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Your Half-Eaten Sandwich’s Dirty Secret

by Justin Thomas Posted on September 16, 2013

Mother Jones

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A full third of the world’s food is wasted. According to a new report from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, discarded food accounts for a staggering amount of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, if food waste was a country, its 3.3 gigatonnes of emissions would make it the third highest-emitting country in the world, after China and the United States:

All charts reproduced with permission from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

(LULUCF refers to “land use, land-use change, and forestry”—so this chart doesn’t take into account all of the carbon emitted when a rainforest is converted to a farm, for example.)

What exactly makes all that waste and its emissions? It’s not just consumers throwing dinner scraps away. Some food spoils before farmers can harvest it, other food goes bad on its way from the farm to the market, and still more food ends up rotting on supermarket shelves. Looking at emissions of uneaten food from farm to table, the researchers found that food wasted at the consumer phase had the highest carbon footprint. That’s because by the time food gets to that stage, it’s already accumulated emissions from production, harvest, and distribution. In other words, when chuck food that you buy at the supermarket, you’re throwing away every part of the process that has gotten it there, as well:

Some kinds of food waste create more emissions than others. Wasted fruit, for example, has a relatively small ratio of food waste to carbon emitted. Meat’s ratio is much larger. That’s because meat production is exceptionally carbon intensive.

Food waste and emissions also vary by region. This graph shows that industrialized Asia (China, Japan, and South Korea) is far and away the largest contributor to both food waste and carbon emissions in the world:

But if you look at food waste’s carbon footprint per person, North America and Oceania (United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) is the winner—meaning the uneaten food produced by each citizen of North America and Oceania is responsible for more carbon emissions than that of each person in industrialized Asia. The report authors don’t go into the reasons for this, but I’m guessing it has to do with the fact that North Americans waste more food overall—especially in the carbon-instensive consumer phase—than people most other regions.

Of course, carbon emissions are not the only way in which wasted food harms the environment. The report finds that wasted food consumes an amount of water almost three times as large as Switzerland’s Lake Geneva—that’s 60 percent more than Lake Tahoe. The authors also note that uneaten food could cover nearly 30 percent of the world’s arable land.

And that’s to say nothing of the human impact of all this food waste. By 2020, the global population is expected to hit 8 billion. How are we going to feed everyone? Some argue that we should use biotechnology to design higher yielding crops, while others believe that we simply must redistribute the food we already grow—enough to feed 12 billion people, my colleague Tom Philpott reports—more evenly. But surely figuring out how to eat the food that we produce instead of throwing it away would help, too.

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Your Half-Eaten Sandwich’s Dirty Secret

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7 High-Tech Gadgets for Helicopter Parents

by Larissaiyb Posted on September 16, 2013

Mother Jones

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First off, let’s get one thing straight: You suck as a parent. This is obvious because you’re human and thus almost certain to do unforgivable things like leave your baby alone in his or her crib for several hours at a time just so that you can sleep. But let’s assume for the sake of argument that you never sleep: How do you really know that your sleeping child is healthy? By staring at her all night long? Please. It’s time to admit that you have no idea how to raise a child, and that you should outsource the job to your friends in Silicon Valley. Let’s face it, they’re probably smarter than you, and their kids will probably have higher IQs than your kids and get into better colleges. So heed their advice, and buy these indispensable baby-rearing gadgets.

Withings Smart Kids Scale

During scheduled check-ups, your pediatrician will typically weigh your baby to make sure that his growth curve falls within the range of “normal.” But given that your baby may go days, weeks, or even months between check-ups, how do you know he hasn’t suddenly forked off onto an inexorable path towards anorexia or morbid obesity? That’s why you need the Withings Smart Kids Scale. It weighs your baby and automatically transmits the measurements to a smartphone app. You can use the app to tweak your feeding strategy, stuffing or starving your infant into total normalcy.

Owlet Vitals Monitor

A sensor woven into your baby’s sock tracks her heart rate, blood-oxygen levels, skin temperature, and “sleep quality.” It streams this data in real time, along with any “roll over alerts,” to your iPhone, where it’s logged in perpetuity by a special app. Rest assured knowing that the slightest perturbations in your child’s bodily rhythms will be brought to your immediate attention, enabling you to constantly wonder if you ought to rush her to the hospital before it’s too late. Only 6 percent of Owlet customers have babies with health issues, according to Owlet founder Jordan Monroe. But nobody has health issues, you know, until they do.

Babies’ Diary

Unfortunately, sensors and smart scales can’t monitor everything that matters to your baby’s health (and ultimate fantastic success in life). For that, you’ll need the Babies’ Diary, an app that tracks nursings, diaper changes, baths, doctor visits, baby length and head size, and the duration of stroller walks and play sessions. Concerned that constantly updating these details might detract from, say, your quality time with your child? Don’t worry about it! Just sleep less.

True Fit iAlert Convertible Car Seat

When a VC drives his little guy around Menlo Park, how does he really know the kids is buckled in and happy? He could turn around and check on him, but who has time for that while updating their Baby Diaries and negotiating the gridlock on Sand Hill Road? That’s why the True Fit iAlert Convertible Car Seat is such a lifesaver. For just $399.99, you get a seat that’s fully integrated with your iPhone. You’ll never have to take your eyes off the screen again to know that your child has overheated, jumped out the window, or been abandoned by you in the parking lot.

Why Cry Baby Cry Analyzer

Do you know why your baby is crying? Neither do the autistic geniuses who rule Silicon Valley. That’s why they own the Why Cry Baby Cry Analyzer. Who needs common sense when you’ve got algorithms?

Locate 1 GPS

Until robot nannies become viable, you may need to hire a human to help take care of your baby while you’re at work. Instead of trusting your nanny’s judgment, bug your baby’s diaper bag with the Locate 1 GPS. For only $500 (and a $15 to $50 monthly service fee), it can tell you where your baby is going, if he has exceeded a certain speed limit, and whether he has crossed into any “forbidden zones” that you may wish to designate, such as East Palo Alto. The Locate 1 will also come in handy once your baby gets his own drivers license.

BellyBuds

You can put your fetus on the waiting list of an exclusive preschool, but don’t count on it being accepted without BellyBuds. As any good parent knows, children exposed to music in the womb develop sooner than children who aren’t. Sure, affixing two giant suction speakers to your engorged belly every night might not sound like fun, but neither is raising a child that can’t even get into MENSA.

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7 High-Tech Gadgets for Helicopter Parents

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Eric Schlosser: If We Don’t Slash Our Nukes, "a Major City is Going to be Destroyed."

by Judith Kimbers Posted on September 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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The term “wake-up call” is a tired cliché, but it is appropriate in the case of Command and Control, the frightening new exposé of America’s nuclear weapons mishaps by Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser. (Click here to read an excerpt and my detailed review.) In short, Schlosser delivers a book full of revelations that left me agape. While we still worry in the abstract about Iran and North Korea and Pakistan, it’s easy to forget that we still have thousands of our own ungodly devices on hair-trigger alert at this very moment. And even if we never drop or launch another nuke on purpose, these weapons are, in Schlosser’s words, “the most dangerous machines ever invented. And like every machine, sometimes they go wrong.”

That’s what the book is about. Through hard-fought documents and deep digging and extensive interviews, Schlosser reveals how close we’ve come, on numerous occasions, to a domestic nuclear detonation or an accidental war in which there are only losers. Command and Control will leave many readers with a deep unease about America’s ability to handle our nukes safely. Schlosser’s hope is that this unease will beget a long-neglected debate about “why we have them and when we use them and how many we need.” But his book is no screed. Schlosser delivers an engrossing page-turner. Would that it were fiction.

Mother Jones: The safety of America’s nuclear arsenal is far cry from fast food. What got you interested in this topic?

Eric Schlosser: I spent some time with the Air Force before Fast Food Nation came out. I was interested in the future of warfare in space: space weapons, particle-beam weapons, lasers, directed-energy devices. A lot of the people who were involved in it had started their careers as missile-crew officers. As I spent time with them, I became more interested in their stories from the Cold War about nuclear weapons than I did in the future of warfare in space.

MJ: How long did it take to research the book?

ES: A lot longer than I thought it would. I originally was going to write a relatively short book about this accident in Damascus, Arkansas, which was an extraordinary story. But the deeper I got, the more I realized that the subject of nuclear weapons accidents hadn’t really been written about, and that the threat was much greater than I thought it was. So what started out as a two-year project turned into six—and an extraordinary amount of digging around in strange places.

Eric Schlosser Photo: Kodiak Greenwood

MJ: My general takeaway is that, given our history of near misses, it’s essentially dumb luck that we haven’t had an accidental nuclear detonation on American soil, or an accidental launch.

ES: If we don’t greatly reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world, or completely eliminate them, a major city is going to be destroyed by a nuclear weapon. It’s remarkable—it’s incredible!—that a major city hasn’t been destroyed since Nagasaki. We can confront this problem or we can accept that hundreds of thousands or more will be killed. And I don’t think that’s inevitable. The book was really written with a notion of trying to prevent that.

MJ: But is you suppose it’s inevitable if we maintain our current course?

ES: My background, academically, is history. I hate the word “inevitable” because I feel like things don’t have to be the way they are. But we really need to change our policies. I think Obama has done a terrific job of trying to raise awareness about nuclear weapons. But we really need to sit down with Russia, China, England, France, India, Pakistan, and think about how to greatly reduce, if not eliminate, these weapons. And that may sound totally absurd and unrealistic, but when I was in my 20s, if someone had said that the Soviet Union would vanish without a nuclear war and the Berlin Wall would come down and all this would happen without tens of thousands, or millions, of deaths, people would have thought that was absurd.

MJ: What do you think might befall our society were an accidental detonation to occur? I mean, suppose that H-bomb had exploded in North Carolina?

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Eric Schlosser: If We Don’t Slash Our Nukes, "a Major City is Going to be Destroyed."

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A Sneak Peek at Eric Schlosser’s Terrifying New Book on Nuclear Weapons

by gerdi Posted on September 15, 2013

Mother Jones

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On January 23, 1961, a B-52 packing a pair of Mark 39 hydrogen bombs suffered a refueling snafu and went into an uncontrolled spin over North Carolina. In the cockpit of the rapidly disintegrating bomber (only one crew member bailed out safely) was a lanyard attached to the bomb-release mechanism. Intense G-forces tugged hard at it and unleashed the nukes, which, at four megatons, were 250 times more powerful than the weapon that leveled Hiroshima. One of them “failed safe” and plummeted to the ground unarmed. The other weapon’s failsafe mechanisms—the devices designed to prevent an accidental detonation—were subverted one by one, as Eric Schlosser recounts in his new book, Command and Control:

When the lanyard was pulled, the locking pins were removed from one of the bombs. The Mark 39 fell from the plane. The arming wires were yanked out, and the bomb responded as though it had been deliberately released by the crew above a target. The pulse generator activated the low-voltage thermal batteries. The drogue parachute opened, and then the main chute. The barometric switches closed. The timer ran out, activating the high-voltage thermal batteries. The bomb hit the ground, and the piezoelectric crystals inside the nose crushed. They sent a firing signal…

Unable to deny that two of its bombs had fallen from the sky—one in a swampy meadow, the other in a field near Faro, North Carolina—the Air Force insisted that there had never been any danger of a nuclear detonation. This was a lie.

Here’s the truth: Just days after JFK was sworn in as president, one of the most terrifying weapons in our arsenal was a hair’s breadth from detonating on American soil. It would have pulverized North Carolina and, depending on wind conditions, blanketed East Coast cities (including New York and Washington, DC) in lethal fallout. The only thing standing between us and an explosion so catastrophic that it would have radically altered the course of history was a simple electronic toggle switch in the cockpit, a part that probably cost a couple of bucks to manufacture and easily could have been undermined by a short circuit—hardly a far-fetched scenario in an electronics-laden airplane that’s breaking apart.

The anecdote above is just one of many “holy shit!” revelations readers will discover in the latest book from the best-selling author of Fast Food Nation. Easily the most unsettling work of nonfiction I’ve ever read, Schlosser’s six-year investigation of America’s “broken arrows” (nuclear weapons mishaps) is by and large historical—this stuff is top secret, after all—but the book is beyond relevant. It’s critical reading in a nation with thousands of nukes still on hair-trigger alert.

In sections, Command and Control reads like a character-driven thriller as Schlosser draws on his deep reporting, extensive interviews, and documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act to demonstrate how human error, computer glitches, dilution of authority, poor communications, occasional incompetence, and the routine hoarding of crucial information have nearly brought about our worst nightmare on numerous occasions.

While casual readers will learn a great deal about the history and geopolitics of our nuclear arsenal, Schlosser’s central narrative is built around a deadly 1980 explosion at a missile silo in Damascus, Arkansas, where our most powerful weapon, a W-53 thermonuclear warhead, sat atop a Titan II missile. He puts us on site as the catastrophe unfolds, offering an intimate window on the perspectives and personalities of those involved. It’s a gripping yarn that shows how the military concept of “command and control”—the process that governs how decisions are made and orders are executed—functions in practice, and how it can unravel in a crisis.

Absent the Soviet threat, it’s easy to forget that these ungodly devices are still all around us. An entire generation, as Schlosser told me recently, is blissfully unaware of the specter of nuclear devastation. But Command and Control will leave readers of any age with a deep unease about our ability—to say nothing of, say, Pakistan’s—to handle these weapons safely. Schlosser wrote the book in the hope of reviving America’s long-dormant debate about “the most dangerous machines ever invented.” Fortunately, he delivers a page-turner, not a doorstop.

So below you’ll find the first chapter. It’s just a tease, but it’ll give you a taste of what’s in store. The book is available September 17. Buy it. Read it. Make noise about it. And don’t miss my chat with Schlosser about his epic project, and why he believes “it’s remarkable—it’s incredible!—that a major city hasn’t been destroyed since Nagasaki.”

*******

The following excerpt is reprinted by arrangement with The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, a Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © Eric Schlosser, 2013.


Not Good

On September 18, 1980, at about 6:30 in the evening, Senior Airman David Powell and Airman Jeffrey Plumb walked into the silo at Launch Complex 374-7, a few miles north of Damascus, Arkansas. They were planning to do a routine maintenance procedure on a Titan II missile.

They’d spent countless hours underground at complexes like this one. But no matter how many times they entered the silo, the Titan II always looked impressive. It was the largest intercontinental ballistic missile ever built by the United States: 10 feet in diameter and 103 feet tall, roughly the height of a nine-story building. It had an aluminum skin with a matte finish and U.S. AIR FORCE painted in big letters down the side. The nose cone on top of the Titan II was deep black, and inside it sat a W-53 thermonuclear warhead, the most powerful weapon ever carried by an American missile. The warhead had a yield of nine megatons—about three times the explosive force of all the bombs dropped during the Second World War, including both atomic bombs.

Day or night, winter or spring, the silo always felt the same. It was eerily quiet, and mercury vapor lights on the walls bathed the missile in a bright white glow. When you opened the door on a lower level and stepped into the launch duct, the Titan II loomed above you like an immense black-tipped silver bullet, loaded in a concrete gun barrel, primed, cocked, ready to go, and pointed at the sky.

The missile was designed to launch within a minute and hit a target as far as 6,000 miles away. In order to do that, the Titan II relied upon a pair of liquid propellants—a rocket fuel and an oxidizer—that were “hypergolic.” The moment they came into contact with each other, they’d instantly and forcefully ignite. The missile had two stages, and inside both of them, an oxidizer tank rested on top of a fuel tank, with pipes leading down to an engine. Stage 1, which extended about 70 feet upward from the bottom of the missile, contained about 85,000 pounds of fuel and 163,000 pounds of oxidizer.

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A Sneak Peek at Eric Schlosser’s Terrifying New Book on Nuclear Weapons

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9 Surprising Foods With More Sugar Than a Krispy Kreme Doughnut

by biglermyrta910 Posted on September 13, 2013

Mother Jones

It’s Friday! After a long week of work, you’re probably ready to curl up on the couch with a big box of doughnuts. But having read Gary Taubes’ expose in Mother Jones on the sugar industry’s terrifying campaign to convince the American public that sugar won’t kill you, maybe you’ll reach for a “healthier” option instead—like a green Odwalla “Super Food” smoothie.

Not so fast. According to a new report by Credit Suisse, you might be better off eating a doughnut than some of the stuff marketed as healthy. Here are nine surprising foods that have more sugar than a Krispy Kreme doughnut, which, at 10 grams, seems saintly in comparison:

1. Luna Bar: 11 grams

2. GRANDE STARBUCKS latte: 17 grams

3. Subway 6″ Sweet Onion Teriyaki Chicken Sandwich: 17 Grams

4. 8 oz Tropicana 100% Orange Juice: 22 Grams

5. Yoplait Original Yogurt: 27 Grams

6. 20 oz Vitamin Water: 33 Grams

7. Sprinkles Red Velvet Cupcake: 45 Grams

8. California Pizza Kitchen Thai Chicken Salad: 45 Grams

9. Odwalla Super Food Smoothie (12 oz): 50 Grams

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9 Surprising Foods With More Sugar Than a Krispy Kreme Doughnut

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Photos and Videos From Dramatic Flash Floods in Colorado

by jp19gkx Posted on September 12, 2013

Mother Jones

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Heavy rains falling in the Front Range of Colorado this week have left at least three people dead, authorities say. Up to 6 inches of rain fell in 12 hours overnight on Wednesday and into Thursday morning, augmenting what had already been a rainy month in the area and leading to dangerous flash floods.

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Photos and Videos From Dramatic Flash Floods in Colorado

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"We Made Them Suck Their Own Blood off the Floor:" Assad’s Other War Crimes

by bt88jtv Posted on September 12, 2013

Mother Jones

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For the last month, Washington has been tying itself in knots over how to respond to the Syrian government’s alleged use of chemical weapons. The Syrian people, meanwhile, are being subjected to ever-graver atrocities, most having nothing to do with poison gas. A new report from the United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria illuminates the increasingly brutal tactics that the country’s government—and, to a lesser degree, rebels—are deploying against civilians, from electrocution and rape to enlisting medical professionals to help torture hospitalized detainees. Significantly, while the report focuses on the commission’s findings from mid-May to mid-July and doesn’t cover the August chemical-weapons attack near Damascus, it concludes that both sides are guilty of war crimes and also accuses pro-government forces of crimes against humanity.

Whether the international community will do anything to curb the escalating brutality is an open question, though Thursday’s meeting between Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov may provide some answers. If the two sides can come together and craft an agreement to secure Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, perhaps the international community can also find common ground on other measures to protect civilians—and hold Syria’s war criminals to account.

Below is a roundup of atrocities laid out in the UN report.

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"We Made Them Suck Their Own Blood off the Floor:" Assad’s Other War Crimes

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Death Panels: Why Firefighters Are Scared of Solar Rooftops

by Finley Kay Posted on September 11, 2013

Mother Jones

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This story first appeared on the Atlantic Cities website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A 300,000 square foot refrigerated warehouse in Delanco, New Jersey, burned down last week, and the local fire chief says solar panels are partly to blame. No, the 700 solar panels on top of the Dietz & Watson warehouse didn’t cause the fire, but their presence did dissuade Delanco Fire Chief Ron Holt from putting his team on the roof. “With all that power and energy up there, I can’t jeopardize a guy’s life for that,” Holt told NBC Philadelphia. The only thing firefighters fear more than fire is solar.

So long as a solar panel is getting sunlight, it’s impossible to turn off. “During daylight, there can be enough voltage and current to injure or even kill a firefighter who comes in contact with the energized conductors,” Matthew Paiss, a fire engineer with the San Jose Fire Department, wrote in a handy guide for firefighters. The Dietz & Watson warehouse fire started when the sun was out. By the time the sun went down, the fire was beyond control. The warehouse burned for 29 hours.

As Paiss explained in his essay on solar panels and firefighting, roof access is crucial for firefighters:

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Death Panels: Why Firefighters Are Scared of Solar Rooftops

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A Political History of "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia"

by graptorm Posted on September 11, 2013

Mother Jones

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“The Gang” is back for its ninth season of dedicated nihilism and political incorrectness.

The new season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia last Wednesday, this time on FX’s newly launched spin-off channel FXX. The series—starring Charlie Day as Charlie, Glenn Howerton as Dennis, Rob McElhenney as Mac, Kaitlin Olson as Dee, and Danny DeVito as Frank—has a much-deserved reputation for outrageous and low-brow comedy (“Seinfeld on crack,” it’s been called). During a blind date with a beautiful woman, a nervous, sweat-drenched Charlie lies about his job by telling her he’s a philanthropist, but mispronounces it as “full-on rapist.” When Dennis visits his old frat house, the brothers are torturing a pledge with a stun gun to the genitals. You know, stuff like that. But the copious layers of crude humor mask one of the show’s less appreciated virtues: Oftentimes, it gets damn political—and on a wide range of issues, from foreign policy to welfare.

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A Political History of "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia"

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On Syria Debate, Congress Shifts From Frenzied to Frozen

by AntonioRe Posted on September 11, 2013

Mother Jones

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On Tuesday night, President Obama took his case for bombing Syria to the American public, but he also kept open the possibility that US attacks could be averted if Bashar al-Assad’s regime agrees to give up its chemical weapons. Obama asked lawmakers to delay a vote on whether to approve attacks on Syria, and just like that, the Syria debate in Congress went from frenzied to frozen. It’s crickets on Capitol Hill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) canceled the vote on Syria he was expected to schedule for this week. The Senate canceled an afternoon briefing on Syria. Lawmakers instead gathered on the US Capitol steps for a remembrance of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and trotted out onto House and Senate floors to opine on the budget, Obamacare, 9/11, and the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013. On Syria, they mostly waited. “Everyone’s just sitting around,” says a Senate Democratic aide.

That’s quite a change from the past week or so. To build support for bombing Syria, the White House threw practically every staffer and surrogate into the lobbying effort, briefing congressional Democrats and Republicans and trying mightily to convince skeptical lawmakers why they should vote yes on an authorization to use military force in Syria. The mighty American Israel Public Affairs Committee dispatched 300 members to the Hill to twist arms and convince lawmakers to support the attacks. By Monday, the president and members of the administration had met with some 85 senators and more than 165 House members, according to PBS NewsHour. It was an all-hands-on-deck effort—and it wasn’t working.

Obama’s Tuesday night speech to the American public was, among other things, a timeout call. By looks of Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Congress is more than happy to take a breather and put off, for now, what was sure to be a divisive vote for both parties.

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On Syria Debate, Congress Shifts From Frenzied to Frozen

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