"Are you kidding me with your f-ing farm skyscraper?"

DIRECTIONS Horizontal versus Vertical

A couple of weeks ago, I watched a panel discussion off MASNYC on the viability of commercial-scale organic food production in fully-equipped hydroponic skyscrapers aka vertical farming. And my thoughts exactly: "Are you kidding me with your f-ing farm skyscraper?"

Okay - the buildings - they look ridiculously beautiful and they'd be built to support local, organic food production in urban areas. Thumbs up! But how much are these vegetables going to cost? And what about the thousands of existing urban acres brimming with the products of neglect: hot cracked asphalt, trash piles, crack addicts galore. I think it'd be way more cost-efficient to kill a bunch of birds with just a couple of existing stones; invest in urban agriculture on the ground to beautify and clean up neighborhoods while providing local produce. Kids might even get the chance to figure out how carrots grow from the ground and not from expensive fancy eco-friendly platinum starred skyscrapers.

"Why re-invent the wheel?" outside of fun & excitement. I really think that the infrastructure is already there for the horizontal:

LAND - lots of neglected urban land, ugly & wasted.
LABOR - lots of unemployed laborers looking for work.
DEMAND - local food is all the rage, people are hungry, and obesity sucks.
KNOWLEDGE - lots of people know how, especially immigrants, your grandma probably knows how.
CAPITAL - minimal start-up costs compared to those skyscrapers. though i'd like to learn more about this.
POLITICS - again, local, healthy, sustainable, [more buzz words] foods are all the rage. politicians & michelle obama love this stuff.

SOME BIRDS TO KILL - neglected urban space, unemployment, hunger, obesity, incompetency

When the above has been addressed, then sure, let's go for the vertical option if we still need it. I think Despommier is probably a really well-intentioned, smart man, but I think as a prof. of medicine and public health, he may need to study up on his "traditional farming" before trying to one-up it. Maybe I'm missing something, too.

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More technical arguments: "Advantages of Vertical Farming" (from website, response in color)

Year-round crop production; 1 indoor acre is equivalent to 4-6 outdoor acres or more, depending upon the crop (e.g., strawberries: 1 indoor acre = 30 outdoor acres) Seasonality?; horizontal organic intensive techniques exist.

No weather-related crop failures due to droughts, floods, pests Rather, it would be energy & input-dependent.

All VF food is grown organically: no herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers All farming was organic until recently.

VF virtually eliminates agricultural runoff by recycling black water Energy-dependence -> coal, oil ->runoff.

VF returns farmland to nature, restoring ecosystem functions and services What is "nature?"

VF greatly reduces the incidence of many infectious diseases that are acquired at the agricultural interface

VF converts black and gray water into potable water by collecting the water of evapotranspiration Energy-dependence -> black & gray water.

VF adds energy back to the grid via methane generation from composting non-edible parts of plants and animals How will plants be fertilized if not from composting or fertilizers? Also possible in horizontal.

VF dramatically reduces fossil fuel use (no tractors, plows, shipping.) How do you make steel, glass, & plastic?

VF converts abandoned urban properties into food production centers Horizontal does, too, w/greater accessibility.

VF creates sustainable environments for urban centers Horizontal does, too, but improves on the existing ecosystem.

VF creates new employment opportunities Horizontal does too, with more opps for entrepreneurs & small business.

We cannot go to the moon, Mars, or beyond without first learning to farm indoors on earth Is giving up on the earth a practical approach?

VF may prove to be useful for integrating into refugee camps

VF offers the promise of measurable economic improvement for tropical and subtropical LDCs. If this should prove to be the case, then VF may be a catalyst in helping to reduce or even reverse the population growth of LDCs as they adopt urban agriculture as a strategy for sustainable food production.

VF could reduce the incidence of armed conflict over natural resources, such as water and land for agriculture The political nature/root causes of those conflicts may manifest in other forms.

not okay

NOT OKAY Upper Sproul, Spring 2008

I just read an article about the "Kill Team" in Afghanistan. My first reaction is: oh damn, sucks, but it happens, the whole of war is messed up, acceptance, move on. But today, I actually read through the explicit details of the story, and it hit me a little harder than usual. The last time I remotely felt this way was three years ago in my Controlling Processes class. Our guest speaker was this guy named Dahr Jamail who used to be a mountain guide in Alaska, who up and left for Iraq in 2003 to find out what was going on first hand.

During the lecture, he stood at the podium and simply described the nuances of what he observed. Stuff like how the streets over there don't have clear addresses like we do here, so it was common for military personnel to wrongly (and knowingly) detain, question, and harass civilians from incorrect locations for indeterminate lengths of time. No defenses, no lawyers, no complaining.

I know that if someone ever did this to me, my family, or a friend, I'd simply explode, kaput, and probably develop some kind of hard and vengeful, paranoid outlook on life :/

I just remember after the lecture, I went on my usual way home through Upper Sproul, except this time I stopped at the fountain, sat for a while, and broke down. It's not something I have a habit of doing, either. I really couldn't help it. It just hit me. A stranger even tried to console me and all I could say was, "the Iraq war [sobs]." I don't know my American idioms too well, but I guess in a different way, the devil lies in the details. I'm not sure why I'm writing this, but I know that I don't ever want to forget how I felt then, not numb, not cold, not okay with it.

Difficulty Reading

DIFFICULTY Reading

^Franny and Zooey in existential crisis!

A Confession. In my many years of formal education, 19 years to be exact (gross!), I've only read through a handful of books to their very last pages. Maybe 20 in my lifetime. I too quickly give up if I'm not immediately captured by the words, due to a lack of patience, I think. Luckily, and/or unfortunately, I've been able to successfully write entire essays and participate in meaningful discussions without completely reading material first hand, as in the case of the classics I've sadly never come to finish: To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tale of Two Cities, The Scarlet Letter, 1984, Dante's Inferno, to name a few. I even took a semester-long seminar solely dedicated to that last one. In a way, I feel I've faked my way out of it perhaps intentionally, keeping myself ignorant at a distance. It's fun to guess sometimes, I don't know. I don't care to know. In the end, I'm pretty sure I'll never finish these books 'cause I simply have no desire to.

So it was a relief to find some exceptions this past year: Truman Capote and J.D. Salinger, so far. Especially Truman Capote. I read through Breakfast at Tiffany's today in one sitting, which NEVER happens. It's pretty short, but I'm also a pretty slow reader since I have to sound out all the words in my head to hear them. His collection of short stories, Music for Chameleons, is my favorite. Something about the rhythm and sound of the words, and how it's all arranged to create meaning, sort of like music. J.D. Salinger's, Franny and Zooey, too. In strict terms of plot, it's completely dull: Franny reads this book, freaks out, and lies on the couch for a while. Her brother, Zooey, lies in a bathtub, walks around the house, and consoles her. But the language and the substance, for chrissake, GODDAM.

My problem, I'm sure, is that I haven't actively pursued or explored literature with any faith. So I'm hoping to change that and give it a try after all these years. Trying to get my eyes off the computer screen and back into my imagination. Next stop: Oscar Wilde. He's supposed to be witty, right?

Some stuff from Breakfast at Tiffany's:

I came home to find outside my door a grand-luxe Charles & Co. basket with her card: Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling: and scribbled on the back in a freakishly awkward, kindergarten hand: Bless you darling Fred. Please forgive the other night. You were an angel about the whole thing. Mille tendresse - Holly. P.S. I won't bother you again. I replied, Please do, and left this note at her door with what I could afford, a bunch of street-vendor violets.

And,

the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects; she'd made them ornamental by admitting them boldly. Heels that emphasized her height, so steep her ankles trembled; a flat tight bodice that indicated she could go to a beach in bathing trunks, hair that was pulled straight back, accentuating the spareness, the starvation of her fashion-model face. Even the stutter, certainly genuine but a bit laid on, had been turned to an advantage. It was the master of stroke, that stutter; for it contrived to make her banalities sound somehow original.

And,

They've had the old clap-yo'-hands so many times it amounts to applause.

pretty informative

VISUALIZATION infoaesthetics

So much to visualize.

Check out the 2011 Federal Budget on NYT's interactive infographic. Pretty raw, but does the job.

"twitter"

So I've heard of this thing called, "Twitter." You know, that thing that does the message thing thinger. I hear it's all the rage. Well, I signed up for an account finally and ended up subscribing to some random people/orgs. And I learned that March is National Frozen Food Month -_-

LA Food

REGIONAL LA Food Policy Council

"Good Food For All Agenda"

Before last night, I didn't even know that there was a real food movement in LA. My bad, now I know.

Just two months old, the LA Food Policy Council is working to capture and coordinate the momentum of LA's food movement to make policy tools that will provide a more secure/sustainable regional food system for Los Angeles. Priorities: boosting regional economies, market building, hunger elimination, improving equitable access, facilitating urban agriculture, and food system education. They've come out with a comprehensive report, the Good Food For All Agenda, with full-on charts, graphs, stats, and next step recommendations.

I'm especially interested in the regional economy aspect of the movement because I think our current economy is too insecure, dependent on outside fickleness over which we have little control. Like foreign oil supplies and failed banks :( For the sake of economic resilience, I think investment in local entrepreneurs along with increased regional circulation of funds might be worthwhile. (I'd prefer a cute family business to a faceless one anyways since they're more likely to invest and recirculate funds within the region.)

Apparently, until the fifties, LA County was the largest agricultural producer in the US. Who knew. Currently, LA County spends about $25 billion per year on food. We can at least try to capture more of that $ and profit some off our sunny weather, fertile land, and readily available labor, because who can live without eating? The market is there. Might as well use our unique position in CA to build a stronger piece of the economy through food by facilitating the growth of community-based/family-owned growers, distributors, vendors, restaurants, businesses, etc.

(Although, one of the major road blocks I can think of is that of subsidies, and that's a whole 'nother discussion that deals with the distortion of price, competition, real value, okay it's time for me to run away now.)

100th Anniversary

STATS Women in Science & Engineering

I remember an ecology teacher at Cal telling us how amazed she was to see so many girls in her classes. During her time there were supposedly very few women professors in science & engineering. So I looked it up, and I guess it's true: six times more male S&E faculty in 1987. I know at least in my bio & ecology classes at Cal, I was mostly around Caucasian and Asian girls, so it's sort of cool to see how some things have progressed over our lifetimes. (Though I know there are still a bunch of depressing statistics out there that tell us otherwise, OF COURSE! I.e. only 17% of the US Congress is represented by women, a record high, what?!) Happy 100th International Women's Day!

Always Jane Jacobs

INTERVIEW Jane Jacobs Medal Winners 2008

MASNYC, the Municipal Arts Society of New York, "fights for a more livable New York, and advocates for intelligent urban planning, design, and preservation."

I think if I'm to have any long term goal in my life, it's to be on the level of a Jane Jacob Medalist: someone who can cleverly transform a problem into an asset.

"You can make absolutely a difference. You just have to understand what your talents and skills are, identify a problem or concern you have and are committed to, and you can begin to make a difference." - Peggy Shepard

"We're not looking for people to give us things. In the end that perpetuates a cycle of disempowerment. We're looking to be respected as engaged citizens of this city in determining what is best for ourselves, our future, in partnership with policymakers, agency heads, and elected officials." - Alexie Torres-Fleming