Thinking globally, eating locally

Via kottke.org: the question of whether eating locally is better for the environment isn’t quite settled, argues Sarah Murray, writing for the Financial Times (a publication, admittedly, with its own slant on things), in support of her recent book. She points to recent studies that indicate that shipped food performs as well as local food in terms of environmental impact.

Keep in mind that Murray is writing for a British publication, and food shipped into the U.K. needs must travel over water (often by efficient container ship) while food that travels within the U.S. and North America more likely came by truck. And her quoting a study by New Zealand’s Lincoln University that New Zealand lamb is more efficiently produced than its British equivalent, even after accounting for shipping, is disingenuous.

Nevertheless, Murray makes the good point that transportation may not be the most important environmental factor in the production of a lamb and boiled potato dinner. And

the environmental trade-offs can be perplexing. While water conservationists point out that pressurised sprayers and drip irrigation systems distribute water to crops more efficiently than traditional gravity-based methods, they require mechanical pumping and therefore consume more energy.

Along with the carbon dioxide emissions generated by agriculture come other, more potent, greenhouse gases. Animal manure, soil management and heavy use of synthetic nitrogen fertilisers in crop production all contribute to an increase in nitrous oxide emissions, which are up to 300 times more effective at heating the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

On the other hand, whether a locally-produced piece of fruit, picked and carried a short distance to a farmers market, just plain tastes better than one engineered for long-distance travel, harvested green, wrapped in plastic, and shipped thousands of miles is a question that Murray doesn’t pick up in this article.

It’s not working

Okay, it’s against my better judgement, but I’ll bite—I don’t normally respond to goads from creationists, because what results is not dialogue but mutual sniping, but I am rising to the bait from Robert Bowie Johnson Jr., who proposes the expression “Slime-Snake-Monkey-People” to refer to adherents of “Darwinism, a closed-minded, anti-Creator mindset which compels them to ignore or deny any evidence which tends to validate the Book of Genesis.” Supposedly, as the press release suggests, skeptics will be shamed by such a risible epithet. Oh, yes, and “since Slime-Snake-Monkey-People insist they evolved over millions of years through a countless series of random mutations, Christians should also refer to them as ‘mutants.'”

Online, at least, Johnson doesn’t seem to be getting much traction with his intended audience. Most of the current search results point to blogs unsympathetic to his cause. It might have something to do with his unconventional thesis that Greek art recapitulates the stories in Genesis.

International Rock-Flipping Day

trashI had just a little time yesterday morning, before we scurried off to the theater, to get out for the first International Rock-Flipping Day, so I poked around in the wooded strip between my townhouse cluster and the middle school grounds. As a result, it turned into one of my quasi-periodic Clear the Trash jaunts. I picked up a grocery bag’s worth of rubbish, a serviceable basketball, and (alas) a seventh-grader’s lab book for Understanding Our Environment.

cricketsI turned up a couple of candidate rocks, but nothing more than a retiring earthworm, so I fudged a bit and flipped some bits of wood (unwanted leftovers, probably, from some neighbor’s woodpile). I found a couple of what I make to be Gryllus sp., Field Cricket. Borror and White offer this helpful distinction:

The House Cricket, Acheta domesticus (Linn.), is a species introduced from Europe that often enters houses; it differs from field crickets in having the head light-colored with dark crossbands.


On the record

Something good has come of unfortunate, nonplussed Lauren Caitlin Upton’s on air meltdown: Geoffrey K. Pullum turns it into a teaching moment about the term of art used to distinguish proper names that do not use a definite article (Argentina, Sudan) and those that do (the Argentine, the Sudan, and, as Upton would have it, *the Iraq). They are, respectively, strong proper names and weak proper names.

A shining

Via ArtsJournal: Philip Kennicott produces an excellent piece about the art, science, theater, and politics of illuminating the monuments and other public buildings of the National Mall at night.

A recent revamp of the lighting of the Washington Monument, employing focusing technology used to light sports events, reduced the amount of wattage thrown on the structure as well as light pollution (what a lighting designer would call “spill”). Nevertheless, 24 kW goes into keeping the obelisk bright at night.

The structures on the Mall have a hierarchy that is replicated in the lighting scheme:

… as lighting designers who have worked on the Mall discover, that hierarchy is an informally acknowledged rule, not a written one.

Claude Engle, a lighting designer who has lit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean War Veterans Memorial and the [East Building] of the National Gallery, remembers a significant change over the years that he has been working in Washington. In the 1970s, when he lit the new [East Building] of the gallery, he just did it by feel, by instinct.

“We decided—and that was just us—that it should be less bright, maybe 80 percent as bright, as the Capitol dome,” he says.

And silly restrictions on information “for security reasons” extend to lighting the Capitol dome:

Eva Malecki, a spokeswoman for the architect of the Capitol, says that since 9/11, officials can’t even reveal what kind of light bulbs are used to light the structure.

“Any information regarding the current process for lighting the Dome,” she says by e-mail, “is security sensitive.”

Potomac to Occoquan

trail markerSince I’ve already walked, piecewise, some of the longer paved trails in the area—the W&OD, Mount Vernon, the two trails that connect them, and the Capital Crescent—I needed a new project to keep me motivated for outdoor exercise, so yesterday I started the traversal of Fairfax County’s Cross County Trail. The trail, recently completed, covers 40 miles, from Potomac River in Great Falls Park in the north to the Occoquan River in Occoquan Regional Park in the south. It connects with lots of other trails in the county, and shares a track with some in several stretches, and so I’ve already walked some of it without really taking note of the fact.

decomposersI started my recordkeeping with a section near to home, a segment of somewhat less than two miles from where the CCT splits from the W&OD and threads through Tamarack Park to an underpass at the Dulles Toll and Access Road. The trail dips in and out of the valley of Difficult Run and shares the Toll Road crossing with the run. Unfortunately if not unexpectedly, the most salient feature of this passage is the plentiful graffiti covering the support columns of the Toll Road. Fairfax County is not wilderness. There is some wildish habitat to be found along the trail, but you’ll also see your share of white-tailed deer munching backyard gardens. And I discovered that carrying a trash bag along with me would be a good idea. There is little elevation change in this section of the trail, but it can be tricky to find your way at times, especially where young pickles have effaced the marker posts.

The Hothouse

The Hothouse, by Harold Pinter, was written in 1958 (contemporary to his reputation-building The Dumb Waiter and The Birthday Party) but not produced and published until 1980. The play may look back to conventional British satire and sex farce, but it does so shaded with Harold Pinter’s signature coloring of offstage menace. We watch the staff of a sanatorium for mental illnesses bumble through the investigation of a mysterious birth by one of the patients. What ensues includes gratuitously painful electroshock therapy and mayhem that leaves many of the professional staff dead. Although Roote, the administrator of the deathly place (played by Michael John Casey as a marionette martinet who gradually comes unstrung), declares that the maintenance of Order is the most important thing to him, what he gets is anything but.

Each member of the cast incorporates a distinctive physical style into his or her character, and this serves to animate what can be at times a talky script (especially for Pinter, the poet of silences). Noteworthy among them are Jason Lott’s naive and pop-eyed Lamb, a night watchman who lives up to his Dickensian tag name, and Jonathon Church’s menacing, cat-like Lush, lithely negotiating the huge level changes in Elizabeth Jenkins McFadden’s practical set.

Kathleen Akerley, in a director’s note, suggests that the play offers the possibility of hope, its events occurring as they do on Christmas Day. But it’s a Christmas Day when the falling snow has turned to slush, and the closing scene shows us that this hope is misplaced.

  • The Hothouse, by Harold Pinter, directed by Kathleen Akerley, produced by Longacre Lea, Callan Theatre, Washington

Thump

Ellen Barry and James Estrin follow Colin Grubel, graduate student in biology at Queens College, to Swinburne Island in Lower New York Bay. Swinburne hosts a colony of Double-Crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax auritus), whose numbers have rebounded, like those of other top predators, in response to the DDT ban. Grubel’s field work involves collecting cormorant boli, in order to determine what food items they’re taking. (And thus perhaps to foster greater acceptance of the birds by fishermen, who see them as competition.) Fortunately for Grubel, the birds are very forthcoming with their regurgitation.

“I’ve been hit on occasion,” he said. “In some ways it’s almost this great personal experience between you and the birds.”

Squeezed

Suhas Sreedhar explains why the old Bruce Springsteen CDs that I’ve ripped sound so much quieter than newer tracks. The dynamic range of CDs (as opposed to vinyl) and digital signal compression technology made it happen.

In the 1980s, CDs were mastered so that songs generally peaked at about -6 dBFS [0 decibels full scale, the loudest point of the dynamic range] with their root mean square (RMS)—or average levels—hovering around -20 dBFS to -18 dBFS. As multidisc CD changers began to gain prominence in households toward the end of the decade, the same jukebox-type loudness competition started all over again as record companies wanted their CDs to stick out more than their competitors’. By the end of the 1980s, songs on CDs were amplified to the point where their peaks started pushing the loudness limit of 0 dBFS. At this point, the only way to raise the average levels of songs without having their loudest parts clipped—the digital equivalent of distortion, where information is lost because it exceeds the bit capacity—was to compress the peaks.

And as music players become smaller and more rugged (I moved from a sports-model water-resistant Walkman to a hard-drive-based iPod and aspire to a solid-state one), we’re taking them more places with us and we expect the music to be there. Music on the subway as the train rumbles through a tunnel is a commonplace now.

But the problem doesn’t just lie on the production end. If people are listening to songs in a noisy environment—such as in their cars, on trains, in airport waiting rooms, at work, or in a dormitory—the music needs to be louder to compensate. Dynamic-range compression does just that and more. Not only does it raise the average loudness of the song, but by doing so it eliminates all the quiet moments of a song as well. So listeners are now able to hear the entire song above the noise without getting frustrated by any inaudible low parts.

This might be one of the biggest reasons why most people are completely unaware of the loss of dynamics in modern music. They are listening to songs in less-than-ideal environments on a constant basis. But many listeners have subconsciously felt the effects of overcompressed songs in the form of auditory fatigue, where it actually becomes tiring to continue listening to the music.

Significant Others wrapup

We struck Significant Others this afternoon, insofar as packing up some props and moving a few pieces of furniture back to storage can be called a strike. Leta and I got two solid performances in, after some technically shifty work on our part on Thursday and Friday. The flavors continued to develop over the weekend, and at least some of the fishy bits on my part got clearer. Now I regret not having a few more rehearsals to continue to sharpen things up.

It was fun to get to do a part with so much light banter: think of the fiery relationship between Walter and Hildy in His Girl Friday. And to get most of the laughs, even though I still don’t understand why “It wasn’t my fault. She was your sister.” was so successful.

Director Sharon also dressed the set as one of the outdoor lounges at an expensive wedding reception, and it looked great. We reused the table and chairs that we used for The Gold Lunch last year (which turn out to belong to Andrea, and they’re going back to her house, which is too bad, ’cause it’s nearly the only nice furniture the Stage had).

Update: In an earlier draft I neglected to mention the fabulous tuxedo that Sharon rented for me from a local shop in exchange for a program ad. It’s the first time I’ve worn clothes with bar codes on them. Leta also bargained a sparkly lavender formal (flashy, but not to outshine the bride) for herself.

I took a suggestion from Evan and learned my pages back to front, which worked well for me. I think he says something like, “as the play progresses, you’re heading for your happy place, where you are most familiar with the script.” And Husband has his longer passages toward the end of the play. Early on, the dialogue that Steve has written is a lot of short phrases and sentences, and easy to learn. But it’s full of transitions that sort of skip from to another like following stones in a stream crossing (and it was these transitions that gave me memory trouble), as Husband is trying to ask a question that he’s not sure he wants to hear the answer to. In fact, Husband never does ask in so many words, and Wife calls him on it.

HUSBAND: What did I say?

WIFE: Nothing. But I know what you were thinking.

HUSBAND: I wasn’t thinking anything.

WIFE: You were.

HUSBAND: I was. And the answer is no?

The pleasant surprise was that the rush-hour commute to Maryland was much easier to take than it was in July. Friday, I barely slowed at the big curves on the Beltway near the Mormon Temple, and otherwise had a straight drive in, so I was way too early arriving for my call. I guess everyone really did go to the shore this month.

Over the years, I’ve developed a number of tactical responses to the inevitable traffic jams in eastern Fairfax and lower Montgomery Counties. At bottom, you have to cross the triple barriers of the Potomac River, the CSX railroad corridor, and Rock Creek and its greenbelt, and you have a limited number of ways to do it. I’ve assembled routes involving Chain Bridge, Western Avenue, and East-West Highway; or University Boulevard through Kensington if I bail out of the Beltway once I get across the river; or my new tricky favorite:

  • cross the Potomac on the Beltway at Cabin John, and immediately slide off onto the Barton Parkway;
  • at the first exit, jog over to MacArthur Boulevard;
  • cross over on the stone arch bridge, restricted for many years to one lane of traffic in alternating directions;
  • climb out of the valley on Wilson Lane (can be a bad left turn here);
  • traversing a lot of expensive real estate, tack left and right on Rayburn Road, Bradley Boulevard, Huntington Parkway, Old Georgetown Road, and then on to Cedar Lane;
  • cross under the Beltway and turn into Beach Drive to follow Rock Creek east and downstream;
  • left on Stoneybrook Drive, past the Temple campus and over the railroad, around an incredibly blind curve to the intersection with Capitol View Avenue;
  • wind through more historic neighborhoods, turn left on Forest Glen Avenue at the old stone post office;
  • cross Georgia Avenue and Sligo Creek;
  • freestyle from here: Sligo Creek Parkway or Brunett Avenue or any of the neighborhood streets to University Boulevard;
  • and you’re in Four Corners!

Caveat emptor

So now we have a uniform, federal certification program (the NOP) for organic food. Should be easy to trust that geen and white label, to know that what’s on the breakfast table was raised without chemical nasties, eh? Not so fast. The program appears to be woefully underfunded, as Andrew Martin reports:

The National Organic Program, which regulates the industry, has just nine staff members and an annual budget of $1.5 million….

Other parts of the Department of Agriculture spend roughly $28 million or so a year on organic research, data collection and farmer assistance….

With just nine employees, one of whom performs clerical duties, the National Organic Program would be lucky to effectively oversee the organic industry in Vermont, let alone the rest of the world.