CRUSTY BLISS: Mamadou's manufactures sweet aroma
Winchester Star - Dec 24, 2008
By Eric Tsetsi/Staff Writer The smell of fresh baked bread may be one of the best things on earth. And at Mamadou's Artisan Bakery at 63 Swanton St.

CRUSTY BLISS: Mamadou's manufactures sweet aroma

By Eric Tsetsi/Staff Writer

Wed Dec 24, 2008, 08:03 AM EST

Winchester, MA - The smell of fresh baked bread may be one of the best things on earth. And at Mamadou's Artisan Bakery at 63 Swanton St., the aroma of French baguettes, peasant bread, multi-grain sourdough, whole-wheat raisin bread and more, fills the air from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. six days a week.

Watch the slideshow

In an unobtrusive building across the street from the Swanton Street Diner, Winchester resident Mamadou Mbaye recently opened this bread lover's haven.

Every Tuesday through Sunday, Mbaye arrives to his kitchen at about 12 a.m. and begins preparing dough, shaping it by hand and letting it ferment. The day doesn't end until he closes the doors at 6 p.m.

"I'm a busy person," he said with a weary smile. "I have a very short time to sleep."

But at this point Mbaye is prepared to put in the long hours.

His bakery is just getting on its feet, but with the walk-in customers he's attracting, supplemented by the larger deliveries he makes to area restaurants, Mbaye hopes to see a thriving business base in the near future.

"When you love something you get sucked into it," he said. "If you put a lot of hard work and love into it, it's amazing how it can work miracles sometimes."

Mbaye, originally from Senegal, came to the United States in the early 1990s and moved to Winchester in 2001.

He began to delve into baking while working at Whole Foods Market. He was the bread trainer for the store chain's entire northeast region for a number of years, until he decided to strike out on his own.

He began to make his name this past summer at local farmers' markets. He would bake more than 300 loaves of bread per day for the markets in Winchester, Belmont and Arlington, he said.

Many of those loaves made their way into the hands of customers who have followed him to his new location, some driving miles to get their favorite baked goods.

"It's just so fun for us, we just want to take it one step at a time and grow it from the ground up," said Mbaye, of his business.

The outside of the bakery has yet to be fully decorated, but Mbaye said he's in the process of getting a sign permit from the town to put up an awning he has waiting in the garage. He bought the building in June, 2007, and has slowly pieced together the necessary parts of the sparsely decorated, but sparkling clean and orderly kitchen.

"If they give the permit today, the sign will be up today," he said.

Mbaye's wife Mame and 8-year-old son, Aldemba, can often be found at the bakery during the week and on the weekends.

Mame takes care of the retail side of the business, and helps out with some of the baking, according to Mbaye. She took a leave of absence from her job as a flight attendant to help get the bakery off the ground.

As the business continues to grow, Mbaye eventually wants to have an area where people can sit and have a cup of coffee and a fresh pastry. He said he might even hire a couple employees some day.

But, "it's just the beginning at this moment," he said, adding, "Every beginning is always hard."

Eric Tsetsi can be reached at 781-674-7731 or etsetsi@cnc.com.

Fwd: Big Dig leads to more time stuck in traffic

This was so predictable.  There are numerous studies showing that increasing the capacity of roads increases traffic even more.  So a short time after the road is "improved" the traffic is worse than before.
--pws

Big Dig pushes bottlenecks outward

While the Big Dig achieved its goal of freeing up highway traffic downtown, the bottlenecks were only pushed outward, as more drivers jockey for the limited space on the major commuting routes. Many motorists going to and from the suburbs at peak rush hours now spend more time stuck in traffic. (By Sean P. Murphy, Globe Staff)

Interactive graphic Commuting times

UltraFit - Large Fella on a Bike

By Stephen Regenold
The Gear Junkie

The rebirth of Scott Cutshall began Thanksgiving Day 2005, a bowl of vegetable soup for breakfast kicking off a new life where nothing would be the same. Cutshall, living in Jersey City at the time, weighed 501 pounds. He was having breakfast. And then he was getting ready to go on a bike ride.

He rode 1.9 miles that day, rolling through neighborhoods, biking on the street, stopping to rest four or five times to sit on a curb. Head down. Panting. Hot even in November.

The ride of less than two miles took Cutshall three hours to complete. But the wheels were turning. His body was in motion. The journey had begun.

Polar Bear Attack

Polar Bear Attack
WARNING: This page contains scenes of violence and may not be suitable for young audiences.
These explicit photos of a polar bear attack are not for the faint of heart.

Why does the world flock to one precious metal in tough times?

from slate.com

The Problem With Putting All Your Money in Gold

Why does the world flock to one precious metal in tough times?

By David Ian Miller Posted Monday, October 13, 2008 - 2:57pm

• In theory, mankind could have picked any precious metal as a security symbol, so why do we seek out gold when everything else is tumbling down?
• "It is very irrational from a business standpoint, because we have so much better technology now for transferring wealth," says the slyly named Douglas Silver, chairman of International Royalty Corporation, a company that buys royalties associated with mining properties. "But it's cultural. It's built into our psyche that when things get ugly, gold will store value."
• Still, there are some logical reasons behind the value assigned to gold. It's one of the earth's rarest elements-gold makes up about one part per billion of the earth's crust. It is also durable. Gold cannot be destroyed and it won't rust or decay. It's a very good conductor of electricity, and there's a little bit of gold in every computer, cell phone, and airbag, among many other things.
• And gold is easily divisible. Unlike, say, real estate or cattle, you can reliably break it up into smaller quantities. (Try giving someone change for a cow.) Most importantly, unlike hard currency, gold cannot lose its value because of government or corporate mismanagement.
• Coyner says that now, for the first time on an annualized basis, South Africa is not the world's leading gold producer.  "Assuming what they're telling us is true," says Coyner. "China is now the world's largest producer of gold."
• That brings us to the demand side of the equation, where the psychological factors surrounding the price of gold really come into play. As noted above, gold has industrial applications. But it's the investment in gold as a hedge against scary economic times-rising inflation, falling currencies, crashing stock markets-that can really juice the numbers. As we saw in the last few months, the price of gold can swing up and down just as wildly as the Dow whipsawing on news of the latest bank implosion or government bailout.

Giant Crystal Cave Comes to Light

Check out the photos in this National Geographic article, Giant Crystal Cave Comes to Light.
I include one photo and one sentence to pique your interest.
--pws

• A sort of south-of-the-border Fortress of Solitude, Mexico's Cueva de los Cristales (Cave of Crystals) contains some of the world's largest known natural crystals—translucent beams of gypsum as long as 36 feet (11 meters).

Mandarin Oriental

Observations:

• grilling on the roof deck sounds awesome.
• isn't the name Mandarin Oriental redundant?

Back Bay's tower of wealth -- Luxury Mandarin to open next week

• When the Mandarin Oriental, Boston, a $300 million luxury hotel and residential complex, opens next week, the city will see an overt expression of wealth like it's never seen before.
• Each unit, each floor, is unique, requiring massive amounts of steel to support the 12-foot ceilings and expansive rooms unsullied by beams and pillars. Twelve units are connected to private roof decks via personal elevators. There, owners can order from the hotel's room service steaks or seafood prepared for grilling, and have housekeeping clean it up when they're done.
• And the owners? They include Robert Epstein, a managing partner of the Boston Celtics; Charles K. "Chad" Gifford, the former chief operating officer of FleetBoston Financial Corp and auto magnate Herb Chambers.

The (bike) path of least resistance

op-ed By Chris Bohjalian September 29, 2008

IF THE GRASS is indeed greener, then the other guy's bike path is probably smoother. I live in Vermont, where the biking is as scenic as advertised, especially if you're accustomed to taking your life in your hands and pedaling between Cambridge and Boston during rush hour.

But even here a bike ride can be an episode of "Fear Factor," minus the life jackets and safety nets. The road rage that some motorists feel toward other drivers pales before the antipathy they have for bicyclists. This month two Burlington, Vt., riders were hit by cars, one of whom was riding on a sidewalk. Both vehicles fled the scene. September also marks the anniversaries of my friend Marc Tischler's two bicycle accidents in the Green Mountains. The first left him with a broken neck and broken ribs. The second left him with a concussion, a broken pelvis, and more broken ribs.

Now, Tischler is no daredevil. He's a cardiologist. In 1999, he was commuting to the hospital and medical school where he works. In 2007, he was taking a leisurely spin near his house. The first accident involved a pickup truck. A witness reported that she thought Tischler had been hit by the truck's side mirror as it passed him. The pickup didn't stop and was never heard from again. The second accident may have involved a vehicle, but we'll never know: Tischler was found unconscious on the road and has no memory of the 48 hours that preceded that accident, including the picnic he had had with his wife moments before it occurred.

I bike, too, and so I've always been unnerved by Tischler's accidents. And yet neither experience disturbs me as much as the time a pickup passed him, honked, and pulled over. The driver emerged from the truck with a tire iron. He wanted to make it clear that he was the alpha male and any guy in Lycra bike shorts is - and let's not mince words - a weenie. Tischler had to apologize for commandeering a slender strip of the road's shoulder.

There has always been an uneasy détente between vehicles and bicycles. It doesn't matter whether you're on a dirt road or scooting through Harvard Square. And as Tischler can attest, this isn't a face-off between equals. The cardiologist admits he is now too scared to bike, a loss he feels acutely.

There's no logical reason for the hostility. Sure, a bicyclist's presence means that a driver must slow down and pay attention. But there may be something deeper going on, too: A bicyclist has the potential to make anyone feel guilty for guzzling gas. Or envious that they are not on a cycle. I know when I'm biking past a road crew, I feel like an entitled fop from the leisure class: I'm in the hot sun by choice, not because my paycheck requires it.

Moreover, bicyclists aren't perfect neighbors on the asphalt. Sometimes we ride two abreast, sometimes we zip through red lights. Once I hurt an animal: A garter snake. Accidentally, I turned it into snake salad when it darted into my gears when I lurched off the pavement near a marsh. (For those of you eating breakfast, I will spare you the recipe.)

But there is so much to be gained from biking - for drivers, too. Obviously, biking doesn't replace mass transportation and it isn't feasible if your commute is more than a few miles. But it minimizes commuter congestion, it's nonpolluting, and it inspires no one to chant, "Drill, baby, drill," like a lunatic sports fan.

And it's good for you.

Consequently, I applaud Boston's goal of becoming a first-rate biking metropolis, and the programs it has launched to broker peace: More bike lanes, bike racks, and commuter efforts such as Bike Friday. These initiatives add a veneer of "official" approval and encourage vehicles to give riders a break. I don't know if similar programs in Vermont would have spared Tischler any pain. But they might have kept him where he belongs: On two wheels.

Chris Bohjalian is a guest columnist whose novels include "Midwives," "The Double Bind," and "Skeletons at the Feast."

Fwd: flexitarians

from slate.com

The Great Vegan Honey Debate

• the word flexitarian for its utility in describing a growing demographic—the "vegetarian who occasionally eats meat." Now there's evidence that going flexi is good for the environment and good for your health. A study released last October found that a plant-based diet, augmented with a small amount of dairy and meat, maximizes land-use efficiency.
  
• Thirteen percent of U.S. adults are "semivegetarian," meaning they eat meat with fewer than half of all their meals. In comparison, true vegetarians—those who never, ever consume animal flesh—compose just 1 percent.
• There is no more contentious question in the world of veganism than the one posed by honey... Does honey qualify as a forbidden animal product since it's made by bees? Or is it OK since the bees don't seem too put out by making it?
• The hard-liners argue that beekeeping, like dairy farming, is cruel and exploitative. The bees are forced to construct their honeycombs in racks of removable trays, according to a design that standardizes the size of each hexagonal chamber. (Some say the more chaotic combs found in the wild are less vulnerable to parasitic mites.) Queens are imprisoned in certain parts of the hive, while colonies are split to increase production and sprinkled with prophylactic antibiotics. In the meantime, keepers control the animals by pumping their hives full of smoke, which masks the scent of their alarm pheromones and keeps them from defending their honey stores. And some say the bees aren't making the honey for us, so its removal from the hive could be construed as a form of theft.
• The flexitarians counter that if you follow the hard-line argument to its logical extreme, you end up with a diet so restrictive it borders on the absurd. After all, you can't worry over the ethics of honey production without worrying over the entire beekeeping industry. Honey accounts for only a small percentage of the total honeybee economy in the United States; most comes from the use of rental hives to pollinate fruit and vegetable crops... Life for these rental bees may be far worse than it is for the ones producing honey. The industrial pollinators face all the same hardships, plus a few more: They spend much of their lives sealed in the back of 18-wheelers, subsisting on a diet of high-fructose corn syrup as they're shipped back and forth across the country. Husbandry and breeding practices have reduced their genetic diversity and left them particularly susceptible to large-scale die-offs.

Fwd: a workout in a pill

Drugs Offer Promise of Fitness Without Effort
New York Times - 34 minutes ago
By NICHOLAS WADE Can you enjoy the benefits of exercise without the pain of exertion? The answer may one day be yes - just take a pill that tricks the muscles into thinking they have been working out furiously.
Scientists say they've found exercise in a pill Los Angeles Times
Exercise in a Pill? Maybe WebMD

• Can you enjoy the benefits of exercise without the pain of exertion? The answer may one day be yes — just take a pill that tricks the muscles into thinking they have been working out furiously.
• Researchers at the Salk Institute report they have found two drugs that do wonders for the athletic endurance of couch potato mice. One drug, known as Aicar, increased the mice's endurance on a treadmill by 44 percent after just four weeks of treatment.
• A second drug, GW1516, supercharged the mice to a 75 percent increase in endurance, but had to be combined with exercise to have any effect.
• They should help people who are too frail to exercise and those with health problems such as diabetes that are improved with exercise, he said.
• In a report published in the Friday issue of Cell, he describes the two drugs that successfully activate the muscle-remodeling system in mice. One, GW1516, activates PPAR-delta but the mice must also have exercise training to show increased endurance. It seems that PPAR-delta switches on one set of genes, and exercise another, and both sets are needed for great endurance.
• The second drug, called Aicar, improves endurance without any training. Dr. Evans believes it both mimics the effects of exercise and activates PPAR-delta, thus being able to switch on both sets of genes needed for the endurance signal.

Fwd: Dash's amazing new GPS gizmo guides you around traffic.

from slate.com

Dash's amazing new GPS gizmo guides you around traffic.

• nowadays when you are lost, your phone can probably assist you. So it's no surprise that GPS firms are suffering.
• The Dash Express navigator packs a killer feature that other GPS systems lack: the Internet. Network connectivity powers Dash's primary attraction: what the company calls "crowd-sourced traffic." As you traverse your favored metropolis, the Dash Express anonymously transmits information about its location and speed to a central server. Every other Dash driver does the same. Using this data, Dash can paint a stunningly accurate picture of traffic patterns. Have you ever been stuck in a jam and wished there were some way to look two miles ahead to see whether things are still ugly? Dash essentially does that for you.
• I've been testing the Dash Express for a week, and I'm floored. One morning rush hour this week, I drove from my home in San Francisco to Stanford University. At the start of the 30-mile trip, I plugged my destination into the Dash Express. The device gave me three possible routes, each with an estimated travel time based on traffic conditions gleaned from other drivers currently moving down those roads. I chose what Dash said was the fastest route, a straight shot down the congested 101 freeway. The device guessed I would arrive at Stanford in 59 minutes. Sixty-two minutes later, I was there. Along the way, the Dash predicted nearly every hurdle along my trip with eerie accuracy: Traffic slowed down just where the color-coded map showed yellow, orange, and red roads, and speeds picked up again exactly where Dash's map was painted green.
• Dash also receives incident and sensor data, but it adjusts all its numbers with on-the-ground conditions fed back by real drivers. The system uses this info both to plan your route and to suggest changes as you're driving. If Dash senses a sudden slow-down ahead, it will ask whether you'd like to be routed around it. Sometimes, it will even guide you off the freeway and through surface streets, for which Dash also knows traffic conditions. (The system tracks traffic patterns over time, compiling a database of how quickly all roads move during 672 discrete intervals during the day.)
• Dash's Internet connectivity helps with things besides traffic. Traditional GPS devices ship with databases of millions of shops and attractions across the country. Like a printed phone book, these databases go out of date: If you bought your GPS a couple of months ago, for instance, it will think there are 600 more Starbucks in the country than there now are. Over time, as roads shut down and new developments spring up, maps go stale. In order to refresh your device, you've got to buy an update disk.
• Dash updates itself automatically with the latest maps, and it offers something an order of magnitude more useful than a built-in database of attractions: a Web-based search engine. When you look for nearby shops in Dash, you're really searching Yahoo, which already knows about all those shuttered Starbucks.
• For all this great functionality, Dash faces a major vulnerability as a business proposition: Many of its features can be replicated on smartphones. Technically, the iPhone can do everything Dash does—it's got the Internet, GPS, and a touch-screen interface. It's possible to imagine another start-up building a Dash clone on Apple's device or on any other advanced phone. Considering how many of them are out there, the crowd-sourced traffic information generated by the iPhone would put Dash's data to shame.
• In the meantime, the traffic data that Dash learns from its drivers could also prove valuable. The licensing possibilities look lucrative—Google, Microsoft, and Apple might all want better traffic data for their maps products. UPS, FedEx, and the Postal Service could probably also do with a clearer picture of road conditions. And Dash might even be able to help Starbucks out. At a recent tech conference, a Dash executive pointed out that Dash knows where people drive and knows where people search for coffee. That means it knows exactly where Starbucks should open up its next location in Arkansas: Highway 40, between Little Rock and Memphis, Tenn.

This Robot Hates Fat People: What Wall-E gets wrong about obesity and the environment

The following paragraphs are from an article aboutf Wall-E.  The author makes many assertions that I find questionable.  For instance:

• If obesity is mostly controlled by genes and not environment, then why do we suddenly have an obesity epidemic?  Our genes cannot have changed that much in the last few decades.
• My experience is that biking everywhere does make you skinnier.
• And that kids who watch a lot of television are less active.

What do you think?  Is there any validity to what this author is writing?
--pws

from This Robot Hates Fat People: What Wall-E gets wrong about obesity and the environment

But the metaphor only works if you believe familiar myths about the overweight: They're weak-willed, indolent, and stupid. Sure enough, that's how Pixar depicts the future of humanity. The people in Wall-E drink "cupcakes-in-a-cup," they never exercise, and if they happen to fall off their hovering chairs, they thrash around like babies until a robot helps them up. They watch TV all day long and can barely read.

It ought to go without saying that this stereotype of the "obese lifestyle" is simply false. How fat you are has a lot more to do with your genes than with your behavior. As much as 80 percent of the variation in human body weight can be explained by differences in our DNA. (Your height is similarly heritable.) That is to say, it may not matter that much whether you eat salads or drink "cupcakes-in-a-cup," whether you bike everywhere or fly around in a Barcalounger. If you have a propensity to become obese, there's only so much that can be done about it.

That's not to say that our circumstances can't lead us to gain weight. But there's little evidence that overeating causes obesity on an individual level and no real reason to think that anyone can lose a lot of weight by dieting. (Most of us fluctuate around a natural "set point.") We also know that children who watch a lot of television are no less active than other kids and that pediatric obesity rates are not the direct result of high-fat diets.

When The Man is One of Us

By Jack White | TheRoot.com
link to this article

Sure, Jesse is an old fool who doesn't know how to act. But his latest gaffe shows how none of us is really ready for this moment.

Getty Images

Type Size

July 10, 2008--On one level, it is easy to dismiss the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.'s crudely worded metaphorical threat to castrate Barack Obama for supposedly talking down to black people as the raving of an increasingly irrelevant, former big shot suffused with resentment at the rising star who pushed him off stage.

That, after all, is the sort of talk we'd expect from a lynch mob, not a civil rights leader who does not seem to realize that the times have passed him by. Even his son and namesake, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., agrees that his dad is doing more harm these days than good. Pronouncing himself outraged and disappointed by his father's ugly words about Obama, Jackson Jr. issued a statement that, in effect, ordered dear old dad to "keep hope alive" and shut up.

That's good advice, and one can only hope that Jackson Sr. accepts it. But in a deeper sense, his stunningly inappropriate comments symbolize the social, political and psychological vertigo that all of us, and especially black Americans, are experiencing because of Obama's success. We are all, including Obama, in a place we never really thought we would be, and it has knocked us off our feet. We don't know how to act. We don't have a plan. We're searching for our equilibrium. And until we regain our footing, we can expect all sorts of bizarre behavior from people who ought to know better. Hold on to your hat.

We haven't really been in a place this confusing since 1954, when the NAACP's crusade against segregation culminated in the Brown vs. Board decision and the walls came tumbling down. It's fair to say that we were so focused on winning that fight that we weren't prepared for the victory or its aftermath. We've spent nearly 60 years since then trying to figure out what kind of relationship we want to have with America and with each other. For the most part, we, like Jackson Sr., have seen ourselves as outsiders battling for justice and a seat at the table. Our default has been to protest. And while that mindset has served us well, it has, in a flash, been made damn near obsolete by the prospect, even the likelihood, that one of us may soon become the most powerful man in the world. If that happens, how can we seriously argue that we're being held back by anything but the limits we place on ourselves?

That, it seems to me, accounts in part for the frustration some of us are feeling by what we interpret as Obama's move to the center. We are simply not accustomed to one of our own playing real, power politics. Some of us see his call for an expansion of George Bush's half-hearted commitment to faith-based social programs as mere politics, what Jackson Sr. castigated as "talking down to black people." We explain Obama's support for the compromise Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Supreme Court's upholding of a citizen's right to bear arms as attempts to inoculate himself against Republican attacks.

And, of course, they are.

But they, like Obama's Father's Day speech urging black men to take more responsibility for their children, are more than political posturing. They represent the first stirrings of a new consensus that places more emphasis on a public discussion of personal responsibility than on protest, on publicly delving into our own shortcomings and dysfunctional behavior.

There's nothing new about this kind of self-examination, but in the past we've conducted it mainly in private, in barbershops and beauty parlors, and churches. We've bristled when whites in power like Daniel Patrick Moynihan, joined in the critique of, for example, our soaring rate of out-of-wedlock births. We've moaned about the negative consequences of washing dirty laundry in public. But such a self-protective mindset no longer makes sense because Obama is one of us, who has taken part in our private handwringing about the self-inflicted wounds that bedevil segments of the black community. He hasn't said anything most of us haven't heard or said at the dinner table. But now, because Obama is who he is, the whole world is listening in to the conversation.

The attention makes us uncomfortable and disoriented. So does the prospect that one of us might soon be in charge of trying to fix this mess instead of simply complaining about it.

We're not really ready for the day when The Man becomes a black man.

It's a dizzying idea that is going to take some getting used to. And until we do, we'll stumble about, like Jesse Jackson Sr., saying all kinds of crazy things as we slip and slide on the new paradigm.

Jack White is a former columnist with TIME magazine.

Sudbury group sounds alarm over proposed bike trail

The Globe makes the opponents to a bike trail in Sudbury sound like idiots.
--pws

Sudbury group sounds alarm over proposed bike trail
As far as Maurer is concerned, a better solution is for bikers to get their exercise indoors.
"My whole theory is: Go to the gym that you got the membership for and that you know you are not using," she said.

Soccer coach arrested

This guy is the son of the Middle School principal, and a well-known soccer coach in town.
--pws

Winchester teacher aide facing child enticement charges involving student

June 30, 2008 02:49 PM

By John R. Ellement, Globe staff

A teacher's aide at a Winchester middle school is facing criminal charges of child enticement for allegedly trying to convince a 13-year-old student to have sex with him, using online conversations as the way to deliver his message, authorities said today.

Christopher M. French

The aide was identified by Winchester police as Christopher M. French, who became the target of an investigation last Thursday, Winchester police Lt. Peter MacDonnell said today. He said police searched French's home on Hollywood road in Winchester and obtained evidence leading to his arrest on a charge of child enticement.

"Christopher French is employed as a special education teaching assistant at the McCall Middle School in Winchester,'' said MacDonnell. "And his employment is connected to this investigation.''

French's attorney, David Mortenson, said in a brief telephone conversation that he has instructed French not to discuss the case with anyone and that he expects to see the 28-year-old Winchester resident exonerated.

"As far as we are aware, he has not done anything wrong,'' Mortenson said of French. "We expect to investigate (the allegations) and prove that eventually.''

A spokesman for Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone, Jr., said that French is charged with trying to coerce a female student at the school. "We are continuing to investigate this matter to determine whether additional charges are appropriate,'' spokesman Corey Welford said in a statement.

MacDonnell said police, armed with a search warrant, searched another location yesterday and obtained additional evidence. He declined to say where the second search was conducted. He said a third search warrant had been issued and will be acted on today.

MacDonnell said French was arraigned today in Woburn District Court where he pleaded not guilty to one count of child enticement and was released on $5,000 cash bail. He is due back in court Aug. 8.

According to his biography on his myspace and facebook pages, French is a graduate of Colby College in Maine and is a lifelong resident of Winchester where he has long been active in town-based soccer teams both as a player and a coach.

don't use exfoliants with plastic beads

excerpts from Scrubbing Out Sea Life: Exfoliating plastic beads feel good—unless you live in the ocean by Hillary Rosner
 Is your exfoliant harming marine life?

• the exfoliating ingredient in Olay's body wash, and in most similar big-brand products (such as Dove Gentle Exfoliating Foaming Facial Cleanser and Clean & Clear Daily Pore Cleanser), is actually made out of plastic: tiny particles of polyethylene that scrub the dirt from your face and then wash straight down the drain and into watersheds and, eventually, oceans.
• It's well-known by now that increasing amounts of plastic are clogging the planet's seas, killing millions of sea creatures every year when they swallow it, choke on it, or get tangled in it and drown.
• Plastic doesn't biodegrade, meaning it doesn't break down into its initial components; every piece of plastic ever made is probably still around somewhere on the planet today. But sunlight disintegrates plastic into smaller pieces of plastic. These can wind up in waterways like rivers and creeks, flowing out to sea.
• The thing about plastic exfoliating beads is that they don't need to break down in order to end up in the stomachs of marine life from otters to octopi.
• sewage treatment systems are not designed to remove microplastic, meaning the particles are likely to remain in the water. "It would appear that considerable quantities of these materials may be entering aquatic habitats; little is known about their persistence or the potential environmental consequences and more work is needed to establish this," Browne says.
• Not all exfoliants contain plastic. Many products are available that use salt, pumice, or ground up seeds to do the same job without the environmental cost—like Burt's Bees Deep Pore Scrub (finely ground peach stones) or St. Ives Apricot Scrub (apricot kernels).
  

Melissa Lin - state champion

Susan Bitetti sweeps to state tennis title

By Mike Farrell  / Girls Tennis
Sunday, June 15, 2008 - Added 1d 17h ago

WORCESTER - If you decided to cruise down to Clark University to enjoy some sun, a cool bottled water and a dramatic, war-of-attrition-style battle to settle the state's individual girls singles and doubles championships, this may not have been the year.

At least, it wasn't until the day's last set.

After Norwell's Susan Bitetti authored a 6-0, 6-0 thrashing of Longmeadow's Rebecca Kimmel for the state singles crown, Winchester's Melissa Lin and Leslie Signor followed suit and blanked Notre Dame Academy's Kelly Leonard and Lindsay Harrington in the first set 6-0.

The following set provided the day's only clenched fists and bitten fingernails, as Notre Dame fought back valiantly, but ultimately fell 7-5, securing the doubles title for Winchester.

"I think we let it get to our head that we won 6-0, so it's really hard to come back from that," Lin said. "You think you can sail through it, but you can't. Neither of us were too tired."

Photo by Herald file photo

Winchester's Melissa Lin, along with doubles teammate Leslie Signor, captured the state championship yesterday at Clark University.

An Affair To Remember

An interesting, funny, and sad article.
--pws

Some excerpts from http://www.slate.com/id/2192178/

• She was 82. He was 95. They had dementia. They fell in love. And then they started having sex.
• But when Bob's son walked in and saw his dad's 82-year-old girlfriend performing oral sex on his 95-year-old father last December, incredulity turned into full-blown panic.
• Bob's son became determined to keep the two apart and asked the facility's staff to ensure that they were never left alone together.
• After that, Dorothy stopped eating. She lost 21 pounds, was treated for depression, and was hospitalized for dehydration. When Bob was finally moved out of the facility in January, she sat in the window for weeks waiting for him. She doesn't do that anymore, though: "Her Alzheimer's is protecting her at this point," says her doctor, who thinks the loss might have killed her if its memory hadn't faded so mercifully fast.
• Gerontologists highly recommend sex for the elderly because it improves mood and even overall physical function, but the legal issues are enormously complicated, as Daniel Engber explored in his 2007 article "Naughty Nursing Homes": Can someone with dementia give informed consent?
• In the picture, Dorothy is sitting at the piano in the lobby, where she used to play and he used to sing along—with gusto, usually warbling, "I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair," no matter what tune she was playing. She is all dolled up, wearing a jangly red bracelet and gold lamé shoes, and they are holding hands and beaming in a way that makes it impossible not to see the 18-year-olds inside them.
• Whenever Bob caught sight of Dorothy, he lit up "like a young stud seeing his lady for the first time." Even at 95, he'd pop out of his chair and straighten his clothes when she walked into the room. She would sit, and then he would sit. And both of them began taking far greater pride in their appearance
• The state did send someone in to try to mediate the situation—but then the mediator was diagnosed with cancer and died just five weeks later.
• Dorothy's son-in-law, who is a doctor, suspects Bob's son of fearing for his inheritance. Bob had repeatedly proposed for all to hear and called Dorothy his wife, but his son called her something else—a "gold digger"—and refused to even discuss her family's offer to sign a prenup.
• Though Dorothy might or might not remember what happened, "there's a sadness in her" that wasn't there before, the manager said. Bob "gave her back something she had long lost—to think she's pretty, to care about her step and her stride."
• And though the doctor never laid eyes on Bob, in general, he said, the fear of sex causing heart attacks is wildly overblown: "If you've made it to age 95, I'm sorry, but having sex is not going to kill you—it's going to prolong your life.

6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World

We need sun-dried shitakes.
--pws

excerpts from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2008/06/10/6-ways-mushrooms-can-save-the-world.aspx?source=nl

Paul Stamets has the kind of forward-thinking mind that stands to make a real difference for the future of the planet. At first it may seem strange to be as passionate about fungus as Stamets is, but his vision is in many ways parallel to mine: improve the health of the population and the planet using natural means. "There are more species of fungi, bacteria, and protozoa in a single scoop of soil than there are plants and vertebrate animals in all of North America," Stamets writes in his book Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (which, by the way, is well worth reading if you find this topic as intriguing as I do). And it seems there is virtually no limit to what these fungal spores -- which Stamets calls "the neurological network of nature" -- can do: Restore habitat that's been devastated by pollution Naturally fight flu viruses and other diseases Kill ants, termites and other insects without using pesticides Create a sustainable fuel known as Econol It's hard to imagine that in one cubic inch of soil, there could be eight miles of mycelium -- or that it can hold 30,000 times its mass. But, then again, the best solutions are often the most obvious -- and the simplest. And as the first organism to come to land -- many thousands of years ago and still going strong -- fungi must be doing something right. Mushrooms for Your Health Just as mushrooms can strengthen the immune system of the environment, they can also strengthen the immune system in your body. Aside from being rich in protein, fiber, vitamin C, B vitamins, calcium and minerals, there are about 50 species of medicinal mushrooms that are so rich in antioxidants they can do everything from boost your immune function to lower your risk of cancer, heart disease and allergies. In ancient times, Egyptians and Asians created longevity tonics from mushrooms -- and even the 5,000-year-old "Ice Man" that was found in Europe a few years back had dried mushrooms with him. Interestingly, if grown and dried in the right way, mushrooms are also one of the few foods that can provide you with vitamin D. As many of you may know, sun exposure is still the best route to make your vitamin D, but one study found that exposure to ultraviolet light could enrich growing, or just-picked mushrooms with a large supply of vitamin D. Stamets' book that I mentioned above also describes this topic in detail, including a study in which shitake mushrooms increased in vitamin D from 110 IU when they were dried indoors to 21,4000 IU when they were dried in the sunlight! Getting Back to Sustaining the Earth … It's always been apparent that the health of your body is intricately tied to the health of the land, but lately it seems the tides are turning in regard to how we view our connection to nature. Increasing numbers of people are choosing to honor the laws of nature and are reverting to the more sustainable practices of long-ago generations. I believe that future health depends on creating sustainable farming practices that will provide pure, nourishing food -- and along the way this requires cleaning up the soil that has been pilfered by industry. And what could be a better start to this than Stamets' "life boxes" -- which are cardboard boxes full of fungi and seeds that can grow food, clean up toxic wastes and even provide a new beginning for old-growth forests? Once again, it seems, the simplest ideas will be the ones that ultimately improve the world.

web site also has video and photo from graduation
--pws

Tassels flipped; introducing the WHS 'Class of 2008'

By Eric Tsetsi/Staff Writer

Mon Jun 09, 2008, 04:45 PM EDT

Winchester, MA -

The Field House at Winchester High School was packed with cheering onlookers Sunday for the WHS class of 2008 commencement.

For anyone who's been to a graduation, it was a traditional affair with the typical music (Pomp and Circumstance), speeches and cap throwing. But for this year's graduates, it signified a turning point in their lives as they move on from the familiarity of home to the excitement of college and elsewhere.

"We all wonder what's ahead," said Peter Stein, Senior Class President. "Right now we're all contemplating the abruptness of the end of high school and our interest in the new worlds we are about to enter. This change may be frightening at first, and I know it will be for me. But in other ways I see it as just the next step … Winchester High School has prepared us well."

About 280 students graduated this year. The majority — more than 90 percent — will be entering college, according to the guidance office's unofficial statistics.

Several students are going to Boston College; others will be attending Yale University, Tulane University, Princeton and Cornell, according to Red and Black, the high school newspaper.

"We have learned to overcome obstacles and face difficult challenges to get to this point today," said Stein, who congratulated his fellow graduates on their achievements and their futures. "All of our experiences both big and small have stimulated our growth. As we grow, however, we also change."

According to Stein, the class of 2008 stood out for several reasons, including for its commitment to helping disadvantaged people across the country, from New Orleans to Boston.

"We've traveled far and wide in order to help others," he said.

Several students spent their vacations volunteering to help rebuild New Orleans and the gulf coast, according to Stein.

The senior class gift was a reflection of their commitment to helping others. They made a donation to every school library in the school district to help in the purchase of new books.

Although the hot and humid weather that dominated the weekend created a stuffy atmosphere in the field house, the celebration went smoothly and within an hour and a half, graduates were off to their various parties and gatherings.

"I think this was a great class. They were a great group, they improved the school unity," said Principal Tom Gwin.

Math teacher Robert Trakimas, who gave the faculty address, urged students to maintain their passion for helping others as they grow older and become consumed by life's travails.

"Don't forget the internal reminders of promoting issues such as tolerance of diversity," he said.

Trakimas, a former trial attorney turned high school teacher, also urged students to follow a path that brings them happiness and enjoyment.

"I hope that all of you can follow your dreams … I hope you can find a job that you love and I hope that you find many other interests that you can enjoy," he said.

Eric Tsetsi can be reached at 781-674-7731 or etsetsi@cnc.com.

Fwd: Fw: Pretty Amazing...

More chalk drawings from Julian Beever.  Incredible!!!!!   Julian Beever is an English artist who's famous for his art on the pavement of England, France, Germany, USA, Australia and Belgium. Beever gives to his drawings an amazing 3D illusion.     Look Closely, you can see the Bricks through the Chalk on theMonitor Screen   There is no hole in this pavement   People are actually avoiding walking in the 'hole'   Which is the real guy &which beer is real?  < /FONT> Girl in Swimming Pool (Remember, both his feet in reality are flat on the pavement )   Politicians Meeting Their End   World's Biggest Fly-Spray   This drawing of a Rescue was to be viewed using an inverting mirror .   Make Poverty History drawing from the side(40 ft long)             Spiderman to the rescue   Batman and Robin to the rescue(SO COOL)

 

do computers have a negative effect on scholastic achievement?

Oh no!  We just gave Alexa a laptop for her graduation.  We may have jeopardized her college career...
--pws

excerpts from http://www.slate.com/id/2192798/

So will kids use these subsidized computing resources to prepare for the demands of the 21^st-century job market? Or do computers just serve as a 21^st-century substitute for that more venerable time-waster—the television?

New research by economists Ofer Malamud and Cristian Pop-Eleches provides an answer: For many kids, computers are indeed more of a distraction than a learning opportunity. The two researchers surveyed households that applied to Euro 200, a voucher distribution program in Romania designed to help poor households defray the cost of buying a computer for their children. It turns out that kids in households lucky enough to get computer vouchers spent a lot less time watching TV—but that's where the good news ends. "Vouchered" kids also spent less time doing homework, got lower grades, and reported lower educational aspirations than the "unvouchered" kids.

This is certainly not the first attempt to measure the costs and benefits of giving computers to kids. Some earlier studies also found that computers have a negative effect on scholastic achievement. Others found the opposite.

The Fat Cyclist's Dilemma

I thought you might find The Fat Cyclist's Dilemma interesting.
--pws

Dilemma

06.6.2008 | 9:58 am

A couple days ago, I was riding my road bike down Suncrest, flying at 45-50mph.

Tight tuck. Arms and legs tensed and pulled in close. Eyes in narrow slits. Tears streaming sideways. Teeth bared.

And that is when a bug smacked into my teeth. Full force. I'm pretty sure it exploded on impact.

And so I did exactly what I've done a million times before, and which I'm sure you have done just as many times when a bug flies into your mouth while you're cycling: I began hacking and spitting, desperate to get the insect — or, more accurately, insect parts — out of my mouth. Stat.

And then…well, then…something horrible, yet fascinating happened. Something unexpected. Something I have yet to come to terms with. A realization I still am trying to find ways to deny:

That bug did not taste half-bad.

Yes, you read that right.

That insect that slammed into my teeth, exploding into a million little raw atom-sized bug parts, left a pleasant, nutty aftertaste.

You cannot know how much this distresses me.

I mean: I like the taste of bugs? Raw bugs?! That's not possible, is it?

Except, evidently it is.

So I'm confronted with a host of questions, each equally disturbing.

• What kind of bug was it? Or do I really want to know? Because if I find out, would I dare try another one?
• Do I like the taste of all bugs? Or do I just like the one kind? It seems likely that if one kind of bug is delicious, others are too. I can't believe I just typed that sentence.
• Have I missing out on something really wonderful my whole life by not being an eater of bugs?
• Should I, from this point forward, ride with my mouth open, and crunch thoughtfully and appreciatively on whatever snack happens to find its way into my mouth?

Of course, there's considerable upside to this, potentially. I mean, with as many bugs as I smack into in an average ride, I could easily stop bringing energy food with me on rides. Think of all the money I'd save. And I'm sure my friends wouldn't be grossed out at all.

I am horrified, even as I am intrigued.

Please excuse me while I go brush my teeth and floss. For the thousandth time this week.

couple never more than 15 feet apart

Slate article By David Plotz and Hanna Rosin
Posted Monday, June 2, 2008, at 10:18 AM ET

I posted this article in its entirety, but was warned it was copyright infringement and had to remove it.

car plows into Mexican bike race

1 dead as car plows into Mexican bike race

Police say American driver was apparently drunk and fell asleep at wheel

	A car collides with cyclists participating in a race in Mexico's northern border city of Matamoros on Sunday.  View related photos
Jose Fidelino Vera Hernandez / AP

updated 6:11 a.m. ET, Tues., June. 3, 2008

MONTERREY, Mexico - A car plowed into a bike race along a highway near the U.S.-Mexico border, killing one and injuring 10 others.

The 28-year-old driver was apparently drunk and fell asleep when he crashed into the race Sunday, police investigator Jose Alfredo Rodriguez said Monday.

A photograph taken by a city official showed bicyclists and equipment being hurled high into the air by the collision.

Rodriguez said Juan Campos was charged with killing 37-year-old Alejandro Alvarez of Monterrey.

Authorities said the wreck happened 15 minutes into the 34-kilometer race Sunday along a highway between Playa Bagdad and Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

Campos said he is an American citizen living in Brownsville. The U.S. Consulate could not immediately confirm that.

"We are looking into the incident in terms of whether American citizens were involved,'' consulate spokesman Todd Huizinga said.

Kevin Anglin gives senior address at St Michael's College commencement

Hi Francis,
Congratulations on Kevin's successfully completing college and giving such an excellent commencement speech.  Quite an accomplishment.
--Phillip

Winchester resident gives showstopper senior address at Saint Michael's College Commencement

Winchester Star article, Sun Jun 01, 2008, 08:58 AM EDT

Winchester, MA -

Kevin Eugene Anglin, son of Francis and Eugenia Anglin of Winchester, earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Saint Michael's College at commencement ceremonies May 15, on the campus of the liberal arts residential Catholic college located in the Burlington area of Vermont.

Anglin was selected by his classmates to give the Senior Address at the ceremonies, and he gave a show-stopper speech that held his peers in rapt attention. His principal message was that college should not be the best years of their lives, but that each year into their futures should be better than the last. His speech was characterized by humor, crisp language, and matchless delivery.

Opening with a joke about being the speaker, Anglin said to his classmates, "When you got that e-mail about voting for your commencement speaker, you really should have replied to it."

After a fine rap through a number of jokes, Anglin said, "First: we can't allow these to be the best four years of our lives . . . They were great of course, and while they may have been our best four years to date, they were only in preparation for our best years to come . . . Saint Michael's has instead prepared us so that hopefully each year following this one, will be the best year of our life, creating a wondrous self-reciprocating cycle concluding that when we die, due to medical advancements, at the ripe old age of 227, that will have been the best year of our life."

Saint Michael's College, www.smcvt.edu, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's Best 366 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns, and less than two hours from Montreal.

As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students.

In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael's professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last seven years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2008 U.S. News & World Report rankings.

Record numbers of bicyclists on the roads

article By Steve LeBlanc Associated Press / June 2, 2008

Drivers, clear a lane; bicyclists are taking to the road in record numbers in Massachusetts.

In Cambridge, ridership has soared 70 percent in five years, the MBTA is launching a "Bike Coach" to let riders bring their bicycles to beaches this summer, and across the state bicycle shops are struggling to keep up with demand.

With gas prices now topping $4 a gallon, the surge shows no signs of slowing.

During a recent bike-to-work week, activists hoped to get Massachusetts riders to pledge 50,000 commuter biking miles. Instead they got 125,000 pledged miles - more than half the distance to the moon.

For bicycling enthusiasts - once a subculture of bike messengers, car haters, cash-poor students, and eco-activists - it's beginning to feel like a tipping point.

"People are coming back to the cycle in a big way," said Shane Jordan of the nonprofit Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition. "There's a whole lot more people out on the street around this time than there were last year."

Cities and town are adapting in big and small ways.

In Lexington, near the popular 11-mile Minuteman Bikeway, activists installed a half-dozen new bicycle racks in April.

On a recent Saturday every spot was taken, with extra bikes locked to sign posts and parking meters.

"I couldn't believe how many people were out there," said Stewart Kennedy, head of the local bicycle advisory committee. "It's getting into the zeitgeist that it's cool."

Boston is planning to install hundreds of new bicycles racks and create a new "bike map" of the city while one of the Massachusetts' largest planning groups has launched a statewide inventory of ridership on bicycle trails.

Riders are also flocking to sign up for safety and training courses, according to Jordan, the bicycle coalition's director of education and outreach.

The group offers one-hour sessions at companies to help workers learn the ins and outs of bike commuting. Last year the group gave three training sessions. This year they have given about a dozen, Jordan said.

At Ace Wheelworks in Somerville, mechanic and salesman Memet Ozgoren said business is booming.

Sales have been especially good among riders looking for sturdy commuting bikes, according to Ozgoren, who said several customers told him they sold their cars.

"Bike sales have been excellent in general, especially bikes geared toward urban riding - bicycles that are more practical as opposed to pleasure craft," he said.

© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.

Fwd: amazing driving stunts

The driving in this old car commercial is amazing.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2006/08/24/the-best-car-commercial-you-ever-saw.aspx

How to opt out of our own stupid choices

Possible book club read.
--pws

books: Reading between the lines.

Taming Your Inner Homer Simpson - How to opt out of our own stupid choices.

article By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Monday, May 12, 2008, at 7:03 AM ET

The real trick to understanding how to approach Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, the new book by Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler, lies in recognizing the limitations of your inner Homer Simpson. In the authors' view, your whole brain is a civil-war zone between your "automatic system" (the rapid, intuitive, reptilian part) and your "reflective system" (the slow, deliberate, self-conscious part). Behavioral economists take the position that snap judgments formed by your Homer Simpson brain are often quite terrible ones, which go on to have enormous consequences in your financial, physical, and emotional life. Like Homer, we use all sorts of mental "heuristics" or cognitive "rules of thumb" that are flawed, which is why we pay for magazine subscriptions for years after the three-month "free" trial ended ("status quo bias") and why we buy lottery tickets ("unrealistic optimism").

The premise of Nudge—the authors caution in their very first footnote that this is not to be read as noodge (noun: from the Yiddish, meaning, "You never call; you never write. ...")—is that in framing public policy, "choice architects" should gently guide us to make better choices, the sorts of choices Albert Einstein or Star Trek's Mr. Spock* might make or that we would make if we were to consult such men on our personal decisions about, say, giving up smoking. Laissez faire economics holds that faced with a broad menu of choices, most of us will choose wisely. Sunstein and Thaler fear that some of us might pull a Homer Simpson and try to eat the menu.

Now, nobody appreciates being compared to Homer Simpson, but isn't that really the whole point? Sunstein and Thaler are very persuasive in illustrating how often we channel him in our daily decision-making. In fact, your automatic system may reveal your own biases with respect to this book: While your Homer Simpson brain might leap to the conclusion that any book by a University of Chicago economist and a law professor—Sunstein is about to become a Harvard law professor—might be hopelessly dry, that could just be a mistake of the so-called "availability heuristic" (assessing the likelihood of an outcome based on the examples that come most readily to mind). But Nudge is actually great fun to read. And while your reptilian mind might balk at their language of "libertarian paternalism"—even the authors concede the words are "off-putting" if not "contradictory"—your reflective mind may have to concede that there's something to be said for gently guiding children to eat fruit in the cafeteria or inducing workers to sign up for their 401(k) plans, so long as nobody is being coerced and the Oreos are merely moved to a higher shelf, not banned. In some ways the whole project involves resetting the default buttons of your life to healthy and wealthy and wise. Of course someone else is doing the resetting, and that is where the problem lies.

You will not like the version of yourself you meet in Nudge. For one thing, you eat too many cashews, long after you stopped wanting one. (You will also eat squeaky, stale popcorn even if you hate it.) Problem blackjack players (like, er, myself) will play more recklessly with the "house money" you have just won. You are hopelessly enslaved to the judgments (even the wrong ones) of others. You believe everybody knows (and cares) which T-shirt you are wearing. You pay insane fees on your credit cards and don't contribute to your 401(k) even though you know you should. You claim to want to be an organ donor yet somehow find checking the box on your driver's license to be beyond you.

One way you may soothe your Homer Simpson mind is by patiently explaining to it that he is not only stupid, but that public-policy decisions made to get around him are already quite common: Sunstein and Thaler tell us that Chicago's Lake Shore Drive features white stripes on the most dangerous parts of the road that offer drivers the illusion that their speed is increasing. Drivers slow down. An Amsterdam economist had black houseflies etched into the wells of the urinals at Schiphol Airport under the theory that "If a man sees a fly, he aims at it." Spillage decreased by 80 percent. Some of these suggestions for libertarian paternalism in savings have already been enacted into law. Automatic enrollment is becoming the norm for 401(k) plans. In 2006 Congress passed the Pension Protection Act, which offers employers incentives to match employee contributions and resets certain enrollment defaults to maximize contributions. And the ATM beeps to remind you that you've walked away without your bank card.

Is it oh-so-slightly creepy (or socialist) to envision a world in which shadowy choice architects are nudging you away from the cashews and toward organ donation? Could those seniors who understood all 46 options offered in President Bush's prescription drug plan please raise their hands?

If Sunstein and Thaler are right that we live in a world of too many choices, with insufficient time and information to make the best one and little feedback about the stupid choices we've made in the past, the question is not so much whether we should be steered toward the smart ones as: Where should we be steered instead? Given that someone someplace is often setting the defaults anyhow, wouldn't we prefer that the guy in charge be Mr. Spock? Could any of us agree, however, about which Mr. Spock is truly worthy of making these decisions? The authors urge that "if the underlying decision is difficult and unfamiliar, and if people do not get prompt feedback when they err, it's legitimate, even good to nudge a bit."

Some of the suggestions will generate controversy, particularly when one contemplates some wise decision-maker who is resetting our defaults, in secret, or producing the summary sheet of the best schools for our children. And although the nudges in question are often referenced as "small" or "gentle" or "non-coercive," there are certainly moments at which a nudge turns into a full-on body check, particularly when you contemplate the government becoming involved. The authors toss out ideas about privatizing marriage, allowing patients to waive the right to sue their physicians, paying teen girls not to get pregnant. And my own favorite suggestion may well be a "civility check" warning you that the e-mail you are poised to send "APPEARS TO BE AN UNCIVIL E-MAIL. DO YOU REALLY AND TRULY WANT TO SEND IT?"

As the child of an economist, I must confess that there was a part of me that wanted to push back against the message that animates Nudge, i.e., that every time I think I am picking the best health plan for my children, Homer Simpson is actually just reaching for the double-glazed chocolate doughnut. I want to believe I am smarter than that. But you see that, too, is a product of my reptilian brain. As Sunstein and Thaler explain, another common cognitive error is the heuristic called "optimism and overconfidence." It's what leads more than 50 percent of Thaler's MBA students to predict they will all perform in the top two deciles of their class and allows 94 percent of professors at large universities to believe themselves better than the "average professor." In other words—painful though it may be to admit—the mere fact that we believe ourselves smart enough to optimize complicated choices may be the most Simpsonic thing about us. I know: D'oh!

Is fake grass better for the environment?

Eco-Turf - Is fake grass better for the environment?

article By Brendan I. Koerner
Posted Tuesday, May 13, 2008, at 7:27 AM ET

I fear that my well-tended lawn is wreaking havoc on the environment. I've considered replacing it with synthetic grass, which requires far less maintenance. But manufacturing that plastic vegetation must give off a lot of carbon emissions, right? So which type of lawn is (figuratively) greener—real or fake?

It's tough to declare a winner here without knowing the specifics of your lawn-care regimen, as well as your geographic location. If you're reckless with the fertilizer, oblivious to the consequences of heedless mowing, and live in a drought-stricken region, then ersatz grass has the clear environmental edge. But if you're diligent about your gardening routine, the real stuff may be better.

The environmental drawbacks of genuine lawns are easy enough to tally. They're thirsty, of course—the average American lawn gulps down 21,600 gallons of water per year. Lawns planted atop sandy soil can be particularly wasteful since they drain more quickly. And the water usage problem is particularly acute when a homeowner insists on laying sod that's ill-suited to the local climate.

Gas-powered mowers, meanwhile, are hazardous to more than just eardrums. A 2001 study by Sweden's Stockholm University found that an hour's worth of mowing resulted in the same amount of smog-forming emissions as driving a car 93 miles. Mower manufacturers contend that their newer models have become cleaner, yet they still resist calls to add catalytic converters to their products; according to the Swedes, doing so would reduce mower emissions by 80 percent.

Another knock against real grass is that it's frequently drizzled with fertilizer, most of which is synthetic. American homeowners use about 3 million metric tons of synthetic lawn fertilizer per year. The fossil fuel equivalent of a barrel of oil goes into manufacturing 560 pounds of such fertilizer, so our collective lawn habit is costing us more than 11.8 million barrels of oil annually. We also use 70 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides on our lawns every year. Clippings that are improperly disposed of can end up polluting major waterways.

On the plus side, lawns do act as carbon sinks. According to a 2005 NASA study, the United States is covered with roughly 40 million acres of tended lawns. Assuming all clippings are bagged and tossed in the trash, those lawns can soak up about 13.2 million pounds of carbon dioxide per year. But the study's authors stressed that the lawns' carbon absorption is likely negated by the amount of energy that goes into making synthetic fertilizer and powering mowers.

While it's not entirely maintenance-free, synthetic grass requires neither water nor fertilizer nor mowing. Its greatest environmental sin occurs during manufacturing, since the production of polyethylene and other essential fake-grass materials (such as polymers and elastomeric coatings) is energy intensive. One must also consider the inevitable disposal issues—like most plastics, aside from those found in beverage and detergent bottles, artificial turf is typically landfilled rather than recycled.

So how bad is fake grass? The best life-cycle study the Lantern could find is this one (PDF), in which Canada's Athena Institute tried to calculate the carbon toll of converting a school's playing field from real grass to artificial. The new field could be made carbon neutral, the study's authors concluded, by planting and maintaining 1,861 trees for a decade. But keep in mind that this was an athletic pitch measuring 96,840 square feet, not a piddling single-family lawn. And Athena's calculations had to take into account the installation of PVC pipes for drainage, something that may not affect the average homeowner.

There are also many environmental activists who revile fake grass that uses rubber infill—that is, crumbs of recycled tires sprinkled between the blades, in order to provide cushioning. They claim that these rubber bits can cause health problems if inhaled; the artificial-turf industry counters that such fears are scientifically unwarranted. The Lantern will note only that the infill issue seems to affect athletic fields more than ornamental lawns and that there are artificial options that don't include rubber crumbs.

The bottom line is that, whichever lawn type you choose, you should commit to managing it responsibly. If you want to minimize your water and fertilizer use by going the fake route, make sure you purchase a quality product that won't have to be replaced for a decade or more.

But if you don't feel comfortable with plastic, think about drastically altering your lawn-care practices. For starters, compost your clippings instead of bagging them; per the NASA study, this can nearly triple your lawn's effectiveness as a carbon sink. Ditch your aging gas-powered mower in favor of a reel push mower. And make the switch to organic fertilizers that contain ingredients like cornmeal or seaweed.

Is there an environmental quandary that's been keeping you up at night? Send it to ask.the.lantern@gmail.com, and check this space every Tuesday.