Author Archive
Time to think
The first thing I wanted to write today was, life is not consistent. But as I put the words down it occurred to me that if life is anything it’s consistent. The last several months have been filled with what most people would consider surprises. However, what in life can really be considered a surprise. There is very little that happens to us that we don’t know is a possibility. The existence of any life is measured by risk, and luck. The spectrum of lifestyles knows every combination of possibility. We don’t know where we’ll fall on this spectrum. I’ve known people who didn’t want to take risks for fear of the possibilities. I’ve known people who embraced risk out of fear that they’d live a sedentary life only to be caught by life while crossing the street one day on the way to work.
By the time I was 13 a handful of my family had passed away. As I grew up I spent a lot of time thinking about them. About their lives, and their legacies. I thought about the loved ones they left behind. And I thought about what they must’ve felt in their last moments. The reflections they made back on their time. I fantasized about facing my own mortality, going through the emotional process of actually acknowledging my own death and dealing with it. I came away from this feeling that I wanted to make sure that every moment of my life was valued. I wanted to do the with my life only that which enhanced my experience. Which made life more pleasant. Ironically much of that meant not avoiding things that I found to be unpleasant, but to embrace anything that I didn’t like. If I didn’t like a food, eat it and try to understand why I didn’t like that taste, the texture, or the smell. This translated into other aspects of my life. The company I kept. The sports I took part in. The arts, reading. Every moment took on a new importance. Each moment was a line of history committed to stone. Not to be undone, edited, re-written or erased. What was would always be.
I’m thirty now. And I’m questioning everything. What seemed like would be a temporary existence now feels as though it may go on for a long time. A part of me is afraid to acknowledge this possibility, only to have life sneak up. Life sneaks up all the time. Too often, too soon, too young, too unfairly. What I do know is that I don’t want to live a life in fear or worry. That I want to marry, have kids, die an old man, but who doesn’t. When I was younger I wanted many more things. As time has passed and they never came to be, I let those dreams pass for other opportunities.
What the future holds is a mystery to me. I may get hit by a bus, I may die a 90 year old man sitting in my rocking chair. I could get cancer when I’m 50, survive, then fall and break my hip when I’m 60 which forms a blood clot to my brain. You just never know.
News?
Is written news ever as exciting as a good picture? I believe not. But I don’t have any pictures to post, and since I always have a lot to say, and feel the site is in need of an update; here I go.
The show at Iron Works in Berkeley is all setup and underway. The new year is here and feels like it has wings of its own as days are already flying by.
On the Horizon: rock climbing, slot canyons?, new employment, weight race with my roommate (him down to 220, and me up to 180. currently 280:165), MS in Counseling MFT @ CSU.
Early Morning Hike in Jackson Hole
I took this picture Thanksgiving of 2006. It was a beautiful hike up the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort!
Self Portrait
I needed a portrait for the article accompanying the show. I took a bunch last week and picked this one. But I look so serious! Next I have to write a bio.
Final Show Selections
I have made the final selections for the show. The Preliminary Picks are the final photos, and I’ve added one more photo from a climbing trip, as seen below.
Getaway
I took a weekend away. I intended on driving up I-80 looking for a used to be Port to take pictures. I had heard that Port Costa was a good place to start, but upon arrival I found an interesting however small, used to be , town.
I walked around and took some pictures of the area. I thought about having a beer in the very quaint, and definitely my style bar/restaurant. But it was only one in the afternoon and I still felt like I had a long day ahead of me. I decided I’d keep driving. I felt the pull of the mountains calling me. Having not spent much time in the Sierra’s, but the knowledge of them constantly teasing me to make my way out there. I had packed some light camping stuff just in case I found myself far away from home, and a part of me was really hoping I would.
I drove for about six hours, and ended up near the Bear Valley Ski Area. I saw a mountain pass on my atlas and decided that would be my destination. The towns I passed were occupied by less than a hundred people and as the elevation increased the populations only got smaller. This was definitely what I was looking for.
The plan was to buy some groceries and cook some food on my camp stove at where ever I found to crash for the night. I couldn’t find a grocery store with enough of a selection to eat from, and ended up stopping at a place called “Double Burger” which specializes in, go ahead guess.
That sloppy greasy six dollar stack of what once probably resembled meat filled me up, and I took off on down the road heading for yet higher elevations and camping.
I hadn’t taken very many pictures up to this point, except for a handful in Port Costa, but, and this is a big but here, I had been playing around with a new lightmeter for my RB67 and forgot to reset the ISO to the film I was using… which means I exposed the 50 ISO film I was shooting at 1000 ISO. Yup that’s fifty versus one thousand, not a typo. Way beyond what could have been salvaged through push processing. Laughing it off, after a brief bout with anger over the discovery, I changed the lightmeter to 50 and exposed the rest of the roll at various scenics, and lakes en route to my night stay.
I found a great camping site just off the main road. An inconspicious dirt road that passed through tight trees and rocks into a larger circular clearing. I took these pictures as I waited for nightfall.
I meditated in the sunrise the next morning. Perched on top of a large outcropping of rocks over looking the single lane highway (single lane as in no yellow line single), the valley, and far off mountains. It was a great weekend. I shot three rolls in the RB.
Email response from Dr. Dangour’s Office
Dear Fred
Thank you for your email. The study focused solely on nutritional content of both organic and conventionally farmed foods. The study was carried out by public health nutritionists and not toxicologists so pesticide use was outside the remit of the research. Further research into pesticides may be useful. If you would like to learn more, you can download the full report from the Food Standards Agency website http://www.food.gov.uk/news/newsarchive/2009/jul/organic.
I hope you have found this information helpful.
Kind regards
Gemma
Gemma Howe
Press Office
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Keppel Street
London
WC1E 7HT
It seems as though a peer review should have noted that a missing element from this study would be the lack of evidence into toxicology effects of non-organic foods, this was a study funded by “Food Standards Agency.”
They even go so far as to claim,
”The FSA commissioned this research as part of its commitment to giving consumers accurate information about their food, based on the most up-to-date science.”
Perhaps they were using a calendar system only up to a previous date, say 1945. The most up-to-date science would have perhaps included a full chemical analysis instead of just looking for the specifics they wanted to find?
The published review does state:
This review does not address contaminant content (such as herbicide, pesticide and fungicide residues) of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, or the environmental impacts of organic and conventional agricultural practices.
It seems as though they were preparing for a firestorm on their findings rather than address an apparent flaw in the research because the previous paragraph states:
This systematic review of the available published literature was designed to review the evidence of differences in putative health effects of organically compared with conventionally produced foodstuffs.
These two statements are in contradiction of each other. They declare their own ignorance of the toxicology aspects as though doing so relieves them of the burden of writing a hypothesis that accounts for all aspects of the “putative health effects” of the food they studied. Perhaps they should have rewritten their hypothesis to be, “the systemic review of the available published literature was designed to review the evidence for the claims of nutruitional advantages of organically produced foodstuffs commpared with conventionally prepared foodstuffs*.”
* The narrative review highlighted several short-comings in the design, interpretation and reporting of the studies included in the review. (this was taken directly from their paper)
Barring a complete examination of all relevant information as it pertains to the impact on human health seems to be a drastic oversight when coming to a conclusion as to whether a ‘foodstuff’ has a beneficial, or not, impact. This is a classic example of excluding information that contradicts a studies hypothesis.
Email to Organic Study Participating Author
I decided to write one of the author’s of this study. He was quoted in several articles specifically refuting the nutritious benefits of organic food. While I understand why they took on this specific point, it seems that a major flaw in the study is to ignore the major premise for which organic food came into popularity, and is the definition from which organic is derived. Here is the email I wrote:
Dear Dr. Dangour,
To say that I was saddened to see this article flourishing in the news
media would be an understatement. I decided to write you because so
often the media delves into the scientific realm with little
understanding of the conclusions they draw. As such I am curious to
know if the study you participated in did in fact ignore what is left
out of organic foods?
For me to jump to the assumption that the study ignored the conditions
under which a food is labeled ‘Organic,’ mainly the lack of pesticide
application, would render me no better than the linear thinking media.
Would you be so kind as to inform me of the difference between what
the media is reporting and what the study you participated in found?
Thanks,
Fred Finn
‘Organic’ May Not Mean Healthier
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=8206608&page=1
Ok here we go… The media really shouldn’t dabble in science. It makes them look bad.
This article states, “British review of studies done over the past 50 years, organic and conventionally produced foods have about the same nutrient content, suggesting that neither is better in terms of health benefits.”
Isn’t the whole debate about organic growing not about the overall nutrient level, but about the pesticides used in production which then make their way into water, soils, and insects develop immunity which leads to more pesticides which leads to increased immunity and so on, and so on, and so on?
Why is the media chasing the white rabbit down the hole? Perhaps the headline should read, “‘Organic’ Does not mean more nutrients,” or “‘Organic’ uses lest pesticides but doesn’t mean more nutrients,” or “Journalists pretend to understand science when deriving cause and effect relationships from correlations” (my personal favorite).
Short of getting into a debate over why organic is or isn’t better for you, or the farming practices that place a greater burden on independet farmers, or the impact pesticides have on the bigger picture environment (both globally and locally). The author does acknowledge the pesticide issue in revelance to children, and the disappearance of pesticide residue in urine after only 5 days on an organic diet, but I can’t help notice that the overall tone in this article is that ‘Organic’ somehow isn’t living up to some standard; which the author feels, and states, that ‘Organic’ food was the magic pill that would fill all of the missing nutritional needs of the people. In the end it seems as though the media, once again, is crushed by the realization of it’s own lie. They built up ‘Organic’ food to be the savior of the people, and now they’ll tear it down for being something it never was to begin with.
What did ‘Ogranic’ food ever do to you? Well other than decrease the amount of pesticide residue in your urine, which is only the stuff your body couldn’t filter out… hmmmm.