freestyle soccer
It’s cool for a minute-thirty Internet video clip, but I wouldn’t want to watch 90 minutes of it.
… and then there’s this from Becks:
Notes on Sleep
Between the ages of 10 and 14, my father and I; and my friend Brian and his father would take yearly father/son trips to rural Ohio to hang out on Brian’s family farm in the middle of Amish country. For three or four days we would ride dirt bikes around the lake, play poker at night, eat hamburgers and drink Vernors and Coors into the night.
One year, Brian’s Dad brought along The Book of Questions, which was pretty popular around that time. You probably remember it. It was full of questions like, “Would you take only two days of vacation every year if it meant a 30 percent increase in your salary?” It was meant, I’m sure, as a way to start conversations at dinner parties after a couple bottles of wine.
The book was generally beyond, Brian and I, but our Dad’s seemed to dig it, so one night we found ourselves sitting around the table after dinner thumbing through the questions.
Honestly, I only remember one of them. It went something like this: “If you could take a pill that allowed you to function on one hour of sleep in the same way you now function on 8 hours, would seek a prescription?”
Here’s what I remember about this: Brian’s dad — a successful oral surgeon with his own practice — immediately said yes. My dad — a vice president at a mid-sized grocery store chain — thought about it for a couple of seconds and said yes. Brian and I — who liked to sleep until noon and ride motor bikes until well after dusk — didn’t even understand the question.
To this day, I remember thinking, “Why would anyone not want to sleep as much as the world would let them?” Of course, at the time I had zero responsibilities. Intellectually I was somewhere between Revenge of the Nerds and JD Salinger and emotionally I was somewhere between GI Joe and Tawny Kitaen.
Sleep was a luxury and an essential experience. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to give that up.
But for our fathers, sleep was an undue burden — six-to-eight hours of downtime when they could be seeing patients, writing business plans, reading, writing, and doing things for themselves instead of for their bosses, customers, wives and kids.
From that moment, I’ve monitored my relationship with sleep as it devolved from a luxury to an increasing burden. Today, as slivers of time are peeled away by increased responsibilities and expanding possibilities, I find myself staying up later, trying to wake up earlier, doing more and dreaming less.
Today, if a drug existed that would allow me to safely function on 1 hour of sleep in the same way I do on eight hours, I would not only seek a prescription, I’d buy it off the street if I had to.
Sun Chips: Our Time, Our Snack Food
Like almost everyone I know, my lunch usually consists of a sandwich at my desk — or something frozen from Trader Joe’s — a Diet Coke and a bag of chips from the vending machine. Today, those chips were Sun Chips.
As I munched on this purportedly healthy snack and perused the marketing literature on the bag, it dawned on me: Sun Chips are the perfect snack food for our time.
Think about it, what do people want now more than anything?
Answer: A functioning economy.
Dammit… OK, What else do people really, really want — almost as much as a functioning economy?
Answer: To do the right thing for their bodies, the planet and society with absolutely no effort whatsoever. In fact, we want to do the right thing for our bodies, society and the planet — and be rewarded for it with good taste, popularity and fabulous wealth.
Ladies and gentlemen: I give you Sun Chips.
Healthy for your body: My bag of Original Flavor Sun Chips contains 10 grams of fat. This seems bad, until you consider that it is 30 percent less fat than regular old potato chips. (Potatoes? Do they still make those?)
And, here’s the kicker: Sun Chips are made with coveted whole grain — 18 grams of whole grain in fact. Therefore, you are offsetting your fat intake with the whole grain. In fact, you get a net positive of 8 grams of whole grain out of the entire equation. So, eating a delicious bag of Sun Chips is actually good for you.
Good for the planet: As I learned from my bag, One of the plants (don’t say factory, ick!) that Sun Chips are made in is actually powered by, wait for it… THE SUN! Yep, they use solar power in their Modesto, California plant (not factory).
OK, so that’s not where all Sun Chips are made. Some Sun Chips are made in plants powered by dirty, coal-fired power factories (ICK!). Well, to make up for this, the good folks at Frito Lay purchase Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) that help fund some other renewable power plant or forest project, or no-till farming operation, somewhere in the world completely unrelated to the manufacture of Sun Chips. They do this to offset the dirty power they use while making the Sun Chips.
Good for society: OK, so this wasn’t actually on the bag, I had to go to the website for this one. But here’s the deal: Leonardo DiCaprio is helping this town called Greensburg, Kansas rebuild after it was wiped out by a tornado, and Sun Chips gave him $1 million to build a solar-powered business incubator for the town (Seriously, they LOVE the sun). And, it’s all going to be on TV on the Discovery Channel’s Planet Green, where I’m sure you’ll see all sorts of Sun Chips ads.
So, to recap: One bag of Sun Chips gives you a net gain of 8 grams of whole grain, a carbon neutral snack that may or may not be made using solar power and the chance to rebuild a shattered town as a new green utopia. All for just 85 cents in the vending machine. Clearly you can’t afford not to be eating Sun Chips.
Obviously, I’m being sarcastic. And, because it’s late, I’m also being incredibly unfair. Frito Lay, and Sun Chips should be applauded for coming up with innovative ways to make their products more healthy and more environmentally benign. I actually believe that carbon offsets do have their place in the market (Not RECs necessarily, but that’s a different post for another night.) And, I think the Greensburg renewal is actually a really wonderful project.
But, my point is this: We can’t save the world with 85 cents and a bag of chips. We can’t do what we really need to do to leave our kids with a better planet and rid ourselves of foreign oil without making real and lasting sacrifices. (Or lose weight for that matter.)
What we need to do is fundamentally change every aspect of our current system — from the way we generate our energy, to how it’s transmitted, to the way our towns are built, the cars we drive and the things we buy. And we needed to start doing it five years ago.
By all means, let’s have our Sun Chips — they truly are delicious — but let’s not be under any delusion that that’s all we need to do.
Technorati Tags: California, carbon offsets, coal fired power, dirty coal, discovery channel, energy, Environment & Science, frito lay, green living, green washing, greensburg kansas, healthy snack, Kansas, leonardo dicaprio, marketing literature, modesto california, planet green, potato chips, renewable energy, renewable energy credits, renewable power, snack food, solar power, sun chips, whole grain
A Saner Cyber Monday
The stories of rampant, violent consumerism coming out of Black Friday frankly made me sick. So, in the hopes that some of us will have a saner Cyber Monday, here are a handful of sites offering unique, sustainable gifts we can be proud to give:
Etsy.com: Your place to buy and sell all thing handmade.
Etsy hooks up people who make things with people who buy things. The site has lots of great jewelry, furniture, fashion, home decor and other cool stuff. Everything is handmade and you buy it directly from the seller. The site is well designed and includes great ways to browse, including his and her showcases and pounce, which allows users to browse by recently updates shops or shops that have just made a sale.
A few folks on our holiday list will be getting Etsy goods this year, and I have to give a shout out to Glass Elements, which is run by the wife of a friend.
The Great Elephant Poo Poo Paper Company LTD.
It’s a long title for a fairly simple concept: Making journals, note cards, greeting cards and other stationary out of dried elephant dung and donating a portion of the proceeds to elephant welfare and conservation programs. The products are simple, beautiful, unique and a pleasure to write on. My wife got me one last year and I love it. And no, it doesn’t smell like elephant poop.
One Laptop per Child: XO Laptop
Sure, you could get your kid a slightly cheaper Acer laptop with a buggy Windows Vista operating system, or you could participate in the give one, get one program and help save the world by giving children in developing nations a fighting chance at an education.
The XO doesn’t come with Word or Excel (Don’t you already have a computer with that shit on it?) but it does come with kid-friendly open-source programs for drawing, writing, music editing and even computer programming. It also comes equipped with a web browser and webcam. Oh, and it only draws 4 watts of power as opposed to the 60 watt average for laptops.
Nature Conservancy Marketplace
The Nature Conservancy recently launched a completely re-vamped store — one that is well-worth visiting. Yes, you can still get your logowear and your Conservancy tote bag, but you can also get designer T-shirts made of organic cotton, designer birdhouses made of recycled aluminum and jewelry made by Bolivan artisans. the store even includes classic and modern environmental texts. A portion of all proceeds benefit the Conservancy and its projects.
Of course, if you don’t need an actual product as a gift you can enroll your friends and loved-ones in the newly expanded Adopt-an-Acre program or offset a portion of their carbon footprint.
The Gift of (WordPress) Blogging
Have a friend with a lot to say? Get ‘em a blog. I know a woman who did this for her husband last year and he loved it. If you go this route, be sure to get everything set up for the recipient/newbie blogger ahead of time. That means securing and purchasing the domain name, paying the first six months (or year) of hosting fees, setting up the blog template, installing appropriate plug-ins and providing the requisite training.
This is obviously something to do only if you know the person well — and if they’ve ever said, “I’m really intrigued by bogging, but…” To get the most sustainable bang out of your buck check our Taproot or Acorn Host, both of which are committed to using wind power.
Technorati Tags: cyber monday, consumerism, green gifts, sustainable gifts, handmade gifts, christmas, online shopping, etsy.com, black friday, jewelry, furniture, fashion, home decor, poo poo paper, stationary, journals, elephants, conservation, environment, one laptop per child, xo laptop, technology, education, developing world, nature conservancy, marketplace, tote bag, adopt an acre, wordpress, blogging, taproot, acorn host
Black Friday
Do we love cheap Chinese goods so much that we’re willing to kill for them?
A temporary Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death in a rush of thousands of early morning shoppers as he and other employees attempted to unlock the doors of a Long Island, New York, store at 5 a.m., police said.
US World Cup qualifying: USA 1 : 0 Cuba
Because it really can’t be all politics all the time.
There’s not a lot I can say about the actual soccer in this game. It was very typical for a second-round US away match: Not-so-great play on a craptacular, decrepit field in the Caribbean (or Central America) in front of a crazy anti-American crowd. The play in this match was made even worse by absolutely torrential rain and a series of power outages.
So, what to say?
Dempsey’s goal was well taken and Tim Howard made two quality saves — actually the save at the beginning of the second half was pretty sick. None of the US players played particularly well and only DaMarcus Beasley had a particularly poor game. Taken with the Guatemala match a few weeks back, there is really very little to say about the US team in qualifying thus far. They’ve done enough to get two tough wins on the road under less than optimal circumstances and to earn the top spot of second-round group 1 but they haven’t played stellar soccer. We should get a better idea of the side’s quality on Wednesday when the US will play Trinidad & Tobago — a higher-quality side — at Chicago’s Toyota park. And of course the real test won’t come until the final round begins. Until then, expect Bob Bradley to keep the US moving forward in an efficient, if underwhelming manner.
Watching these away matches is always a bit surreal. The stadium, shrouded in darkness seems disembodied from whatever country it happens to be in. The field is in worse shape than many recreational fields here in the US, the stadium is built of crumbling cinder block and the fans — often sequestered behind old-school crowd control fences — look as if they’re going to explode with passion and anger. (This last point always makes me wonder how they can stand — year after year — to lose to the US where the vast majority of the population doesn’t give a shit about soccer.)
In Cuba all of these elements (with the exception of the fencing) were present — with a few added touches: The stadium also houses a block dormitories where the national team players live, presumably only during qualifying but that was unclear. There is no game clock — time is kept on the field and the score is posted, by hand, on a large green scoreboard (that’s right, like they used to do in baseball). The five US fans in attendance wore bandannas and sunglasses over their faces so they wouldn’t be identified. (Remember, traveling to Cuba without a proper Visa is illegal.) The conditions make fading RFK stadium — where the two teams will play on October 11 — look downright state-of-the-art.
That’s right, US v. Cuba in Washington, DC. After seeing last night’s conditions I have to wonder how many Cubans will choose to defect in our nation’s capital.
“This Barack Obama?” A Child’s Take on Identity, Race and Change
There comes a point in every child’s life when he realizes that he is not the same as the people around him and we all come in different colors, sizes, shapes and abilities. This realization comes to the child almost imperceptibly but leaves an imprint he will spend his entire life trying to overcome.
Parents witnessing this moment are touched by sadness and in some cases humor. Sadness from the fact that their child has lost a bit of his innocence, and humor, from the unintended wisdom that comes from a child saying honestly and bluntly, “they are the same, but they are different from me.”
For our son Oliver, this moment manifested itself at Costco. Our Subaru was in the garage getting new tires and we were passing the time wandering the aisles and stocking up on granola bars, pita chips, canned peaches and other essentials of suburban family life.
We were in the Armageddon aisle (canned and dry food stuffs by the pound), chasing after those peaches, when we heard Oliver behind us quite literally shouting, “This Barack Obama? This Barack Obama?” and pointing to a five-pound bag of rice wrapped in orange plastic.
It took about half a second for Tracy and I to realize with some horror that Oliver was pointing to Uncle Ben — of parboiled rice and racist stereotype fame — and asking if the illustration was Barack Obama. It took another split second for us to double-over in laughter and embarrassment and hustle Oliver away from the rice and over to a mountain of DVDs.
So what does it say about us, about our time, when a two-year-old can confuse a racist marketing symbol from the 1940s with a man who will hopefully be the next president of the United States? And what does it say when the two-year-old points to Uncle Ben and calls him Barack Obama, and not the other way around?
Perhaps it says, in one fleeting moment in the crucible of middle class commerce, that when it comes to race in America we are still struggling mightily with change — struggling to abandon old stereotypes while at the same time hoping to create some sort of post-racial society. It says, quite simply, we have come a long way on race, but we still have a long way to go.