IQ & Pesticides

Just read this article in La terre de chez nous, which relates this finding in which children's IQ would be related to the mother's amount of organophosphate pesticide contaminant, says Bouchard & al. (2011).

Thank you for coming yesterday!

Will have a video up on youtube sometime this summer with the images taken.

Vote!

On Earth Day, I went to vote. I could't think of anything better to do that day, apart from working on my Ma Water presentation (tonight!!)

I voted for the Green Party. This is who I want to have a seat in parliament: Elizabeth May.

I'm no politic expert, but can't we change it to have representation according to %, not ridings ?

Anyways, voting should (there i go again with my perspective) be obligatory.

Putting consumption in the Recycling Box isn't enough.

10 000$ tractor

Well, another TED talk inspiring me for a new vision for tractors and farming. Open Source Ecology is Marcin Jakubowski and other's (farmers, engineers, +) effort at making creativity and work available and affordable (advertized as up to 8 times less expensive). Check out the links if a Global Village sounds interresting to you ;)

Safe Drinking Water Available For The World NOW?

Just thought I'd pass this on... quick entry this time ;)

The Lifesaver Bottle could be one of the answers to safe drinking water around the world. In a matter of a minute, one could take water from the filty-est stream and drink it

Q.

Does the LIFESAVER bottle filter out chemical residues?

A.

Your LIFESAVER bottle comes with an activated carbon filter. This is designed to reduce chemical residues, Inc: pesticides, endocrine disrupting compounds, medical residues and heavy metals.

It's good for 3 years...

Check out the TED talk for more exciting info and demo ;)

Beings In Circumstance & Fools

Are we fools in front of the threat that is facing us?

Lets ponder on the fact, that, we live on a planet, often referenced as the Blue Planet, for 70.9% of its surface is water.


Then, recognize that you & I have somewhere between 78% and 45% water in our body, depending on whether we are newborns (78%) or obese (45%).


Today, I watched Gasland. I hope you do too one of these days. Why? Because we should all know about how contaminated water can shatter our lives... and it's already starting... right here in Our Beautiful Province. "Should"... yes, I do think we are responsible... up to which extend? well it depends how long each of us wants to stay stuck with our heads in the sand. But guess what? Ostriches don't do such stupid things (yes, it's pretty stupid). They either run for their life, or try camouflage, but no-, they don't think "if I don't see Danger, Danger won't see me!"


(yes, i just called me, and by projection, us, stupid)


Indeed, I am a fool in front of the treath that is facing all of us. I am quite clear about it. I have examined the possibility of being stuck in circumstance... I can hear my inner Cartman "But, Mo-o-o-ommmm!", claiming the right to some poetic allegory of Cheesy Poofs for my life, right now, and always. (Yes, I am a single kid)

The undeclared war - there are many unpublizied corporate wars, implicating our governments, very well funded, so the message doesn't get too easily accessed by the "average" (also just implied that I/us might be "average") person - over water is pernicious.


And indeed, I'm angry. I told you, I just saw Gasland.


In Non-Violent Communication workshops, I have found helpful to consider my feelings as indicators that a need was either being met, or not. My need for Security is not met. (War against terror accentuates my anger and need for more security.) To some philosopher, this need of security could be considered "my" problem. I'd have to agree to an extent, since indeed, I have the power to adjust the volume on the radio, but I haven't harnest the power to change the song to some unsigned labed artist. In this sense, my Being in Circumstance is accepting the cards Destiny has given me/us, and I want to play with them... I would like to play with you too... not against... "better for all" seems more "sustainable" to my logic.

This water we value as "free" in our capitalist market society (yes, we are living under the capitalist dogma, it is a dogma, not reality), is unmistakably underevaluated... but been here done that (see the last blog entry).


We are living the undeclared war over water quality and quantity. This Blue Gold is actually a common ressource. In Canada, we use 9% of our water for agriculture, 1% for mining (2005 data) and the government argues we (Canadians) should learn how to "value" more water by paying higher fees for water related services. Hummmm... But, companies, can continue using the tapwater we pay for with our tax dollars, and re-sale it to us under some River marketing image, all made under million dollars budgets. Such companies are Thames Water, Vivendi, Suez and RWE. They are the Water Barons and made 62.9 billion US dollars in 2005. I'd bet ya they'd like to keep that up... and they do, water bottle sales have gone up almost 30% since 1999 (check out Inside the Bottle or/and Flow).


With the St-Lawrence watershed being at risk with Hydraulic fracturing, we will shortly face buying (and transporting = GHG) this water we could take the time to save.

But who as the time right? (still angry :)

We live in a country where the Boreal Forest takes a major part of our pristine territory. A report made by PEW gives the Boreal Forest the prestigious claim to be the home of the world's largest source of water. It also had this to say about the boreal forest:

• contains 25 percent of the planet’s wetlands, millions of pristine lakes, and thousands of free-flowing rivers, totaling more than 197 million acres of surface freshwater;
• provides an estimated $700 billion value annually as a buffer against climate change and food and water shortages;
• offers the last refuges for many of the world’s sea-run migratory fish, including half of the remaining populations of North American Atlantic salmon.
• maintains freshwater flows critical to forming Arctic sea ice, which cools the atmosphere and supports marine life, from sea algae to polar bears; and,
• stores more than 400 trillion pounds of carbon in lakes and river delta sediment, peatlands and wetlands—more than any other terrestrial source in the world.

Water isn't simply a good for an offer & demand illustration. It is imbeded in life on Earth. On this Turtle`s back is there place for NAFTA?
I couldn't help to wonder if a business minded person had read the title of the PEW review, and thought "wow! what a great exploitation potential! I could make millions!"

?


Lets come back to our planet's Water Cycle, and the fact that the planet has a finite water supply, which is only a small percentage of the total amount of water on earth... that is about 1%...

*Another reason my presentation on the 26th of April is 1$

So, when we look at the way "our" Québec minister of Natural Ressources, Nathalie Normandeau, has handled the Shale Gas industry, we can recognized that she has done her job by making Quebec's Natural Ressources easily available to the industry (yes, that is the mandate of the Ministry of Natural Ressources).

This is their priority:

1. Create the necessary conditions for the development of Québec’s oil and gas resources.
2. Diversify natural gas supply sources.
3. For refined petroleum products, give priority to secure supplies at competitive prices.

Ya, protection of our Health, Environment and Rural Communities, is NOT their agreed priority.


Government for the people?
No wonder more and more people don't even want to vote for they don't see how a change could Really happen even if they did. But don't be fooled! Although Voting is not the solution on it's own, it sure is part of the solution that we have access to. Only 35% of youth, between 18 and 25 years of age voted last election. What would government look like if everybody would vote, even the "angry" people?

:)


But, true enough, voting isn't enough. Education is another component of the solution.


What is your water footprint?
Canada and the USA (and Mexico) are bound in this ridiculous agreement called NAFTA. Under NAFTA, critics say we are not protected against corporate interests on water. Canada has a very similar amount of water supply as the USA, but is about 10 times less populated, and uses about 10 times less water. Where is USA going to turn to when they feel the Peak Water? Well that's it, they already felt it, no wonder we have included "water" in NAFTA.


The Royal Bank
Is the BlueWater Project one of these well marketed campains to beautify the image, of a perhaps not so ethical, bank? Well involved in the tar sands development, the RoyalBank of Canada has, according to Rainforest Action Network sources, financed the tar sand activities at 17 million$. In december 2010, they revised their new public environment and social standards to inform investors whether the Indigenous Communities have agreed to the projects they finance... Ok.


That leaves me still hungry for Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.


I don't seem to hope The World Bank will solve anything after watching Flow (the movie).


Is it through gatherings, such as Jesus Christ Superstore, that we can destabilize people into a loving brotherhood of open minds?


Or should we go a known route by making even better ads then the corporations? A new twist to capitalism would make Common, (ads worth spreading) a success story.


I guess I'm one of many who tends to look at History and feel a bit bitter at how corruption is rampant in politics around the globe, especially when it comes to corporate interrests versus environment... Remember the Gulf oil spill? Indeed, they did not want to clean up. Is this a young teenager's activity, who's mother is too busy to educate him? The allegory doesn't do justice to the teens, but it does say how much I don't think manhood has anything to do with leaving such a DISASTER un-delt with.
 Not to mention, prevention.


So, at last, the MOON.


I was attending a gathering around the Mohawk traditions. The topic was the moon and the women. There were many aspects touched upon in the 2 hours talk that touched me deeply about their tradition, but one fact I had to check out...

Indeed, the NASA bombed Grandmother Moon on october 2009.


?


So to REMEMBER (its the Qc licence plate message) the Gulf oil spill, students at McGill are calling the 20th of April the Day of Action Against Extraction. Meet them at Noon, corner of McGill College & Sherbrooke. "Bring a friend and a flair for the dramatic" says the pamphlet.

Ma Water; a pictorial reality

As I'm still working on the next blog entry (started back in february!) I shall at least post this information, which is quite important to me...


I will be presenting my final presentation of the project on the 26th of April in Morrice Hall Theatre at 8pm. You can find your way there by checking out Morrice Hall on the McGill website. You can also follow these instructions, as first given to me by Sophie on my first visit there... it worked!
Walk up McTavish street (indeed you'll have to walk, no cars permitted) until you reach the SSMU building on the left, on your right should be gates (black and big), go through the gates and follow the building on the left, to go around it. There will be a door. The theatre, also known as Tuesday Night Café, is there on the left (once inside). *memory help: tuesday night café on tuesday ;)
The fee is 1$... that is because you give up buying one bottle of water to take part in this presentation ;) 
Still waiting for confirmations, but live music may be... Sophie Price is a confirmed guest artist :)


RSVP to make my life easier at postalpoems@gmail.com
Thank you so much



Three laughing men by the Tiger stream represent Confusianist, Taoist and Buddhist monks that were so enthralled in their discussions that they passed a river full of tigers without realizing until after the fact. (XII century)


The title of the presentation is Ma Water; a pictorial reality.


Why? I like the connotation of frenglish in Ma Water, mon eau, my water... the difficulty in figuring whether a word is feminine or masculine when first learning french, and... that the element of water in taoism is a feminine principle...
The meaning is also in regards to the japanese concept of Ma, which is sometimes associated with negative space, the space in between the forms. As water is formless, contained in form. This form is the presentation, the stats used, the chosen references, the theatre, your bodies, my body... in this sense it is pictorial. While seeing a few lectures from Robert Irwin, I wrote down a few guiding principles of his talk. One of them was about abstraction, how every artist made their work as real as possible, that everything exists in a set of relation, and those relations make our pictorial reality.


See President's Lecture: Robert Irwin on Abstraction


So this work is about my water pictorial reality... Because the evaluation of this presentation is under the plant science departement,  I made a special effort to have clarity in the form, in the thoughts, in the logic. Nevertheless, I have found myself eager to allow the feminine waters of the unconscious speak their own true wisdom within, and around the form.


A bit what I am trying to do with this blog too. How to blend the personnal knowledge, what Robert Irwin describes as "watching something through our feelings and taking the meaning out", the experience of understanding, and re-birthing it with a different form, richer with my personnal experience. I have found this quite arduous.


Let me go on with more of Robert Irwin's wisdom :)
Actually, Piet Mondrian inspired him with the concept that everything exists in a set of relations. I smiled when I heard this, simply because I remember as a young teen feeling so clear that "everything is connected". Now, 20 years later, I still think this... or should I say, now I know this, every step, rendering it more clear.
In his lecture, Irwin also spoke of our limitations (form) as being the nature of our lives, hence our fascination for transcendance (formless).


"No room for form with love this strong" Rumi

Painting by Piet Mondrian View from the dunes with beach and piers (1909)


"Phenomenal beauty lies also in the fact that shadows cast on it." Robert Irwin


Robert Irwin also spoke a while on how the "I" in "I perceive" isn't given... The concept that I can move is because the world doesn't... Have you ever been in a train, perceived you were moving, but in fact were not? A strange feeling that relates to our changing perceptions of the world, and as an "artist", one is continually engaged in re-examining how the world functions (I like to, and wouldn't limit it to "artist"). This hability, in the end, can create a pictoral reality, which to some may seem abstract, but to me is, as Irwin calls it, "a desert of pure feeling". Together, nourrishing a collective body of knowledge, we create sophisticated art, as a form.

"The critical difference [between artist and scientist] is that the artist measures from his intuition, his feeling. In other words, he uses himself as the measure. Whereas the scientist measures out of an external logic process and makes his decision finally on whether it fits that process in terms of various external abstract measures." Robert Irwin

Buckwalter, M. 2010. Composing while dancing; an improviser's companion. The University of Wisconsin Press. 231 pages

"The Management of Choice and Belief" or "When Water Starts to Burn"

It`s a Choose Your Title essay today. (A bit like destiny, the choice is there, but the core stays)

The Management of Choice and Belief

From my perspective, we live under the dogma of capitalism. It may as well become a god. We worship, we sing the praises, we make books, we convert the young (or the ones that "don't know better"), we defend, we make wars, we idealize, we condemn "others" not following His rules, we construct our societies around Him, we change His name. In other words, there is a marketing strategy.

According to the businessdictionary.com, there are four major steps to marketing. Lets say I want to sell you water (I`m sorry, but I`m old enough to remember the clash in my head when I started seeing water bottles for sell... It was a type of "paradigm shift" moment). The first step to marketing is choose, and develop if necessary, your product. So that`s my first step, just did it, I choose to sell water. Then, decide how much it`s going to earn you/how much "others" are going to pay. (I do make a point of choosing my words... if I write others, it`s because i believe it`s this sentiment of individuality which allows us to make egoistic decisions). In his book, The Value of Nothing, Raj Patel illustrates this point by comparing a few studies which compared wealth and happiness. It seems like a certain amount of whealth, does bring some happiness, yet, too much to manage gets people more anxious, generally. So why are we building our societies around the concepts of cheap prices = more stuff (offer and demand)?

"Economy and larger social advance is measured by the increase in the total production of all goods and services - in the United States what is called the Gross Domestic Product (the GDP) [...] from the size, composition and eminence of the GDP comes also one of our socially most widespread forms of fraud. The composition of the GDP is determined not by the public at large but by those who produce its components. This, in major part, is the result of the comprehensive and talented persuasion of the economic world, including economists. How does the GDP move? Its scale and content are extensively imposed by producers. Good performance is measured by the production of material objects and services. Not education or literature or the arts but the production of automobiles, including SUVs. Here is the modern measure of economic and therewith social achievement." (Galbraith, 2004)

"Can't take my eyes off you" is singing Damien Rice. Water. One of the Pacific Institute`s program is geared towards providing sustainable solutions to water pollution and shortages.

The third step in marketing is distribution. The Pacific Institute made this perceptive link between water and conflict in history.

"War remains the decisive human failure." (Galbraith, 2004)

And indeed, war can be costly... therefore somebody is making money.

Rien ne se perd, rien ne se crée, tout se transforme (Principe de Lavoisier) is actually inspired from the Greek Anaxagoras born in 500 BC.

(to be continued...)

Fourth and final step, I need to elaborate a strategy to promote my water bottles as being so amazingly necessary (!), that you will buy, no matter what... There is marketing of a need.

"Belief in a market economy in which the consumer is sovereign is one of our most pervasive forms of fraud. Let no one try to sell without consumer management, control." (Galbraith, 2004)

The Marketing Imagination by Theodore Levitt, is a book which explains how one will be charmed into being the customer. There is definitely room for us to improve our "Freedom of Choice"... choice, another form of innocent fraud?... a few researchers, such as Barry Schwartz and Sheena Iyengar, have looked into it and it seems like it may just be. Check out these ted talks by clicking on the names.

"The renaming of the economy served to affirm consumer sovereignty. In the market system [aka capitalism] the ultimate power, to repeat, is held to be with those who buy or choose not to buy; thus, with some qualifications, the ultimate power is that of consumer. Consumer choice shapes to the demand curve. As the ballot gives authority to the citizen, so in economic life the demand curve accords authority to the consumer. In both instances there is a significant measure of fraud. With both ballot and buyer, there is a formidable, well-financed management of the public response. And so especially in the age of advertising and modern sales promotion. Here an accepted fraud, not least in academic instruction." (Galbraith, 2004)

So we have been in schools (schools are businesses too), where we are taught microeconomics (obviously, for people who know me, they realize we are getting into my pet peeve), and it seems like one of the great defendant of free market, Alan Greenspan, who was in charge of the Fed for several years, has also figured a new meaning to freedom. Check out: Alan Greenspan's testimony.


When Water Starts To Burn

Reading back, it`s like this blog entry is more a prelude to my perspectives on life, rather than on water strickly. Indeed. Yet, I believe everything is connected. Like our consumption of fuel, our economic paradigm led us to the disaster of the Gulf of Mexico, july 2010 (see photo at the top of the entry). Are we at this point in history where we our children will find it normal to see water burn?

"Mass slaughter has become the ultimate civilized achievement." (Galbraith, 2004)

Is there a governement working for us? No, it's working for the Economy... and since it has a process of it's own (capitalism), who can and want to take advantage of it, will. That's the choice?

"The myth of the two sectors" (Galbraith, 2004)

Galbraith, J.K. 2004. The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth For Our Time. Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston, New York. 62 pages

Patel, R. 2009. The Value Of Nothing: Why Everything Costs So Much More Than We Think. HaperCollins Publishing LTD. Toronto. 250 pages