Our tainted foods

We’re told time and again to eat vegetables and fruit in order to be healthy, but with all the pesticides used in agriculture nowadays we’re eating a lot of stuff that’s not good for us at all:

Of the 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides used annually in the US, less than .01% actually reach their intended targets--the bugs! Obviously they are completely contaminating our food, and the consequences are disastrous, with numerous national and international government agencies acknowledging the connection to various health problems--nervous system toxicity, cancer, hormone system effects, and irritation of skin, eyes, and lungs among them.

Unfortunately, due to cost and availability, organic food which is grown without any pesticides, is not a plausible option for every family. Thankfully, the Environmental Working Group has put together a ranked list of the 49 most purchased produce items, based on laboratory tests conducted by the US Department Of Agriculture Pesticide Testing Program. So if you can't get organic, at least you know which foods are the safest, and which should be avoided.

View the EWG's full list of 49 produce items here and a handy pocket shopping guide with the "Dirty Dozen" worst and "Clean 15" best of the list here.

Curious about what’s the worst vegetable you could possibly eat?

Celery.

Thankfully, I don’t like celery, but it’s followed by peaches and strawberries, two of my favorite fruits.  Onions top the ‘best’ list, and I love onions, but how am I supposed to replace a nice serving of strawberries with an onion?

Will Kemp’s ridleys go extinct?

Kemp’s ridley is the smallest species of sea turtle and has been around for millions of years.  It was around at the time of the dinosaurs!!
Unfortunately, since it exists only in the Gulf of Mexico, it might vanish forever thanks to BP’s carelessness and humankind’s greed in general.
From NYTimes.com:

Federal officials said Tuesday that since April 30, 10 days after the accident on the Deepwater Horizon, they have recorded 156 sea turtle deaths; most of the turtles were Kemp’s ridleys. And though they cannot say for sure that the oil was responsible, the number is far higher than usual for this time of year, the officials said.
The Deepwater Horizon spill menaces a wide variety of marine life, from dolphins to blue crabs. On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expanded a fishing ban in the gulf because of the spreading oil. But of the endangered marine species that frequent gulf waters, only the Kemp’s ridley relies on the region as its sole breeding ground.
Since the Ixtoc 1 spill, the turtles, whose numbers fell to several hundred in the 1980s, have made a fragile comeback, and there are now at least 8,000 adults, scientists say. But the oil gushing from the well could change that.
The turtles may be more vulnerable than any other large marine animals to the oil spreading through the gulf. An ancient creature driven by instinct, it forages for food along the coast from Louisiana to Florida, in the path of the slick.
“It lives its entire life cycle in the gulf, which is why we are so critically concerned,” said Dr. Pat Burchfield, a scientist at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Tex., who has studied the turtle for 38 years.
The Kemp’s ridley is millions of years old; its ancestors once swam with dinosaurs. Sandy olive in color, Kemp’s ridleys are the smallest of the sea turtles, only about two feet across. Although the turtles have been spotted along the Atlantic Seaboard, they return to the warm waters of the gulf to breed.
As recently as the 1940s, they were abundant in the Mexican gulf waters. Tens of thousands at a time would come ashore on the same day at Rancho Nuevo, a remote Mexican beach in Tamaulipas State, to lay their eggs in the synchronized pattern unique to their breed. But pollution, the collection of eggs for food and aphrodisiacs and the nets of shrimp trawlers depleted their numbers.
Then came the blowout on the Ixtoc 1. The deepwater well dumped three million barrels of crude into the gulf, covering the beach at Rancho Nuevo. Nine thousand hatchlings had to be airlifted to nearby beaches. Although the role of the oil in killing the turtles was never confirmed, by 1985, there were fewer than 1,000 Kemp’s ridleys left.

I just happen to love turtles, of any kind, so the possibility of losing a whole species breaks my heart.

Missing Lost

A nice ode to the great TV show that just ended:

The Gulf Coast region might never be the same again.

With the amount of oil leaking every minute in the Gulf waters and the oil finally reaching the marshes and beaches of Louisiana, one can only despair in the realization that there’s nothing we can really do to fix this disaster anytime soon.
As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words:

 
More frightening and sobering images here.
Countless animals are dying and will die, and future generations will be affected by dramatic drops in numbers as breeding grounds are lost for decades.  Some perhaps forever.
Some species might never recover from this catastrophe, or they might abandon the Gulf region altogether, if they can find another area where they can live.

Present day Gulf of Mexico

This is what the once clean, healthy, and rich of life waters of the Gulf of Mexico look like after BP’s oil disaster:

It looks like my in-laws’ pool when they open it at the end of the winter and the water has been sitting there for months.

Lost

After six years, another great show has come to an end.

Lost began with a splash (its pilot was – is? – the most expensive ever produced) but its success wasn’t guaranteed: a bunch of survivors of a plane crash find themselves marooned on a tropical island in the Pacific with little hope of being rescued (the plane was way off course when it crashed and no one would know where to look for them).

On top of that, the island seems full of weird stuff: polar bears; a smoke monster; very secretive (and heavily armed) indigenous inhabitants; a French woman who doesn’t trust anyone; a centuries old boat in the middle of the island; the four-toed foot of what had to be a massive statue; high tech stations from the Dharma Initiative (that no one ever heard of); strong electromagnetic forces; miraculous healing properties; and a button that needs to be pushed every 108 minutes or else.

The show offered adventure, action, drama, mystery and great characters whose actions would intertwine with often unexpected results.  For me, it was the perfect combination and made for a great ride.

It all ended this past Sunday with the long awaited series finale that answered many – but not all – questions.  I liked the episode.  It had the right mix of action and personal resolutions that were the staple of the show and were required to give closure to the faithful audience.

Given its peculiarity, Lost wasn’t a show that everyone could appreciate, but Ray and I loved it and were both very touched by how it all ended.

To a great six year ride.  Thanks, Lost.

Gulf spill update

BP is soon going to try to stop the unrestrained flow of oil in the Gulf of Mexico by using a so called “top kill” method:

Oil company BP is expected to discuss Tuesday its next attempt to contain the gushing oil in the Gulf of Mexico -- a maneuver called a "top kill" that it plans to implement the following day.
All previous attempts by the company to cap the spill have failed, and BP CEO Tony Hayward said the top kill maneuver will have a 60 to 70 percent chance of success when it is put in place as early as Wednesday morning.

BP on Wednesday plans to pump thick, viscous fluid twice the density of water into the site of the leak to stop the flow so the well can then be sealed with cement. The top kill procedure has worked on above-ground oil wells in the Middle East, but has never been tested 5,000 feet underwater.

Unfortunately, the oil has finally made it to shore, and it’s not pretty:

The memorial comes as oil sloshes ashore on Louisiana's barrier islands and seeps into marshes around the mouth of the Mississippi River. And public patience is wearing thin in Gulf states, where fishing is a $2.4 billion industry.
State and parish leaders in Louisiana have demanded the federal government approve their plan to dredge up walls of sand to close channels between the Gulf and coastal estuaries. Those plans have been held up by the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard and BP.
"It's easier to clean oil on sandy beaches than it is to clean up an estuary. There's no way to clean up the estuary, which is the breeding ground which allows for our fisheries to be in abundance," said Steve Theriot, Jefferson Parish president.

Worse yet, it’s been reported that it has reached a current that might bring it to Florida’s and Cuba’s shores and up the East Coast:

The first oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill has entered an ocean current that could take it to Florida and up the east coast of the US, scientists say.
Satellite images released by the European Space Agency (ESA) depict a streak of oil stretching south from the main slick into the Loop Current - a body of fast-flowing water coming from the Caribbean which the agency says is likely to propel oil towards Florida within six days.
The oil would be "highly weathered" if it reached Florida, or could evaporate en route, it said.
The scientists warned that the turbulent Loop Current could mix the oil and water, making it difficult to track the oil's progress in the coming days.
Also on Wednesday, the US said it was having talks with Cuba over the spill.
Observers say the rare talks demonstrate a concern that the oil may be carried by currents far from the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Can this get any worse?

A Quote By

Lady Gaga, the IT singer/performance artist of the moment:

"I love the rumor that I have a penis. I'm fascinated by it. In fact, it makes me love my fans even more that this rumor is in the world because 17,000 of them come to an arena every night and they don't care if I'm a man, a woman, a hermaphrodite, gay, straight, transgendered, or transsexual. They don't care! They are there for the music and the freedom. This has been the greatest accomplishment of my life- to get young people to throw away what society has taught them is wrong. Gay culture is at the very essence of who I am and I will fight for women and for the gay community until I die."

The 2010 spill - update

BP, the owner of the oil deposit, doesn’t want us to know how much oil is being spilled into the water because they know it’s much more than the estimated 5,000 gallons.
A lot more:

Two weeks ago, the government put out a round estimate of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico: 5,000 barrels a day. Repeated endlessly in news reports, it has become conventional wisdom.
 But scientists and environmental groups are raising sharp questions about that estimate, declaring that the leak must be far larger. They also criticize BP for refusing to use well-known scientific techniques that would give a more precise figure.
The criticism escalated on Thursday, a day after the release of a video that showed a huge black plume of oil gushing from the broken well at a seemingly high rate. BP has repeatedly claimed that measuring the plume would be impossible.
The figure of 5,000 barrels a day was hastily produced by government scientists in Seattle. It appears to have been calculated using a method that is specifically not recommended for major oil spills.
Ian R. MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University who is an expert in the analysis of oil slicks, said he had made his own rough calculations using satellite imagery. They suggested that the leak could “easily be four or five times” the government estimate, he said.
Scientists said that the size of the spill was directly related to the amount of damage it would do in the ocean and onshore, and that calculating it accurately was important for that reason.
BP has repeatedly said that its highest priority is stopping the leak, not measuring it. “There’s just no way to measure it,” Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said in a recent briefing.
Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem. With undersea gear that resembles the ultrasound machines in medical offices, they measure the flow rate from hot-water vents on the ocean floor. Scientists said that such equipment could be tuned to allow for accurate measurement of oil and gas flowing from the well.
BP later acknowledged to Congress that the worst case, if the leak accelerated, would be 60,000 barrels a day, a flow rate that would dump a plume the size of the Exxon Valdez spill into the gulf every four days. BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, has estimated that the reservoir tapped by the out-of-control well holds at least 50 million barrels of oil.
Environmental groups contend, however, that the flow rate is a vital question. Since this accident has shattered the illusion that deep-sea oil drilling is immune to spills, they said, this one is likely to become the touchstone in planning a future response.
“If we are systematically underestimating the rate that’s being spilled, and we design a response capability based on that underestimate, then the next time we have an event of this magnitude, we are doomed to fail again,” said John Amos, the president of SkyTruth. “So it’s really important to get this number right.”

I can’t say I don’t agree with the last statement.  We need to know how much oil is coming out to make sure we account for a full clean up and we make sure it doesn’t happen again.
And evidence of a larger than reported spill is mounting:

Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.
The plumes are depleting the oxygen dissolved in the gulf, worrying scientists, who fear that the oxygen level could eventually fall so low as to kill off much of the sea life near the plumes.
Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said Saturday. “That is alarming.”
Scientists studying video of the gushing oil well have tentatively calculated that it could be flowing at a rate of 25,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day. The latter figure would be 3.4 million gallons a day. But the government, working from satellite images of the ocean surface, has calculated a flow rate of only 5,000 barrels a day.
BP has resisted entreaties from scientists that they be allowed to use sophisticated instruments at the ocean floor that would give a far more accurate picture of how much oil is really gushing from the well.
“The answer is no to that,” a BP spokesman, Tom Mueller, said on Saturday. “We’re not going to take any extra efforts now to calculate flow there at this point. It’s not relevant to the response effort, and it might even detract from the response effort.”
The undersea plumes may go a long way toward explaining the discrepancy between the flow estimates, suggesting that much of the oil emerging from the well could be lingering far below the sea surface.
Dr. Joye said the findings about declining oxygen levels were especially worrisome, since oxygen is so slow to move from the surface of the ocean to the bottom. She suspects that oil-eating bacteria are consuming the oxygen at a feverish clip as they work to break down the plumes.
While the oxygen depletion so far is not enough to kill off sea life, the possibility looms that oxygen levels could fall so low as to create large dead zones, especially at the seafloor. “That’s the big worry,” said Ray Highsmith, head of the Mississippi center that sponsored the mission, known as the National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology.
“This is a new type of event, and it’s critically important that we really understand it, because of the incredible number of oil platforms not only in the Gulf of Mexico but all over the world now,” Dr. Highsmith said. “We need to know what these events are like, and what their outcomes can be, and what can be done to deal with the next one.”

I wonder what kind of pressure will be necessary to force BP to let the actual flow be measured.  We’ll probably never know for sure.

Portugal steps into the 21st century

Portugal’s President ratified that country’s gay marriage law even though he didn’t support it in order to avoid it going back to Parliament for a veto override that would have distracted the legislature from working on more pressing matters, like the economy.
Whatever his reasons, I’ll gladly accept them:

Portugal's conservative president announced Monday he is ratifying a law allowing gay marriage in the predominantly Catholic country.
The head of state's decision to permit the enactment of a bill passed by Parliament in January makes Portugal the sixth European country allowing same-sex couples to wed.
Vetoing the bill would only send it back to Parliament where lawmakers would overturn his decision, he said, adding that the country needed to focus on overcoming an economic crisis that has increased unemployment and deepened poverty.
Elsewhere in Europe, gay marriage is permitted in Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Norway.
Five U.S. states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage, as have Canada and South Africa.

Who will be next?