Food Inc

"... the cows, who were taken from their mothers just days after their birth... are fed Bovine Growth Hormones so that milk production is dramatically increased... They develop huge udders that bluge, bloated and uncomfortable... Often udders and teats become infected, but there is often no time on these factory farms to deal with such minor (though very painful) ailments. The.. antibiotics in the animal feed is supposed to deal with things like that. These infections transmit pus, or dead bacteria, and white blood cells into milk, causing a disagreeable taste and unpleasant colour. Factory dairies sometimes mix the milk from infected udders with normal milk, so the infected milk with its offensive flavour and colour is diluted."

- Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating by Dr Jane Goodall

Thanks to Pink who lent me Harvest for Hope, I drank my milk this morning thinking whether it has how much pus it contained. then J informed me that Food Inc (movie poster above) was coming to Singapore soon. *sweet*..  Any free movie screenings coming up? seems to be the only way to get non-believers to watch this show - same thing happened for Sharkwater, though buying the DVD as a present works well too. heh. Watch the movie trailer for Food Inc here.

Cosmetics List

Started gg around hunting for organic, SLS/paraben/petrochemical free stuff after Green Drinks opened my eyes to the 101 things in our daily bodywashes/shampoos/toothpastes/deodorants tt could be harmful to our body - might as well just use water. Anyway, am quite impressed by myself. Didn't think I'd bother.. :) here's my list of brands so far:

• Yes to Carrots
• Sukin Organics
• Renew
• Nature's Gate

The first three I saw at the Watson's near Bedok bus interchange. The last one more common, can be found at NTUC and some kuchingkurau Ang Mo Kio shop (cheap too! $12 for a big bottle). After googling for these brands, found out that there are another two brands apparently sold in Singapore: Trilogy and Lavera. But haven't seen them for myself.

Still looking out for my aluminium-free deodorant...

Mermaid's Tears

I've been dumping little plastic bits also known as nurdles or "mermaid's tears" into the sea for the past probably 10 years or more. How? Through the daily use of exfoliating facial scrub. First read about it in "Bottomfeeder" and have to admit the fact didn't stick somehow but now that I came across the issue again in "The World Without Us", I'm determined to find a substitute for my Biore.

"Browne pulls open the top drawer of a laboratory cabinet. Inside is a cornucopia of feminine beauty aids: shower massage creams, body scrubs, and hand cleaners. Several are by boutique labels: Neova Body Smoother, SkinCeuticals Body Polish, and DDF Strawberry Almond Body Polish. Others are international name brands: Neutrogena, Clearasil, Pond’s Fresh Start, even a tube of Colgate Icy Blast toothpaste.... all have one thing in common.

“Exfoliants: little granules that massage you as you bathe.” He selects a peach-colored tube of St. Ives Apricot Scrub; its label reads: 100% natural exfoliants. “This stuff is okay. The granules are actually chunks of ground-up jojoba seeds and walnut shells.” Other natural brands use grape seeds, apricot hulls, coarse sugar, or sea salt. “The rest of them,” he says, with a sweep of his hand, “have all gone to plastic.”

- "Polymers are forever" in The World Without Us

These micro-scrubbers are tiny spheres of polyethylene which are sold to be washed directly down the drain, into the sea. From there, they go up the food chain and will most probably land on our plates. Karma. In the North Pacific Subtropical gyre (a 10-million-square mile ocean dump), plastic particles outnumber plankton by a factor of more than six times! Oh but some good news.. the great pacific garbage patch is finally due for cleanup sometime in June 2009. Great stuff. Read more about Project Kaisei here.

The things we don't know as consumers.. appalling. Just like how I just came to know about the harmful effects of aluminium in deodorant. And I've been using that for years too. Anyone who knows of a good brand of facial exfoliant and deodorant to use, do share.

Malthusian Catastrophe

Hilarious poster. and No, I do not agree with this mode of environmentalism.

After reading that Sir David Attenborough has (in Otterman's words) "come out and said it: too many people on earth", decided to do a quick search on the topic and came up with a bunch of interesting results:

• Malthus was a political economist who blamed the decline of living conditions in 19th century England on three elements: The overproduction of young; the inability of resources to keep up with the rising human population; and the irresponsibility of the lower classes. To combat this, Malthus suggested the family size of the lower class ought to be regulated such that poor families do not produce more children than they can support. -UCMP
• Both Darwin and Wallace independently arrived at similar theories of Natural Selection after reading Malthus. - UCMP
• World population is projected to rise from today's 6.8 billion to 9.1 billion in 2050. - optimumpopulation.org
• Assuming the global biocapacity and average footprint remain stable at the 2003 level, then, to become sustainable, the world population needs to contract to a maximum of 5.1 billion. - optimumpopulation.org
• The world's 200 wealthiest people have as much money as about 40 percent of the global population, and yet 850 million people have to go to bed hungry every night. - Spiegel Online

Pretty scary facts huh. and I do know two Singaporeans who've told me they'd rather adopt than have kids for similar reasons: don't wanna contribute to depleting the planet; 2) don't wanna let another human grow up in this 'sad world'.

it's not all that bad right.. just enjoy life when you've been given it.

Other blogs on the same topic:

• Liliane.wordpress.com
• Strangeherring.wordpress.com

Things We Forget

"Post-it notes left to their fate in public places."

-Thingsweforget.blogspot.com

Cradle to Cradle

"Cradle to Cradle Design takes its inspiration from nature, in which there is no place for the concept of waste, but in which waste = food.

'Cradle to Cradle' is the antidote to the 'Cradle to Grave' paradigm, where product cycles are not really cycles but mostly half cycles in which products, after their useful life, are put out of sight in landfills. The purpose of the Cradle to Cradle Design is to restore continuous cycles of biological as well as technical nutrients with long terms positive effects on profitability, the environment and human health. Cradle to Cradle Design is highly operational: It aims for perfection, it can prove when it has achieved it or how far it has succeeded in its task."

- EPEA.com

Watch the video here.

Manado VS Singapore

Manado trip was great, with tonnes of exotic critters.. including mimic octopus! *BIG FAT GRIN*. THEN when I showed my pix to colleague M, she commented that many of these critters can be seen in Singapore. !!! I knew we had an amazing variety of nudibranchs but, Singaporean dragonets and Singaporean bobtail squid? COOLIO! and I thought the only similarity between Lembeh and Singapore was the muck.

Gorgeous dragonet from Koksheng's blog. 

Cyrene 2008

and other dragonets found in Changi, Cyrene and Semakau here.

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Boxcrab (from Lembeh). Was so  excited to see it. 

and we have it on mainland Singapore!

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Longspine scorpionfish (from Lembeh)

for the Singaporean longspine.. click here

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Seamoth!!! (from Lembeh)

seasonally abundant on Chek Jawa!

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Bobtail squid at Pulau Hantu!!!

from Hantu blog 2004

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Pipefish from the Tide Chaser Blog

Semakau 2008

Was looking for the new species found by Blue Tempeh in 2006, 

but sadly, the photo is no longer online. 

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Other of my Manado sightings found locally include Solefish, Frogfish, Crocodile fish /flathead. Of course, there's also the commonly sighted pufferfish, filefish, butterflyfish, octopii, and the list goes on...