Ennui and the Profusion of Hobbies that Follow - A Road BACK TO AFFLUENZA



Above you see our Square Foot Garden as it appeared at the beginning of May. We've already eaten salads created from this garden, harvested the spinach, Swiss Chard, Romaine lettuce, and Basil leaves several times. Now at the end of May the tomato vines are pushing up against the top of the cage and stands about 5 feet high with thick stems. We’re still waiting on the onions, carrots, broccoli, peppers, and tomatoes. The broccoli plant is exploding and threatening to shade up the entire garden. We are giving about 6 cups per 12" square per 5 days of water (water saved from changing the water from our 75gallon aquarium). It's almost too much produce for us. Because this is a raised garden with rocks/gravel separating it from the ground (and pests), with soil mixed from scratch by us, we are seeing absolutely no weeds, no pests thus far. The enclosing wire cage is keeping all the birds, squirrels, rabbits, etc. away.

The initial labor was steep, the upkeep is becoming almost boring. That's the thing about hobbies, if it gets too easy and there is no scrambling about trying to figure things out, the hobby loses its appeal. Since I mentioned our aquarium, fish-keeping is another hobby of mine which has lapsed into something vaguely uninteresting. My first fish tank was a gold-fish bowl in which a series of common goldfish died - this was in 1971-1972. Over the past decade, for about 6 years I was literally obsessed with fish-keeping and all things aquatic. I have a couple of 6-foot high bookshelves filled with aquariology books I've read along with several years worth of fish-keeping magazines. I own nearly a thousand dollars-worth of water-testing equipment - now sitting dusty and out-of-date. My basement as you can see in my house-tour, is filled with hundreds of pieces of PVC piping, home-made aquarium stands, old fish-breeding equipment, filters, and various fish-tanks - all remnants of a mad obsession over a fish-keeping hobby. After a while, I began to lose interest in the whole fish-keeping enterprise -

I felt like I could routinely keep, breed, manipulate genetically etc. a couple of the challenging breeds of fish. But the time it took away from my kids and the other aspects of my life made it not worthwhile. I believe when my children are grown and I become bored with life, I can take it up again.



An Die Musik

Ever since I was about 10 years old, I’ve been a classical music aficionado. In fact my mother can’t stop telling everyone of how I used to be able to hum several dozen complete songs before I was two years old (and before I could talk). My maternal grandfather was a musical performer in his younger days playing piano, guitar, violin, viola, and the accordian in jazz clubs before he became an entrepreneur. My mother was a classical violinist and for a few years had a her own radio show where she participated in a moderated discussion about some aspect of music, then played a series of Mozart violin sonatas. She led me to my interest in classical music, initially of the popular classical pieces: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No.6, Brahms’ Symphony No.4, Mozart’s piano concerto No.21 etc. Eventually I went deeply into the most abstract pieces by Bach, pretty much memorizing every detail of his English Suites, Well-tempered Clavier Book2, his Toccatas, etc. I spent most of my high-school years listening to Bach, Scarlatti, Brahms, Schumann, Scriabin, Mahler, Bartok. I learned to master a stupid musical instrument, the clarinet – my mother allowed me to play it instead of the viola which I asked to play because she did not want me to become a musician as she clearly and repeatedly stated (--musicians starve--). I went to NC all-state bands and Governor’s school with this stupid instrument. I won trophies and awards, and I played in musicals on local tv and with town orchestras and town bands with this stupid instrument. During College I played two years with the Penn wind ensemble, but as my clarinet began to decay and became unplayable, I couldn’t justify buying another one as my interest in it began to wane with the instrument. I increasingly longed pathetically to have been a string player, or even a pianist. I became focused on listening to most of Schubert’s songs, I drifted away from performance and became only a spectator of great music performance. This was all rapturous stuff and I couldn’t understand how people could live lives devoid of such nectar of the Gods. When I was in Philadelphia during college, instead of studying my heavy Pre-Med coursework, I used to visit the Curtis Institute of Music to hear the free concerts which were given 3-4 times a week by the pre-adolescent prodigies on display there. I used to go to the Academy of Music to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra and the bevy of international superstars perform there at least once a week. I believed it was better to score “B’s” on my physics and chemistry tests and partake of this music than to make “A’s” and forego the experience. In fact, one of the top reasons I chose to go to Penn was precisely for this reason (I don't otherwise have a great explanation for why I chose to go to Penn). I went to music festivals to hear Boston Symphony at Tanglewood Massachusetts, to hear young (and old) superstars at Marlboro Vermont, and of course at Philadelphia’s Mann Center in the Summer. My college grades continued to suffer as a result. I increasingly came to feel like a “groupie” as I hung around with my mother’s old musician friends (who were members of Boston Symphony strings and Philadelphia Orchestra strings). My cousin was a graduate and a cello performance instructor at the Vienna Conservatory – I stayed with her and her husband and I drank in the atmosphere of the city of Schubert, Brahms, and Mahler. I finally drifted away from the entire musical world when I moved down to Chapel Hill for Med school (the “sticks” in term of the musical world).




Astronomy

Here's another hobby in which I was briefly obsessed, one I've been interested in since I was 12 years old. I owned a 10x50 Bushnell binoculars and a dimestore 4" telescope which didn't work well when I was a child. I never understood much about astronomy, sky-watching until the past couple of years when I re-discovered my interest. I read about a dozen or so well-known astronomy hobby beginners' books such as NightWatch and Backyard Astronomer's Guide and Turn Left at Orion and half a dozen me-too type hobby books such as Practical Skywatching (the best of them I think). After a solid year in which I tried to learn most of the common constellations by sight and time of year, I ended up purchasing a used Meade 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain scope for $750 along with maybe $500 worth of eyepieces from Orion. I borrowed most of the books I read from the library in keeping with Tightwadding, but I did end up purchasing Turn Left at Orion, Burnham's Celestial Handbook volumes and 2 current skyatlases (the Norton and the Cambridge). With my new equipment I've seen Jupiter and its Galilean moons, Saturn and Titan, the Great Orion nebulae, various deep space object (smudges), and galaxies, and I believe this has been worthwhile and will continue to watch the skies for the rest of my life. Astronomy is one of those hobbies which is not only extremely expensive if you want it to be, but can be thrifty if you choose that path - the technology (and the potential spending on it) is limitless, but the information, knowledge that can be gained is also boundless - a very worthy life-long hobby I think. When you realize that one of these days, a massive comet or asteroid is probably going to smash the Earth into oblivion, it's even more important to keep looking out into the skies.



And now the most shameful hobby which I have unfortunately indulged:
fountain pen collecting (no laughing please).
I don't know why I've been fascinated with fountain pens since I was about 9 years old. I think it might have come from watching old 1920s silent movies by Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, and King Vidor. When I was in 4th grade I used to write in a diary with a leaky Sheaffer cartridge fountain pen which I purchased from a Kroger grocery store. I had a room-mate in college who used a fountain pen as an affectation - I simultaneously despised and envied it. After many years, my appetite for fountain pens was finally fully re-awakened in 1997 when I saw a mail-order catalog (I believe it was Levenger’s) which sold fancy Montblanc fountain pens. I decided to order a $350 fountain pen from a store in Michigan – a burgundy-colored Aurora Optima made in Italy - a very smooth writer. I scoured some flea markets around Raleigh, Charlotte, even in Charleston SC for old pens – I found it extremely difficult to find any good fountain pens this way – flea market vendors always over-estimated the value of their junky fountain pens. This immediately got me onto a train of purchases of increasingly expensive pens culminating in the purchase of a $400 Pelikan Souveran M1000, a $400 Omas 360 and a $500 Krone special edition button-filler pen. Along the way I picked up several antique pens also. My excuse was I would use these pens to write up my tedious history&physicals and orders for my hospital admissions at work. I did in fact use it some for this, but this stopped when one of my expensive pens (a Parker Duofold Centennial fountain pen) was stolen by one of my patients – this caused me to lose all trust and hope in mankind. I was able to wean myself off this horribly decadent hobby over the past several years but I had a final little frenzy this past year when I got my Pelikan M1000 Souveran’s tip ground into a stub and got my 90 year-old Conklin crescent-filler restored to perfection by Richard Binder. I sold the Krone and Omas fountain pens on ebay at a loss to rid myself of some guilt, but while researching this, I ended up purchasing another antique restored pen, a brown marbled rubber circa-1920s Mabie-Todd Swan lever-filler from a physics professor in Missouri. Once you write with a smooth flexi-nib old-fashioned fountain-pen, you can never ever again be happy with writing with ball-point and roller-ball pens. I do a lot of writing in my line of work, and sometimes the prospects of writing with a fountain pen can imbue my work with some degree of pleasure.

Over the past few months, I’ve been stricken with another deadly expensive hobby-fixation:
digital photography.
In fact I’ve been flirting with this hobby for the past couple of decades, but never committed to it because I didn’t like the mess of dark-room photo development. I did in fact do some dark-room work in a lab in medical school, and I didn’t enjoy it at all. I took many pictures with point-and-shoot Nikons since I was in high school, finally got a Nikon 35mm slr around 1996 (a $400 N60 kit). In late 1999 I bought my first digital camera, a very expensive Olympus C-2500L (cost $1500 at the time). Ignore that review, in real life, this camera absolutely sucked. After many slow subpar pictures, it finally conked out for no apparent reason in 2002. I bought a Canon G2 which is a fantastic point-and-shoot camera which can also do some manual work. It is very slow to cycle however and can’t give you pop-out crystal-clear pictures as many examples in my blog shows. Just before going on a week-long trip to Washington DC, after some encouragement from a friend with a Nikon D70, and after much reading and reviewing online, I finally gave in and bought a
Canon 20D. This camera is a quantum-leap in technology and ability from the G2 and I believe can take a picture the equal of if not superior to 35mm film SLRs. This camera can unfortunately hook up with a long line of frighteningly expensive lenses such as the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS which currently sells for $1700 from cut-rate online NYC vendors. The lenses I chose after experimenting with the $600 Canon 17-85mm IS, is the Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8, the Canon 85mm f/1.8, and the Canon 50mm f/1.8. All three of these lenses are spectacular. I also had to purchase the Sigma EF-500 DG Super E-TTL external flash and a couple of expensive B+W multi-coated protective filters. I sold back the 17-85mm lens on ebay and my total digital slr expenditures over the past 2 months have been $2792. This is not thrifty at all. And furthermore, I find that with the copious memory and computing power required by this beast of a camera, I am now looking at upgrading my 7 year-old computer and monitor. This is not good at all for a tight-wad lifestyle – Amy Dacyczyn would not approve believe me. Yet, take a look at the high quality images – here’s an example of one I took in a dark hole:

How can you say no to that? I’m in the midst of a frenzy of reading again. I’ve read mostly very bad photography books such as Lee Frost’s Teach Yourself Photography, John Freeman's Practical Photography and John Hedgecoe’s The Complete Guide to Photography. I’m about to read a couple of National Geographic photography series books which I’ve heard are good. I think there might not be any really great photography books just as there are no great books about “how to paint” or “how to write a book.” Most of the information is redundant and about things I already know about: apertures, shutter speeds, exposures, composition, photographic equipment and technology etc. Anyway this is my current obsession and hopefully this will lead to me being able to post better pictures.

When I was crazed about aquatica, I went to my local fish club meetings and went to several auctions in North Carolina and even up to the DC area. What I saw was a sad collection of lonely older unmarried people, childless couples, lots of middle-aged poorly socialized types, a few young people (the type their peers would classify as “nerds”), and a few dynamic con artists out to make money off these people. In general the demographics of the “fish-keeping crowd” is pretty depressing. They seem in general to be a middle-class lot, a very few with probably some wealth, none of them multi-millionaires, none of them destitute. In looking at the demographics of the “sky-watching crowd” by perusing various online astronomy websites, I could see that the type of people attending these so-called “star parties” are essentially the same as these fish-keepers. Gung-ho gardeners seem to fit the same profile, as do obsessed photographers. A recurring theme: loneliness begets hobbies. Contrari-wise, what you find with the super-socialites is that they seldom have deep, obsessive hobbies. They certainly have interests in various things, but their interests are very superficial. They dabble in some decorating, or some gardening maybe. But they are not likely to be able to expound at length about the details of the growth cycle of the cut-worm, or of the biochemistry of soil etc. I thought Chris Cooper should have won an oscar for his performance as John Laroche, an obsessed Orchid keeper (and former fish-breeder) in Charlie Kaufmann and Spike Jonz’s Adaptation - his portrayal is so true-to-life and reminds me so much of several such obsessed hobbyists I’ve seen in fish-keeping (I’m sure he mimics the profile of many such archetypes in all types of hobbies). Some similar ideas found in Adaptation are espoused in Kaufman and Jonz’s earlier Being John Malkovich. A 1994 film made by Terry Zwigoff shows a famous example of such a real person in their real life settings but pretty much the same character archetype I'm talking about - the spectacular documentary Crumb. American splendor is about Harvey Pekar, a former Crumb associate - his life and world is again peopled by the type of obsessed, bizarre/neurotic, yet common-place real-world characters I'm talking about. I’m definitely more the obsessed hobbyist nerd than a fluttering/preening socialite. I think if the wind blew in a slightly different direction 10 years ago, I would easily be one of those unmarried (and never to be married) asocial lab trolls obsessed with various hobbies, scurrying about dark rooms over-stuffed with technical books and journals, cluttered with expensive equipment - lonely and pathetic, yet busy and only obliquely engaged with the world in my own strange way.

Spring is Coming - Plans for Our Third Garden

"...the sun looks on our cultivated fields and on the prairies and forests without distinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and the former make but a small part of the glorious picture which he beholds in his daily course. In his view the earth is all equally cultivated like a garden. Therefore we should receive the benefit of his light and heat with a corresponding trust and magnanimity..."
--Henry David Thoreau in Walden, "The Bean Field."

Our First Garden:

Back in 1998, we made an attempt at our first garden after purchasing a house. This was in Concord NC just outside of Charlotte. We had a large flat treeless backyard with too much sun, no shade. The soil was rocky, somewhat sandy and clay-like, having been trucked in from who knows where in about 1990 according to our neighbors who were the first to live in that neighborhood. We dug out first a polygonal quasi-triangular corner plot bordered with bricks and about 8-12" deep, perhaps 75square-feet in area and amended the soil with perlite, peat-moss, and various "soil conditioners in a rather haphazard way. We created another rectangular plot roughly 2feet by 14 feet bordered with bricks, but shallower, about 6inches deep. Between my wife and me we might have read 1-1/2 gardening books at that time. We planted partially grown tomato and pepper plants (about 8) in the large triangular plot, a few more tomato plants and strewed some giant Russian sunflower seeds along most of the rest of rectangular plot. We fertilized using synthetic stuff (blue Peter's powders) and plentiful tap water using sprinklers. By the end of the summer we had so many tomatoes we let most of it rot on the vine. The giant sunflowers grew to a fearsome height as the following picture shows:

After many years, we decided to try a vegetable garden again this year. By now my wife and I have read probably a dozen or so gardening books. The best of which is probably Mel Bartholomew's Square Foot Gardening. I like his engineer's sensibility to gardening. He describes every detail of setting up and cultivating a garden and doesn't throw out the usual trite and unuseful homilies like "water an inch" - (what the hell does an inch mean, unless you specify the conditions and the containers which enclose that inch?). His book is greatly recommended as is his website.

Late Winter Pre-Gardening
To gain an advantage over nature, I set up a mini-greenhouse using an old 55gallon fish tank and 2 fluorescent lights (80Watts of about 6000K light 14hours/day). I put aluminum foil over the back to reflect light and tried to raise the seedling dishes toward the light. I figured the tank with top should retain moisture and the lights should be adequate:

It turns out we either didn't have the inclination or time to care for these seedlings well as they grew tall and sickly and rootbound and fell over before we had a chance to re-pot them. Hopefully the pepper seedlings might make it as they are the most crucial time-wise.

Following Mel Bartholomew's advice:
I made a wooden box using 4 pieces of 2"x8"x10' fixed at the corners, then painted with latex for some weatherproofing. For the bottoms, I used composite board (extremely expensive) and screwed on the bottom with 1/4" spacing between for drainage. We painted the box, then let it dry a week.
Here's my daughter helping paint the box:

My wife and I lay the box out over cinderblocks and dirt and gravel to level it the best we could on a hill (we live on a steep hill). I stapled in black landscaping fabric to the bottoms and sides of the box to act as a filter, then dumped in 4cubic feet of perlite, 10x 2-1/2 gallon bucks of all-purpose sand, almost 6 cubic feet of peat moss, about 4 cubic feet of mushroom compost, 4 cups of pelletized lime, 4 cups of "organic" chicken manure. Mixed and watered the mixtured as per directions, then covered the whole box with a large square of clear plastic to "heat" the soil for planting.

Our plans are to plant 3 tomato seeds ( 1 cherry, 2 beefsteak), 1 pepper, 16 carrots, 16 onions, Swiss Chard, Romaine lettuce, Basil. I plan on building a cage of tomato wire and chicken wire to ward off squirrels, rabbits, cats, and cover the cage with clear plastic for frosts. We'll see how this project turns out. My wife and I have proven ourselves to be rather careless gardeners in the past. Here's the breakdown in cost of the project thus far:

Lumber:
4 of 2"x8"x10' - $9.58 x 4 = $41
4 of 8' length of composite board - $23 x 4 = $98.50
Soil:
peat moss 3.8CF for $7.53 - 2 bags = $16.11
perlite 4 CF for $16.99 = $18.18
sand 60lbs (5gallons) for $2.94 - 5 bags = $15.73
mushroom compost 40lb bag for $3.99 - 6 bags = $25.62
lime 40lb pelletized bag for $2 = $2.14
chicken manure 40lb bag for $5.99 = $6.41
woodashes/charcoal - can't find
Wire/Fencing:
chickenwire 50' of 24" $7.93 = $8.49
Seeds: .97 - $1.49 per packet = $10.70
Misc:
paint brushes, paint: $20.81
large turnable 60gallon enclosed composter: $139.09
Total costs: $402.78 - AMEXgift check (100) - gardencenter giftcard(33) = $269.78
additional expense to be spent: metal supports for tomatoes/peppers, tomato wire for protection: ~$30

The only way to justify this nearly $300 of net expenditure would be that we will use this set-up every year for at least 5 years and that the produce resulting will be healthier, cleaner, safer, etc. And that it will provide therapeutic and life-enhancing benefits unquantifiable otherwise. We could have spent much less for material - for example, we could have just fixed up a compost pile using discarded pallet crates for free (saving $139.09), and we could have used scrap lumber and no composite board (saving $100-$141) but we were thinking we will use this method and materials annually thus the investment in lasting materials was considered worthwhile. Also as noted above, my wife had a couple of giftcards worth $133 which helped reduce this expense from over $400 to under $300.

Organic Produce - What are the issues and is it worth it?

Of course you'd have to compare the cost of the vegetables (assuming we get results from our garden) only with good "organic" produce from a place like Whole Foods. If you investigate the benefits of organic produce, you can find as many negatives as positives. Here's a page framing the debate. Does the price of organic produce justify the benefits? Maybe not - the main benefit of organic produce which does hold up to scrutiny is that in general organic produce tend to have significantly less synthetic pesticides like organophosphates. The organic producers tend to downplay the fact that organic produce however contains significantly higher amounts of organic pesticides which can be also toxic to humans. It also raises the question, why is organic produce contaminated with pesticides at all? One fairly done study shows that ~25% of organic produce is contaminated with the synthetic pesticides which were measured. This is probably because these residues are present in our water table, in the air from overhead spraying, and in the general environment - can we avoid organophosphates and other pesticides at all? I'd say no - it's simply a matter of quantity of exposure. Is it worth paying x times as much for produce for a questionably lower levels of only certain types of pesticides? Also, can we trust "organic" farmers to be assiduously meticulous and conscientious about their farming methods? And can we trust the federal inspectors to properly certify various farms as "organic?" - probably there is a lot of corruption and/or laziness here also.

I know that there is a great deal of money being made in the organic certification process and in general this organic certification business is necessary - yet I can't help but be extremely skeptical about the whole process. I suspect there is a whole lot of bullshit going on in this business, as much if not more than in the meat industry.

The entire pesticide issue has become laden with an eco-terrorist zeal which becomes increasingly uncomfortable to debate. I like the general liberal approach to our world and ecology, but this is one issue where opinions like this and this needs to be more prominently pushed. And organic people tend to lose sight of the fact that produce contaminated with fecal organisms (from "organic fertilizers" like manure) is probably a greater danger to our health than synthetic pesticides - also read this reasonable overview article about some of the points in the debate in general. This is why cultivating your own garden as Voltaire suggested is probably the best way to reduce all the concerns on both sides of the issue.

Summary From My personal Garden Price Book

I did examine the total costs of the material by "price-booking" at the following stores: Lowe's, Walmart Garden section. Basically the only places you could find decent stuff was Lowe's, Home Depot, and Logan's Trading Co. Logan's Trading Co. was almost always more expensive, the Lowe's and Home Depot had pretty much the same price on everything. The local garden stores had everything priced exorbitantly - the only reason we bought a lot of stuff at Fairview was because of our gift card which could not be cashed.. Here's the price book breakdown on the main ingredients:

..................Lowe's..........Home Depot....Logan's Trading Co......Fairview
pbarkmulch.......(1.16/cf)...........(.94/cf).................(1.26/cf)..............(2/cf)
peatmoss.............(1.98/cf).........(1.98/cf).............(3.42/cf)...............(2.7/cf)
perlite...................(.36/qt).............(.37/qt).................(.14/qt)..............n/a
sand....................(.053/lb)..........(.049/lb)...............(.08/lb)................n/a
m.compost...........3.97/40lb.........2.85/40lb...........5.99/40lb.............n/a
pell.lime...............2.23/50lb.........2.00/50lb...........4.49/40lb..........6.99/40lb .
wood..............2"x8"x10' 9.58.....2"x8"x10' 9.58...........n/a.................n/a
seeds................0.97/packet................................1.69/packet.....1.09/packet

Our composter was a "gazingus pin" which we thought was a good investment after reading about composters in various books and looking at online information like this. In speaking with friends and neighbors, composting out in the open attracted squirrels, raccoons, rats, cats, dogs, and other even worse night animals - manually turning the compost with a shovel or fork was also apparently back-breaking labor. Our Canadian-made turn-o-matic enclosed composter was a breeze to turn, had a tight lid which was animal proof, and kept the compost discretely. In pricing various composters of this size online like this one or this one we decided the one we bought (from Logan Trading Co) was a good deal. In general, I would recommend that all triangle area gardeners flock to Logan's Trading Company for their rich store of gardening material and supplies, however, one should be aware that you pay more for the basic supplies. I'd hate to see this company go out-of-business so I'd be willing to spend extra to keep them around. If you look at many of the prices at Lowe's Hardware and Home Depot - one can't help to wonder they arrive at such similar pricing - either they are blatanly in cahoots with each other to fix prices, or one or both have price spies to keep their products priced in line with the other.

Marketing to the Masses: Amorality and Civil Anarchy by Corporations

Within modern corporate culture there exists a beautifully regimented theocracy - the God of this corporate governance is Money. All other considerations are subjugated to the Primacy of Money. Here are a few books I've read in recent months (and one movie) which expand on this theme:

1. Born to Buy : The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture by Juliet B. Schor

2. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser

3. Super Size Me - "documentary" by Morgan Spurlock

4. The Laws of Choice by Eric Marder


Juliet Schor, author of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need and Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, put out Born to Buy last year which completes her trilogy on on the American Middle-Class Malaise. Speaking of threes, the triumvirate of Middle-Aged Women Moping about the Malaise of the American Middle Class are Barbara Ehrenreich, Elizabeth Warren, and Juliet Schor.





I talked a little bit about Ehrenreich's books here. I discussed Elizabeth Warren's book briefly here. Schor does a good job reporting about her analysis of American middle-class problems. Her current book puts forth the thesis that corporate amorality has damned the recent generations of Americans to behave almost as automatons enslaved by Materialism. She interviews marketing executives past and present, parents, children, ad-men and documents research (her own as well as pre-existing) demonstrating the behavioral effects of such marketing on children as they grow up. She tries to refute the claim by marketers that "associations not causations" underlie the links between their marketing acts and the growing pestilence of fatness, stupidity, laziness, materialism, substance abuse, violence, and psychiatric disorders (anxiety and depression mainly). She claims her research on two cohorts around Boston (one affluent, the other inner-city poor) forges a sure connection, causality, between the marketing of products and such behavior by American kids. She decries the commercialization of the public school system with the expected diatribes, well researched. Starting initially with good intentions, she writes about how Advertisements have infiltrated the school systems compromising education and stealing large chunks of time daily. Channel One is again attacked, as they should be, and she talks briefly about the groundswell of opposition against Channel One (see Channel One Removal Kit).

She describes the chilling methods employed by Marketing companies in order to capture or seduce small children into becoming agents for their products. Particularly striking are the descriptions of the "Viral Marketing" techniques and the use of children as "spies" within their peer groups - e.g. the GIA (the girls intelligence agency) which infiltrates the typical suburban pajama slumber party of pre-teens with a school girl who has the assignment of obtaining a laundry-list of information from her school/classmates during the party, all for the marketing edification of corporate conglomerates like GAP, Levi-Strauss, etc. Also interesting is the evidence presented which show that large corporations now believe that it is to their benefit to market alcohol, cigarettes, and even such items as large appliances, automobiles to children more than to adults. Schor portrays us consumers as mostly pawns and victims, reminiscent of Elizabeth Warren's book The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke. For the majority of Americans this may be true unfortunately.

Fast Food = Death
Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is a tour de force of the fast-food industry, an excellent, entertaining, and fairly-well researched book which I wished I could make all 220 million or so adults in the US read.

He begins with the story of Carl Karcher, Richard and Maurice McDonald + Ray Kroc describing the birth of the hamburger industry in California in the early 1950s. He covers the marketing to kids including examples of outrageous public school marketing plans just as Schor did and draws parallels between Ray Kroc and Walt Disney - their early friendship during WWI, Kroc's early flirtation with Disney, later enmity, and the ironic posthumous partnerships of their companies. The overall theme of Schlosser's book would have to be Exploitation of the People by large corporations. He shows how franchisees are exploited by the big companies McDonald's, Subways, Burger Kings. He shows how high-school teenagers are exploited by the minimum-wage fast-food job market. He talks briefly about the fattening and the blighting of the health of the Nation and the World. He shows how Idaho potato farmers are exploited by the Ore-Idas, Simplot and Lamb Weston companies - he interviews the aged multi-billionare J.R. Simplot himself who grew his fortune by learning to dehydrate potatoes, then selling the idea to McDonalds. He shows how slaughter-house workers, mostly migrant workers, many illegals, are exploited, trashed, and discarded by the giant slaughterhouses like IBP and Conagra. The most striking parts of this book are the descriptions of the abattoirs in the midwest which he visits. He interviews many managers, workers - he describes routine amputations, decapitations, and workers' bodies falling into the machinery - the ongoing production of meat continuing nevertheless.

He describes the filth, chaos, and brazen anarchy in the meat-packing industry, the impotence of OSHA and all federal safety inspectors as the USDA is now controlled by the cattle industry (with the actual president of the cattle industry acting as the head etc.). He gives a thorough reporting of the Ecoli 0157:H7 contagion spreading throughout the country with emotional recounting of the deaths of six-year olds as told by their parents from eating spoiled hamburgers (remembering the Jack-in-the-Box incident in 1997 as well as the well-covered-up incidents involving McDonald's and Wendy's). As he writes on p197: "The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms...Behind them lies a simple explanation for why eating a hamburger can now make you seriously ill: There is shit in the meat." He includes one statement which seemed poorly researched (based on examining the "Notes" he includes in the back): he implies that Charles Gerba, microbiologist at Univ of Arizona found more fecal bacteria in the typical American sink than in the typical American toilet - he states that you'd be better off eating a carrot that you drop into a toilet than one that you drop into your kitchen sink. This may be true in your kitchen sink, but not in mine (in your face). In general, you'd have to conclude that he has an activist agenda against the Fast Food Industry and that he is unlikely to provide much positive information on this industry - nevertheless the information he provides is extremely entertaining, very important and very believable for the most part. He ends with a chapter on the globalization of the American fast-food industry and its portentious consequences.

Fast Food is Disgusting

Morgan Spurlock is a "dumb redneck" from West Virginia, now living in Manhattan, who stars in and produces Super-Size Me, a mockumentary on the Fast Food Industry, mainly designed to induce disgust in fast foods. Most of the scenes shown are pointless, but the film is fairly entertaining and provides some very good information in a format chosen for mass appeal, thus may offer the promise of exposing the most fast-food-prone people to its influence. Spurlock reveals in an extra feature on the DVD that Schlosser's Fast Food Nation was the predominant progenitor of his film and his interview with Eric Schlosser is a nice bonus.

The Science of Marketing
When I was at Penn, I spent some time at Wharton's Business School where I first became acquainted with Eric Marder's The Laws of Choice. This is a book I would not recommend to anyone due to its very non-riveting writing style. It mainly describes the STEP (strategy evaluation program), VEST (volume estimation test), SUMM (single unit marketing model) which are measurement tools used in the marketing of products by just about all the large corporations. It provides specific examples, many equations and graphs which allows you to calculate the probabilities of market share, market penetration, and describes specific product testing and measurements of such, describing the links between the product testing and the actual market performance and how the two correlate based on the performance of testing. He describes the Principles and "Laws" governing product choice, product performance, and product sales in the real world as captured and "pre-described" by the STEP, VEST, SUMM tests. It is initially extremely boring, yet at the same time fascinating, and ultimately, the realization comes upon you that marketing, the human behavioral response to influence peddling, is in many ways, a true Science.


Money is so all-powerful in the US that it buys everything - from the Presidency, down the various levels of government, to the public school system, and even the minds of your children, and you yourself. It's always sickening to watch the influence of money during the Presidential election cycles. I think many Americans, and the Corporate mindset especially, will compromise all their ideals of Democracy and most of their personal beliefs when seduced by the power of Money and the promise of Great Wealth. Juliet Schor interviewed a couple of former marketing executives who admitted they "should burn in hell" for what they did (advertise unresponsibly to small children). Money from the Great Corporations such as McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Disney, Nickelodeon has corrupted our nation, has purchased the influence of our Congressmen and Senators. Government's major purpose is to keep its citizens safe; the widespread corruption of the individuals elected to serve as cogs in governance has nearly broken apart Government's justification for existence. In the inner workings of our government, He Who Has the Most Money wins. Thus laws which should by all reasonable minds by adopted are repeatedly shot down - forbidding advertising aimed at children was deemed "impractical", the safety nets for the food supply have had giant holes punched in them by people in the USDA and the cattle and meat industry (and others). The existing regulations are largely window dressing which deceives the American Public into believing that they are indeed being protected, and that their taxes are being spent responsibly to pay responsible people charged with running the large government agencies. There are good people in the government and over-generalizing is histrionic, but unless Government does its Primary Job better - that of acting as the control valve, this worship of Money will continue and this Anarchy of Greed will reign.
Here's something:

They Will Say

Of my city the worst that men will ever say is this:
You took little children away from the sun and the dew,
And the glimmers that played in the grass under the great sky,
And the reckless rain; you put them between the walls
To work, broken and smothered, for bread and wages,
To eat dust in their throats and die empty-hearted
For a little handful of pay on a few Saturday nights.
--Carl Sandburg

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs Re-examined

Reviewing our electricity usage over the past year and over the past 2 years, and keeping in mind my previous discussion regarding the use of compact-fluorescent light bulbs throughout our house (see right side bar, or click http://septembersong.blogspot.com/2004_06_30_septembersong_archive.html), I’ve found a significant reduction in our monthly and daily electricity usage over time. As you can see in the raw numbers below, if you compare the Kilowatt usage averaged daily from 6/2/2004 to 1/5/2005, and compare to 6/3/2003 – 1/5/2004, you’ll see the difference. On 6/3/2003, the average temperature was low, 66F, a rather cool late Spring month – yet we used 2065 KWh or 65 KWh daily averaged. On 6/2/2004, the average temperature was higher, 74F, yet we used just 1515 KWh that month or just 54KWh averaged daily. The next month comparison, 7/2/2003 vs 7/2/2004 shows temperatures of 74F vs 76F (i.e. warmer this past year thus you’d expect again more air-conditioner use etc. thus more electricity use). Yet KWh usage is 1912 vs. 1526. The comparisons break down like this:

Compared months........ avg Temp’03vs’04....... KWh used... Avg Daily KWh use

June 2003 vs 2004............... 66F vs 74F............ 2065 vs 1515........... 65 vs 54~

July 2003 vs 2004............... 74F vs 76F............. 1912 vs 1526........... 66 vs 51

August 2003 vs 2004........... 78F vs 79F............. 2213 vs 1850.......... 71 vs 58**

Sept 2003 vs 2004............... 79F vs 75F............. 2443 vs 1670........ 76 vs 56~

Oct 2003 vs 2004................. 69F vs 71F............. 1397 vs 1310........ 48 vs 44

Nov 2003 vs 2004............... 60F vs 62F.............. 904 vs 657........... 31 vs 23

Dec 2003 vs 2004................ 56F vs 55F............. 1006 vs 770......... 31 vs 23**

Jan 2004 vs 2005................ 41F vs 43F.............. 1246 vs 932......... 42 vs 31

I’ve marked with ~ those months compared where the temperature difference is 4degrees F or greater, thus allowing one to argue that the comparison is somewhat confounded. I’ve marked with ** those months where the temperature difference was within 1 degree F, thus making comparison more believable. In those ** months, you can see that the difference in average KWh usage is 8-13KWh or 18-26% less. Averaged over these 8 months compared, the difference average is 22% less Kilowatts per hour used. And furthermore, there are no months where we spent more this past 6 months than in previous 6 months periods of the same time frames.

The difference in terms of money spent?

Compared months.... billed difference.... how much less?... Percentage less?
June’03 vs ’04............. $165.05 vs $123.75......... $41.30...................... 25%
July ’03 vs ’04............. $173.03 vs $140.32........ $32.71....................... 19
August ’03 vs ’04......... $199.17 vs $168.63 .........$30.54 ......................15
Sept ’03 vs ’04............. $219.15 vs $152.90......... $66.25 ......................30
Oct ’03 vs ’04.............. $128.30 vs $121.44......... $6.86........................ 5
Nov ’03 vs ’04............. $76.88 vs $58.77........... $18.11........................ 24
Dec ’03 vs ’04............. $84.35 vs $67.68............ $16.67........................ 20
Jan ’04 vs ’05............. $103.01 vs $80.46.......... $22.55 ........................22.... avg 20%less

data compared to 2 years ago’s numbers:

June’02 vs ’04............ $146.00 vs $123.75........ $22.25....................... 15
July ’02 vs ’04............ $197.96 vs $140.32 ........$57.64 .......................29
August ’02 vs ’04....... $205.57vs $168.63......... $36.94....................... 18
Sept ’02 vs ’04 ...........$175.31vs $152.90.......... $22.41....................... 13
Oct ’02 vs ’04 ............$159.05 vs $121.44.......... $37.61....................... 24
Nov ’02 vs ’04 ...........$106.41vs $58.77............ $47.64...................... 45
Dec ’02 vs ’04 ............$119.05 vs $67.68........... $51.37 .......................43
Jan ’03 vs ’05............ $147.05 vs $80.46........... $66.59...................... 45 ....avg 29%less

Speaking cumulatively, we’ve saved $234.99 over this past 6 months as compared to the same time frame 2 years ago. Averaged, we are saving $29.37 per month compared to the previous year’s data, and saving $42.81 per month compared to 2 years ago’s data ($342.45 total). The critique in the argument might be that the temperatures are different, but if you look at the data, the temperatures differ by an average of 4% between years ’03 and ’04 month-by-month with a range of 1-11% difference, and most importantly, the temperatures are not consistently higher or lower month by month but differs randomly (additionally, the lows and highs averages are very similar year to year also). In any case the 20-29% savings is not explained by temperature differences of 4%. The other critique could be that we are behaving more frugally and thus cutting back significantly in our electricity usage. This definitely has some merit as shown in the following graph provided by my utility company:

As you can see, we have been using electricity less in the just completed past 12 months than in the previous 12 months, thus demonstrating our renewed commitment to frugality. The temperature curves overlaying also once again shows that the temperature difference is not what explains the differences. Yet the difference in the bar graphs in the 6 months prior to our changing over to compact-fluorescent bulbs is visibly MORE than in the most recent 6 months!! I can believe that we have been much more frugal this past 12 months, but were we such horrible spendthrifts in the previous year with electricity? Based on this graph, you would have to say YES! Yet we’ve also tried to save on water usage by not wasting it. In fact my wife and I are pretty reasonable people overall in terms of not wasting resources, so I’m a bit surprised at the difference that a little bit of extra care seems to have made in terms of our utility bills. In fact, when looking at our water bill over the past 6 months compared to the same 6 month time-frame years previously, I find that there is not a big difference and in fact there are more months this past year where we actually spent more water than a 6 months period a year previously (4 of 7 months) – this potentially blows a hole in the argument that we have been behaving less frugally over the past year than before in terms of utility usage.

WATER USAGE DURING THIS TIME PERIOD

Comparison period..................#Days................Daily Usage...........Total Usage (gal)
June 2003 vs 2004.....................30 vs 31...........146.33 vs 111.94....... 4390 vs 3470
July 2003 vs 2004......................30 vs 29............76.33 vs 100.69..........2290 vs 2920
August 2003 vs 2004..................32 vs 31...........99.06 vs 109.35...........3170 vs 3390
Sept 2003 vs 2004.......................28 vs 32...........122.86 vs 139.06........3440 vs 4450
Oct 2003 vs 2004........................30 vs 30...............127 vs 128...............3810 vs 3840
Nov 2003 vs 2004........................28 vs 32...........151.07 vs 107.19.........4230 vs 3430
Dec 2003 vs 2004........................29 vs 29...........120.34 vs 138.97........3490 vs 4030


But water usage is difficult to alter too much short of not flushing toilets and other unsanitary behaviors. And water usage may have gone up for us because our children have been growing up and requiring more baths, more dishes with eating, etc. Though this argument should go for electricity usage too. In any case, a max of $43 per month saved on electricity is nearly the cost of our cable-modem fees, and more than our local and long distance telephone bills, more than our average natural gas bill. So we have potentially saved the equivalent of this monthly averaged out over the year mostly by behaving more frugally in terms of our electricity usage. Importantly, I also began actually reading the dials on our electrical meter and calling my utility company to let them know if there was a difference so that they could come and re-read it (– I made them come by to re-read twice). This served the purpose of mainly letting whomever at the utility department and my meter man know that I’m watching the meter and their performance as well (so that they won’t try to rip me off). In general I’ve found over the past half year that the meter man reads pretty much on the money so that I could probably let that part of it go until I get a very anomalous reading.

Summation: Should you go change out all your light bulbs to compact fluorescent? I think you should, mainly because it sets you in the frame of mind to conserve as well as the potential savings of $62 over the life of the bulb versus equivalent lumens of incandescent lighting (According to http://www.newdream.org/consumer/cflfactsheet.html ). Does CF lighting definitely save you in monthly electricity bills? I would have to say it seems to in superficial analysis as above, but there are many confounds and like I said, CF bulbs sets you in the frame of mind to conserve, thus you may be conserving electricity in other ways too which would confound the comparison – being willing to tolerate more heat and cold, turning off lighting more often, using your appliances more efficiently, turning off TVs and computers more frequently, etc. These other measures in combination is probably going to surpass the savings you get directly and solely from changing out your light bulbs. So what part of the 20-29% savings we saw could be directly attributable to the change to CF light bulbs? I wished I could spout a believable figure but based on looking at the raw data and the bar-graph comparisons, I could guess that it is the low end or 20% which could be believable. Or I could guess more conservatively that it would be something like half that or maybe 10% savings, maybe even less.

Remember from my previous post on installing CF light bulbs, I spent $361.30 total to purchase all those CF bulbs for the house. It looks like I've almost saved that much in half a year through the use of CF bulbs throughout the house and (maybe) other frugal behaviors. In any case, I'd say that you could safely assume that you can make back the initial investment in compact fluorescent light bulbs within 1 year, and by 10 years (if these bulbs do last that long), I could potential have saved thousands of dollars! We'll have to see.
------------------------------------------------------------

LET ME GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF A NON-SAVINGS

I've heard that All-Clad pots (http://www.allclad.com/) are good because it heats food faster. This I've shown to be not true. I took an All-Clad stainless with the aluminum core 3 quart pot and a Revere 3 quart stainless steel only pot, place 6 cups of identical cold water in each, put one on an identical sized oven eye and simultaneously turned on the stove to HIGH for each eye.

The All-Clad pot took 13 minutes to boil the water. The Revere el-cheap-o pot took 10 minutes to boil the water.

Just in case one of my oven eyes were bad, I switched the pots after allowing 3 hours of cool-down time:

Again the exact same result: The All-Clad pot took me 13 minutes to boil 6 cups of cold water, the cheapo pot took me 10 minutes to boil the 6 cups of cold water. So All-Clad stainless pots take longer to heat water, I assume because of the 3-ply construction, thus taking the contained water further away from the heat. Their Cop-R-Chef collection might boil water faster, but I'd be skeptical of that too. The main proclamations by All-Clad themselves I've found is not that they heat food faster but that they heat food more evenly, thus causing less searing and burning; that they impart no metallic tastes to the fo0d; that they become heirloom-like items lasting several generations. Perhaps these are true. But can you justify $635.00 expenditure on basically 7 pots/pans with lids for 3 of them? I somehow did and purchased them, but I think this is an example of affluenza without any obvious evident benefit except for the Luxury quotient.

De-Cluttering

I've been getting rid of a bunch of stuff that sits around the house un-used. Over the past 15 years I've accumulated an enormous mound of useless garbage. I received an impetus to start getting rid of major items when I checked out Material World: A Global Family Portrait from my local library. I first heard of this book back in 1998 or so on the documentary Affluenza on PBS - for an excellent website which organizes some of the ideas in those documentaries click here. I had to wait 2 months to get this book as there was a qeue of something like 10 people in Wake County looking for this book! It shows a spectacular disparity of possessions among various peoples around the world - it would have been even more interesting had the authors included many more countries. They were trying to get the "average" family in a given country to display their entire material possessions in front of their residence. I was trying to imagine what my family's possessions would look like displayed in front of our house and it was an ugly scene to imagine. It made me decide to get rid of all the little junky crap my wife and I seem to horde. I set up a seller's account on ebay and promptly sold 8 items over 2 weeks and netted a profit of $688 after paying ebay fees, shipping fees, and paypal fees. It was actually quite fun to sell on ebay and I may resort to this again. One interesting turn of events was that I was forbidden by email from ebay from selling any medical equipment. There is an enormous bureaucracy behind the selling and re-selling of health-care related equipment - an example of government control over a field of activity gone amuck. Meant to protect a patient from bad medical devices which could harm the patient thus resulting in the patient sueing the pants off the manufacturer and the government, this FDA branch prevents someone like me from selling a spirometer or a simple diagnostic equipment to another health care provider - a ridiculous waste of everybody's time and energy. I failed to sell a set of 5 Simpson's plastic dioramas with figures - an immature use of my money on a trendomatic, worthless waste of money and space - I guess everybody else feels the same way about the Simpsons now. In any case these are the 8 items I did manage to sell:

1.my old cellphone/PDA device (the kyo 6035)
2.my over-complicated multi-battery charging device which I've hardly used
3.a set of 5 Maurice Sendak Where the Wild Things Are plasticine figures (too scary for my kids)
4.a cash register
5.my old credit/debit transaction terminal
6.an old fountain pen
7.an un-used nebulizer machine
8.a time-stamp clock

I also donated items with abandon to various charities in my neighborhood. To Dorcas Thrift Shop (Christian Communities in Action) I gave:
1.My son's 8-piece drum set (received from Santa Claus last year, he played with it 3 times)
2.A Sanyo VCR
3.Lamp Shade
4.A heavy steel trash can
5.A box of about 20 mugs/cups
6.A box of trashy novels/garbage books
Dorcas turned down my offer of several garden hoses and a Xerox XEfx90 all-in-machine

To GoodWill I donated:
1.that Xerox XEfx90 all-in-one machine
2.Component stereo system: Pioneer turntable, Pioneer double-cassette deck, Sony Receiver/amplifier, 2 AIWA speakers - remember these ancient stereo systems every "audiophile" had to have? Who needs them now?

To Guardian Angel Thrift (Alzheimer's research) I donated:
1.30gallon aquarium with top (this leaves me with still 7 more aquaria, a 5g, 10g, 20g, 40g, 55g, and two 75gs, only one 75g and one 40g is in use now)
2.3 Aquamaster 350 aquarium filters nicely cleaned and bleached out
3.Sears 3hp gas-powered edger
4.An abdomenizer (my one and only purchase from a TV-infomercial con-job - 1994)

To Habitat for Humanity I donated:
1.2 clean toilet seats
2.A brass chandelier
3.2 sets of black track lighting

I plan to call back Habitat for Humanity to donate: a large Pappasan and ottoman my wife bought from Pier-1 back in 1994 or so, my wife's old student oak kitchen table for two with 2 oak chairs, 3 black leather and chrome/steel stack-on chairs from Target, 2 butterfly chairs, 2 plastic out-door fold-up chairs, maybe a child's play table with 2 chairs (plastic), maybe 4 heavy office-wall dividers, maybe my wife's old Perception kayak with oar and skirts etc equipment. There is also a beaten up, run-down old ugly wooden rickety office chair and a rusty old metal two-seater porch swing which our former neighbor gave my wife 6 years ago which she absolutely refuses to give away now that he is dead (he was an old man) - I would do almost anything to get rid of these items.

My wife has been fighting me all-the-way to try to keep most of these items as she is a greater pack-rat than I ever was. My son is also a bit of a pack-rat like his mother. Therefore I've had very little luck trying to rid our house of toys. Last Spring I convinced them to sell off many useless large toys at our yardsale, but they are not budgeing on the remaining gargantuan stash of toys. They are actually adding on as I speak. My wife said tonight that my decluttering is creating a vaccuum which makes her want to purchase more stuff to fill in the emptiness. As you can see from the lists above all the junk I'm trying to rid are items I can't imagine us using any time soon. I also sold several dozen of recent sellable books to Edward McKay Used Books and Mr.Mike's Used Books - I got a couple of books in return as well as some money - the danger to trying to sell books for me is that I often end up acquiring even more books simply by going into a used book store. I've made a habit of acquiring vast collections of used books since I began frequenting an Edward McKay Used Book store in Fort Bragg and Fayetteville NC back when I was a middle-schooler. As I went through my book collections, most of them were books which nobody else would ever want - what I've found is that the used book stores in the area no longer want those old 1960s binding books. They all want the recent best-sellers or prize-winners which I'd tend to hold onto for a second reading sometime. I considered selling these books on Amazon.com which seems to sell well, but the thought of such hundreds of nickel-and-dime transactions is just mind-numbing. What I've found is that the thrill of selling and shipping off the items at my local UPS store becomes stale after about 8 transactions.

My greatest hope is to be able to get rid of most of my medical equipment. I own a $4200 EKG machine on a rolling cast-iron cart, a $2900 vital signs monitor on wheels, a $2800 portable spirometer, a $2500 cholesterol screening machine, a $1400 cryosurgery system with 20lb N2O tank, a ?$1000 autoclave, a $650 urinalysis machine, an $800 exam table with vag illumination system, a $700 audiometer, IV pole, instrument table, 2 exam stools, an orthopedic exam bench, exam light, also I own 4 cabinets full of medical supplies such as sutures, needles, syringes, bandages, ace wraps, KY jelly, scalpels, iodine, drapes, tongue depressors & cotton swabs, alcohol wipes, forceps and clamps, some very expensive (and expired) medicines etc. Probably >$16,000 worth of equipment which clutters up the house. I tried to ebay equipment as I mentioned above. I got fast bids on an item before ebay shut down my solicitations. Apparently I forgot to mention that I don't have the original boxes for my equipment - without the original boxes, the FDA forbids resale of the items - quite a silly rule for the type of equipment I was selling. I could try selling the equipment on labX at high cost, or I could just hold onto them as I will never get back the money I paid for them. I've already used these items quite a bit as a favor for family and neighbors believe it or not. How did I end up with this decadent stash of medical equipment? My father retired from practice around 1995 and left me with a bunch of stuff, then I closed my own private practice in 2002 and joined a group as an employee (as a scut monkey). Overall I enjoy being an employee more than being an owner - my personality was not suited to be an owner. As an employee, I can leave my troubles behind when I leave work - a priceless commodity. I believe I have a latent fear that I must one day work again self-employed, therefore I am holding onto all the equipment, but I think more and more that I'm better off as an employee indefinitely. It takes leadership skills and lots of self-motivation to own your business - alas I do not have such qualities. A decent movie, About Schmidt, addresses the pathetic notion of such mediocrity: especially the case with the no-good son of Kathy Bates who has his room wall plastered with "participant awards" from his childhood; not even a 2nd place showing in sight. I'm not quite that pathetic, but could probably sympathize with that kid more than not. There hasn't been a whole hell of a lot I've been "number 1" in - perhaps in my high school class I was not bad, but once in college, I've been simmering ever-since in the cauldron of mediocrity. My 3.2 GPA from my undergrad school, itself a mediocre Ivy-League school (Penn), attests to it, as does my showing in the bottom of the top third of my medschool class, as does my "competent" but not spectacular showing during my residency. Confucius teaches us to strive for the Golden Mean and I believe I have attained that quite well. Another movie (since I'm talking movies) which addresses mediocrity is of course Amadeus seen from the perspective of the mediocre Salieri - and I am Salieri.

In my mind, mediocrity and clutter somehow are entwined, but it's hard for me to articulate this principle precisely. Maybe it has something to do with my mediocrity causing a feeling of emptiness inside me and my attempts at trying to fill the void with something of substance, just as my wife said "to fill the vaccuum with more stuff." In which case then, why am I trying so hard to declutter my house? Maybe I'm trying to get back to the center of my void in order to understand it? Maybe I'm hoping that I can learn to accept and be happy in my mediocrity once I can see it clearly? It reminds me of something by Nietzsche, like his Human, all too Human. I think looking over that Material World book made me think that our possessions are helping us delude ourselves into thinking that we are better than others (or more superior). When once we are stripped of our possessions, we are naked and nothing but humans like any other person in the world, no better, no worse, just a "mediocre man."

The Negatives of TV Viewing
stolen directly from p.125-129, Marie Sherlock's Living Simply with Children (Three Rivers Press, 2003)

"
1.TV Transforms Our Kids - And Us - Into "Consumer Units"
If there was ever any question about the relationship between TV viewing and kids wanting more "stuff," a study reported in the June 2001 issue of Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics concludes that, yes, indeed, kids who watch more TV bug their parents to buy more toys. The study involved a school-based effort to reduce television. By the end of the school year, those students who'd watched less TV were 70 percent less likely to have requested a toy during the previous week.
TV advertising works on adults too. A survey by economist Juliet Schor concluded that respondents spent an extra $208 annually for each hour of television they watched weekly. Betsy Taylor, Executive Director of the Center for a New American Dream, aptly calls the television a "direct I.V. of manufactured want."

2. TV Gives Us inferiority Complexes
The premise of most TV advertising is to make the viewers less-less cool, less attractive, less popular - if we don't buy whatever they're selling. The message is that, by buying these items, we'll be complete, we'll be part of an "in crowd."
And the "in crowd" has changed too. Television shows and movies aren't portraying the Cleaver family anymore but a very upscale Jones family. We essentially need to keep up with ever more affluent reference groups. Consequently, we need ot spend more and more to keep from feeling "out of it."

3.TV Promotes Violence And Other Negative Values
Remember the statistic quoted above about the 200,000 dramatized acts of violence and 40,000 dramatized murders that our children, on average, witness on television before they turn eighteen? According to a variety of sources, there is overwhelming evidence that violence on television - and at the movies and in video and computer games - is one of the causes of violent tendencies among young people.
Any doubt about the cause and effect of violent programming was put to rest by a joint statement in July 2000 by the Amercian Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. They said: "The conclusion of the public health community, based on over 30 years of research, is that viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values, and behavior, particularly in children. Its effects are measurable and long-lasting. Moreover, prolonged viewing of media violence can lead to emotional desensitization toward violence in real life."
It isn't just the violence on TV that is harming our kids. Other negative "values" are reinforced on television, among them disrespect, greed, the notion that looking good and being cool is of paramount importance, and an attitude of entitlement and selfishness.

4. TV Induces An Addictive, Trancelike State
Another reason to be TV-free involves the psychological effects of television viewing. A number of studies conclude that the simple act of watching TV is harmful to children, whether it's "Sesame Street" or "NYPD Blue." Among the many negative effects that television viewing has on children is the trancelike state it produces, the sensory overkill, and its addictive qualities. The pernicious effects of viewing are amplified by the quantity of TV the average American kid watches. A twenty-year longitudinal study conducted at Yale University concluded that children who watch excessive amounts of television tend to be less imaginitive, more restless, more aggressive, and have poorer concentration.
Television's hypnotic, addictive effect is only getting worse. In his book Culture jam: The Uncooling of America, Kalle Lasn explains that television content contains "jolts" that he describes as "any 'technical event' that interrupts the flow of sound or thought or imagery - shift in camera angle, gunshot, cut to commercial." In 1978, television shows contained about ten jolts per minute; by 1998, the number of jolts had doubled. some channels and programs deliver many more of these "technical events," like MTV with sixty events per minute. Lasn and others contend that jolts release hormones that trigger the fight-or-flight response, and that the viewer's attention is riveted by upping the incidence of jolts, inducing essentially an addiction to that release of hormones.
The real world does not work this way, notes down-shifted mom Debbie Newman. She believes that this aspect of television programming may even be the cause of the "epidemic" of kids with ADD and ADHD. "If we were going to take, say, an alien from outer space and train him to have a short attention span, what would we do?" she asks. "Probably we would sit him in front of a screen and flash pictures in front of him that change every fraction of a second." Just park him in front of the tube - instant attention deficit.

5. TV Creates Couch Potatoes
Excessive TV viewing contributes to weight problems in children. According to the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the more children viewed TV, the heavier they were. Children who watched four or more hours of television a day were, on average, 17 percent heavier than those who watched less than two hours per day. A recent study at Tufts University revealed that kids who watch a lot of television end up eating more of the types of foods advertised -- that is, fast foods, convenience foods, candy, and soda - than children who don't watch as much television.

6.TV Inhibits Learning
Too much television also leads to poor academic performance. A number of studies conclude that the less TV a child watches, the better that child will score on achievement tests. Similarly, as TV viewing increases, reading ability decreases.
The negative effects of television on young children are so pronounced that, in 1999, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement recommending that pediatricians "urge parents to avoid television viewing for children under the age of 2 years."

7.TV Is A Time Vampire
So far the negatives I've listed have, more or less, been related to the programming, advertising, or psychological impacts of viewing television. But there's another, more straightforward and potentially much more negative impact of television viewing: the simple amount of time it takes away from other activities. A 2000 study by the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that kids ages two through seventeen spend an average of 4-1/2 hours each day in front of screens - TV, computer, video game systems.
That it takes away from time spent on physical activity and reading is implied in the last two negatives discussed. But there are many other activities that are lessened and sometimes obliterated because we're zoned out in front of the tube.
Family time together is a huge one! A 2001 study by Professor Barbara Brock of Eastern Washington University revealed that TV-free families spent an average of 385 minutes each week in meaningful conversation with kids, ten times the national average. Families without televisions spend much more time playing, creating, and just "hanging out" together than their TV-immersed peers. TV-free families also have more time to spend getting to know neighbors, helping younger siblings, working around the house, learning to play an instrument, volunteering - in short, virtually any of those activities listed later in this chapter and in Chapter 12. This failure to spend time on pleasurable, relaxing activities could explain why, as a 1999 Kaiser Family Foundation study revealed, youngsters who watched more TV tended to be less content than their TV-free peers.

...And Yet We Watch
Marie Winn has written extensively on the effects of television on us and our kids. In 1974 she instigated what may have been the first "TV free" experiment in Denver, Colorado. Fifteen families turned their televisions off for a full month and kept diaries on the results. The improvements in family dynamics and happiness seen during that month were impressive. The families reported better communications between children and adults, a more peaceful atmosphere in the home, greater feelings of closeness as a family, more help around the house by the children, more leisurely meals with more interesting mealtime conversations, more reading by both parents and children, and more real play among children. The negatives says Winn, were minor. Some family members missed their favorite TV programs, some kids mentioned experiencing a "weird" feeling (coud it have been withdrawal?), and parents reported a few discipline problems without TV deprivation to use as a threat!
The positives of doing without television are noted over and over again by experts. Family therapist and author Mary Pipher notes that her standard suggestion for families in crisis is that they turn off the TV for a at least a couple of nights a week and, instead, watch the sun set or take a walk.
But here's the rub: Having experienced all of theses benefits - and with knowledge of the many negatives of TV viewing - all fifteen families in Winn's Denver experiment returned to watching TV to some extent after the experience!
With virtually no positives to recommend it and numerous negatives, television continues to hold the country in its viselike grip.
It doesn't have to. Simple living families almost universally have taken one of two actions with regard to television viewing: Either they have no TV in their home or they strict limit TV viewing. Here's a look at each of these alternatives.
"
...continues on in "Reclaiming Your Kids, Part II"
More on this topic written by others are here, here, and here.

School Is In Session



So I now have a couple extra hours of free time in the daytime. My 7year-old goes to school 8a-3:30p. My 2 year-old takes a 2 hour nap daily. My son just changed schools - from a private Montessori school to a Charter School Montessori. Both he and I like this Charter school much better. Private schools from our 2 years of exploring and interviewing at various ones around town were not at all impressive. Their biggest attraction is that they can expel kids at the drop of a hat for various infractions, so theoretically, you keep all the punks and disruptive kids out of class. What you see in real life however is a class of fairly conservative/conforming, well-to-do white-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant kids. You also see a lot of wimps and basket-cases who couldn't cut it in the real world of public schools. Surprisingly, you don't see a lot of smart kids in private schools. I attended private school from grade 5 to 12th grade (graduated from one). I had the same experience as described above - a bunch of spoiled rich stupid kids. I have to admit though that the sheltered environment made for a fairly stable, safe environment with very little fighting or other violence. Our plan is to let our kids attend well-selected public or charter schools at least up through middle school or so. This not only is the frugal way to go, but I think provides the better, more diverse and grounded educational environment.

As many parents who send their kids to Montessori schools do, I read most of the recommended Montessori books. Maria Montessori's The Montessori Method and her the Absorbent Mind are the best of the bunch. Her history, her theories and practical applications and her descriptions of her teaching methods make the Montessori method incredibly attractive. I can't see how any parent would look elsewhere once they read her books. The many books by her disciples and adherents (Lillard, Gettman, Hainstock etc.) similarly make this educational method seem unbeatable. But of course, the reality does not fit the hype. I've seen some classes where the method is closely followed and the children seem to behave in the ways described. But more often, the teachers of the Montessori method do NOT adhere closely to the methods - they take liberties here and there and improvise their own "take" on the Montessori method. The final corrupted product often leads to poor results - you can end up with an unfocused, lazy, overly-concrete and uncreative child who can't take standardized tests well. You have to realize the short-comings of the Montessori method - this method was originally designed to work in a day-care-like setting among kids whose parents were working all day long and unable to bring up their kids well.

As such, the "teachers" use efficient techniques to corral and organize learning activities individually assigned to each child - they minimize their interactions with each child partly because there are too many children and not enough overseers. Therefore a very curious, bright, out-going child might do poorly in this environment where they are unable to obtain maximal attention from their "teacher." Of course the Montessori teachers would say this method of supervision is designed to encourage independence and self-motivation etc. There are kids whose personalities fit the Montessori method absolutely perfectly. I think more often this method comes up somewhat inflexible and more kids than not lose by it if this method is used alone. There is also no evidence that this method works at all beyond the middle elementary years. John Chattin-McNichols describes most of the recent research on the method in his The Montessori Controversy - what you find is that not a lot of research is out there and what there is doesn't reflect too favorably on this method when it comes to actual testing.

Homeschooling is a great option if you as a parent are adequately trained, educated, and motivated. I think ideally you need a deep, broad and solid background in childhood education. You also need to be very proficient in the various mathematic fields, the sciences. You need to know the details of world history, you need to understand, not just appreciate all the great movements in the Arts, Literature, Philosophy, Politics, Music. You need to be extremely well-read. If you are not, you are potentially short-changing your own kids. You of course need to have the free time to run a "school" in your home. Also, you need to have the type of sunny disposition and great relationship with your kids that can allow them to tolerate sitting and taking lessons from you for hours a day everyday for years at a time. If your local school district does not have well-trained teachers, then homeschooling might be an acceptable, though not always optimal, solution. From what I've seen many home-schooled kids turn out very well, and the WORST home-schooled example is very likely to turn out better than the WORST public- or privately-schooled kid, and the BEST home-schooled kid is also likely to out-perform the BEST product of the public/private schools. But I think there is quite a bit of selection bias here - the failed cases of homeschooling are likely to go into hiding and not announce what happened. Also the most uneducated, unreasonable, and frankly, most stupid parents often have no insight into their own inadequacies and therefore will inflict their own homeschooling on their unfortunate kids. Conversely, often the most ideally educated and trained parents I've seen often suffer from feelings of self-doubt and will NOT homeschool their kids for this reason and because obviously, the most highly educated parents often can and will earn much more money in the work force rather than staying at home with their kids.

What we've settled on is letting our kids go to public or charter schools, do additonal "homeschooling" at home to reinforce and confirm what they know/don't know. We're going to give Montessori methods more looks before giving up on them.

A new school year is so exciting in so many ways - especially when you change schools like we just did. I changed schools 7 times before I hit 4th grade so changing schools was pretty unremarkable for me. My wife only changed schools at the elementary-middle and middle-high school interfaces so changing schools seems much more traumatic to her. We are also for the first time Car-pooling with 2 other neighborhood families. This is to save on our commuting costs in terms of time and money (no school busing at charter schools currently). It's still early (just 2 days) but it''s working out so far. Overall I think the whole situation fits into our simple living ideologies well. My wife wants to take the results of two recent tests (WoodCock Johnson and Iowa) my son took to his teacher to show her that he is pretty much an "academically gifted" child - I'm worried this is going to only cause troubles for him. I think many teachers don't really enjoy the smarter kids in class - the conforming middle-of-the-road students are so much easier to deal with. I can imagine how a long-time jaded teacher could prefer a class full of mediocre kids who do what they are told and turn in the results expected - punch in, punch out, go home and worry about my own life instead.


I used to fantasize about how I could be a spectacular teacher and have a handful of brilliant and talented students who endlessly stimulated each other and our class. In real life of course, I'm much too reserved, introverted and non-dynamic to be any good as a teacher. When I was a resident I think I did a better than average job as a teacher to medical students and interns on the wards, but I was never the spine-tingling dynamo of a teacher I fantasized about being. Teachers in the Wake County region are paid ok, I've read something in the range of $35,000/year - far better than they used to get, though admittedly they should be able to make much more IF THEY ARE GOOD. Compared to say what a medical resident makes after completing medical school, this is not bad. I made $31,000 as an intern just out of medical school and I thought that was pretty good money at the time (of course I had never made any real money to talk about previously so my perspective on money was skewed downwards). I was looking at various governmental jobs online and what they offered - typically we're talking salaries starting around $20,000 or less right out of college with no job experience. These are for jobs requiring you to forfeit your entire day Monday through Friday - a pitiful sum seen in this light. I know that college professors can make greater than $100,000/year once tenure is earned and their track record is established. From what I've seen from my college years (Univ of Penn), I can't say that many of my professors deserved a six-figure salary. The ones that earned that kind of money really seemed to perform minimal duties and the the hardest workers, usually the graduate students or junior faculty, seemed to do most of the work.
Whenever this time of year comes around I get little tingly feelings of excitement and anticipation, even though I've long finished my schooling. I almost want to start back in 2nd grade like my son and do it all over again. I think I was not like other kids because even as a child, I never hated school - I used to have trouble sleeping at night because I would get so excited thinking about going to school the next day. I had perfect attendance from Kindergarten to 12th grade - I missed the very last day of my Senior year (the Awards Presentation Day) out of some bizarre sense of rebellion and rejection of my perfect attendance record. I actually ENJOYED taking tests and preparing for them! These are all things that I would never confess to my own friends. School was always a wonder for me - the babble of kids and all the clashes of personalities and histrionics, the lessons and tests, and the goal of trying to get "100"s on all the tests - the sheer satisfaction of seeing that "100" with a smiley face on a difficult Pre-Calculus or English or Biology Exam. Later in college, the studying was much more difficult but the satisfaction of seeing an "A" on an Organic Chemistry Exam was so much more exalted. My college years were much harder and while I was doing them, the years were much more miserable than earlier, but in looking back my college years were so much more intense and wonderous. Medical school and residency was mostly fun and really not as challenging as my undergraduate education. I hope I could take some courses at a local college when I'm retired years from now - maybe I can get another degree purely for fun. They say Youth is wasted on the Young. I think School is wasted on the Schooled - if they only knew how rich their school years are.