Olivia Judson’s articles are always so interesting. Here is a fascinating – and disconcerting – look at how cuckoo birds plant their eggs in other birds’ nests and fool them into caring for their chicks – often in lieu of the actual offspring that are thrown out!
The OneVoice Movement has been running for the past couple years a program called Imagine 2018, where they are asking Israelis and Palestinians to share their vision of what their lives and future would look like if the conflict were to be resolved and a two state solution achieved.
OneVoice will soon be unveiling its next phase in the project - very promising stuff.
In the meantime, I just got a video from my friends Art Winter and Doug Suisman about their vision. In cooperation with the RAND Foundation, they have worked for several years on a Palestinian infrastructure corridor that includes state-of-the-art planning to enable a Palestinian state to prosper and grow in peace with Israel. Their work is nothing short of stunning.
Take a look at their teaser video below, and visit their site here:
by Kim Walker on behalf of Daniel Lubetzky
Here is an interesting chart from the Environmental Working Group of pesticide levels of a sampling of fruit and vegetables. The ones with high levels (low rank) should be bought organic.
by Kim Walker on behalf of Daniel Lubetzky
British newspaper The Independent recently highlighted Natalie Portman for her new vegan shoe line and her involvement in good causes, including OneVoice!
Sometimes in business you are faced with the decision to invest up front more capital resources but ensure that over the long term you see savings, vs. save up front, but at a steady higher cost of production per widget on an ongoing basis.
The problem with choosing the path that is "inexpensive" up front is that it not only creates higher costs for the enterprise over the long haul, but it can also generate externalities (costs to society that the enterprise avoids paying).
A case in point is illustrated by this Edge shaving cream picture:
The travel-size version has less product but just as much waste in plastic on the cap and the outpouring device.
You can picture the team responsible for designing the travel-size version figuring that it made all the sense in the world to take advantage of existing infrastructure and just making a smaller bottle for travel by just cutting its height/size.
But years later and millions of cans later, so much more waste - AND COST - is generated because you are using such an inefficient means to provide a product: a fraction of the size in product but as much in caps etc. It should not have necessarily been this way. They could have designed a less expensive disposable version - but it would have required an upfront investment in capital.
Too bad.
A lot of "convenience" products like travel
We came to America for the American dream - to do good and to make good.
- K.R. Sridhar
(As quoted in a column by Tom Friedman in the NYT)
If you haven’t seen the documentary Food Inc. - you have to. Like Michael Pollan’s books, this movie will change the way you see food and the world.
If we as consumers and citizens don’t do something quickly to fight back against the food industrial complex, by voting with our dollars, by informing and educating others, and by advocating to the government for more transparency, freedom, and a level playing field for natural foods producers, then the epidemics of diabetes, obesity, environmental degradation, food contamination and inhumane treatment will threaten us further.
Some highlights:
Serious work ahead.
Yesterday I tried Softsoap’s Pure Cashmere Hand soap. I was struck by the proposition that a soap could contain "cashmere extract" because a while back I had wondered what "cashmere" really was. Most consumers just know Cashmere sweaters as exceptionally soft but don’t know where "cashmere" comes from, so I guess the marketing team at Softsoap’s parent company, Colgate, figured that they would make things romantic with the cashmere association.
The trouble is, cashmere is the fur of a type of goat - the cashmere goat. Colgate tries to connect to this silly gimmick by using "hydrolyzed keratin" - a protein extract from the goat’s hair. This ingredient, besides being the least present in the formula (see label), has no discernible impact on the purported features of the product. It is just used for smoke and mirrors. Too bad that most consumers have not yet caught up with this deception - though I did find one colorful site that brought them to task on it.
![clip_image001[6]](http://blog.peaceworks.net/wp-content/uploads/ColgatesGoatSoap_5E5/clip_image0016.jpg)
You’d think Colgate would be a bit more responsible with its claims and advertising.
Then again, liquid soap is a modern invention that pollutes water at such greater levels than regular soap, for the sheer fact that it is used in much ampler and less efficient form than regular bars of soap. The same reason why companies created shower gels and liquid soaps - because they can command a higher price and accomplish more turns than using regular soap bars - is also the reason why consumers should avoid using such products, which harm the environment and are just wasteful.
This season many millions of pine trees are being chopped off to decorate Christmas living rooms. With growing awareness about the harm of reducing the footprint of trees in our globe, this tradition (which I assume does not have any grounding in biblical or canonical precepts of Christian religion) must be getting questions more and more.
One answer for environmentally-conscious Christians may be to just pass up the tree altogether - or to use an artificial Xmas tree.
But what if a company were to offer to go further: that for a fraction of the cost of buying such a tree, it would actually plant a new tree in the honor of the family foregoing the actual tree.
Or a company in business of making the artificial trees could sell a version that included this environmentally-conscious commitment - not only would buyers forego killing trees, but the company would actually pay to plant X number of new trees…
Leave it to a Mexican Jew to think this up… 
I really liked this thought by Jonathan Safran Foer on his goal as a parent. He wrote it in the context of his journey as a vegetarian, but it has wider applications and resonates as a noble aim:
I’m not as worried about what [my children] will choose as much as my ability to make them conscious of the choices before them. I won’t measure my success as a parent by whether my children share my values, but by whether they act according to their own.
– Jonathan Safran Foer, in The Fruits of Family Trees, New York Times Magazine
