Torture...the talks continue.....

Things had a glimmer of activity in the comments section of the Ethics Question: Torture post I put up a few days, so I thought I'd blather on here about my own opinion on the matter. I see that we're all split about the matter, so maybe if I piss somebody off enough with my opinion, they'll comment. :)
Seriously though...I would like to hear arguments from the other side. I'm really intrigued to know.

Perhaps unsurprising to you, but I think torture of another human being (no matter the desired outcome or reasoning behind it) is abhorrently wrong. Mostly for these reasons, which come from a Christian framework:

1) As a believer in the message of Jesus - I think torture goes against everything Jesus represents. Yes, people are twisted. Yes, there is evil in the world. But this is not the world as it was created to be. This world is about as far out in left field as it was intended to be by it's Creator. I think that when believers hold hands with politics and war....it's a dangerous romance.

2) As a human, I respect the sanctity of life....all life. I'm pro-life. I think that killing the unborn is wrong. I also think that torture/execution of believers in China is wrong. And that massacre in the Congo is wrong. I think all human beings deserve respect and dignity. How can one respect life with exceptions?? That just doesn't jive with me.
I believe that Jesus loves us all unequivocally, without exception. And when one of his "children" is slain (no matter their "sins") it pains him.
In Genesis, when Cain killed Abel, God told him "Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground" (Gen. 4:10).
-------
That's all I've got for now.
Go on then....fire away.

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"You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."Anne Lamot

"I have been held without trial by the US for 6 years, 1 month and 12 days. That is 2,234 days (very long days, and often longer nights). Of this, about 550 days were in a torture chamber in Morocco, and about 150 in the 'Dark Prison' in Kabul. Still there is no end in sight, no prospect of a fair trial...It is long past time to end this matter. I have been next to committing suicide this past while. That would be one way to end it, I suppose."Binyam Mohamed, Guantanamo Detainee, in a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown

More Show & Tell & some Surveys

Let's see....a few more things to show you:


Check out this Zodiac Body Art by this artist named Rudi Everts (warning: nudity).
Cool, huh? I particularly like the Sagittarius and the Cancer.








Have you heard all the hype about BPA plastic bottles??
Normally, I'm not one to freak out about various studies that lead to cancer, or cause Alzheimer's, or man-boobs, blah-blee-blah-blee-blee, but this whole thing about dangerous plastics has me a little concerned. The plastics in and of themselves aren't bad, but when they're heated or begin to break down over time (plates in the microwave, bottles in the dishwasher, binkies, etc) the Polycarbonate in the plastic leeches into the food or drink and has been shown to cause major health problems - like breast caner, early puberty, and other sucky stuff from high estrogen levels from the Polycarbonate.
It has me grabbing the glass plates to warm up food for the kids and now that payday has arrived, I think I'll be buying some stainless steel water bottles and sippy cups to go in lunches.

What do you think?

Scaling Back

So, in the spirit of yesterday's post with the tiny NYC loft apartment that a family of 4 shared, I thought I'd show you something else I found online recently, that I was reminded of, while reading THIS POST on Clint's blog this morning.

Yay! Show and Tell time!

"It's Katrina Cottage 1, a 308 square-foot tribute to coastal Mississippi style designed by Marianne Cusato during the October Mississippi Renewal Forum in Biloxi. At a built-out cost somewhere south of $35,000, it was a huge hit when it debuted as a two-dimensional drawing during the forum. Now it's going national."

..."she achieved her purpose: To prove that affordable emergency housing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina didn't have to be a trailer that ends up in a landfill in 18 months. She downsized a perfectly scaled Mississippi-style coastal cottage, complete with an inviting porch. She created clever built-in storage under porch benches and beneath bunk beds. And she gave the sparse interior space a roomy feel with over sized windows."



Here's the interesting thing: Local authorities are hesitant to actually let people live in these houses during the rebuilding phase because they fear that instead of rebuilding that people will actually live in them indefinitely.

Here's the thing. And by "the thing", I mean my opinion, which you're subject to quite frequently if you read my blog: What's actually wrong with letting people live in them??
For free? Of course I don't think that should be an indefinite answer - if they need them as temporary housing while they rebuild, then they should be able to use them for free. BUT, if they want to use it indefinitely, or actually BUY one, don't you think they should be able to? Imagine that - people can actually live in a just-sufficient space instead of building yet another large house (and by large, I mean a "normal" sized house) to fill up with junk that they don't actually need. Could it be a small answer to the question of How to stop consumerism?

What do you think?

A Bit Controversial

I subscribe to the TreeHugger blog, and one of the articles on there today was about population control.
As stated in the article, Alan Wiesman of The World Without us- "we have to "limit every human female on Earth capable of bearing children to one".
While I'm not really in favor of limited the number of children that people can have (um...hello, China? I'll have an order of a rise in unsafe abortions and female infanticide please), it is interesting to consider the effects that overpopulation have on our overpopulated and taxed planet.
Personally, I think adoption would be the "easy" solution, if only it were so easy. Steve and I would love to adopt - we had talked about for years while we were dating and during the early years of our marriage. In fact, we had planned on adopting FIRST, and then things were rearranged when Owen came along as a surprise. I'd still like to adopt one day, but logistically, it's difficult. A mountain of paperwork, interviews, home studies, and then of course the big one: THE COST. How many people don't adopt because quite frankly, it's just easier to get yourself knocked up and have your own kid?? I understand the need to make sure that children are placed in loving and stable homes, but I just wish there was a better solution to make adoption more feasible and less scary for more people. There are a LOT of kids (domestic and foreign) that need homes...
Anyway, I'm rambling. I don't have solutions, but it piqued my brain today and got me thinking...

The survey on treehugger.com asked this:

What do you think about population control?

1. There are too many already, people should adopt
2. Alan Wiesman is right: one kid per family
3. If you can afford to support them and instill in them a strong sense of environmental responsibility, why limit it?
4. Fundamentally, it's none of yours or anyone else's business

From The Matrix, Agent Smith to Morpheus: "Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment. But you humans do not. "You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area."

GDiapers....Or: I'm Turning Into a Hippie

But I think true hippies smoke weed and drive Volvo's so I think I'm ok. For now.

Forewarning: this is a post about diapering. So if you don't care about diapering. Or being a hippie. Or poop. Or the earth. Then you might want to skip over this one, may God have mercy on your consumeristic soul.
Just kidding about that last part.

Before Owen was born, I had considered using cloth diapers on him. They're more environmentally friendly, gentler on baby's skin, cost-efficient (depending on the route you choose), etc. etc. But then I saw (through a lady I knew who was cloth diapering her newborn) how much freaking work it was and elwww, you dunk it in the TOILET to rinse off the poop? --->insert gagging sounds here <---- That quickly brought to an end my grandeur ideas of being earth-friendly and I opted for the Pampers route. For the next 5 years. We should own stock in Pampers. Seriously. But a few months ago, I came across this new product called G-Diapers, which are actually flushable diapers. Sounds weird, right? But no...it makes a lot of sense. You buy these cute diaper covers with a plastic snap-in liner (which Tyler is modeling in the photo above) and then you put in this flushable insert (think giant maxi-pad for babies). When you change the diaper, you pull out the insert, put a new one in and then flush the old one. Genius! Considering the fact that as a nation, we throw about 18 billion diapers away each year into trash cans and bags, believing they've gone to some magic place where they will safely disappear. The truth is, most of the plastic-lined "disposables" end up in landfills. There they sit, tightly wrapped bundles of poo that take about 500 years to break down. Ellw... That's a whole lotta stanky dipes. The G-Diapers flush away all that stuff - where it belongs - in the crapper. Or...if you're out and about and don't want to mess with flushing, the GDiapers break down in about 30 days. You can click on the video HERE to watch a side by side comparison of normal plastic diapers deomposing next to the GDiapers. Pretty eye-opening. And gross.

Price wise, GDiapers are slightly more expensive. Depending on the brand you use, about 4-8 cents more per diaper. But isn't keeping the earth clean for your kids worth the extra investment? So I ordered a starter pack to give them a try. And by golly, I liked them! I tentatively told Steve-o about them before I ordered...testing the waters, seeing if he was up for the bit of extra work involved and he was game and said to go ahead. So I did, and they're working fabulously.
But THEN...oh, then....I REALLY got granola, and I thought, maybe, just MAYBE, I could use the G-Diapers part of the time, and cloth inserts inside of the G-Diaper cover when we're at home and save some money AND the environment. HOoooo boy. I was feelin' crazy. Again, I tested the waters with Steve....he wasn't sure, but he would give it a try.

Now, lemme just tell you that the days of the folding-of-the-cloth diaper and securing with a pin are LOoooonng gone. There are so many cloth diapering options out there that my head was about to EXPLODE from information overload. AIO's, inserts, doublers, fleece, cotton or hemp? which is better? this one's more absorbent, which ones leak, which ones for nighttime, blah, blah, blah! Ack!
I finally got a little bit of an understanding, after I emailed a few online distributers and basically said, "help me! I'm in cloth diaperland hell!" and they were super nice in explaining things to me so my virgin cloth diapering brain could understand. So I ordered some hemp/cotton inserts (super absorbent PLUS soft and natural on baby's skin) and have been using those during the day when we're at home. AND.....they're great. And last night Steve even said, "man, I wish we had known about all this stuff when owen and aj were babies". So I think that's a pretty good sign that things are going just fine.

Our diaper trash can in the nursery is pretty empty these days...and in just the few weeks we've been doing the G-Diaper/cloth combo deal we've saved a LOT of diapers from ending up in the landfill. Just for us alone, an average of 5 diaper changes per day (more when they're little, less when they're bigger), we were putting about 150 diapers a month in the trash....

that's 1,680 per year
about 5,040 over each of our kid's lifetime until they're potty trained. So with 2 kids, we've put about 10,000 plus diapers in landfills, that won't break down until our boys great great great great grandchildren come along. Field trip to the dump kids! Let's look at great great great great great grandaddy's poopy diapers!

Anyway, that's my product endorsement/save the planet plug for this week. If you're interested in learning more about G-Diapers, or cloth diapering, you can check out the links below, or feel free to ask me questions and I'll try to answer. It's really not that hard and if you have wee ones, I think you should check it out. Not to mention, they're really cute. Soft diaper covers are much cuter (and comfier) than crinkly, crunchy plastic diapers.

Tyler likes 'em....doncha buddy?

See. I told you.
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G-Diapers

General Cloth Diapering Info

Cloth Diapering FAQ
____________________________

Groovy man. I'm off to make some beaded friendship bracelets and tye-dye some t-shirts.
Catch ya later.

How Rich Are You??

It's Good Deed Tuesday and I've been (briefly) considering over coffee how fantastically weathly we really are. Besides the wealth of my beautiful and healthy family (a richness worth far more than anything else I can imagine), it seems that on a global scale, we have A LOT of money.
The very fact that I'm sitting --in my kitchen (electricity running) sipping hot coffee (fresh, that we just bought yesterday and ground this morning) at my expensive laptop, wearing pajamas that are less than 6 months old - is a sign to our wealth as a nation. Even though we struggle to pay bills sometimes (irony in the fact that our "necessities" are: cable tv, cell phones, car payments, etc) and luxuries are few and far between, the simple fact of our posh existence is testament to our richness and surely puts things in perspective. We are a spoiled and undeserving nation, too quick to whine when we can't get that iphone we so desperately need, or the new car that we've been drooling over, or new furniture for our homes when there are so many other people that have nothing. Seriously nothing.

And it gets me thinking (which I've been doing a lot of lately)...how can we cut back? How can we prioritize? How can we change our way of thinking that we NEED the next newest thing, that our houses MUST have cable, must have luxuries, we must have the newest thing?? It's a hard habit to break, this idea of "being normal".
WHAT IF...you told your family that you weren't going to buy the newest model of cell phone when your contract is up for renewal? That you'd be happy with the baseline model?....if you decided not to buy new furniture...for the next 15 years? Because the stuff you have is FINE structurally, albeit dated?.....if your main purpose behind working so hard at your job wasn't to "improve" your way of living - goals of bigger and better houses, newer and cooler cars, exotic vacations? "I could do that", you think. But then....I'd feel self-conscious when people would come over and our rug is old and ugly, or people would tease me about my crappy cell phone when I text my friends, or...people will wonder why we're still only in a 3 bedroom house.

Just a peek inside my brain this morning.

Wanna see how rich you are on a global scale??

Go HERE to see how you rank on the global rich list. It's humbling.

Here's a Fun Quiz

Check your ecological footprint HERE

Mine was 11 - according to that, we would need 2.5 planets if everyone consumed goods and energy like me. :( bummer

The Garbage Game

I played The Gotham Gazette Garbage Game and sent 1,897,871 tons of refuse across 1,921,409 miles.

We're Theme-ing It....Get Ready For Good Deed Tuesdays!

So....how 'bout we start doing a theme once a week. I made up the theme...you participate. Sound good?

Here's my idea: Good Deed Tuesdays
It's as simple as it sounds....do at least one good deed for someone else on Tuesdays. It can be something small (buy a latte for the person behind you in line at Starbucks) or go all out (give your neighbor your car because theirs broke down). Whatever it is, it has to be for someone else and it has to be somewhat inconvenient for you and not TOO easy (here honey, I'm doing a good deed by closing the lid on the toilet seat so you don't fall in when you get up to pee tonight).

I've already got mine figured out....I'll post it tomorrow....start thinking about yours and then tomorrow: execute! Then tell us about it...either here or on your own blog. No excuses...it's not like you're overwhelmed with getting back into the work week because it's Monday, and you're not too obsessed with weekend plans because it's Friday, it's Good Deed TUESDAY-early enough in the week that you have brain cells left to think of something, but not too late that you're in weekend-mode.

Come ON!! It'll be fun!

Check it

This is addicting...fun....and for a good cause.

Check it out:

Go Read This

Found this interesting article.....check it out:

5 REASONS NOT TO DRINK BOTTLED WATER

Project 1Buck

Many of you may remember the post I did a couple weeks back for Project1Buck.

They're over half way to getting the $$ needed to buy a computer for the Black Hills Neighborhood community center, so if anyone if willing or has a minute - pop over to the their site and give a mere $1 so they can meet their goal before their deadlines is up (in 11 days) so they can meet their goal. If everyone who gave $1, gives just $1 more, the goal will be met! And I can't wait to see what the next project in store is.....

Read more about it and give a dolla' here.

Come on....all the cool kids are doin' it......

Project 1Buck

So....there was this website called The Million Dollar Home Page (http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/), set up by this college kid who needed some funds to pay off his college debt. He set up a 1,000 x 1,000 pixel grid, and put each pixel up for sale… the price was $1 each.
Alex sold all 1 million pixels in just over 5 months.

Enter Steve's best bud from college, Scott Sadler, along with a few of his friends - who were intriqued by the theory of thousands of strangers donating a mere $1 to a certain cause. They began to wonder if the strategy of raising money one buck at a time could be used in different ways… "What if that idea, that strategy, was used to support a good cause? Could it work?"

So they started Project1Buck. The idea is simple... If enough people donate $1, good things can happen for people in need. Their current project is to buy a computer for a community center in downtown Grand Rapids. They only need 752 people to donate $1......why don't you??

Check it all out here: Project1Buck

Go Green

Casey beat me to it, but I was getting ready to post a blog about the beginnings of my efforts to reduce my impact on the planet. Sadly, as a country, we are gluttons for "stuff" and all things bigger, better, faster, more, more more!! and we are, as a whole, poor stewards of the earth.

Have I gone off the deep end? Am I going to join PETA and eat salads composed of grass and wildflowers from our backyard or sew my own clothing from tree bark or bathe just once a week in goat milk to conserve water?? No...not that extreme - but am I going to try to do a few things to lessen the depth of my footprint on the planet.

Lately I've been considering how many plastic bags we go through in a week. I *loathe* going grocery shopping (with the boys, it's a nightmare that causes me to break out in hives just thinking about it ) so I'll usually go to the grocery store once almost every day. Sound backwards? It's not....
Here's my logic: I'd rather run in the store while I'm out and grab enough stuff for dinner for that night, some milk and a box of cereal, then spend an hour and a half going through every aisle getting EVERYTHING that we need.
So, on average, I'm bringing home 2-5 grocery bags full of stuff EVERY DAY. That's a lot of plastic bags. And what happens to them?? You use them once to bring home your stuff, and then you throw them away.
Where they're carted off to the dump...to sit.
----- For about 1,000 years! ----
Seems wasteful considering that you only use them for the 8 minute ride from the store to your refrigerator.
Americans consume and throw away about 395 billion plastic bags per year. What a waste.

So....what can you do about it?
Go to the local craft store (Hobby Lobby, Michaels, etc) and buy some canvas tote bags. They cost about $3-$10 each depending on the size. And if you're feeling arty-farty you can have your kids paint on them, or hot-glue some grass on it, or iron-on your Metallica patch that you've been saving since 1987.
I found some mesh tote bags at Target on sale for $5 each and they are just as big (if not bigger) than a regular size grocery bag. You can also buy bags online at various eco-friendly online stores at like ecobags, or reusablebags.com, or even on ebay.

What a great and easy way to teach your kids about recycling and being a good steward of the earth! And you'll feel good too....I promise. It's a small thing, but it really does make a difference.

For other simple ways that you can cut down on waste and make a difference globally, check out Stopglobalwarming.com. You'll find a whole list of things (big and small) that you can do today or in less than 5 minutes to make a change for the better.
I promise...we won't call you a tree-hugger, or think you're weird. Quite the opposite...you'll be pretty hip seeing as how "going green" is so freak'n IN right now. You'll be oh-so-cool.

Like me.

And really, who doesn't want to be like me????
:)

(click to enlarge)