Media pics

James Hill of the New York Times has just created an interesting photo essay about Russia and the way of life of rural farmers, called "Russia: The Land". It's a bit romantic at times, but the images are beautiful and give a picture of Russia we don't get to see much anymore in the West.

I also highly recommend the SNL parody of an interview with Sarah Palin. Brilliant.

Celebrating Barack in Hungary

I'd been waiting a long time for someone to make this pun! Finally, Americans in Hungary for Obama are hosting the "Peachfest" in Budapest. Barack in Hungarian means peach, so Obama's first name has lovely sweet associations for Hungarian speakers, if a bit funny. Oszibarack is peach, sargabarack is apricot, kopasz barack is nectarine. Mmmmm, Barack.

Russian troops in Georgia

oh shit. i hope my friend doing work in georgia is going to be okay.

Purslane: Weeds, Food, and the Politics and Ethics of Nomenclature

THINKING ABOUT WEEDS, READING ABOUT WEEDS, DIGGING ABOUT WEEDS
Now that I've been gardening more, I've also been reading a ton online about plants and gardening.

Today I was reading more about weeds, which I've been thinking about a lot lately, as I become more familiar with the plants native to Michigan, the ones that are invasive, and the ones that are introduced but are not considered problematic.

WEED IDENTIFICATION RESOURCES: IMAGE GALLERIES, DATABASES
One thing I've been exploring a lot is the various weed databases that are around. Rutgers University has a really handy weed gallery with thumbnail photographs of the plants, helpful if you aren't as familiar with botany as some databases require the researcher to be. (The Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research weed identification tool, for example, though it is also very useful, asks you to specify the characteristics of a number of plant features to conclude what your weed is, which may overwhelm the neophyte gardener.) For Michigan, there's also a common weed seedlings gallery, which is, interestingly, much more comprehensive than the noxious and restricted weeds list for Michigan. (Ergonica will help you find your way to a similar list for your region, if you aren't local to MI.)

THINKING MORE IN-DEPTH ABOUT WEEDS
Today I came upon this fabulously interesting reading on weeds: course notes from a weed science course taught by Dr. Alan York at North Carolina State University. Although from an anthropological perspective, the idea of a plant "interfering with human activities" calls for some deconstruction and consideration, what's really great about the information he presents is that he deals in much more specific terms about the particular problems weeds pose to human populations than most sources I've come upon: "health hazards," "water management," "safety issues," etc. His detailed, quantified explanations of the reduced crop output of crops given particular levels of weed interference are particularly helpful for understanding the problem of weeds from his perspective.

THREATS TO BIODIVERSITY
Similarly, as someone generally concerned about the diversity of life on the planet, and with the conservation of (relatively) uncultivated land and its species, I'm chilled when I hear the Michigan State University's Invasive Species Initiative has to say about garlic mustard: "Garlic mustard is an exotic invasive plant from Europe that invades woodland habitats in North America and impacts forest biodiversity. In some woodlands, dense stands of garlic mustard in the spring threaten showy spring blooming ephemerals like spring beauty, trilliums and trout lilies. Other research points toward potentially negative impacts on timber species and forest health. Many land managers consider it to be one of the most potentially harmful and difficult to control invasive plants in the region." (See more on the Garlic Mustard Initiative, including photos, here.)

PURSLANE: THE PROBLEM OF CULTURE
But, to get back to what I mean about the deconstruction needed in thinking about weeds "interfering with human activities" (in Alan York's language), consider the example of purslane. (Thanks very much to Scrumptious, my dear friend who blogs about her CSA adventures in San Francisco, for pointing out this problem to me!) Purslane is called a "severe weed pest in vegetable crops and newly seeded turf" by the Rutgers University Agricultural Experiment Station. It gets a similar rap from most folks in the American mainstream. Yet, according to the organization Annadana, it was cultivated over 4000 years ago, and has been eaten for at least 1000 years by people in the Southwestern area of the United States. It's used by healers in the Andes, was used by Mayans in the Yucatan, and is grown as a vegetable in Africa. The Australian Naturopathic Network indicates it has been used also by Australian Aborigines, peoples in India and the Middle East.

As Rosemary Barron writes for the Weston A. Price Foundation for Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts, "the FDA lists purslane as a pervasive weed (the 7th worst, worldwide) but to those of us who love its earthy, slightly acidic flavor and crisp, succulent stems and leaves, the word ‘weed’ hardly seems fair." She explains further, "Medieval herbals describe purslane as ‘cold,’ meaning that it was considered a cure for a ‘burning’ (or malfunctioning) heart and liver. Greeks call it a ‘blood-cleansing’ herb. In Mexico, purslane is considered good for diabetics. Recent research has confirmed that purslane is one of the best vegetable sources of omega-3 fatty acids, as well as carotenes and vitamin C."

The CSA folks and naturopaths are clued into the human benefits of this plant. It's gotten the attention of medical researchers as well as the New York Times food and dining section. So why does the FDA still classify it as a weed? What exactly are the human activities with which it's interfering? Stretching green lawns in front of our domiciles that offer nothing to humans or beneficial animals in the way of foodstuffs?

Moreover, why does the American Heart Association not mention purslane anywhere in its omega-3 recommendations? Given the rising cost of food and devastating environmental problems leading to concerns about transportation of food, it should be much more widely publicized that the plant most Americans are trying to weed out of their lawns could actually help save their lives by reducing their risk of coronary heart disease, without paying a single penny to a pharmaceutical company.

Promoting the home cultivation and consumption of this omega-3-rich vegetable could also circumvent the problem that the recommendations for twice-a-week fish consumption, if it actually could be afforded financially by everyone in the population (a BIG if in a society -not to mention a world- with such great wealth disparities as ours has), would so much further contribute to overfishing that it would destroy the world's fisheries.

People. It's time to think about sustainability seriously, and not to treat it as something outside the purview of health sciences. We need to think seriously about how we live, if we want to continue to do it on this planet.


SOME RELEVANT HEALTH RESEARCH:
Ezekwe, Michael O., Thomas R. Omara-Alwala, Tadesse Membrahtu. "Nutritive characterization of purslane accessions as influenced by planting date." Plant Foods for Human Nutrition. Sept 1999 v53 i3 p183(9).

Guil-Guerrero, Jose L., and Ignacio Rodriguez-Garcia. "Lipids classes, fatty acids and carotenes of the leaves of six edible wild plants." European Food Research and Technology A 209.5 (Sept 1999): 313(4).

Purslane eyed as rich food source - US weed has beneficial nutrients
Agricultural Research, Dec, 1992, by Sean Adams

Simopoulos AP. "The omega-6/omega-3 fatty acid ratio, genetic variation, and cardiovascular disease" ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NUTRITION. 2008;17 Sup.1:131-134.
Simopoulos AP, Norman HA, Gillaspy JE, Duke JA. Common purslane: A source of omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants. J Am College Nutr. 1992;11:374-382.

Simopoulos AP, Norman HA, Gillaspy JE. Purslane in human nutrition and its potential for world agriculture. World Rev Nutr Diet. 1995;77:47-74.

Simopoulos AP, Salem N Jr. Purslane: a terrestrial source of omega-3 fatty acids. N Engl J Med. 1986;315:833.

Simopoulos AP, Gopalan C (Eds). Plants in Human Health and Nutrition Policy. World Rev Nutr Diet, Basel: Karger, vol. 91, 2003.

Zeghichi S, Kallithrka S, Simopoulos AP, Kypriotakis Z. Nutritional composition of selected wild plants in the diet of Crete. World Rev Nutr Diet. 2003;91:22-40.

Simopoulos AP. Omega-3 fatty acids in wild plants, seeds and nuts. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2002;11(S6):S163-S173.

Simopoulos AP. Omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants in edible wild plants. Biol Res. 2004;37:263-277.

Love Client #9

Ha! My favorite commentary on Spitzer thus far.


(Discovered through Vinylboy20, friend of a friend on Livejournal, who has his own commentary on the subject).

From Ann Arbor to Rajasthan to the Nile

Tonight I saw "In the Trail of the Ghawazee: Gypsy Dances from Rajasthan to the Nile" with Leila Haddad and the Ghawazee musicians of Luxor, thanks to a friend who got some extra tickets and kindly invited me. I was about ready to pass out because I'm so tired from grading and everything. (Okay, part of the effect is due to the fun of celebrating K&J's engagement last night!!) But the music and dancing were quite beautiful, and it was humanizing to be with friends doing something besides my everyday labor. I couldn't help but think of my friend and his research on the Gypsies of Rajasthan, though, and our informal interviewing of groupies in the audience at the Sziget a few years ago.

Yesterday I saw a lecture on the origins of domestic food production by the illustrious Kent Flannery, entitled: "The creation of agriculture: So easy a caveman could do it." Katie and I were both excited to learn about teocinte.

Contract negotiations continue for the University of Michigan graduate student instructors, via the Graduate Employees Organization. There's serious talk of a possible walk-out, depending how the conversation goes over the next couple of weeks. We've already extended our expired contract for a couple of weeks to allow for additional negotiations.

Meanwhile, there's a policy change called "continuous enrollment" being discussed at U of M's Rackham graduate school that has lots of us very concerned, to the point that the Dean met with the Graduate Student Forum today and there's another lunch meeting with the dean being scheduled for students by the GSF in another week or two. The arguments in favor of the change that were presented by the dean today centered primarily around (a) the data on degree completion from research that included both institutions that have such a policy and institutions that don't, and the apparent fact that the policy will, in fact, be revenue neutral, and (b) that the decrease in candidacy tuition will counterbalance the increase in semesters of enrollment while a candidate.

There are many issues being raised among students and faculty in disciplines that depend on extended field research in discussions that I don't want to go into here, but a couple of the things that puzzled me about what she said yesterday were the following: (1) she indicated that the cost of tuition is set by a different body than Rackham, who obviously would preside over this policy. So in principle the candidacy tuition could rise at a later date, making the argument b look rather less convincing. (2) While the dean indicated that data that include all disciplines in sciences and humanities indicate that the rate of completion of degree is higher when continuous enrollment policies are in place, when pressed by a student in the GSF with the question "Do institutions with continuous enrollment policies have greater degree completion rates than the University of Michigan?," she said that those data were unavailable, but that anecdotal evidence indicates that there are some that have better rates of completion and others that have far worse.

. . .

My neck pain is excruciating after grading my undergraduates' papers. I'm almost through all of the 75. I know I can't afford a massage, but I may need to find a way to pay for it anyway, because I can hardly turn my head. I wish there were affordable acupuncture in Ann Arbor.

I almost missed the most exciting news! My dear friend Eri just had her baby. I don't know exactly what time, or the stats or anything. But they both look positively radiant in the photos.

Cancerous ignorance is bliss.

From the Society of Environmental Journalists:

GREAT LAKES STUDY SUPPRESSED

"For more than seven months, the nation's top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially 'alarming information' as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates," reports the Center for Public Integrity.

Chris De Rosa, former director of the division of toxicology and environmental medicine at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), has charged that he was demoted for writing the report.

That claim may be harder to evaluate, because it seems ATSDR (housed at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta) may have demoted De Rosa for writing another report — the one saying formaldehyde in FEMA trailers distributed after Hurricane Katrina was a health risk. CDC has been accused of suppressing that information also.

The original peer reviewers of the study reportedly had no major problems with it and still want it published.

The House Science Committee has begun an investigation into the matter.

• "Congressional Committee Probes Killing of Great Lakes Cancer Report," Twin Cities Daily Planet, February 21, 2008, by Eartha Jane Melzer, Minnesota Monitor.
• "Great Lakes Danger Zones?" Center for Public Integrity, Feb. 7, 2008, by Sheila Kaplan.
• "Delay of Report Is Blamed on Politics," Washington Post, February 18, 2008, by Kari Lydersen.
• "Toxic Info Withheld," Living On Earth, Steve Curwood interviews De Rosa on show airdated week of Feb. 15, 2008

Thanks to a friend on LJ for sharing this report.

This New York Times article on violent offenses by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans conveys exactly the kind of human costs I knew this country wasn't prepared for when George W. Bush pushed us into this war, and I wept as I walked down the street in Austin, marveling at the futility of us 10s of thousands of anti-war protesters in the capital of his home state, railing against the inevitable. I felt embarrassed at the time, that I couldn't hold it together. Now, I think there was a kind of premonition in my reaction.

What is absurd to me is that there isn't thorough treatment for all the military personnel coming back from this war. Given the military culture, it's unreasonable to expect a questionnaire to be an adequate screening tool, and it's irresponsible to do anything less than an individual assessment for each and every person who is expected to make the transition from holding a weapon with the express purpose of causing injury and death to an enemy, to going about everyday life in a civilian world. I believe the US government bears far more responsibility in these cases than the NYT is in a position to argue. And I believe that this article is a fine illustration of how woefully underestimated the enduring costs of this war have been, and continue to be, by this regime.

European Integration and Franco-German R&B

Sometimes I just have to think that Europeans do it with more style. I can't say I love the R&B number that the French and German foreign ministers have just recorded on the theme of European integration, but the concept of working with artists and new media to demonstrate a sentiment is one that I can subscribe to, and there's a freshness and a candor about their message of inclusivity and the appreciation of cultural diversity in the new Europe that I can't imagine too many of our politicians generating.

As they explained on the PR Newswire, "Steinmeier and Kouchner brought two messages with them as they met and exchanged ideas with the young people in the studio in Berlin's diversNeukolln neighborhood. "We are not here to learn how to sing," Steinmeier said. "We want to show that we benefit from the abundance of cultures. Even with all the mistakes, the omissions in the process of integration, there are successful cooperations," Steinmeier said. The second message, he said, is that young artists tell their own people: Learn German, get training." There's something intriguing about the promotion of German language here too . . . and something telling in a French minister singing along to the German lyrics.

The song, by the way, was written by Muhabett, a German-Turkish musician, and a 17-year-old budding artist, Sefo. The style is apparently a newly emerging one called R'nBesk, which "combines American R&B, Turkish Arabesk and Pop with German lyrics" (PRNewswire).

And just for your enjoyment, here's a video of the ministers jamming with the musicians and a handful of other energetic youngsters. It's even better than the clip I heard on PRI's The World the other night on my car radio (pretty much locked in place on NPR).