Archive for May, 2009
Canada Hates the Blind
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) held a meeting in Geneva this week, where the issue of a treaty to protect the rights of blind people and other people with disabilities regarding copyright law.
The purpose of the treaty, introduced by Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay, is to permit the cross-border import/export of accessible books (like audiobooks, refreshable braille, computer generated text to speech, or books with large type), so that people with visual impairments, dyslexia, or other reading disabilities can have access to the works, which are expensive to make. Who would object to “a harmonized system of copyright exceptions that ensure that it’s possible for disabled people to get access to the written word?”
Well, Canada does, but that’s probably because America does. So does Australia, New Zealand, the Vatican and Norway.
Yup. The governments that are supposed to be representing their constituency are willing to place the interests of corporate lobbyists before the rights of disabled people.
As Cory Doctorow says,
We know that WIPO negotiations can be overwhelmed by citizen activists — that’s how we killed the Broadcast Treaty negotiation a few years back — and with your help, we can make history, and create a world where copyright law protects the public interest.
The proposed treaty is still on the agenda for the next meeting, so you have time to tell your government how disgusted you are that your voice at the meeting thinks it is appropriate to deny equal access to information for people with disabilities. Where I come from, they call that a human rights violation.
Get the word out. Is your MP sick of hearing from you yet?
Via BoingBoing.
Hot Season Lettuce
R asked me the other day whether it was too late to plant lettuce. The short answer is yes, it will bolt in the heat. Bolted lettuce is terrible. The long answer is, you can get around that. Here’s some tricks:
1. Give it lots of water. Lettuce is mostly comprised of water, so water frequently to keep it in shape. By frequently I mean daily, at least.
2. Give it nitrogen. Lettuce likes fertilizer. You can apply a balanced composted manure, or for a bigger nitrogen kick, apply fish meal or blood meal. Interplanting lettuce with soybeans is good too, so you can enjoy edamame and nitrogen fixing from a plant that will be roughly the same height. Another surprising nitrogen source is hair. Finely chopping up the (un-dyed/permed) hair from your comb and pets and mixing it into the soil is a good way of adding nitrogen. On another note, your soil loves toenails, but the wonders of human soil additives are best saved for another post.
3. Eat your sprouts. Make sure you are thinning your lettuce crop as it grows, so that the plants have room to grow. Lettuce can’t bolt before it’s mature, so eat salad every day. With leaf lettuce, you can also harvest single leaves from the plant, so that it continues to produce new leaves without having a chance to reach its bolting stage. This reminds me of another tip:
4. Plant leaf lettuces, not head lettuces. Head lettuces are harder to grow, even in the appropriate season. Plus, there are more fun varieties. Check the seed packets for varieties that say they’re resistant to heat or bolting.
4. Shade it. Keep it out of full sun, because lettuce isn’t a fan of summer weather. If you’ve ever moved a plant into natural sunlight without adjusting it first, you’ve probably seen that plants can get a sunburn (whitening of the leaves). Lettuce is the Irishman of the veggie patch: it sunburns easily, and then it’s cranky. Either plant it in part shade, install a shade cloth, or plant tall things to shade it.
5. Use containers. A soil-less potting mix retains water better than earth, so container planting can be a good solution if you’re more neglectful. Just remember to plant it in clay, not plastic, so that the roots stay cool.
Subversive Library
Kat Atreides is a student of a private high school that released a long list of books that students were not allowed to read.
I was absolutely appalled, because a large number of the books were classics and others that are my favorites. One of my personal favorites, The Catcher in the Rye, was on the list, so I decided to bring it to school to see if I would really get in trouble. Well… I did but not too much. Then (surprise!) a boy in my English class asked if he could borrow the book, because he heard it was very good AND it was banned!
Now she’s running an illegal library of 62 banned books (I shudder to think how long the list must be) out of her locker and the unoccupied locker next to hers. I love that students who had no previous interest in reading these classics are now hungry for their chance. Because she doesn’t want to cause mental harm to children unprepared to deal with the content of these dangerously subversive books (many of which were on my highschool’s curriculum), Kat doesn’t loan books to freshmen.
A sampling of the offending books in her catalogue:
- Animal Farm
- Catch-22
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
- The Catcher in the Rye
- The Canterbury Tales
- Candide
- The Divine Comedy
- The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
- Lord of the Flies
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
- Paradise Lost
- The Picture of Dorian Gray
- Slaughterhouse-5
Kudos, Kat. In my first year of university, students were getting special permission not to read Timothy Findley’s The Wars because they were certain they’d be irreparably damaged by the description of homosexual acts.
From Yahoo Answers: “Is it OK to run an illegal library from my locker at school?”
12-Year-Old Activist
When 12 year old Dustin was looking for a community service project, he wanted to find something that would combine his dual passions: animals, and solar energy. So, proving that he had more moxie than most adults, he “made an initial business presentation” about the benefits of solar to the CEO of the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, explaining the fact that installing solar systems would have a future payoff. Then he approached Namasté Solar, about whether their granting program could help make it happen. When the Center for ReSource Conservation (CRC) later received an anonymous donation and asked Namasté, a community partner, about projects that deserved funding, Dustin’s project was on their mind. Together, the two organizations were able to cover 100% of the cost of a solar array.
Says Dustin:
“It was exciting – we had a sheet with costs showing where all of the money was coming from. Usually, the section ‘what you have to pay’ is a bigger number, but for the Humane Society, it was $0. We had found ways to fully pay for their system, and that meant there was more money for the animals.”
Aside from the 18000 lbs of emissions savings, the Humane Society can expect an annual energy savings of $800. Because of a 12 year old boy with a superhero complex.
Via Yellows and Blues.
You asked Google, I answer:
I’ve noticed a lot of people are arriving here at Living Lime on search terms with some variation of “buttercrunch lettuce” and “lime” (as in ground limestone for the garden). Hopefully I can help you find what you’re looking for:
1. Leaf Lettuces:
- are delicious, but have to be planted in cool weather, and give them frequent, short watering (most other plants want infrequent deep watering). If leaf lettuces bolt (suddenly grow tall and flower), you may as well just let them seed and try again, because they’ll be bitter.
- How to harvest? pick it. Early in the morning is the best time, whenever the leaves are big enough to eat.
- If you plant the seeds close together, then you can thin the lettuce patch by eating it. This will help you grow more in less space. Even better is if you mix a bunch of leaf lettuce seeds together in one spot, so you get a tasty salad mix.
- companion planting: beans, kohlrabi carrots, alliums(onion family), radishes. Avoid celery, cabbage, cress, parsley.
2. Horticultural lime:
- is excellent for raising the Ph of your soil for alkaline loving plants. But unless a soil test has told you your soil is too acidic, you probably don’t need it for this use. Your plants like soil that’s full of organic matter, even if it makes the soil more acidic. I wouldn’t recommend applying lime unless you’ve done a soil test, because you don’t want to be mucking about with your soil’s pH if it’s already perfect. It can damage plants and drinking water supplies.
- is often used for adding calcium to the soil, which is particularly useful for preventing blossom end rot in peppers, tomatoes, and eggplants (the fruit gets sunken dark patches of rot on the bottom). More likely, your peppers just need more consistent water conditions, as peppers have difficulty taking up nutrients if they go through periods of drought. Bone meal delivers calcium but is also high in phosphorous (= strong roots), so I’d rather use that than lime. I’ve also read that that you can put a Tums tablet in the bottom of the hole when you plant, as the calcium is more available in that form, and it only goes where you need it.
-lime is best applied in the fall, because it needs time to break down. Adding it in the spring isn’t really going to help with calcium levels for your new plantings.
-If you’re going to use lime, Don’t ever apply lime mixed with a chemical fertilizer. Even with natural fertilizers, it’s best applied at a different time, because nitrogen + lime = ammonia + negated nutritional benefit to your plants. Also, don’t apply lime two years in a row, or you’re just asking for trouble.
-If you’re sure you want to apply lime, use a face mask. Trust me, you don’t want it in your lungs.
Deception at the local “Farmer’s Market”
I’ve been noticing a disturbing trend at the farmers market lately. More and more vendors at the farmers market are selling imported produce, and you have to pay attention to the labelling to know if you’re actually buying from a local farm, or if you’re at a quaint supermarket stand. Yesterday’s trip to the market was particularly disheartening.
We were perusing the outdoor vendors, and came across a stand with zucchinis and tomatoes that caused me to go on my usual envious rant about Leamington having an earlier season. But there were strawberries there. I wait all year for the summer berry binge of Ontario strawberry season, so I was pretty surprised, especially since it said product of Ontario on the sign. I asked the guy where in Ontario strawberries season starts in May. Short answer: It doesn’t. They were product of California. Then why was he using a Foodland Ontario sign? He wasn’t trying to lie, he assured me. When people ask he tells them that they’re from California, as he did with me. He was just using the signs provided by the market. Obviously, if that was the case, he could easily have used the back of the sign, or cross out the “Product of Ontario” claim at the bottom (which we suggested to him). But since he was the only one around using Foodland Ontario signs, and he had taken the time to put the strawberries in cardboard pint boxes, it was pretty clear that deliberate deception was exactly the point.
We didn’t ask about the rest of the produce, but let the market office know what he said about the strawberries. They were not interested in having their customers deceived and made him change his sign. But he vends at 4 local markets, they informed us. Taking advantage of people who are trying to locally source their food.
It’s definitely worth chatting with your market vendors before you buy.
UPDATE: Foodland Ontario said, “It is illegal to sell produces [sic] as ‘Product of Ontario’.” Thought so. They also investigate abuses, like food police!
Growing Bananas in -40 degree weather
The thing people always ask me when I say I’m on the 100 mile diet is, don’t you miss bananas? [Full disclosure: I can't kick avocados, which have their tasty hooks in me] I was never that big on bananas, but I’ve tried unsuccessfully to start a dwarf variety from seed a few times (they can take up to 3 years to germinate). Amory B. Lovins (great name!) has done even better. He harvests full sized banana crops grown indoors in a -40 degree climate, without even heating the space. And the technology he used is 20 years old.
Watch this video. It’s not just about the bananas, it’s about intelligent energy-saving design, and it brought me back from the depths of GMO dispair last night.
Because I can’t endorse the Chevron PR ad preceding the vid, here’s a bonus image:
Drop that Corn Chip! – Scary GMO studies
Two days ago, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) urged doctors to “educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM (genetically modified) foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks.” Further, they’re calling for long-term independent studies, labeling, and “a moratorium on GM foods.”
The findings of negative health effects of GMOs in animal studies are frightening and diverse: “There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects.” A quick scan of the article’s end notes shows more than 20 cited scientific studies.
“There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation,” as defined by recognized scientific criteria.
Here are some highlights of the effects in animals:
Rats:
-Death of most offspring of rats fed GMO, compared to 10% mortality in control group.
-smaller, fewer babies of GMO fed mothers, and those babies are also less fertile
-even the embryos “had significant changes in their DNA”
-Testicles of GMO fed rats turned colour from pink to blue (what?). Sperm was altered.
- “Even Monsanto’s own research showed significant immune system changes in rats fed Bt corn.”
- “7 of 20 rats fed a GM tomato developed bleeding stomachs; another 7 of 40 died within two weeks.” Oh, and by the way, Monsanto’s own study also showed evidence that major organs were poisoned.
Sheep:
-death of “all sheep fed Bt cotton plants…within 30 days”, compared to healthy non-GMO cotton eating sheep
Buffalo and Cattle:
- “premature deliveries, abortions, infertility, and prolapsed uteruses” and high mortality rate in those calves that were actually born.
-Infertility in both cows and bulls
- “On January 3rd, 2008, the buffalo [who usually grazed on non-GMO cotton plants] grazed on Bt cotton plants for the first time. All 13 were sick the next day; all died within 3 days”
Pigs:
-sterility, false pregnancy, “others gave birth to bags of water” (yikes!)
On a completely unrelated note, “the incidence of low birth weight babies, infertility, and infant mortality are all escalating” in the US population.
Here’s the really scary thing:
The only published study on humans revealed that when you eat GMO soy, the inserted gene “transfers into the DNA of bacteria living inside our intestines and continues to function.” That gene? It’s a pesticide. Sure, it’s a organic-approved natural bacteria pesticide (fatal to caterpillars that eat it), but the difference is you can’t wash off a pesticide that’s inside your food’s DNA. (Read “The ABC’s of Bt” on Dave’s Garden.)
Put more plainly, eating a corn chip produced from Bt corn might transform our intestinal bacteria into living pesticide factories, possibly for the rest of our lives.
Our lightbulb powering friend David Suzuki adds, “Anyone that says, ‘Oh, we know that this is perfectly safe,’ I say is either unbelievably stupid or deliberately lying.”
So how do you avoid eating GMO? You really can’t. If you check the lables of any packaged food, it invariably contains soy or corn (or it’s sneaky friend high fructose corn syrup, sometimes listed just as “fructose”). Almost all of that is GMO. Although many fresh fruits and veggies at the grocery store are less likely to be GMO, the tomatoes most likely are (you can improve your chances by buying organic). Of course, you’ll never know, because the GMO folks have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure your food isn’t labled. Because it’s safe, of course, so you shouldn’t have a choice. I try my best to avoid them by growing my own food from herloom seeds, but even these I can’t be sure are 100% GMO free, because unintentional GMO contamination happens all the time, through natural pollination, and pollen drift, by which the wind causes pollen to float “in from fifty miles away”.
How long before our entire food supply is contaminated? Give your MP a call and ask them. If you think you’d rather not eat GMO food, read the “Pocket Shopping Guide to avoiding GMO foods”, and let companies know if you’ve dropped them for a (hopefully uncontaminated) non-GMO brand.
In the mean time, read this article for more details.
“Wild Girl”: Urban Foraging
Any blog that starts with: “Both the white and blue flowers in the photo above are camas. The white one will kill you, but the blue one is food,” is a blog worth reading, regardless. But what’s even cooler is when that blog is about a woman living off nothing but urban foraging for a week: finding food in sidewalks, parks, and natural areas in the heart of Portland. I am very happy when I get the chance to add foraged food to my meals (it’s like a free food treasure hunt!), but it takes moxy to eat nothing but.
“I’m interested in foraging as a way to connect with the land and explore a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human,” [Becky] Lerner said. “It’s also a valuable survival skill: Should the trappings of modernity become unavailable to us one day, knowing how to find food without grocery stores or even farms will surely come in handy.”
Here’s the photo of the deadly/tasty plants, in case you’re hungry:
I’ll try to identify as many local wild foods as I can photograph for you this summer 
Stay tuned. But in the mean time, here’s a gem from the press release:
Lerner readily admits that her pesco-vegetarianism is in question. She will face the decision of whether to endure a vegetable fast — or else eat insects, go fishing or even consider dining on roadkill.
Check out the article on City Farmer, or the press release.
