model bill in many states that would require schools to teach climate change denial. It sounds creepily reminiscent of the creationism/evolution mess from a few years ago. Except with the fossil fuel industry instead of the religious right behind it. Gah.
Vision Prize Vision Prize is an expert poll on the nature of the climate risks we face, meant to demonstrate the degree of consensus (or the lack thereof) amongst those able to judge the evidence. It's put together by Carnegie Mellon University. Will be interesting to see what the results look like...
Open Climate Science Course The University of Chicago has created an Open Courseware style Climate Science 101, with videos of the lectures and self-assessment materials online. It's aimed at non-science undergraduates. If you, or someone you know, want to get a little more in depth knowledge about climate science on their own time, it's a great resource.
Think Again: Drugs A great roundup of the myths surrounding the Drug War, and the cogent arguments against continuing our ridiculous, harmful, and expensive policy of ideological prohibition.
OK, I didn't read the whole article, but I know what the woman's problem is who feels shackled by breastfeeding – (at least) one too many children! She claimed nirvana from nursing her first two for a whole year, why didn't she stop there? I only had one child, mainly because that is more than this earth needs, but also because 3 years of constant, uninterrupted mothering and 6 years (still counting, but getting pretty far between) of breastfeeding was all I could hack. I'm a huge believer in the benefits of breastfeeding, and even she admits at least a slim margin of benefit. Do the world a favor, and only have the number of children you can parent whole-heartedly. Yes, many of us who believe that directly from the breast is best find our spousal relationships and ideals of equality a bit stressed for a while, but this is temporary, if not illusory, and equality is a sticky beast – in our family it involved cycles – mom stays home and ties to baby for 3 years, dad stays home or works part time around school being main parent for 3 years and counting. Not so elegant a rundown as the Apollonian vs. Dionysian (which I love).
I talked to my sister (who is a La Leche League organizer) about this article, and she had her own litany of reasons why this article is broken. She pointed out that co-sleeping made night-time parenting a non-issue for their family, and that the LLL breastfeeding source book is probably a much more exhaustive literature review than what the Atlantic author did (albeit obviously a review with a bias… just like it sounds like the Atlantic author had). She also pointed out that in a lot of places (like Fresno anyway) new mothers are given basically no support or incentive to even attempt breastfeeding by the medical establishment. They can’t even possibly have the problem this upper middle class New Yorker is having. She admitted that the equitable division of parental/spousal labor, and American housewife isolation are serious problems, but again, I think this is much much more indicative of our having structured society in a broken way, than of something being wrong (or even sub-optimal) with breastfeeding.
Wow. Six years? He’s going to remember that, which might be interesting socially. Our mom stopped around 4 I think – or at least, there were 4 years between us, and there wasn’t any overlap. I don’t really have any memories of it (but I do remember when my sister was born). And her dad (a doctor) disowned her temporarily for it. Ah, society.
I wish I could take the credit for the Apollonian vs. Dionysian, but it’s really Michael Pollan’s trope. Imitation, flattery, etc.