So Little Time, So Much to Do

Americans are busy people. Way, way too busy. We’re so busy, we’re too busy to notice that we’re too busy.

A psychiatrist who’s written a book called CRAZYBUSY: OVERSTRETCHED, OVERBOOKED AND ABOUT TO SNAP, ascribes our excessive busy-ness to several factors: communications technology, fear of falling behind, fear of dealing with bigger issues, etc. All these reasons may contribute, but the one I find most likely is: “We do not know how not to be busy.”

I think that’s true. We strive to take on more than we can handle (see March 25 entry on multitasking), and we’re not very good at doing less or doing nothing (see March 14 entry on naps).

So pencil this onto your calendar or add it to your to-do list: “relax and enjoy myself.”

Let Kids Be Kids

We’ve become hyper-anxious about our kids, to the point of neurosis. The perception of crimes against children is worse than the reality, and as a result, we’re trying to protect them from their own childhoods. It’s pretty pathetic when parents are too scared to let their kid ride a bicycle by himself around the block or walk to school. Is it any wonder children are suffering more from obesity and related ailments? They can’t even play outside anymore.

As this LA Times op-ed observes, “when a child is parked on the living room floor, he or she may be safe, but is safety the sole objective of parenting? The ultimate goal is independence, and independence is best fostered by handing it out a little at a time, not by withholding it in a trembling fist that remains clenched until it’s time to move into the dorms.”

Green Just Not Wal-Mart’s Color?

Stacy Mitchell makes the argument in this column for The Grist that it’s impossible for Wal-Mart to be eco-friendly, despite its recent “green” initiatives. Big-box stores are killing small, neighborhood businesses. People have to drive farther to go shopping, creating more CO2 emissions–pollution that Wal-Mart hasn’t taken into account and exceeds by far its own combined greenhouse gas emissions.

Yet, such well-known environmental groups as the Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense are applauding Wal-Mart’s efforts. After all, the company has promised to make its stores 20 percent more energy efficient by 2013 and double the fuel economy of its trucks by 2015, among other things. But, if Mitchell is correct, Wal-Mart’s initiatives can’t offset the pollution created by its own shoppers.

Mitchell writes: “This cannot be dismissed as greenwashing. It’s actually far more dangerous than that. Wal-Mart’s initiatives have just enough meat to have distracted much of the environmental movement, along with most journalists and many ordinary people, from the fundamental fact that, as a system of distributing goods to people, big-box retailing is as intrinsically unsustainable as clear-cut logging is as a method of harvesting trees.”

The Semi-Identical Duo

The journal “Nature” has reported the world’s only known case of “semi-identical” twins.

Identical twins form when an egg fertilized by one sperm splits, forming two embryos with the same genetic material. Fraternal or non-identical twins form from two eggs fertilized by different sperm, so they share half their genetic material. In this case, the twins were created when one egg divided after being fertilized by two sperm–a rare occurrence. As a result, these twins have identical maternal genes, but only share half their paternal genes.

As an interesting footnote, one of them was found to be a hermaphrodite.

Scale Back to Fight Global Warming

Less is more and bigger isn’t always better. These truisms apply when it comes to economic expansion and global warming. This LA Times op-ed says “if we’re going to cope with global warming, we may also have to cope with the end of infinite, unrestrained economic expansion,” which is responsible for so much of our carbon dioxide emissions.

And is that any great loss, really? Why do we need to live in huge McMansions? Or drive gas-guzzling SUVs? Are these really the keys to happiness? To the contrary, since the 1950s, economists, sociologists and other researchers have found that more material wealth provides little, if any, increase in a person’s satisfaction.

One more truism: it’s quality of life, not quantity of goods, that counts.

The Enviro Guide to Green Sex

Umbra Fisk, a columnist for the environmental news site The Grist, has a column today about eco-friendly sex. Apart from birth control, it seems there are other considerations when it comes to greening up your sex life. I, for one, had no idea there was such a thing as a vegan condom.

One Thing at a Time

Research shows what I could have told you a long time ago–multitasking reduces productivity. Trying to handle multiple tasks simultaneously only increases the risk you’ll make a mistake and ultimately makes you less effective than you would have been if you’d done one thing at a time.

Multitasking is a curse of the modern age. Remember the tortoise and the hare–slow and steady wins the race.

Not a Latte to Say

Are you a frustrated writer who can’t find a publisher? Try Starbucks. Someone has to write those little meditations that appear on their cups. If your thoughts are big enough, you too could be a venti scribe.

Harry Potter Goes Green

The boy wizard is set to become the green wizard. For the seventh and final Harry Potter book, HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, the U.S. publisher, Scholastic, is joining forces with the Rainforest Alliance to make the book’s release eco-friendly.

All copies of the book will contain at least 30% recycled fiber, and 100,000 copies of the “deluxe edition” will be made from recycled paper only in a factory powered by renewable sources. At 784 pages per book, the green publishing plan for DEATHLY HALLOWS will save a lot of trees. Tens of thousands of trees, according to Greenpeace, which lambasted Scholastic two years ago for not using recycled paper to produce the previous Potter book.

How Would You Stretch the Federal Dollar?

If you could decide what the federal budget would look like, where would you spend the money?

In this LA Times op-ed, rather than getting bogged down in large numbers, the author looks at the federal budget in terms of fractions of a dollar. Not surprisingly, a healthy amount goes toward defense and homeland security (19 cents), Social Security (21 cents) and MedicareMedicaid/health (23 cents). Interest on debt gets 9 cents, while education, veterans services, transportation, the federal court system and various other programs get a few pennies each.

So what would you do? This writer proposes cutting defense spending and increasing support for environmental protection (music to my ears). She invites readers to e-mail her their spending plans.