Saving the World, one bicker at a time

Sometime last spring, I was having a Facebook "conversation" about some political thing or other, and, as sometimes happens when friends of friends start putting their two cents in there into an online forum, it turned into a Facebook argument shortly thereafter. Well, not an argument, exactly, but a heated discussion, carried on fairly intelligently, considering it was limited to bursts of 140 characters or less. Such is the life of an American political junkie in China...

I don't even remember the topic that we were discussing, but one comment that I do remember was something along the lines of "What's the use sitting around and discussing what's wrong with the world, anyway?"

...and I started to think, "Wellll... if we all could agree with what's wrong, we could all start to fix it, couldn't we?"  You know, how a flock of birds hangs out in a clump of trees for days and days, some flying off, and then all flying back, and you can hear them chirping and bickering for miles around.  And then one day - pow! - their collective mind is made up, and off they fly.  Together.

So, if we go with the idea that all of this chatter about what is wrong with this or that or the other thing in the world at large is really just the noise of the global flock making up its mind, then the individual conversations start to take on a greater meaning, don't they?  What may seem like an isolated argument on someone's Facebook page may actually be an artifact of the human community struggling to come to terms with its most pressing problems, in the same way that the chirps and hops of individual birds at some point add up to an action taken by the flock as a whole.

Don't know if this Tipping Point argument (see Malcolm Gladwell, et. al.) is true or not, but it does become an interesting way of looking at global change, politics, and the world at large.  From this point of view, discussions of issues among friends on Facebook are not just so many tempests in so many teapots, but our species' way of building global consensus, hashing out our issues on a molecular level.

A bit grandiose, perhaps?  Maybe.  I have certainly become increasingly suspicious of any kind of "Save the Word" argument in the last couple of years.  After all, the world has gotten along just fine without us for the last 4 billion years or so, and it will do just fine for the next 4 billion, regardless of whether us humans are on it or not.  But as a species, I'd like to think that in spite of everything, we're still worth keeping around.  Or worth improving, to put it more accurately.

Maybe our mantra should be, not "Save the World!", but rather:

"Hey everyone, let's all keep bickering back and forth good-naturedly for a while until we all can agree on a couple of simple ideas that are slightly less idiotic that our previous ones!"  

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't scan quite as well, does it?  But it does become more catchy after you repeat it a couple of times.  Give it a try, and let me know what you think.  I'll be posting the best results onto Facebook.

Midsummer, from Ronald McDonald House

A note:  This is a letter that I wrote to friends and family about a week after Xander's operation in Philadelphia at the end of July this summer, which I thought might be good to post here as well.  Xander is now doing quite well in Chicago, by the way, and it's looking like he and Jane should be back in China by early October...

Quick quiz - what do Xander and I have in common with clowns, a dozen Shriners with jeweled fezzes, Santa Claus, Megan Shiel (New Jersey Super Miss, 2010), an Amish buggy maker, and about 450 guys on Harley Davidson motorcycles?  Answer:  We were all at the same party last Sunday!

The occasion was a Christmas in July party at Shriners Hospital, and most everyone mentioned above was there to deliver toys to kids who were there.  (The Amish buggy maker was the uncle of one of Xander's hospital roommates, which is a whole story in and of itself..)  Xander and I took the city bus there from our nearby digs at the Ronald McDonald house, just three days after his surgery and two days after he was discharged.

It was a fun party.  Highlights for Xander were lots of big gleaming motorcycles to look at, and a clown that caught a soap bubble and transformed it into a small glass bead that he could keep.  Highlights for me were people watching, being gladdened and amazed that Xander was getting around so well after surgery on both forearms, and being impressed by the generosity of so many different kinds of people.

We've now been in Philadelphia for just a day over a week, and I continue to be amazed and humbled by the generosity we've encountered.  We're staying at Ronald McDonald House, about a fifteen minute bus ride from Shriners, and every evening, a different group of volunteers comes in to give us a home cooked meal.  For breakfast and lunch, we're free to help ourselves to food from a restaurant sized refrigerator, freezer, and pantry.  Most of the staff are likewise volunteer, including a weekend manager who comes in for a weekly 24 hour shift.

And then there's Shriners, which is a hospital that is funded entirely by donations, and doesn't charge its patients for anything.  Ever. There's a very interesting positive vibe to the place.  This particular Shriners specializes in pediatric orthopedic and spinal cord injury care, which means that in the spectrum of things, Xander's surgery, even though it requires a couple of months, seems fairly routine.  In contrast, the two other boys in Xander's shared hospital room, both with scoliosis, were on their eighth and twelfth surgeries.

On the van on the way back to RMcD House, Xander and a teenage girl from the Bahamas that also had arm surgery had four of the five functioning legs of all of the passengers under eighteen.  All of the other passengers were staying at another RMcD House in New Jersey, and you could tell that they had all become extended family during their kids' extended physical therapy.  The talk was all in (Dominican?  Puerto Rican?) Spanish, but you could tell that the jokes were flying. One teenaged boy in particular, a double amputee, seemed to be the master of ceremonies, and was cracking up everyone else in the bus.  (Well, everyone else who spoke Spanish, that is...)

This isn't to say that everyone who is at Shriners is a carefree superkid gleefully overcoming adversity.  My impression is that most of the kids and parents that we saw there have numerous challenges to deal with, and are happy to have landed in a safe place where they can get some help along the way.  Still, it does put many of life's so-called "problems" into perspective.

So, as a final conclusion, yes, Xander and I are doing quite well, all things considered.  The surgery and the night afterwards wasn't particularly fun, for sure - let's just say that there are much more enjoyable things to do than wake up every two hours the whole night long to help your kid maneuver two heavy arm casts and an IV attached to his ankle so that he can pee..
Now, though, Xander is feeling almost up to his normal self, except that he's got the aforementioned casts to lug around for another couple of days.  He complains of a bit of soreness in his arms every now and then, but we haven't had to use the Tylenol 3 with codeine since the weekend.  His next appointment at Shriners will be to get his arms x-rayed, and if all looks good, the casts come off and we start the one millimeter a day process of bone lengthening.

We're settling into a routine at the House of Ronald, and have already had a good visit from Cathy, a good friend of mine from college.  We're also looking forward to more visits from my brother and family and my mom in the next week and a half.  Gifts and cards for Xander have also made their way here from various points around the country and worldwide, which have cheered him up a great deal.  I could (and probably should) go on and on about all the help and support we've received, but then this email would move away from the territory of an update and start sounding like an Oscar acceptance speech...

So, to wrap up, thank you all so much for your prayers, support, and just plain concern and caring.  The whole process has been much less difficult that I had worried it was going to be, and much of that is due to help we have gotten along the way - thanks so much!


-Dave and Xander

Stuff we all should know by now: trains can work

Okay, and here I go trying to make sense of everything right off. One series of rants on the soapbox - errrr, make that posts - that I've been thinking about lately is "Stuff that we all should have figured out a long time ago but somehow still have a problem wrapping our brains around for reasons unknown."

Which I've conveniently shortened to "Stuff we all should know by now."

Rather than a long winded intro, which really is implicit in the title, let's lead on by example, shall we? Remember Carmageddon? Okay, neither do I - it was a media hype induced minor panic, from this summer, apparently because some two mile stretch of highway in L.A. was due to close in its entirety over a weekend. Or something.

Anyway, one post from the aforementioned media frenzy caught my eye - one of the guys over at Freakonomics doing a very simple "apples to apples" comparison of the number of people carried per hour by one lane of traffic versus the number of people a single commuter rail line, which takes up less space in a city, can carry.

The math is explained in a bit more detail in the article, but it basically boils down to this: one lane of traffic, under optimal conditions, can carry up to 2000 people per hour. A well-operated train line? Up to 40,000 people per hour.

So which system do we go with in America? Why, the system that makes the least sense, of course. Why? Beats me. Something to do with paragraph number one of this post, I suppose... Stay tuned for more.

the iPad and us (part 1 - in the News)

Don't know how prominently it was featured, but our local community of Hongguang made international news last Friday, and not in a particularly good way...



Seems that there was an explosion at a local factory, owned by the Taiwan-based Foxconn corporation. Two workers died at the scene, and one died a few days later following complications from injuries. A further 15 people were severely burned.

You may have heard of Foxconn before, because they are one of Apple Computer's main contracted manufacturers, making both the iPhone and, here in Hongguang, the iPad2. They've been in the news last year as well, because of the working conditions at their factory in the eastern city of Shenzhen. There, to stop a rash of worker suicides at their factory, they installed anti-suicide nets, among other measures.

In fact, it was the situation in Shenzhen, along with huge customer demand for the iPad, that led Foxconn to build a factory here in the Chengdu area in the first place. Labor is cheaper here in Sichuan province than out on the coast, and most of Foxconn's workers out east come from Sichauan anyway. So they built a factory here in record time - in just 70 days, according to one source. According to some interviews with workers, labor conditions at the Chengdu plant weren't much different from conditions in Shenzhen.

So what caused the explosion? Nobody's sure yet. But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a factory built in 70 days + low-paid employees + high demand + forced overtime = a less than ideally safe working environment. Oh yeah, and it happened in a section of the factory where they polish parts with, among other things, manganese powder. Which happens to be highly explosive if it saturates the air in any given area. Hmmm.

So, again the question. What do we pay for the stuff we have? What do others pay for us? More about my connection to all of this coming up soon.

Coal Cares

Yes, coal does care - you can even get a free asthma inhaler for your child! Because if it's on the internet, it has to be true...

What Jane's really been up to

Okay, so my wife really hasn't ever been a professional custard taster. But she has been known to get up in front of large groups of people to talk about worms lately. Specifically, the red wrigglers that reside in our worm composting bin that we set up last fall.



As a matter of fact, worms, CSAs (Community Sponsored Agriculture), organic farming, and Earth-friendly living in general were the subject of a talk that she gave at the US Consulate in Chengdu a couple of weeks ago. Go Jane!

Oh, and here's the article in Chinese, just because it looks way cool...)

Oh, and speaking of Endangered Species...

I always used to like to look at bugs under glass. You know, the little shadow boxes that you can see at the State Fair with the way cool iridescent beetles that are as big as your fist? (Okay, they were at the Wisconsin State Fair about ten years ago, anyway...)

Then I ran into this booth in the Chatuchak Market in Bangkok...



The booth was about twenty by twenty feet, and was piled floor to ceiling with bugs in plastic. Framed bugs, encased bugs, mounted bugs, you name it. And underneath the display shelves, more and more stacks of boxes. Full of bugs.





Now, I'm no expert in the beetle keychain industry, but I've got to wonder - how sustainable is this, exactly...? And for what purpose? (Besides still looking cool in a creepy kind of State Fair science geek Raiders of the Lost Ark kind of way, that is.) And what will the archaeologists think a couple of thousand years from now? Ah, the dilemmas of our modern rain forest-straight-to-WalMart existence...

Fortunately, there will always be pictures of lenticular puppies once the beetles go extinct:

How much food will a dollar buy?

Ten organic blueberries, apparently. Or a McDonald's cheeseburger. From a project by Jonathan Blaustein, who has simply photographed a dollar's worth of different foods available near his home in New Mexico. Would be very interesting to see what this project would look like here in China, as well. Maybe I'll put it on my to-do list? Oh, wait a minute - I see a homework assignment coming up....!


http://www.ecoliteracy.org/blog/how-much-food-will-dollar-buy

When it's sunny, all the laundry comes out to play

Another equation: (Lots of people + small apartments + no dryers) × (very little open space) ÷ (the small number of days when it's actually sunny) = Laundry out to dry everywhere when there's sunshine.

Collaborative consumption

Okay, so this woman has a book to sell, but hey, maybe "buying less stuff, saving limited resources, sharing with people, and making the world a better place" could, in fact, use a more snazzy marketing label.

Ewww. I just used the word "snazzy"....

Turkey revisited

Even though I haven't seen anything resembling a turkey since I've come to China (well, okay, chickens do resemble turkeys, so I take that back), I've recently fallen in love with 火鸡 - their name in Chinese. Say it with me: "huo ji." Literally translated, it means "fire chicken", so I've now got all sorts of pictures in my mind of turkeys running around with fire helmets and capes on, or jumping motorcycles through flaming hoops a la Evel Knievel.

Also been thinking a lot about vegetarianism a lot, especially since Jane's been discussing it in her three environmentalism classes that she's been teaching. So I thought that this post was worth sharing - about a guy in the Los Angeles area who raises and (very infrequently) slaughters his own poultry. The authors warn that the content is "not for everyone", but, no, I think it is for everyone. Something to get a good post-Thanksgiving discussion started, anyway... I've got more thoughts on the issue, but will leave it at that for now.

A last note - Homegrown Evolution is a great site on urban homesteading, gardening, and simpler living in general. Check it out!

Slaughtering Turkeys for Thanksgiving
Homegrown Evolution homepage

The Happy Meal that wouldn't die

Presenting a 171 day old Happy Meal, purchased by artist Sally Davies. Details here.

More on America's biggest export...

This satellite map of world particulate pollution confirms it: China is a pretty gritty place.

For those who haven't yet clicked the link, it's a map of the amount of microparticles present in the earth's atmosphere, as estimated by satellite data from NASA. That little dark brown blob in the center left of China? That's where we are - pretty much the flat part of Sichuan province, ringed by mountains so that the pollution stays around instead of going somewhere else.

Why so high? An abundance of coal, a lot of factories making stuff for Americans, and a whole lot of people that want an American standard of living. In the next decade or two, will China start farming out its pollution to other places in the world like we did? Or will the world run out of options?

Ordinary Stuff - Another good idea

Wind up timers on electrical appliances. Mostly fans, but I've seen them on water coolers (to turn on the heating element) as well. Wind it up, and then you can leave the house or go to sleep, and your electric whatever won't be running all night and day wasting electricity.

Ordinary Stuff - Designed a bit better

Behold, my razor!



An ordinary razor handle, purchased in the US maybe - 15 - years ago? (Sorry, I should've cleaned it up for the picture.) If you look closely, though, you'll see a teeny white plastic tab on top of each blade. Why? The tab is connected to a thin piece of plastic between the blades. Push the tab, push out the small bits of stubble stuck between the blades. Viola! A cleaner razor, and you don't have to change the blade as often. You'll notice that the blades are sold in packs of two, which, according to the packaging, is a two months' supply for most Chinese men.

So we've got the rare phenomenon of an American company making things that last longer, are (okay, only slightly) less disposable, and are (again, only slightly) better for the environment. Who'd have thought, huh? Gillette's got my business for now - until I work up the energy and courage to find myself a straight edge razor and learn how to use it, anyway...

Dang, they're actually going to build this thing!

Yes, the straddling bus is coming to China. Guess we live in the future after all.

In other transportation news closer to home, Chengdu now has electric buses, and is piloting a free bike rental program. And the subway is coming! We'll see if it makes sense for us to use it, but at least we'll get a day trip out of it sometime in the next month...