illustration friday: muddy

illustration friday: clumsy

illustration friday: wilderness

illustration friday: confined

Ridiculous

But who's surprised?

"The Environmental Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush, according to documents released by the EPA."

Read the rest of the article in today's Washington Post.

the intricacies of eco-accounting

oh, my poor neglected blog...life's been keeping me way too busy...

but i came across this article today and had to post. it's good to be aware of how much pollution we are causing and try to reign it in, right? but when the calculations are parsed ad infinitum (i had to look that up) it becomes discouraging and counterproductive. witness today's new york times:

"If you walk 1.5 miles, Mr. Goodall calculates, and replace those calories by drinking about a cup of milk, the greenhouse emissions connected with that milk (like methane from the dairy farm and carbon dioxide from the delivery truck) are just about equal to the emissions from a typical car making the same trip. And if there were two of you making the trip, then the car would definitely be the more planet-friendly way to go.

These results would vary, of course, depending on exactly what kind of car you’re using and what kind of food you eat (or, if you’re going by pedicab, what kind of food your cabbie eats)."

analyzing every potentially pollution-causing decision i have to make in a day like this would cause my head to explode. i'm sticking with the imperfect but livable strategy of prioritizing where i can have the most impact, conserving when possible, using common sense, and not sweating the small stuff.

Time on Yoga

Time has a short online article today on the risks of Yoga.

"Over the past three years, 13,000 Americans were treated in an emergency room or a doctor's office for yoga-related injuries, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission."

This begs the question, how does this statistic compare to other popular workouts? Yes there are risks, as with any type of exercise, and yoga practitioners are (or at least should be!) taught not to push their bodies beyond their limits.

Yes, yoga may not burn as many calories as calisthenics, and it is not a weight-loss method - it is certainly not for everybody. But the increased flexibility, balance and strength (yes, strength - try a plank or down-dog pose series if you don't believe me) that can be gained from regular yoga practice are a big factor in its popularity. I find it too bad that this article fails to present a balanced view of both risks and benefits alike - I would expect better from a mainstream publication such as Time.