For me, there are three tenants at the heart of this growing movement.  The first is to put our food dollars back into farmers’ pockets, as opposed to the pockets of the corporate giants of industrial agriculture (Monsanto, Cargill, Archer-Daniels-Midland).  The second is to stop the inefficiency of using more energy (fossil fuel) calories in the production of our food than actual food calories created, and to stop dousing our farmland with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.  The third is to treat the animals that we eat with a certain measure of respect and humaneness, which includes letting these animals live the way they were evolved to live.  This includes the apparently difficult-to-understand notion of letting a cow graze on grass, rather than pumping it full of corn.

A large consequence of ensuring the above is that, yes, your food will cost more, though now you will actually be paying a price for your food proportional to the costs it took to produce it.

Often, farmers are getting paid less per bushel of corn than it cost to grow it.  Another example is that for every $1 of corn sweetener produced, the farmer only gets $0.04.  Our food dollars are flowing to the “producers” of value-added products like the chicken nugget, instead of to the growers (the farmers).

The farmers that I have met and whose farms I have also visited are the hardest working people you will ever come across.  To complain about paying a FAIR price for your eggs, produce, poultry, beef, etc., and then turning and blowing $60 on a night of drinking, or even more on the newest iPhone/other gadget is the height of chutzpah.

Naturally there are families out there for whom the increased cost of local/organic/sustainable food represents quite the burden, but I would argue that most of the people I have spoken to on this topic do not fall into this category.

The problem as I see it is a lack of basic knowledge of where one’s food comes from.  I challenge anyone to take this first step of tracking or at least trying to track the food they eat on a daily basis, and to examine the consequences of eating meat and produce grown using industrial methods.

Just start there.  And then please tell me what’s elitist about local/organic/sustainable.

Looking back on my (even by my standards) erratic behavior that night I have decided I am shameless enough to share it with you, my loyal readers.  I am at best mildly superstitious, so I definitely surprised myself with the extent to which I jumped off the deep-end as tip-off approached.

This version of the Celtics had had a fairly lackluster year and then proceeded to surprise its fans with a spirited and highly entertaining playoff run all the way to the Finals.  The first six games were extremely hard fought and with the Celtics getting blown out in Game 6 in LA, everything came down to a final game.  I had a bad feeling from the minute I woke up on the day of the game, though on my walk to work that morning I found a $5 bill.  For whatever reason, I took this to be a good omen.

The second good omen of the day was when I found out that the Ferry Building Farmer’s Market was going to be selling sour cherries, my all-time favorite fruit.  It’s only around for a few weeks each year, so I am always thrilled when they are back in season.

So how did I get from a couple of good omens, to superstition?  I don’t actually know.  The idea just kind of materialized organically in my head.  All I can say is that I decided all of a sudden that the only way the Celtics were winning this game was if I did my part.  Which meant what you may ask?  Here goes nothing:

I first decided that I needed to display my first good omen of the day (the $5 bill) on my coffee table in the living room.  Then I decided that I would drink exactly 2 Sam Adams Summer Ales during the first half.  Thirdly, I decided to eat some of my second good omen (sour cherries) throughout the game.  Lastly, I decided to bring back a mini-tradition from college.  When the Boston Red Sox came back against the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series in 2004, I spoke with my friend Derek during every commercial break after every half inning.  Thus it would also be for Game 7.  I would call him (not the other way around) during every commercial break to discuss how the game was progressing.

So the results were promising, at least for the first half.  The Celtics had chances to pull away, but failed to put much distance between themselves and the Lakers.  They were leading, though, at half-time of a Game 7 in LA.  Not bad at all.

For some reason I wasn’t very comforted by this fact and was even more nervous than when the game had started!  I felt like I had plenty of work left in order for the Celtics to come away with banner number 18.

As I was pacing back and forth like a caged, half-crazed, wild animal, I shockingly noticed that I was out of my Sam Adams Summer Ales.  And to make matters worse, I couldn’t allow myself to leave the apartment (yes, my level of superstition was increasing by the very minute) because that would disrupt my continuous presence in the apartment, which could potentially have a negative effect on the game.

What to do???

Luckily my girlfriend walked through the door at this very moment of realization and I hurriedly explained to her that I needed to drink 2 more Sam Adams during the second half, but I couldn’t leave the apartment for fear that this may upset the good karma I had developed during the first half.  Though she looked at me like I was completely crazy she came through for me and took a trip to the corner store.

As the third quarter progressed, all of my hard work seemed to be paying off.  The Celtics built up a lead of as much as 13!  With just one more little spurt they would be able to pull away for good.  I couldn’t believe it.  With the year they had had and the difficult road they had faced in the playoffs just to get to this point, it was almost unthinkable that the championship trophy was almost theirs.  I happily worked my way through the 2 beers and kept on eating those sour cherries, all while looking at my proudly displayed $5 bill.

And then, as the third quarter came to a close and the fourth quarter got underway it all collapsed.  Damn it all, my efforts had been in vain.  The Celtics never quite gave up, but they certainly ran out of gas.  Even with Kobe Bryant on his way to a 6-24 shooting night, with a 13-point lead, and perhaps one or two defensive stops away from taking the title it was simply not to be.

If this was a post about the game itself, I would now talk about how close Bryant came to an off-season filled with rants about his inability to beat the Celtics.  Or how close the Big Three of the Celtics came to a second title in three years.

But this post was more about the power of superstition, so I will end with a final thought.  Do I truly believe that superstition can lead to an impact on a sporting event?  Probably not.  But I certainly felt its power over a one day period and let me tell you, all rationality quickly disappeared.

Maybe I should try again during the baseball playoffs?

As a result of a confidentiality agreement I have with Moby’s owners I am unable to delve into the details of the project (standard in the field), but rest assured the results were nothing short of spectacular!  I am excited at my future as a BMDC and at what will certainly be a successful and rewarding career.

Yep, that’s right, my first consulting job as a BMDC starts tomorrow.

There aren’t many BMDCs out there (at least in America) that can match my skill-set.  Over twenty years of experience give me the confidence that there isn’t a situation I haven’t encountered with these most majestic and complex dogs.

I have been hired to lead a ten-day project, with my girlfriend as my associate.  She is a relative novice in the field, not yet having achieved her level 1-a certification, but she is indeed qualified for “Pooper Scooper” duties.  She has a ways to go before achieving the top certification within the BMDC field- Level 3-c.

Moby will be the first Bernese Mountain Dog that I will be working with and I have high hopes for what we will be able to achieve over these next 10 days.  I will post results after my time with him is done.

In the meantime, I will be offering a special ten percent discount on my services throughout the month of June.  I look forward to helping you with all of your Bernese Mountain Dog needs.

When the Celtics traded for KG in 2007, I immediately thought of a story I had read about KG being the best player on the 2000 Olympic gold-medal winning team.  On BOTH ends of the court.  From opening night of the 2007-2008 season on, it was incredible to see the energy he brought night in and night out.

Many who know me consider me to be quite the intense personality and I’d like to think that if I were a professional athlete I would also play with more energy and passion than most.  But I don’t even come close to KG’s intensity level.  Practice, pre-season, regular-season, or post-season, you better believe KG is bringing it at 200%.  Just watch him play for a few minutes and remember, this is the tail end of his career.

The man pumps himself up more than any other athlete I have ever seen (though Ray Lewis certainly comes close).  My girlfriend has often shaken her head in amazement after watching KG muttering/screaming to himself after a big bucket or while shooting free-throws.  And she lives with me- I go from sleeping to wide-awake and energetic in about 5 seconds in the morning.

I can only imagine what it would be like to see KG’s intensity on display while grocery shopping or doing any other simple daily activity.  It would probably be mildly disturbing to say the least…  But it certainly is incredible to see him play the game of basketball the way it’s supposed to be played.  It’s exhausting simply watching him!

From Splenda’s own website:

“SPLENDA® is also the brand name for the ingredient sucralose. It is made through a patented, multi-step process that starts with sugar and converts it to a no calorie, non-carbohydrate sweetener. The process selectively replaces three hydrogen-oxygen groups on the sugar molecule with three chlorine atoms. In the case of sucralose, its addition converts sucrose to sucralose, which is essentially inert. The result is an exceptionally stable sweetener that tastes like sugar, but without sugar’s calories. Sucralose isn’t broken down for energy, and is not recognized by the body as a carbohydrate.”

I suspect that many of those Splenda users out there aren’t aware that what you are eating is sugar, with added chlorine, making it indigestible. Naturally, there are plenty of arguments made by the pro-Splenda camp, as well as the anti-Splenda camp, with both citing scientific studies.

No matter what this or that study shows, do you really want to consume a sugar-chlorine mix? Is it worth saving those few extra calories every day?

Unfortunately for many this is an extension of their processed-food-eating ways. All the better to be able to get all the sweetness Americans want, without the calories, right? I say WRONG.

Personally, I’ll continue to reach for sugar, honey, or agave whenever I drink my tea (I don’t sweeten my coffee), and I will certainly continue to stay away from all artificially-sweetened foods.  If you are using enough Splenda every day that it would truly make a significant difference to your total daily calories were you to change back to sugar, then you certainly have a problem.

For starters, maybe you should try and wean yourself off the need for that amount of sweetener!

OK, so maybe you haven’t done this, but I certainly have. A strained muscle simply was not a good enough reason for one of my favorite baseball players, Chipper Jones, to constantly be missing in action. I guess I always thought he could or should “play through it”. Well, the tides have turned. That’s right, I recently experienced my first ever sports injury that didn’t involve spraining an ankle. While playing in a basketball game in a local rec league, I managed to strain my groin. Or more specifically my hip flexor.

The thing is, I didn’t even realize that I had strained it. When the guy I was guarding made a strong move to the basket my hip seized up on me as I tried to react, but I didn’t experience any real pain and I was able to finish the game. The next morning I woke up to some discomfort and pain in the general groin region. Naturally, I had made plans to go skiing for the first time in like 10 years that weekend, and I just couldn’t cancel. Let’s just say that the day on the slopes certainly didn’t help!

After a couple of weeks of inactivity I was still experiencing pain and so I finally went to the doctor, where I was diagnosed with a level one hip flexor strain. LEVEL ONE! Jeez, I thought it was worth at least a level 2, but no, that would have required bruising which I didn’t have.

So, six weeks after my initially injury, and a few sessions of physical therapy later, I finally got on the court again yesterday and (very tentatively) played in my first basketball game. And no, I’m still not completely healed. I am hoping to be pain-free in another week or so, and then it’s finally back to regular workouts and full-speed basketball. (Of course I had just been whipping myself back into shape when I hurt myself, and yes, I know everyone says that.)

The moral here is that I will now never criticize an athlete for missing time due to injury. I gained some much-needed perspective over these past few weeks in attempting to heal from my lowly level one strain. I also learned that it can easily take a couple of months to heal even this relatively minor injury, especially without the expert care that athletes receive (and even for them it can be weeks before they are ready to go again).

Here’s to a hopefully injury-free rest of the year!

For many years now I have had strongly negative feelings towards diamonds, and not only because American society was telling me that in order to get married I would most likely have to shell out by some estimates 2-6 months of my salary on a diamond engagement ring.  Though of course this has never struck me as something to look forward to.

A huge part of my ambivalence is a result of my European upbringing- my parents exchanged simple gold bands on their wedding day, as was (and still mostly is) the custom in Europe.  Almost none of my aunts or even cousins brandish a diamond ring, let along a diamond engagement ring.

Then there’s the recency of the diamond engagement phenomenon.  After a drop in diamond sales lasting two decades, De Beers developed a national advertising campaign to promote diamonds in the 1930s.  “A diamond is forever” came along in 1947, and by 1965 80 percent of American women were the happy recipients of a diamond engagement ring.

So essentially one company, De Beers, decided that the only way for a man to express his everlasting love to a women was to purchase a diamond ring for her, and they set out on a crusade to ensure that this vision became the norm.  We can safely agree that De Beers has succeeded and mightily so.

(Naturally this is simplifying the events leading to the normalcy of a diamond engagement ring, but for the purposes of this discussion I won’t delve any deeper than this.)

One of the major ironies of a diamond engagement ring is how contrary it is to the supposed age of equitable relationships.  A man is expected to provide this ring, while the women has no similar expectations placed on her.  And for me at least, wearing an engagement ring isn’t really a solution because it’s not something that I want.

In a recent discussion with my friend RDP, we narrowed down our problems with the diamond industry to a few key points.

1. De Beers has been able to control supply and thus maintain high prices (though it no longer controls upwards of 80% of the market, it still controls an incredible large share)
2. Blood diamonds- diamonds were historically used to fund conflicts in Africa and though this has been somewhat controlled through the Kimberly Process, there are still diamonds that get through the cracks and it does not regulate cutting and polishing centers
3. There can also be human rights violations, including child labor and worker exploitation, that occur in the process of mining diamonds and this is much more difficult to avoid when purchasing a diamond
4. The environmental degradation resulting from the of mining diamonds is severe

There are ways to get around some of the above issues.  You can solely purchase Canadian diamonds, which come from mines with extremely high environmental and ethical standards, though there aren’t as many Canadian diamonds on the market, meaning that prices often tend to be higher.  Perhaps the most ideal way to purchase a diamond, AND avoid all of the above issues is to purchase a lab created diamond (which is NOT the same thing as a diamond simulant).  But the problem here is one of size.  Eventually this will change, but for the time being if you are in the market for anything other than a fairly small diamond, this route simply isn’t available to you yet.

I personally think it’s a shame that women in America learn from a very young age that they should expect to receive a diamond engagement ring at the appropriate time in their lives.  Not only is it materialistic and superficial, I also find it to be pretty boring.  I think it would be much more exciting if every couple came up with a unique way to celebrate their love for one another.  The thousands spent on a ring could certainly be put to good use for any number of other options.  An experience maybe, rather than a “thing”.

I am very well aware of the up hill battle facing anyone considering alternatives to a diamond engagement ring.  It can be extremely difficult to make the argument to a woman that the only reason she wants a diamond is because of marketing and advertising.  I do see the benefits in making the person you love infinitely happy, even if it’s a diamond ring that brings them this happiness.  BUT, on the other hand, I can also point out that to make someone infinitely happy shouldn’t necessarily require the purchase of a material good, especially one with the many drawbacks of a diamond.

I may very well end up buying some form of an engagement ring myself, but I still believe in the value of at least having a discussion on the topic.  And the real problem is that most men simply go to a jewelery store and buy a diamond without thinking about where it came from, and what it took to get that diamond from ground to store.  It’s astonishing how many “good” people (both men and women) can overlook the many negative aspects of such a complex and notorious industry, simply because most of the industry takes place “out of sight”, thus it’s also “out of mind”.

Whew.  That was quite the post.  Thoughts anyone?

What I am not a huge fan of are the questions asked in a setting like this, with a microphone in the middle of the room and people rushing to get in line to ask their question.  I am always surprised at the urgency with which some people literally run to the microphone.  I will admit that at least some of these questions are usually relevant and lead to an illuminating answer from the speaker.  But what about the other kind of question?  You know what I’m talking about- the person who gets to the microphone and ends up talking more than he does questioning; letting the audience know his thoughts and opinions and then asking the speaker to comment.

I have zero problem with a succinct question that gets to the point in about twenty seconds or less.  It just shouldn’t take longer to ask a question.  Is it that people like the opportunity to feel like they were in fact the invited speaker?  Do they like the sound of their own voice?

Maybe the solution is akin to a shot-clock in a basketball game.  Each person has a certain amount of time to ask their question before a buzzer goes off.  Or even better, a dunk-tank!  In order to ask a question you have to climb onto the platform and if your question lasts longer than those twenty seconds, SPLASH!

If I ever become a public speaker (you never know, right?), I just might have to implement one of the above solutions to the interminable question.

It has been far too long and I am back again, hopefully back to posting at least once a week.  As I thought about my resolutions for the coming year, I reflected on what I most wanted out of my life.  I will spare you the entirety of my resolutions, but the major one is relatively simple: to enjoy my life, something (no matter how small) every day.

It’s easy to get bogged down in the stress of daily/weekly life; to focus only on the negative.  I should know because at times I am an All-Pro at this.  For me it can start with something as simple as enjoying a day like today, in which I had nothing that I had to do.  I just took a shower at 4:30 PST after sleeping in this morning, having a wonderful omelet brunch, and watching playoff football.  Even when I am having a day like today, when I actually get to do what I want to do, I have trouble not getting restless and wondering if there is something I should be doing.  That should be another resolution for me- eliminate the word “should” and focus instead on what I am doing or can do.

I hope you’re starting the year of right, which means starting it out the way you want to, and I will leave you with a link to truly uplifting and wonderful video.  It really puts life into perspective and you can’t help wanting to make the most of what you have.

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=9xwCG0Ey2Mg

Back to more football!