Tue, 30 Jan 2007

Coercion vs Persuasion.
Sometimes I like to think about issues of coercion and dominance. On that topic, here’s an interesting article about the difference between persuasion and coercion.

posted at: 15:16 | path: /living | link

Truth, Power
I was gearing up to write a bit of a rant entry on sleep disorders. Then, after a brief conversation with Andrew, I became completely distracted by issues of pathologisation. In a fairly coincidental juxtaposition, while at work I ended up reading this essay, called “Is Bad Writing Necessary”. I find myself completely agreeing with both of the opposing sides presented in this essay, which seems puzzling. It also leads me back to pathologisation, in two respects. The first is that pathologisation is about word usage, and how that affects point of view. The second is that I find myself very much on both sides of the fence when it comes to providing labels for behaviours. Once again, puzzling. Perhaps more on this topic later.

posted at: 14:16 | path: /living | link

Tue, 23 Jan 2007

Check out the colours
Colours totally make me happy. I actually like to go and look at pages like the Non-Dithering Colors by Hue page, just for fun. So I was gleefully entertained when I came across this colour therapy webpage because it has links to pages that are just… a colour. Personally, I’m agnostic about whether or not colours are consistent stimuli across individuals, but I must say that just looking at a giant page of yellow, or pink or red or turquoise does seem to evoke something. Try it out if you don’t believe me.

posted at: 22:41 | path: /living | link

Mon, 22 Jan 2007

Summing up thoughts on fluorescent bulbs
I was reading through through this person’s comprehensive site on all sorts of fluorescent bulbs, and it helped to come to a few more conclusions about the bulbs, which I’ll summarize here (ultimately I’m going to copy this all over on to my Real Green Living site, as well, which I’d like to have up and running this week). My conclusions are:

Safety:
Compact fluorescent bulbs are awesome for using in places where bulbs almost never get broken anyway- i.e light fixtures in the ceiling or bulbs that already have covers over them. On the off chance that a bulb does break, it can be dealt with, but know what safety precautions to take. Different types of fluorescent bulbs have different amounts of mercury in them. The long tube type can have as much as 60 grams. Low mercury compact light fluorescents have the least amount of mercury in them (around 4 grams), so look for those if you’re buying bulbs. Compact fluorescent bulbs last a really long time, but when they do eventually burn out, after years of use, treat them like batteries- don’t throw them in the garbage. Use a Take it Back program to get them recycled (in Ottawa, check out the Household hazardous waste program dates. You can also take items back directly to the recyclers listed on the Take It Back website anytime you want.

Practicality and long life:
If you are using the bulbs somewhere where you need bright light immediately, make sure you get a brand that doesn’t have a long warm up time. I have to say, we’ve never actually had a problem with this. We use these bulbs in our basement, and the light comes right on as soon as we flick the switch. For the longest life, don’t use them somewhere you have to turn them on and off again quickly (like in a closet). Maybe the new LED light bulbs would be a good solution for closets. Make sure you have the right compact fluorescent for the job. Some don’t work so well in cold weather. Again, though, we’re using them on our porch at the moment, and so far we haven’t had a problem. Similarly, don’t use them with dimmer switches, unless you’ve bought ones specially designed for use with dimmer switches. Investigate different white light spectrum options, to see what you like. There’s a range of different types out there.

To see why I’ve come to these conclusions you can check out my previous blog entry on the subject.

posted at: 09:36 | path: /living | link

Sun, 21 Jan 2007

Questions about mercury
I was chatting with some of my work friends about the question of mercury in compact fluorescents. Low-mercury compact fluorescents have about 4mg of mercury per bulb. That’s why people are encouraged to recycle them, since then the mercury can be recaptured, rather than going into the landfill. At the moment, it isn’t actually illegal to throw out compact bulbs, but if you do, it can release mercury vapour into the air when they are compacted by the garbage truck or at the landfill.

In any case, all of this has led to a bunch of research on compact fluorescents, and other sources of mercury. With respect to the breakage situation, it turns out that you can get plastic coated compact fluorescent bulbs that keep things a bit more contained (thanks to this article for the tip). And here’s a low key (and slightly propaganda-ish) EPA fact sheet that describes how to deal with the situation if you break a compact fluorescent bulb in your home (I encourage you to read it if you are using compact fluorescents). Or- if you want to get really hard core, you can read this page which goes into great detail, and covers how to handle breakages of all types of home fluorescents, not just the compact ones.

And just for completeness, here’s a page that tells you how to deal with mercury spills of various other sizes (more relevant for mercury thermometers, but I thought it was interesting. I hope no one I know is still using a mercury thermometer).

For general mercury information, here’s the USA EPA page on mercury, which discusses mercury, and various sources for it. Of course, there’s the fish containing mercury problem, and it turns out power plants spew quite a bit of mercury into the air, too. Here’s a page from the Agency for Toxic Substancs and disease registery with a bunch of PDFs on mercury. They do provide some information on the toxicity of things like mercury vapour. For comparison purposes only (insert typical warning about me being a non-expert and these are only very rough ballpark figures here, and do more research before making action decisions), a compact fluorescent bulb containing 4 mg of mercury that broke in a room about the size of our kitchen (say 3.5 * 4 * 4 meters) could result in a maximum vapour level of 70 micrograms/meter cubed or 0.07grams/meters cubed (once it had dissipated into the room). This document from the U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational safety and health administration says: “OSHA PEL The current Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) permissible exposure limit (PEL) for mercury vapor is 0.1 milligram per cubic meter (mg/m(3)) of air as a ceiling limit. A worker’s exposure to mercury vapor shall at no time exceed this ceiling level.” Presumably this does not include pregnant women or children. And presumably that’s why that one site above says that you should close off the room and open the windows to air it out before you do the clean up.

posted at: 12:58 | path: /living | link

Thu, 18 Jan 2007

Back to questions of heat and energy
I always like pondering questions involving heat and energy. It gives me more practice understanding BTUs and such. Today I was talking to Tim in the biology department, and we were discussing which would raise the temperature of a room more- a person or a computer. As usual when it comes to questions involving heat and energy, a seemingly simple question has a fairly complicated answer, because there are a lot of different variables involved. While looking for the answer, I found this nice page on energy flow. It notes that the body produces heat because it has internal energy. How much internal energy? This leads us to questions of metabolism. The body’s metabolism produces heat as a result of chemical reactions. This is useful, since our body only keeps functioning within a certain range of body temperatures. So basically, our metabolism keeps our body at roughly one temperature (37 degrees celsius). Depending on the temperature differential between that and the environment, our body will lose a certain amount of its heat at each moment to the environment, which must then be replaced by the internal metabolic workings of the body.

posted at: 11:50 | path: /living | link

Wed, 17 Jan 2007

Moon Phase Calendar
Here’s a cool calendar that has pictures of the moon’s phases for each day. And, because I think astrology makes looking at stars and planets more *fun*, here’s a link to ‘The Real Zodiac’ that I was led to by reading Colin’s friends’ page.

posted at: 19:15 | path: /living | link

Tue, 16 Jan 2007

Ideas for work schedules from comic book artists
Here’s another link that I found while looking for coaching links, which I have been thinking of applying to my own life. It’s a work schedule called GET TO WORK / TAKE A BREAK!. In the words of the comic book artist who is writing about it: “The concept is simple: Start with the largest block of WORK. Then have the shortest BREAK. Then, as the day progresses, DECREASE the size of the WORK blocks and INCREASE the size of the BREAKS.”

He provides a sample schedule:

8am-Noon DRAW
Noon-1pm BREAK (lunch)
1pm-3pm DRAW
3pm-5pm BREAK
5pm-7pm DRAW
7pm-10pm DRAW (sic) (dinner + movie / friends)
10pm-midnight DRAW

Granted, this particular version might only work for those with flexible schedules (like me, most of the time). He also provides some variations on theme, with seven other schedules that fit the general work break work plan.

posted at: 17:21 | path: /living | link

Mon, 15 Jan 2007

Racheting procrastination avoidance up another notch
While looking for some resources to give my students, I found this awesome sheet on procrastination that has actually been greatly helping *me* to kick my lingering procrastination tendencies. This is good timing, because I’ve just put this new organization system in place that has really been forcing me to notice when I procrastinate. Basically, I have these to do lists that tell me all of the stuff I *could* be doing in a certain situation (say- while I’m sitting in front of my computer, or in my home office, or on the bus) and I’m noticing that, often, that ‘could be doing’ is just not always translating into ‘actually doing’.

I particularly like the sheet’s list of fears that could be preventing me from moving forward. I just run down the list when I notice I’m procrastinating and say “Yes- right now it is “Fear of boredom” that is stopping me from updating the website. The solution, according to the sheet- “Change your belief that you must enjoy every aspect of your chosen path.” Aye, aye cap’n. Website ho!

posted at: 14:47 | path: /living | link

Sun, 14 Jan 2007

Crystal Clear Knitting Diagrams
I have problems when I try to knit, because there are more ways to stick a needle through a loop, and wrap wool around a needle, than you might think. When you stick or wrap certain ways, it’s much harder to knit through your old stitches (because the yarn is twisted) and sometimes things end up looking a little funny.

It took me quite a while to even understand knitting well enough to see that there were several different ways I could be performing various knitting steps. Then I had to figure out which one was right. I was re-inspired by a scarf kit gift from Rob and Christa to go looking for some answers. And I found this series of instructions, which are beautifully and explicitly illustrated. I believe they should do the trick.

As an aside, this page has an interesting discussion on the orientation of the stitch on the needle, which is something else I’ve grappled with. It notes that As it says on that page, “The trick here is to do it all deliberately.” That’s really what I would like- to understand why doing one thing gives you one result, and doing something else gives you a different result.

posted at: 16:29 | path: /living | link

Sat, 13 Jan 2007

Fear: Stimulus and Response
I went to a very enjoyable talk yesterday about fish responses to chemical cues that are generated as the result of predator attack. It had some interesting data to back up the general idea among fear researchers that once a stimulus is paired with a fear response, the stimulus reponse hangs around for quite a long while. For minnows, a single stimulus response pairing led to changed behaviour up to 9 months later. Wow. The interesting point that the researcher made was that for various fish species in the wild, they have to unlearn this stimulus response pairing because, as they grow bigger, the things that used to eat them no longer can, and they just waste energy freaking out.

Think this doesn’t apply to us ‘higher brained’ animals? It probably does. According to these researchers, though, getting the situation under conscious control may help. And according to HowStuffWorks (a reliable source?) you can unlearn the stimulus-response pair by pairing the stimulus with non-fearful responses. That’s how the whole exposure therapy to phobias is supposed to work. Mountain climbing here I come. And maybe that’s how it works for the fish, too. Once they’re the big fish in the pond, they soon learn that those other (now puny) fish just aren’t going to get them. In fact, it’s probably the other way around… “I’m going to eat you little fishy…”

posted at: 11:55 | path: /living | link

Fri, 12 Jan 2007

Knitting Brouhaha- Blogging picking up speed.
I have some issues with banks. There’s a big knitting brouhaha rippling through the blog-o-sphere at the moment, about a bank that just decided to instantly refund a massive amount of a small businesses’ money back to its customers, because the bank couldn’t believe people would actual pay money to buy yarn to knit socks, and apparently couldn’t be bothered to do the research to confirm it. Check out the story here. Nobody knows who the bank is and the small business (Blue Moon Fiber Arts) isn’t saying (maybe because they are planning to sue?). Edited to add: Apparently they are pursuing legal action, which is why they aren’t releasing the name of the bank.

posted at: 11:24 | path: /living | link

Wed, 10 Jan 2007

World Changing
I ran into Mark Tovey in the elevator. He’s another person I know who is into environmental stuff. He’s about to become the co-editor of the world changing website. I really like its positive premise. In their words, “WorldChanging.com works from a simple premise: that the tools, models and ideas for building a better future lie all around us. That plenty of people are working on tools for change, but the fields in which they work remain unconnected. That the motive, means and opportunity for profound positive change are already present. That another world is not just possible, it’s here. We only need to put the pieces together.”

posted at: 09:11 | path: /living | link

Tue, 09 Jan 2007

Garden of Simplicity
Every time Colin and I get rid of another box of stuff from our house that we don’t need or want anymore, I pretend that we get “100 bonus points”. Clearly a hold over from my video game days. Last night, I was reading an article about different ways to characterize or categorize simple living, and realized that we might fit into one of the categories:
“Uncluttered Simplicity: Simplicity means taking charge of a life that is too busy, too stressed, and too fragmented. An uncluttered simplicity means cutting back on trivial distractions, both material and non-material, and focusing on the essentials — whatever those may be for each of our unique lives. As Thoreau said, “Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify.” Or, as Plato wrote, “In order to seek one’s own direction, one must simplify the mechanics of ordinary, everyday life.”

posted at: 12:38 | path: /living | link

Trying to grok activism
Even though I’m into environmentalism, I’m not really an ‘activist’. To me, an activist is someone who finds particular situations or issues that are problematic, and which the status quo wants to keep the same, and acts to try to force the status quo to change the situation. I think that’s all well and good and important, but it’s not my style.

Still, I think that maybe it would be useful to understand that style of environmentalism a bit more. Grist Magazine seems to be a good website to read a bit of, in that respect.

posted at: 12:32 | path: /living | link

Mon, 08 Jan 2007

Style Sheet Layout
I’m setting up a new website with a somewhat comlicated layout. This leads to the question: nested tables or cascading style sheets? Here’s a discussion of cascading style sheets, with some comments on the debate.

posted at: 18:03 | path: /work | link

Straw Bales
I’ve read that it’s useful to insulate cold frames with straw bales. Here’s a link to the Ontario Straw Bale Building Coalition, which has some information on where to get straw bales.

posted at: 01:22 | path: /living | link

ReStore
One place I might be able to get some windows for my cold frame is the habitat for humanities ReStore in Ottawa.

posted at: 01:17 | path: /living | link

Cold Frames
I may have to put my front of the house green house plans on hold for a bit, but since the winter is so mild right now, I’ve been giving more and more serious thought to building cold frames. I want to set up more garden boxes around the yard, and this could be great. Fresh greens all winter. I’ve blogged about this before, but here are some new links. Here’s a nice bit of information on it. And here’s another site, that has some ideas for keeping things warm by using burlap and also a heating coil or light bulb.

posted at: 00:59 | path: /living | link

Sun, 07 Jan 2007

Companies that sell environmentally friendly paper products
The challenge is getting a hold of some of these products. It’s generally up to stores to choose to pick up these products. Arbour, the environmental store near me, carries North River, which says it is recycled but will not reveal the nature and precentage of the recycling content. Green forest paper products is an option, but based on their website, they don’t sell directly to consumers. Strangely, though, you can by their product for a half decent price on Amazon.com. Similarly, Marcal doesn’t appear to sell directly to consumers (and they have a really annoying website). It’s the same story for Natural Value. Two the of the companies, Planet and Earth Friendly, have company names that are so generic their company websites can’t (easily) be found through google. Seventh Generation products are much more widely available, and can be found in several Ottawa stores. However, since they’re the leading brand, they’re generally quite a bit more expensive compared to non-recycled products, especially when bought in small amounts in stores.

posted at: 13:09 | path: /living | link

Facial Tissue made from recycled paper
One of the things that makes me feel very good is using recycled paper for disposal paper products like toilet paper and tissue paper (a.ka. kleenex). Here’s a good list of companies that make recycled products. Skip the front “doom and gloom” part if you check out the link and scroll straight down to the list. The top producers are: Seventh Generation, Planet, Green Forest, Marcal, Natural Value and Earth Friendly.

posted at: 12:53 | path: /living | link

Fri, 05 Jan 2007

Euglena
I’m learning about all sorts of new creatures, now that I’ve started in on the water fleas. One of them is Euglena, which is part animal and part plant. That could be a nice slogan, don’t you think? “Part animal, part plant, all fun!” Anyway, here’s a page on them.

posted at: 11:09 | path: /living | link

Wed, 03 Jan 2007

Raised Beds
Happy New Year everyone! With the mild weather we’ve been having, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about green houses. If the weather doesn’t go too far below zero, you can grow salad crops outdoors in the winter. I’ve also been thinking about plans for the spring. One idea I’m excited about is growing potatoes in tires. However, there are some concerns that tires can release toxic metals into the soil. It’s hard to find any actual data on this, though. While looking, I found this nice site on raised bed gardening.

posted at: 15:16 | path: /living | link

All material copyrighted by Jen Schellinck. All rights reserved.