health

NY Bottle Deposit for ‘water drinks’ Starts On Halloween

Bottle Deposit Starts On Halloween: Starting this coming Saturday, bottled water drinks will be subject to a nickel deposit—and the NY State government will be able to collect millions from the unclaimed deposits. Governor Paterson said, “The expansion of this legislation not only provides our State with much-needed revenue, but will also help us to keep our neighborhoods and parks clean.”

The law was supposed to go into effect in June, but some bottlers had argued that it was going into effect too soon, especially since NY State requires bottles sold here to have a special UPC. Which means some distribution and logistical issues; Environmental Leader points out, "For instance, a distributor can’t simply restock New York shelves with product from a New Jersey warehouse unless it bears the unique code."

The Post-Standard explains, “For consumers, the change is simple enough. Beginning at 12 a.m. Saturday, they will pay a nickel deposit on bottles of water, just as they do for soda and beer. They will get the deposits back when they return the bottles to the store or to a redemption center. Deposits will not be required on water that has sugar added, or on containers of 1 gallon or more.”

Distributors will have to give NY State 80% of all unclaimed deposits.

[This one is simple. Bottled water is bad idea. It always has been. I’ll admit that there a few times when bottled water makes sense. A few very special cases. Most of the time, tap water is fine. If you’re really super finicky, filter that as well. But by far most of the time plain old tap water carried in a reusable and hopefully recyclable or upcyclable container is the way to go. Lately the word is to watch out for BPA and linings made with BPA (metal cans, and some metal water bottles. Anyway… stop pretending that bottled water is worth the environmental impact of shipping this expensive and heavy item anywhere. We’re lucky that in most places in the US water is clean, healthy, and abundant. And save yourself needless tithing to the State. My disclaimer here is that as a hiker I’ve pulled water from sources that would make city folk vomit, although I did carry a filter and stuff (which never improves (ahem) brackish water), but did seem to keep me safe.]
Source: Gothamist

I’ll try to make room for you

I’ve tried really hard to get past the passing of Susan last week. I’ve never met her, I only passed a couple of emails to Elden here and there. But the ride a week from this Sunday (Strength is forever. Fight Like Susan. for which I’m still raising money) has kept her in my mind far more than I would have thought. Dug, a friend of the Nelson’s wrote this a couple of days back:

As part of the rambling, Sue casually mentioned how tired she was, and how nice it would be if she could just climb up into the bed with Susan and they could cuddle and rest and just “be.”

And to her surprise, Susan fluttered open her eyes, painfully reached over to the bed guard (when the act of rolling over was fraught with danger of broken bones), struggling to open it, and weakly whispered “I’ll try to make room for you.”

Dug asks a good question there at the end. I couldn’t help thinking that the action implied by that phrase can change the world. If we all just made room for each other, our differing beliefs, ideas, and thoughts… If we all just scrunched over a bit to accomodate the next person… simply because. How can it not be the right thing to do, to give a little of whatever you have? Even if it might hurt. The world can be a far better place. Susan gave us a glimpse.

Strength is forever. Fight Like Susan.

Where are the true believers?

Where are the true believers? – Good Experience: Or should we invest $50 billion in a new electronic medical record? That’s the proposal from the government, and I can’t imagine it changing anything. [I know they won’t for two reasons… and in this case I will stick to the computer tech of the situation. When I worked at a compnay that worked with hospitals, i saw first hand the mess that is many hospitals data infrastructure. I mean it’s really truly horrible. Monolithic, badly engineered hacks rule the day. I can imagine how it got there… but I blame the administrators who obviously invested the bare minimum in their infrastructure and now have a huge morass out of which to climb. Second is at a more personal level. I have a fine primary care physician. I trust him, he pays attention, knows the family history, etc. Because of the business side of the doctoring business he joined the equivalent of a conglomerate, which naturally centers their IT cost. All good, except they have a EMR system and when it fails to connect to the database (I wasn’t there as a tech, but as a patient) the system is worthless. No EKG or other tests. No access to records, no updates. Just a few simple paper pages to record new information that no doubt will have to be transcribed (with errors) by the staff. It’s 2009 for criminies sake… what the hell is that? No local storage? No syncing of records? What a freakin mess. And this from a major player in health care in my area. “Sucks” doesn’t begin to describe it…

BTW, as for the true believers… I think they’re there. I’m just not sure there’s enough of them where it matters.]

Jenni’s first post-biopsy ride

5974AC82-E5C8-4419-9BD9-675DF36DDCA6.jpg
. Sure, there was griping, but that is to be, er um, expected. (And I do my fair share as conditions warrant.) However there’s parts to the tory that Jenni did not tell. I’ve been on countless rides where the path was hers we’ve I’ve heard over and over “That’s the last hill…” only to find yet another hill just around the corner. The other part is that she really did have an invasive procedure from which she isn’t healed, so we took it slow. Now that has two effects. It makes some hills harder, and roughness of the road bothered her more than the effort. So the weather was cool, she isn’t healed, we took it slow, and there was some grade.

I should add that I was almost dressed right at the beginning… arms warmers, knee warmers and a vest helped protect from the chill. My arms started out feeling colder than I would have hoped. Everything else was fine, and I even had to roll down the warmers before we were through.

Allez!

Experience and thoughtfulness

Some people will never be considered “experienced”. To become experienced, one must reflect upon experiences and attempt to draw understanding from them. “This didn’t work out, this did. Hmmm? Why is that?” Failure to inspect our experiences leads no where.

You can also get ahead of the curve. “What do I think I should do in this situation? What am I capable of doing? where do they intersect? What does this more experienced and or capable person think? Does that change anything significant?” This is the nature of thoughtfulness.

So with these two simple notions at hand explain to me dear reader why no one pulled through on my ride this morning for over a 10 mile stretch into a headwind? I waved, I pulled out, I slowed… nothing. It’s was like watching one of the TDF breakaways falls apart where it has become everyone for themselves. Ya know, the guys in back never pull through? I would pull out and slow, everyone else would slow. I’d pull out and wave… nothing. Slowly extremely would bring questions of “Are you OK?”. Sigh. I’m fine. Keep pedaling! There was no reason someone else couldn’t stick their nose in the wind. A couple of folks were clearly being lazy, they had no problem sprinting ahead when they felt motivated. Quite a few had no problem pulling when we turned and the wind was longer in our faces. A couple of folks were probably inexperienced and haven’t been taught proper etiquette. Hopefully, they’ll go home and wonder about these moments and at least think “What was that about?”

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33 miles, almost 1000ft of climbing, an average speed of 13.4 that is really a lie ( well no, it’s not in the sense that I’m sure it is the average for all movement on the ride, but that includes the dinkying around the parking lots and city streets… so I pawed through the graph for the “on the road sections” and sure enough even the uphill averages were over 15 with some sections in the low 20’s.

The next annoyance was when I realized that a so called “expert”, an expert by virtue of nothing more than experience, put my wife’s bike rack together wrong, with some critical parts installed backward. My analysis is that in this case the person hasn’t built many of this model rack, and it was a misreading of the instructions, but I was surprised at how things went when I tried to put a bike on the rack. Something was wrong, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Yesterday I saw a picture of the same rack and in just one second it became clear which parts had been installed wrong, and now it all makes far more sense, and works properly. The failure here is that someone who should be used to this (the so called expert) rushed the job. He should be used to working with customers waiting, he does it all the time. I was in no particular rush, and wasn’t hovering (on purpose). So it’s just sloppiness.

We can make a choice about the quality and nature of our work. We can be present and demand a level quality that we will not forego. To me it is essential to constantly be aware of this. I don’t always get to work to the quality level I wish, there are other constraints on my work such as time, cost, and my own ability to execute. What I cannot and do not give up is the awareness of those decisions, how they are made and why, and allow some lesser level than I desire become assumed and routine. I am aware of my decisions, my experience, and I will not release my thoughtfulness to the best of my ability.

Your Piehole…

Your Piehole…: These days, these foods and the lifestyles they are fostering, are making less & less sense in their impact to [and on] land, water, urban-sprawl, the uglification of what our eyes have to look at while out and about, the air, the atmosphere, and our health [of course physically, but mentally too]… so much so, the only real purpose they are serving is Profit, Laziness and the seemingly unending need for Immediate Gratification.
[While Scott’s last coupla posts have seemed a bit bitter to me, that’s prolly in my head, rather than in the words, so I’ll not say more about it. There are many good things about people on bicycles but those of us who ride for recreation and commutation (multi-modal for me) should not be climbing on any high horses. Start at the basics. Where’d that bike come from? Where’s did the steel, scandium, aluminum, carbon fiber, resin, grease, lube, plastic, rubber, cork, paint etc. come from? Who dug it out of the ground, produced a “finished” product and shipped it to be built into that bike? Who again packaged and shipped that bike? How much energy was consumed in the process? How much environmentally harmful stuff was used and discarded? Are the large bike companies any cleaner environmentally than other manufacturing processes? I don’t know how many miles have to be ridden before you offset the debt of the build, but it has got to be more than just a few. I know that the same thing is true for a car or truck with their even higher starting points. And that therefore your impact is lower to start… but it’s still a long way from zero. And therein lies my point. While riding the heck out of that bike now that it’s built, and caring for it so that it lasts a long time, you make the most of the energy spent. However it remains all too easy to climb on a high horse of falsely virtuous eco-righteness. Don’t. You’ve just chosen less, not none. Feel good about that. Help others to do the same. Conservation is a powerful tool. At the same time be understanding of the needs and culture of others. Realize that a bike may be completely foreign to that person, an alien that they have no understanding of or connection to, and remember that we are not outside looking in, but inside, sharing the ride.]
Source: Large Fella on a Bike

The Gospel of Consumption

The Gospel of Consumption | Orion magazine: This was the stuff of a human ecology in which thousands of small, almost invisible, interactions between family members, friends, and neighbors create an intricate structure that supports social life in much the same way as topsoil supports our biological existence. When we allow either one to become impoverished, whether out of greed or intemperance, we put our long-term survival at risk.

[…continues]

Rather than realizing the enriched social life that Kellogg’s vision offered us, we have impoverished our human communities with a form of materialism that leaves us in relative isolation from family, friends, and neighbors. We simply don’t have time for them. Unlike our great-grandparents who passed the time, we spend it. An outside observer might conclude that we are in the grip of some strange curse, like a modern-day King Midas whose touch turns everything into a product built around a microchip.

Of course not everybody has been able to take part in the buying spree on equal terms. Millions of Americans work long hours at poverty wages while many others can find no work at all. However, as advertisers well know, poverty does not render one immune to the gospel of consumption.
[A not to be missed article.]

The Great Mojo Bar Taste Test – Gerry rides, eats, and…

So the Great Mojo Bar Taste Test has been progressing, bars are being consumed and now Gerry, who rode over 22,000 miles last year (um, no, that’s not a typo. He’s a bit of whack job…) weighs in with the following notes. I’ve taken a liberty here or there which Gerry may deign to correct. Or not. He’s got a lot of riding to do after all…

He paused in his pedaling just long enough to jot down these notes:

All were good. My favorites were the Fruit Nut Crunch, Peanut Butter and Jelly (dipped) and the Chocolate Peanut. (dipped)

  • Mixed Nuts: Very nutty taste. Sweet. Good texture and flavor.
  • Fruit Nut Crunch: Fruity and nutty taste. Sweet, good texture.
  • Mountain Mix: Very good.
  • Chocolate Peanut: Excellent.
  • Honey Roasted Peanut: A little sweet for me. Good but not my favorite.
  • Peanut Butter Pretzel: Good but again not my favorite, Not much taste. A little chewy.
  • Peanut Butter and Jelly: Really good!

So there you have it. Gerry liked them all, but clearly went for the Peanut Butter and Jelly. He’s really just a big kid at heart. There was an article in the local Gannet paper about his riding (and another club member), but they suck and have a “pay for” archive and they kill the URL on top of that. Sad.

Time to go prompt some of the other taste testers… including myself.