Report on safety of GM crops

Here is an article linking to a report that compiles scientific findings regarding the safety of current genetic engineering technology.  I haven't read the original report, but from the summary in the article, it seems that the report touches on many issues I've brought up in the past on my blog.

Gay culture and style

This is an interesting article about recognizing and appreciating what can be deemed as gay culture.  The author celebrates things like irony, campiness, femininity, and other aspects of what has come to be associated with gay culture as just that--elements of a vibrant, separate, unique culture, and not stereotypes to be shunned by gays and non-gays alike.  His argument is that in the 21st century, society at large has accepted gay identity and gay sexuality, but not gay culture.  I guess an analogy would be if I were tolerant in an abstract way of blacks or people of another ethnic group, but disdained the music, language, food, and clothing that define these groups culturally.  Essentially the author of the article is reclaiming a place for gay style as a relevant social phenomenon that enriches not only the gay men that express it, but also the rest of society.  Gay culture looks at things from a different angle from the rest of society and thus forces everyone else to at least consider or acknowledge the insights of that different viewpoint.

I'm a pretty Spartan guy in many ways.  I don't like fuss, or style, or much of anything that goes outside of what I deem necessary and practical.  In the author's dichotomy, I am a content guy as opposed to a style guy.  I don't consider myself homophobic, but certain aspects of gay style have in the past seemed annoying or silly to me.  Hyperbolic drama, exaggerated femininity, obsession with physical image--these things seemed at best like a waste of time, and at worst like inauthentic, contrived behavioral tics.  That said, in my life I have enjoyed the company of many people who express just these traits, and my enjoyment was probably in large part because of these traits (despite my professed aversion to excesses of style and flair).  In light of this article, I have a better appreciation that gay style and culture as passed on through the generations is no more contrived or artificial that Masai culture or Midwestern culture or Vietnamese culture.  Perhaps I'll now be more tolerant of some things I'd prior considered frivolous, and I'll understand better why I so often admire and appreciate the individuals who embody gay style.  Their style is not indicative of a lack of content, but rather part of the content of the individual and the collective.  And my admiration for my gay friends living gay culture is thus not in spite of this style but in part thanks to it.

Francis of Assisi review

Years ago my parents gave me a biography of Francis of Assisi, called "Reluctant Saint", by Donald Spoto.   A few months ago I reread it.  It is a really well-done biography, accounting Francis's fascinating life that took him from carefree rich kid antics to absolute self-deprivation.  Aside from the life itself, the book includes great contextual information about the historical period Francis lived in.  There are good discussions of medieval life, of heresies like the Cathars, and of the general politico-religious situation.  There is also a fair amount of background theology to clarify key points of Francis's beliefs.  Given the relative paucity of information about Francis's life, the author engages in a lot of speculation and reasoning out of things to fill in details about the saint.  For example, the author speculates that accounts of Francis's profligate youth might be exaggerations by hagiographers to contrast against his later austere life.  Likewise Spoto's thoughts on Francis's stigmata analyze various alternate explanations of how the saint might have come by the markings on his body.  The book has no footnotes, but there are extensive notes at end.

"Reluctant Saint" is by no means a hagiography, but its viewpoint is unabashedly Catholic and theological. That is to say that the biography is not some secular clinicalization of faith, but rather analyzes many of the traits of Francis's life and times on their own medieval Catholic terms.

When I first read the book about ten years ago, I marveled at many aspects of Francis's theology, and aspired to lead a life in some ways like his.  My self-imposed ascetic austerity almost lost me my friends and then-girlfriend, and in my first trip to Haiti the Franciscan nun that took care of the residence I lived in called me "Francis of Assisi" for my disheveled looks and austerity. 

On this second reading I was less wowed.  Francis of Assisi practiced a very self-centered theology.  He denied his material and emotional needs as a way of drawing closer to the crucified Christ.  He wanted to share in Christ's suffering and the suffering of the poor and sick, but never thought about changing society to lessen the suffering of others.  I appreciate his thoughts on the ennobling aspect of suffering, and I believe that suffering is a necessary and even good part of life and the world, but I can't stop there and tacitly accept the horrid suffering of the oppressed, the poor, the ill, the abandoned.  I feel that by not fighting for change, I am siding in some way with the evildoers who cause that suffering, even if I share in the suffering of others.  If Francis were alive today, he would probably receive the same criticisms that were sometimes leveled at Mother Teresa: that her solidarity with the poor takes the form of living in squalor with them and even objectifying them for her own mortification, as opposed to working to change the lot of the poor.

So nowadays, if I had to choose a Catholic religious order with whom I am closest philosophically, it would no longer be the Franciscans (of whom incidentally there are many sub-orders with distinct charisms) but the Jesuits.  The Jesuits do not have as much of an explicit ethic of sharing in the lifestyle and suffering of the poor, but they seem to practice solidarity by fighting injustice and suffering alongside the poor.  Certainly here in Colombia, some of the most progressive voices and the vanguard of work against war and inequality and poverty are coming from the Jesuits.

The Greed Revolution

Here's an important report from the ETC group.  It may be a bit complex and/or dry for people not versed in agricultural research and development terms and infrastructure, but it's good to read.  Basically the article demonstrates how over the past few decades international organizations that are supposed to look out for the general public interest (ensuring access to seed genetic resources, providing policy frameworks for agricultural development, etc.) are being increasingly hijacked by international agribusiness corporations.  It is important because most of the research and other investments that have greatly improved food supply in the past 50 years have been publicly funded, with mandates for the public interest.  If instead of serving farmers and consumers, these research and development organizations (the CGIAR and the FAO) start to look out for the interests of food processors, petrochemical input suppliers, grain speculators, and the like, then we're all in trouble.

On a somewhat related note, here is a withering critique of the TED conferences, claiming that they are frivolous, self-congratulatory, and basically little more than a cheerleading squad for the status quo.

Third World Green Daddy 35: Clothes

How you treat your clothes is an important part of being green.  In a modern consumerist economy, clothes have gone from being a durable good (like cars or washing machines) to being a consumible, disposable good (like candy or toilet paper).  There are many raw materials that go into the clothes, such as cotton, detergents, synthetic (petroleum-derived) thread, dyes, etc.  There's nothing wrong with using raw materials to make a finished product.  Indeed, it's what makes us human and what drives any true economy, from Stone Age hunter-gatherers on up.  But as with any aspect of Nature, it's important to respect and revere those raw materials and the natural systems from which they're extracted, and consequently to use no more than is absolutely necessary.  So when you buy new jeans or new shoes or new shirts every few months instead of using them for the years they could last in perfectly decent shape, you're wasting a lot more resources than you need to, not to mention creating more solid waste for your local landfill or incinerator.

All these realities shape my family's clothes purchasing habits.  We rarely buy new clothes, and in my case most of my clothes were bought years ago in some thrift store.  This outerwear of mine undergoes a gradual transition from the respectable, nice clothes category, to serving for less formal occasions once it's a bit worn out, and then finally my most ragged and holey clothes are reserved only for when I'm hoeing a field or rooting around in pig shit.  My big annual clothes-buying bonanza occurs when we visit my hometown of Chicago.  We go to a nearby Marshall's store and I buy a whole bunch of undershirts and boxer shorts and socks.  It's very exciting, though my new acquisitions don't mean I immediately throw away my old underwear.  Rather I wear my old undershirts and socks until they are threadbare or even have holes, at which point I stage a ceremonial clothes-ripping a la The Incredible Hulk.  The torn clothing then finds its way to our cleaning rag pile.  The boxer shorts usually last longer, but they too undergo a ripping ceremony when they've worn out.

My wife is similarly frugal, though her more upscale work environs dictate that she maintain a slightly larger and more respectable wardrobe than I do.  My daughter-in-law is thankfully unconcerned with clothes, and my nephew is almost dismissively hostile towards clothes, wearing holes in socks with abandon and then continuing to use them.  This is problematic, because since we don't buy new socks that often, he's also started wearing through mine, which get thrown together with his in the wash.  Even our baby Sam has clothes from a number of sources that span in size from a 3-6 months ripped jacket that he insists on squeezing into, to Oshkosh B'Gosh stuff for 2-year-olds that he also barely fits into.

This generalized frugality when it comes to clothes is all fine, and I'm sure it helps the planet some little bit that our household largely abstains from consuming clothes.  But my wife and I have recently decided that we're going to try to be a bit less radical.  We do work after all, and are fairly intelligent, well-paid professionals.  There is no reason we should look and feel like indigent Dickensian rag-pickers.  Who knows?  Perhaps our extreme self-denial in terms of clothing leads us to make extravagant, wasteful purchases in other areas of our lives just to feel less like hobos.

One step I took a few months ago was getting my clothes tailored.  I had a number of shirts and pants that I'd bought years ago, and because they were a size or two too big I'd spent all that time wearing them with belt tightly cinched and cuffs rolled up various times over.  Again, like a 1930s rails-riding hobo.  But I finally took advantage of the non-wasteful craft economy here in my town (in middle-income countries like Colombia there are a fair number of people who fix old things as opposed to everyone's just buying everything new) to have all my shirts and pants taken in to my measurements, for about $15US altogether.  As seen in the photo above, the end result was that I had clothes that actually fit, and consequently I felt better about myself and my outward presentation.

The next step we'll take to be a bit less compulsively self-depriving is that in late July, when we visit Chicago, we're really going to stock up on underclothes, not just for me but for Caro and my nephew Manuel.  Maybe this way we'll feel like civilized folk and not always have to scrounge about the house to find a pair of clean, intact socks.