Form + Function: The Light Dawns

The good news is that this seriously good-looking light bulb is actually an eco-friendly little fellow, using 80% less electricity to produce the same amount of light as a conventional bulb, and lasting 8 times as long.

The bad news is that it's currently (ha!) only available in the UK. But reports indicate that it's coming to the US... soonest.

In the meantime, congratulations to "plumen 001" for winning UK's Design of the Year award.

UV ABCs

It's summertime and the living is easy...

Y'all know the sunlight skin damage basics, right? Let me sum up:

1. It's the UV (ultraviolet) rays from the sun that do all the damage — from wrinkles and leathering to cancer. There are three types of UV rays (UVA, UVB and UVC), but for the foreseeable future, we really only have to worry about two of them.

2. UVB rays cause mostly superficial sun damage to your skin, as in sunburns, but are also responsible for skin cancer, particularly melanoma. Because, I imagine, UVB causes immediately visible damage, these are the rays that have been the focus of sunscreen since the 60s. UVB light is also weather and season dependent — the rays are absorbed by clouds and rain, diffusing their impact on your skin, and they are stronger the closer you are to the sun (e.g., depending on the season or the latitude of your location).

3. UVA rays, it turns out, are the real monster in the sky. These baddies don't care if it's July 4th or Christmas, and a little bit of window glass isn't going to slow them down a bit. Which is a real shame, because UVA light is responsible for the really bad things, like tanning, wrinkles and causing and accelerating skin cancer. UVA rays penetrate the epidermis (skin's top layer) to the dermis (skin's middle layer) below.

It's kinda like this: the epidermis is the grass and the dermis is the sod. The epidermis, layers of living cells topped by layers of dead cells, is what you see, and it can look lush, pretty and green or tired, brown and dry, depending on what's going on underneath. The dermis, entirely made up of living cells and blood vessels, is responsible for the firmness, elasticity, and strength of your skin.

Okay, yes, I said tanning as though it's a bad thing. Want to know how and why your skin "tans"? I'm going to simplify the heck out of this, but the fundamentals are sound. Tanning is the result of increased melanin production, which darkens your skins. Melanin production is regulated in your dermis (the sod beneath your grass), and is triggered as a protective measure when the cells in the dermis are damaged. Think of it as a shield against further attack. The problem is two-fold: a) the shield/tan only goes up after at least one hit, because your dermis can't see the sun coming, and b) the shield is imperfect, as in it's better than nothing, but it only ameliorates future damage somewhat, it doesn't prevent it.

Depending on your skin type, you'll tan less or more in response to UVA exposure. Regardless of your skin type, however, the UVA rays will damage your dermis. Think about the dermis as scaffolding. When the scaffolding is in perfect shape, it fits below the skin smoothly; when it's damaged, it breaks down and provides less than perfect support, which appears as wrinkles and sagging on the skin layer above.

4. So, skin cancer. My primary interest in all this is the photo-aging aspect. I'm in a perennial war against wrinkles. But... skin cancer isn't pretty. In any sense of the word. Recent research shows that while UVB rays are the primary culprit, especially behind melanoma, UVA rays can not only cause basal and squamous cancers (the other two types), they evidently initiate, accelerate or enhance (well, from the cancer's point of view) UVB-caused cancer. This really shouldn't be much of a surprise, since suntans are evidence of cell damage and mutations, and cancer is a result of mutating cells (vastly over-simplified, I know, but do you really want a cancer monograph here?).

5. And, lastly, Vitamin D. Which isn't a vitamin at all, it's a hormone. And another post altogether. But it's true that UVB exposure is necessary for your body to make Vitamin D. Or you can take supplements and eat Vitamin D rich food (including salmon, mackerel, tuna, sardines, egg yolks). Go figure, Vitamin D deficiency has been (though not definitively) linked with an increased cancer risk, among other things. How's that for irony?

6. Oh, wait, and the whole SPF thing. If you've hung around me for any time, you probably already know that SPF only measures a sunscreen's efficacy against UVB rays. There is not yet a metric for UVA protection. It is clear, however, that until recently, sunscreens didn't contain ingredients that blocked both UVB and UVA rays. Now that they do, there is a whole 'nother host of issues to address. Aha! Yet another post.

By the way, it's the ozone layer that absorbs the really bad rays (UVC and some of the UVB). So as that goes...

Again with the irony

California. Land of entertainment. Home to Hollywood. Movies. TV. The state motto is "Maior. Melior. Magis." (Or it should be — that's Latin for "Bigger. Better. More.") This is a state that so believes in "big" it needed its own mattress size — Cal King.

Explain to me then why this is the state that is passing a law banning televisions larger than 58"? I'm not kidding. The state of California has evidently decided it has the right to limit the size of your TV in your home. (Not until 2013, so you've got a few years, but still.)

This is the second part of a TV energy bill, the first part of which limits sales of HDTVs in the state to only those which meet its energy efficiency standards. I'm down with that. But the next part, the "you can't have a really large TV because we said so" part? I'm thinking that Kit Eaton of Fast Company summed it up nicely:

The Consumer Electronics Association has publicly reacted to California legislators' ban on inefficient TVs by saying "You're all dumb, with about the same grasp on technology as Homer Simpson." I'm paraphrasing, but the CEA has a point.

That's like saying you can't buy SUVs anymore because they're not as energy efficient as small cars. Has anyone checked the energy efficiency of a Porsche 911 against a Highlander Hybrid? I'm just saying...

Happy Valentine's Day

Move over red, green is not just for jealousy anymore—these days it's the new color of love. "Love thyself, love thy neighbor?" Puh-leez. "Love thyself, love thy planet." Now we're talking.

You think I'm kidding? I'm not. Check out the very sweet—and very green—video below:

and yeah, it's a video. Can't see it? Click here.

Name that frog... or septipus

Quick, who said "it's not easy being green"? I'm not talking Kermit, here. Have you met the Green Thing?

Here he is on Vimeo.

So he's not exactly Kermit—I bet Miss Piggy would still be smitten.

Fat Michael by any other name

Is... Cavendish?

It is if you're a banana. A sick banana, that is.

My dad sent me an interesting Op-Ed from the New York Times, by Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World - which points out that the banana we eat today is not the banana my dad ate when he was a kid. Something rather all the more fascinating to me as my friend (and erstwhile roommate) had made this very same point to me not that long ago. What are the odds?

According to Koeppel, 100 years ago the popular banana was a varietal called the "Gros Michel," and it was, by all accounts, tastier, sturdier and larger than the one, the "Cavendish," that we consume today. And this is not the past as seen through those "good ol' days" lenses - this was the estimation of the banana cartel itself, when faced with the prospect of its dying mainstay.

Caught in a mess of its own making (go figure) as the Gros Michel succumbed to a blight (the Panama disease) that had started killing the bananas in the early 1900s, and that, by the 1960s, ultimately rendered the tastier and larger fruit nothing but a sweet memory, the banana industry needed to find a new variety that could withstand the blight. The hardier Cavendish, immune to the Panama disease, was the winning entry.

Well, lo and behold, what goes around comes around, and the Panama disease is back today, bigger and nastier than before, and the Cavendish this time is not immune. The efficiencies and economies of scale engineered way back when to secure the financial success of the banana republics are now backfiring.

Dependent as we are on a single variety of banana to provide us cheap bananas, sadly, when one gets sick, they all get sick. Yes, we have no bananas. Ruh roh.

Ignorance may really be bliss (or not)

Did you know that Dave Matthews' tour bus is a diesel and runs on recycled deep-fryer restaurant oil? I'm not sure what about that is more twisted - the thought that Dave Matthews fills up his gas tank with Mickey D's left-overs, or that we actually eat food fried in something that can power a rock band's tour bus.

Remember that scene in Sleeper, when Woody Allen asks for wheat germ and organic honey? And they gently tell him that it's steak and hot fudge that are good for you, that the other stuff will kill you? The biofuel thing is like that - just when you thought you had it all figured it out (petroleum bad, ethanol good) - wham, bam. Strike that, reverse it.

"Any biofuel that causes land clearing is likely to increase global warming," says ecologist Joseph Fargione of The Nature Conservancy, lead author of the second study. "It takes decades to centuries to repay the carbon debt that is created from clearing land." (read it and weep)

Because, evidently, it's not all about what happens when you burn the fuel...it's also about what happens when you make the fuel. Oh, right. That. Plus, it turns out some ethanol is more equal than others - soy may be better than corn. But still bad. And switchgrass (don't ask, I have no idea) better than both. Not sure if it's better and still bad, or better and good. But it seems to be better.

And, as usual, the politicians don't seem to be quite on the same page as the scientists (haven't we seen that movie before - just recently in fact, with Dennis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal? It wasn't half bad, if I remember correctly, RT:46) - the EU recently made this announcement, and I must quote, because I couldn't paraphrase nearly as well:

Despite intense debate surrounding the growing global food crises, the European Union today defended expanding the use of biofuels in all 27 member countries...“You can’t change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other objectives,” meaning that changing biofuels targets could lead to questioning the entire climate change package.

You know what they say, "don't let the facts get in the way."

But wait, there's more...

None of these costly impacts get considered when politicians tout the alleged societal benefits of corn-based ethanol. Nor do proponents like to mention the huge amounts of petroleum needed to grow corn for ethanol. (Conventional fertilizers and pesticides are made from oil.)
By most calculations – including those of the new Swiss study – these energy inputs match or exceed the energy provided by ethanol made from corn. In other words, we are wasting public money and irreplaceable water and soil resources in pursuit of a false promise of energy independence. (there really is more)

Repeat after me: Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is bliss. Funny, no matter how many times I repeat it, I don't believe it anymore either. I guess I'll go figure out what on earth switchgrass is. And if it's better and still bad, or better and good. Check back - I'll share.

This is for the car Bill Maher drives

Alright, I actually have no idea what kind of car Bill Maher drives.

But he wrote a blisteringly funny and worrisome post on the fallacy of bio-fuel:

Scientists have been on the biofuel bandwagon; how did they get it so wrong? As Time puts it, "It was as if the science world assumed biofuels would be grown in parking lots. The deforestation in Indonesia shows that's not the case. It turns out the carbon lost when wilderness is razed overwhelms the gains from cleaner-burning fuels."
Just as bad, apparently some people in the world still use land to grow real food, and the 800 million people in the world with cars are taking food from the 800 million people in the world who are hungry and putting it in our gas tanks. I, for one, think that's rude. Going up to a poor Brazilian boy, snatching the hot dog out of his hand and shoving it in the nozzle of your Prius, that's wrong.

He points to a cover article in Time Magazine - The Clean Energy Scam:

...several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous...

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency.

Have I mentioned you can't win for losing? Now what?

This is to make up for the car I drive

I found this very cool map, cool and rather disheartening at the same time. It's the US' carbon footprint - plotted by actual emissions. Which you'd think wouldn't be such a big deal.

Well, it turns out that CO2 emissions across the States used to be "calculated" (and let's use that word loosely) based on population... which seems massively unfair. And, as it so happens, also plain wrong. The Northeast? So over-blamed in the game, and the Southeast not blamed enough... well, those days are oh-ver.

Never underestimate the power of the map. Hey, my brother-in-law is a cartographer, and I'm telling you, don't mess with the mapmakers.

I read about the map on Wired's Science Blog:

the NASA- and Department of Energy-funded scientists can detail emissions across all 9 million square kilometers that compose the United States. For a full explanation, check out the video that Purdue's Kevin Gurney put together, which features a number of other excellent CO2 visualizations. Andy Revkin, the New York Times' environment-beat writer, put a memorable headline on a post about the video, calling it, "Breath of a Nation."

Oh yeah, my car? Well, let's just say, that red dot over there? That would be me. I am part of the problem. I confess.