EDITOR’S NOTE: The following essay by Phawker almnus Elizabeth Fiend [pictured below] about her early days as a weirdo punk rocker/comic strip artist is included in THE BOOK OF WEIRDO just published by Last Gasp. Legendary in alt-comic book circles, Weirdo was a comics anthology created by R. Crumb in 1981 and ran until 1993. THE BOOK OF WEIRDO includes a comprehensive history of the publication, interviews with its three editors — R.Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, and Peter Bagge (of Hate fame) — and testimonials from artists that contributed over the years, including Miss Fiend, hence this essay. Robert Aline Crumb will be at the Lenfest Center for the Arts at Columbia University on Monday October 28th from 6PM-9PM for a discussion about the history of Weirdo and the work it published.

ELIZABETH FIEND: My first comic was three frames. A cop says “nice ass” to a punk. She kicks him in the groin; he says “I won’t be able to get it up for a week.” She reaches into her leather; pulls a gun; shoots him, remarking “You’ll never get it up again.” A few months later Mumia Abu-Jamal was arrested and charged with killing police officer William Faulkner. Philly 1981, was a time and place where a cop could be threatening to arrest you and checking out your legs — at the same time.

Employment for punks was scarce and I spent a lot of time drawing. I took a pen name, Luna Ticks, and named my comic strip The Young and The Frustrated: A Continuing Strip Tease. I distributing Xerox’s at punk shows. I gauged success by how many sheets littered the ground at the end of the show – many. My housemates were a dwarf, a black woman, a gay Mexican American, and the son of a police chief, along with my husband. The cop’s son stole our rent money and we were evicted. At times like this there’s only one thing to do. We started a band.

In the punk sea of non-conformity we were the weirdos. Five color hair; a silver space suit; pink floral over-top polka dots. We had a big presence. We walked everywhere because we had no money, paying for a bus would have been an extravagance that would never have occurred to us. Our style was so new and so alienating, once a man jumped out of his car in the middle of an intersection and start beating on us. A reporter described my appearance as having “both a sense of atmosphere, the bizarre and an inexplicable range of covertness.” I continued drawing, a lot. I got heavily into the fanzine scene which was bursting to an unprecedented size not seen since the ‘60’s. My characters were punks, set in a future-now world. They were raw and gritty, evoked strong emotion – mostly anger. I thought I was Anais Nin drawing feminist-erotica. The public thought I was a pornographer.

I got a job in a TV Script Archive. Twenty hours a week I read prime time TV scripts and analyzed them for content. That’s a job? Yes, it’s called academia. It afforded me plenty of free time, I spent a lot of that writing letters, my mailbox was jam-packed. I was printed in hundreds and hundreds of issues of mostly mail order fanzines. I was getting good reviews “Luna Ticks eroticus maximus make GREAT bedtime reading, informal, nasty artwork including barbecued men’s testicles, don’t miss out” [Hardcore Fanzine, SF Punkland]. And “Not merely crude, but always thought provoking.”

I was a woman in a man’s world. I was popular with prisoners – guys who maybe pulled armed robbery to get money for heroin – they wanted to be pen pals and asked for free copies of my self-printed mini-comic books. I always obliged. A lot of crazy people wrote to me. They sent multi-page letters in crayon detailing how they knew I was speaking directly to them via the comics, and ‘thanks.’ It was getting a little scary. A ‘fan’ sent me bits of dead animals. I received a baggie of assorted moss. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: Q&A W/ Weirdo Editors Aline & Robert Crumb

BY ELIZABETH FIEND JUNK SCIENCE EDITOR I’ve been reading Wild Fruits, an unfinished, recently published manuscript by American naturalist Henry David Thoreau. The book is a combination of diary and essay, chronicling the ways Thoreau spent his days and what he learned during the final years of his brief life. With each page I get more jealous, wishing I too could spend my day stalking a bee to find its hive and to learn what type of flower the bee drinks nectar from and how that affects the flavor of the honey.

Of all the things I love to do (and I love to do a LOT of things) observing nature is on the top of my list. Fantasizing how I could manage to spend my days doing what Thoreau did, I realized my main stumbling block is that I’m just not as big of a mooch as Thoreau. Sure, he worked some in his family’s pencil factory (in fact, he “invented” the modern clay-and-graphite pencil). But he also spent quite a lot of time not working, crashing at his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson’s house and living on, and off of, Emerson’s land.

I work full time at a library, not some of the time at a pencil factory. But still, I manage to spend quite a lot of time observing nature, especially the ecology of my South Philly back yard. There’s a lot going on outside, even in the midst of a large city. I actually start my observing while I’m still lying in bed each morning — If you listen to the sounds of the outdoors you can learn quite a lot, especially about the birds. In fact, I think I know more about what the birds in my ‘hood are up to than my human neighbors, whom I never see and don’t particularly want to hear. MORE

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Philly punk band More Fiends was founded by Allen and Elizabeth Fiend (host of BiG TeA PaRtY Sustainable Living) .

BY ELIZABETH FIEND It was November 9th 1989 and More Fiends had been on tour already for a grueling seven weeks. I was lying on an old mattress on the floor of a narrow bedroom watching Happy Days which had turned incredibly funny because in the German dubbed version The Fonz had a whiney, high pitched voice. Plus, come on, Fonzie was speaking German. The program was interrupted by what seemed like some sort of special news report. Instantly — voices, screaming, intensity, astonishment, from the kitchen down the slender hallway of my band’s home base in Hamburg. And more cries from outside, down the block, next door.

Before our back to back 1989 and 1990 European tours were over we would record a Peel Session for the BBC in London; and in Germany a single in a studio that was a  former meat packing plant and before that a Nazi bunker. We would stand on a fortified rooftop in Sweden littered with Heineken bottles tricked-up into Molotov cocktails laying in wait of a raid by the cops; and in the Netherlands would be advised not to smoke in certain rooms because it was were the inhabitants made their bombs. We would be told we couldn’t crash as planned at Hamburg’s famous Hafenstrasse squat because the polizei were on their way to search for members of the Red Army Faction, formerly the Baader-Meinhof Gang, who might be responsible for the recent car bombing death of the head of the Deutsche Bank.

We would ask why a yard-wide swastika was allowed to remain graffitied on the side of a public building in Tampere, Finland; would participate in a march lead by the Autonomen, the role models for the American anarchist black block, kicking off  from the Rote Flora community center; and would have slept next to a room where mounds of asphalt chunks awaited attacks by the police. The chunks were to be lobbed by radicals donning the protective helmets and hunter grade sling-shots that lined the wall, hanging in very neat rows. We would gain firsthand knowledge of one such confrontation at the Ungdomshuset in Copenhagen, Denmark one of Europe’s most important occupied youth centers. We would actually be on stage when it was raided by an army of riot-gear laden politiet. As practiced, defensive positions were instantly taken by the locals, doors slammed shut and barricaded, tense minutes passed. MORE

[Photo by ELIZABETH FIEND]

BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY I was working on a theory yesterday at the start of the Eagles game. It went like this: for (probably) the first time in baseball history, the outcome of an NFL game would affect the World Series. After the Phillies Game 3 loss Halloween night, I figured that if the Eagles lost on Sunday afternoon, the fans at the Phillies game Sunday night would have a sense of impending doom, a fear of a totally lost weekend. And this is the kind of atmosphere that could carry over to the players, and maybe factor into the outcome.Well, we’ll never know because the Eagles stuck it in the Giants sideways. That game was great. On the two occasions that the Giants looked like they might get back in the game, the Eagles scored right away. Eli Manning sucked and it seemed like the Eagles’ secondary could have had half a dozen picks (or more). I love beating the Giants. Donovan looked great, Leonard Weaver made the Giants look silly for a 41-yard touchdown, and LeSean McCoy busted a big one (after not showing much prior to that). With the Eagles win, it took some of the anxiety away for Philadelphia fans and thus became a non-factor in terms of the baseball game. But I think the Phillies owe the Eagles a tiny thank you for taking some of that pressure off.

So, with that weight lifted, did the loose Phillies batter C.C. Sabathia and the Yanks Sunday night? Not exactly. The World Series looked like it was going down the crapper for most of Game 4. Until the homer by Utley, and especially the tying shot by Feliz in the 8th inning. At that point I really thought the tide had turned. I thought Lidge was going to put the Bombers down 1-2-3 in the 9th, putting to rest the “Phillies bullpen blows” talk Then the Phils would dramatically win in the 9th or 10th or something, and regain the series edge with Cliff Lee due to pitch Game 5. And then Johnny Damon happened. Give him credit; a great at-bat, he knew he could run on Lidge and the guy knows how to play the game, cleverly swiping 3rd base. And even though Tim McCarver didn’t need to say it 20 times, he was still correct when he noted that having a runner on 3rd base takes a little bit away from Lidge’s arsenal…he’s got to be careful not to break off a sharp slider in the dirt. Well, some Yankee took advantage and got a big hit (I forget who) and now the Fightins are in deep. They’ll have to count on Cliff Lee to dominate tonight and then figure out a way to win twice in New York behind Pedro and Hamels. They’ve got a virtual Manayunk Wall to climb.

The worst thing about Damon’s play might be the hyperbole. ESPN.com’s Jayson Stark says people will talk about Damon’s double steal, “for the rest of their lives – and probably a thousand years after that.” Yes, just as people are still talking about Shield Jaguar’s last-second game winner at the Great Ball Court in Chichen Itza, 1108 AD. Stark is serious though…his article later says Damon’s steal is, “a play we’ll be rehashing for a millennium.” I’m sure fathers throughout the human settlements on Titan will gather their children around the Yule Log and tell them about how Lidge should have been covering third.

FAREWELL TO HARMS: U.S. Military personnel toss everything from unexploded ordinance to amputated limbs onto the burnpit at Balad Air Base in northern Iraq, creating a near-constant toxic plume that can be seen and smelt for miles.

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Balad, the largest military base in Iraq is home to about 25,000 U.S. military personnel as well as several thousand civilian contractors. In December 2006, Air Force Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis, a bioenvironmental flight commander for the base, reported that there is an acute health hazard with possible chronic implications associated with the disposal of waste, via a burn pit, at the base. According to an article in the Salt Lake City Tribune, “The great plume of black smoke that rises above the burn pit at Balad Air Base is such an invariable part of the horizon that software engineers writing a program to help fighter pilots navigate their way onto the base made it a central part of the digitally simulated skyline.”

Most military outposts use burn pits to dispose of their garbage and waste. However the military has never had any standards on how the pits are managed even though they’re routinely used to obliterate objects that are either toxic in-of-themselves or contain toxic elements. At the pit in Balad plastics, rubber, paint, medical waste, unexploded ordnance and petroleum products are among the noxious items being burned on a regular basis. Burning these items produces smoke that contains known toxins such as benzene, Freon, formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, cyanide and more.

The pits in Balad are even used to dispose of amputated limbs. Yes add the smell of burning human flesh to what the soldiers call “plume crud.”  Airman Aaron Rognstad wrote on his blog Blog Flack “The burn pit is probably one of the worst things on this base. I don’t know how the Air Force, or whoever is in charge of this base, can think that they can just burn all of this toxic s— and have 30,000 people inhale it on a daily basis. The burn pit is probably the reason I am having constant headaches.”

Other soldiers have sinus problems, chronic coughs with black phlegm, and bronchitis. They’re worried about the future as well. The toxins burning at the pit are known carcinogens that may cause leukemia and other types of cancer. Consider that more than 100,000 U.S. service personnel have rotated through Balad Air Base during the course of the Iraq war. And that’s not even factoring in the impact on the surrounding Iraqi population. Burning garbage, toxic or not, creates ultra fine particles that float away on the air. These particles find their way in to the local soil and water ultimately finding their way in to the food chain through contaminated plants and the fatty tissue of animals. Military officials deny the risk. MORE

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR To celebrate my 50th birthday I’m taking a trip to Japan. I’m also taking my brand new Nikon D40 digital SLR camera and telephoto lens. Expect great photos when I return as well as the occasional blog post directly from Japan. Check back here at least once a week and leave comments or messages for me in Comments at the end of the post. We fly out of Philly on December 12 and return just in time for New Years and the Mummer’s parade.

How do working class people such as The Fiends afford an extravagant trip such as this? It’s called a budget. I used direct deposit straight from my pay check into a credit union and deposited $50 a week for three years with no cheating — ever. I planned ahead and bought our plane tix over three months in advance of our trip to ensure a good price and a good flight (I hate getting up at 3am to go to the airport). We purchased this special pass for tourists  for unlimited travel on Japan Railways ($250 per week, per person). Yeah, the Bullet Train … here we come. It helped with $ to be able to purchase these things in advance.

How does a sustainable living advocate such as myself justify traveling halfway around the world for an adventure? I didn’t drive a car for an entire year to offset the carbon footprint of flying to Japan. Okay, my friends are laughing right now because they know I don’t even have a car (or drivers license). The Fiends ride their bikes to work, to the supermarket, to the party.  Day after day, year after year, our carbon footprint is the size of a baby’s foot (we have no air conditioner either). MORE

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Genetic engineering is a biological science that involves modifying plants, animals or any living cell on a genetic level using gene splicing and gene modification. Complex technology allows scientists to isolate DNA from a plant or animal, and also from tinier organisms like bacteria. The DNA is then cut and spliced and either removed from the original source or implanted into another organism. This allows alterations and direct manipulation of hereditary traits of either the original organism, or whichever new host organism into which the DNA has been implanted.

OLD SCHOOL

Hybridization, the old way of making new plants and animals, involves cross breeding (aka sex) between species that are related. This is a natural process and is TOTALLY different than modification on a cellular or genetic level. Be wary of any source, article or argument that tries to tell you they’re similar processes, they are not.

FRANKENFOODS

Foods that have been genetically modified are here and have the catchy nickname Frankenfoods. Genetically engineered crops have only been planted since 1996 but already account for 60-70% of the food in the grocery store. And almost all food that comes in a box or a package. Genetically modified products that are already in the store include dairy products; beef, pork and chicken raised on genetically modified feed; peanut butter; salad dressing; muffins; bread; cake; candy; chocolate bars; protein bars; veggie burgers; corn chips; French fries; cereal; tomato sauce; soy sauce; canola oil; Bacos; soda; beer; fruit juice; non-dairy creamer; pasta; Nutrasweet; corn; squash; potatoes; soy; strawberries and lettuce; not to mention non-food items like detergent, soap, aspirin. . . .

THE PROBLEM

Genetic engineering has already allowed scientists to take DNA from a fish and transplant it into the cell of a tomato plant — the purpose, to make the plant hardier in cold weather. Proponents of GMO say that a tomato from the original tomato plant and one from the new plant, the one with the gene from the flounder, should be treated as indistinguishable. But are they? What happens if you have an allergy to fish? Substance equivalence has yet to be proven. And there is no law that requires the makers of GMO products to do so. To make matters worse, there is no required labeling of products that contain genetically altered components either.

In the little over a decade since GMO has been here, there have been many documented mistakes in the biotech industry. Genetic engineering of plants and animals has already caused allergic reactions and even death in humans, not to mention the suffering of animals. GMO food meant for animal feed has accidentally made its way into the human food supply. Soy and peanuts are now very common allergens. They didn’t used to be. The reason why so many children have allergies to these foods nowadays is unknown and very difficult to determine. But there is mounting speculation that the large amount of genetically altered foods on your kitchen table may be to blame. There is also great concern that the widespread use of GMO in today’s dairy business might be leading to a crisis in antibiotic resistance in humans. MORE

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend knows how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts. Every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you, ya big dummy.

HAIL MARY: You Better Gotta Believe, Victory Parade,  Oct. 31st [photo by ELIZABETH FIEND]

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR Orange juice laced with anchovies, fish genes in ice cream, cheese that kills intestinal parasites, laboratory extracted elements of green tea in your ginger ale, bacteria from yogurt hidden in salsa. Welcome to the supermarket of the 21^st century. Not the 21^st century to come, I mean today, this is your food store now. Fortified foods aka functional foods are the newest adventure in eating. The fancy name for fortified foods is nutraceuticals. Say that out loud, it’s kind of nauseating. A combo of nutrition and pharmaceutical, this name is trying to convince us that food is medicine. Tropicana now offers an orange juice to stop bone loss and another one to prevent acid reflux. But if you drink OJ for breakfast every day, how do you know how much of the ‘medicine’ you’re getting? And couldn’t this add up to be a pretty caloric way to deliver your dose?

During the 90’s nutraceuticals came into prominence. They were originally offered mostly in the form of pills like garlic pills, soy pills or cranberry pills. Food science, a relatively new science, had noted that certain foods seemed to be really good for you. People who consumed these foods had less cancer and heart disease, they didn’t develop diabetes, their bones were strong. So instead of these scientists recommending you eat the healthy and good tasting foods (duh) like tomatoes or blueberries they took a different route. They wanted to know exactly which one, specific micronutrient was responsible for the positive health benefit. So they did a lot of studies and picked one. But time has shown, over and over again, that they can be wrong. That this is not the way nutrients should be delivered into our bodies. That isolating one element away from a whole food doesn’t produce the same positive health benefit as the original food. Maybe that’s because one element isn’t responsible for the positive benefit. Maybe a combination of two different micronutrients is what really works. Or maybe it’s the combination of hundreds of elements in the food. We don’t just know. But apparently, we don’t care either. These failures have not dissuaded the food industry from grasping hold of the concept and producing ever new and startling “foods.” Nestlé, PepsiCo and Dannon are among the many manufacturers who are rolling out new nutraceuticals, aka new food products.

Sure, in the natural state a whole tomato is great for you. Scientists think that maybe the photochemicals lycopene, lutein and betacarotene are the reason tomatoes are so good for you. But to grow a special variety of tasteless tomatoes in an indoor facility and then extract the lycopene in a lab and microencapsulate it into beadlets so small your tongue can’t feel it? Or even worse, produce synthetic lycopene and insert it into a totally different food and then say that this is a good thing.

Will this new product deliver the same nutrition that the original tomato did? The answer: We don’t know, there is no proof, eat a real tomato. The Food and Drug Administration has no rules and few regulations for both the labeling and manufacturing of fortified foods. There is no good science behind these new products, and there doesn’t need to be. Yet, there they are on your store shelf. Maybe even already in your fridge.

Of course, I think they’re stupid. Maybe even dangerous. Eat REAL foods. Eat WHOLE foods. Eat fruit and vegetables and whole grains. You’ll be fine. Actually better than fine. You want omega 3 fatty acids? Eat omega 3 fatty acids in a natural state. Want the benefits from a tomato? Eat one for crying out loud. Don’t eat some chemical abstraction of these healthy foods. Eat the real thing. It’s scrumptious and good for you. The key to good nutrition: hedge your bets eat a wide range of natural foods. You’re guaranteed to be covered nutritionally and you’ll be so healthy you won’t need pharmaceuticals and definitely not need nutraceuticals. MORE

EDITOR’S NOTE: Miss Fiend has asked that we clarify the difference between ‘frankenfoods’ and ‘nutraceuticals.’ So-called ‘frankenfoods’ have been genetically modified, wherein genes from different species are combined and grown in the laboratory, while ‘nutraceuticals’ result from mixing ingredients, presumably for their health-promoting properties, after the fact. Sorry for the confusion. Please carry on.

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend knows how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts. Every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you, ya big dummy.

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR In a stunning consumer victory the biotech behemoth Monsanto announced on August 8th that they want to dump their business of producing rBGH and hope to find a buyer for the product. rBGH is a lab produced, genetically modified artificial growth hormone that is being administered to about 15-17 percent of America’s milk producing dairy cows. r = recombinant which means it’s artificially produced in a lab; BGH, Bovine-Growth-Hormone is the common description for the hormone bovine somatotropin (BST) sold to dairy farmers under the commercial name of Posilac. The label on a bottle of Posilac lists 20 possible toxic effects. Posilac was approved by America’s Food and Drug Administration in 1993 but the product has always been banned in the European Union, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Australia and other countries that have more sense than our own.

The beef with rBGH? Many farmers and animal advocates believe this growth hormone is harmful to cows and many mothers worry that it might actually cause cancer in humans — all this just to get cows to pump up their production of milk by one gallon a day?

rBGH did pump up Monsanto’s bottom line, for awhile. But due to continued consumer backlash many corporations that sell milk and dairy products like yogurt and cheese are realizing that their customers do not want to feed their children milk containing genetically modified growth hormones and have discontinued selling milk that contains rBGH. Thank you Wal-Mart (did I really just say that?!?!) and a shout out to Starbucks, Kroger supermarkets and Kraft who have all announced earlier this year that they were going to only source their milk from dairy processors that have rBGH-free cows. And the Nurses, again on the forefront, have passed an official resolution at the latest American Nurses Association stating that they support state laws and policies that aim to reduce rBGH. This is a huge issue because many states, including Pennsylvania, have tried to pass (or have already passed) laws that would make it illegal to label milk “rBGH Free.” The nurses go even further and announce they favor hospital and health care industry purchases of rBGH free products — in other words, the whole shebang anything that will reduce the use of rBGH. [So Doctors, what’s up with you?]

One of the creepiest results of cows being treated with rBGH is a common side effect, mastitis. Mastitis is an inflammation of the breast, aka mammary gland, aka utter.  It causes the cow pain which is enough of a reason (for me) to stop using this drug. But if you don’t care about things like that what about this — cows that get mastitis from rBGH have to be treated with antibiotics. As you know, increased use of antibiotics in animal husbandry puts everyone at risk of new antibiotic-resistant-diseases. Ok, you say that will never happen to me, I won’t catch one. Fine. How is this? Cows with mastitis produce milk filled with pus. So not only will your milk from rBGH cows have trace amounts of artificial growth hormone and antibiotics it may very well have pus in it too.

In a strange twist of fate, cows with mastitis produce less milk. If the primary purpose of rBGH is to increase milk production but it causes mastitis which significantly decreases milk production, what’s the use? Money for sure. But now, the money isn’t there anymore and Monsanto wants out.

As I said at the top this is a stunning consumer victory. The public doesn’t want to drink milk with artificial, genetically modified growth hormones. They spoke with their pocketbooks and it was noticed, big time, by the corporations involved all the way down the supply chain. But there is still a cloud ahead and it may not have a silver lining. On August 20th the 10th largest maker of pharmaceuticals has offered to purchase the rBGH division from Monsanto. Eli Lilly, the infamous maker of such drugs as Prozac and Cialis has offered to pay $3 million upfront.

People, our work is not done.  MORE

BiG TeA PaRtY has two, count ‘em, two videos showing at this year’s GreenFest Philly, the area’s largest environmental event. It’s a one-day street fair FREE to the public, where over 200 exhibitors and 20,000 people are expected.

Eco-Film Forum @ Greenfest Philly
Sunday, September 7, 11am-6pm
PhillyCarShare Tent: 2nd & Pine Streets
FREE !!

As part of Water Issues 3:30-4pm
BiG TeA PaRtY video:  H2Yo
Learning the importance of water conservation was never so entertaining. Eco-punk Elizabeth Fiend offers cool do-it-yourself tips amidst a groovy parade of psychedelic images.

As part of Communities & Activism 5-6pm
BiG TeA PaRtY video: Crop Circles
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a fun and easy way to maintain an organic and sustainable lifestyle, while also supporting local farmers. Featuring Greensgrow Farm, Scarecrow Hill Farm and candid interviews with Philadelphians.

More info: http://bigteaparty.com/category/events/

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR “You peng zi yuan fang lai, bu yi yue hu?” “Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters?” To the thunderous beat of 2,008 Xia Dynasty drums, 2,008 voices chanted this classic greeting from Confucius in welcoming the 100,000 spectators to the opening of the Summer Olympics in Beijing. The games are now well underway, and it’s impossible to ignore thinking about China, especially after that dazzling opening ceremony. Are the Chinese scary task masters, or did that display show the wonders of a large group of people working together in harmony? It’s hard to decide from our vantage point. But one thing’s for sure, China is on the world stage, straight and center, and its population of 1.3 billion, one out of every five people in the world, is going to influence everything on earth – for the good and for the bad.

Not only big, China is one old country, which is also hard for us Americans to wrap our heads around. It has a history, philosophy and culture that has had continuity for over 4,000 years not like the United States that has only a few hundred years of history under its belt. But unlike its also-communist neighbor Russia, mostly we’ve ignored China except as a source for cheap goods. Well, that’s going to change no matter what we think about it. This sleeping behemoth has woken up for real. Since the Beats of the 1950s brought it to our attention hip Americans have had a love affair with another export from Asia, Buddhism. The Baby Boomers carried this affection with them and integrated aspects of Buddhism into New Age philosophy. The Buddhist philosophy is often about looking inwards; if each person perfected themselves to the highest state of consciousness the world could not help but to be a better place. How true, but how impractical and unattainable.

I think that because of this fascination with Buddhism we have totally overlooked one of his contemporaries, the amazing Chinese philosopher Confucius. Confucius (551-479 BCE) and Buddha (566-480 BCE) may have desired the same outcome from their systems of belief, but the paths they suggest are quite different. While Buddha was looking inward for enlightenment, Confucius recommended looking outward. I’ve always been into Confucius because of the emphasis he placed on doing the common good, community service and the importance of good manners, on the whole treating people with empathy and respect. Confucius coined the phrase “Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself,” which is the same sentiment as the Biblical Golden Rule, except Confucius said it way first. He taught that pursuing self-interest isn’t necessarily bad, but the more righteous person bases his life’s journey on trying to enhance the greater good. It’s pretty surprising that Communist China rejected this guy. Confucius also believed that there is no Creator God who’s going to set things right; it’s up to us humans, as stalwarts of the land to make sure the earth and her inhabitants are treated properly. Yeah, I can dig that too. He thought people should think for themselves, that study and understanding created skilled judgment, which was better than the knowledge of legal rules. Amen to that. Hopefully China’s Olympic “coming-out party” will bring some attention to the ideals and philosophies of Confucianism. MORE

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend knows how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts. Every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you, ya big dummy.

[CLICK TO ENLARGE]

BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR There’s a crisis in the organics world, and it’s called big business. Too much of a good thing has gone haywire. Organic food is so much in demand these days that there simply isn’t enough to go around. As a result, manufactures of organic products have had to outsource. What was once an industry of small family farms has mushroomed into a new kind of agribusiness, with direct financial ties to the likes of Wal-Mart, Kraft, Kellogg and General Mills. Yikes. Big business is finding loopholes in the legal definition of organic and is taking the modern organic farm further and further away from the original, fundamental philosophies of organics. There are already consumer boycotts against organic companies such as Horizon Farms, makers of Silk soy milk, who may not be sticking to the philosophies. In fact, organic standards have deteriorated enough that there’s a whole new classification for farms that do follow the philosophies: Deep Organics.

Now ask yourself this: Is it really better to buy an organic bell pepper – one that doesn’t have any pesticide residue — rather than one grown by agribusiness, if that organic pepper has been grown halfway around the world and then flown-in to your supermarket? Will that foreign-grown organic pepper taste better? Will it be fresher? Is it better for you? What is the environmental cost? Don’t try that “Finally! A good excuse not to eat vegetables and fruits” stuff with me, either. Even eating macaroni and cheese, chicken nuggets or ice cream will expose you to the insecticides DDT, and chlorpyrifos-methyl and malathion. Cheese and ice cream come from cows and chicken nuggets from . . . I guess, chickens . . . which eat plant-based food treated with pesticides. The toxic residue is passed on to you when you eat animal products. So what’s a person to do if organic is losing its luster and food grown conventionally is treated with pesticides? Of course I’m going to tell you the answer. But I’m not going to do it here. For pointers, smart food choices, and the full Monty, please click over to the BiG TeA PaRtY Sustainable Living Center and Blog. MORE

CONSOLIDATED ORGANIC: AND THEN THERE WERE FOUR

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BY ELIZABETH FIEND LIVING EDITOR You go to the doctor. First thing, a nurse takes your blood pressure, then makes a face and leaves the room. Most of the time they never tell you the numbers. Infuriating! You should always ask what your numbers are. It’s a pet peeve of mine that you even have to do this — the nurse or doctor should automatically tell you, but mostly they don’t. I’ve found that a lot of people don’t really understand what their blood pressure readings mean or how having high blood pressure might impact your health. So, here’s a primer on blood pressure: what the numbers mean, and how you can improve them through natural methods.

The Big Picture

Your heart contains a muscle that works like a pump. It begins the cycle of pushing blood through out your body bringing nutrients like oxygen, amino acids or glucose to all your organs. Arteries are the muscle-men of blood vessels; they push blood away from the heart. When your heart beats, which is really a contraction of the muscle, it pumps blood to the arteries and creates little bursts of pressure in the artery walls. This is what we call blood pressure.

When you get your blood pressure taken, two things are measured: the pressure created in your arteries when the heart is contracting (pumping blood away) and the pressure in your arteries in-between beats (when your heart is at rest). The higher or top number in a blood pressure reading is the systolic (sys·tol·ic) pressure – heart pumping; the second number is the diastolic (di·as·tol·ic) pressure – heart at rest. I remember it like this STD = Systolic/Top, Diastolic. Your pulse, by the way, is the difference between these two numbers.

Sphygmomanometer is the name if that cuff-thingy they put on your arm and then pump to gauge blood pressure. In the old days the sphygmomanometer used a column of mercury which would rise up from the pressure, looking much like a big thermometer. Mercury is no longer used but the term related to mercury, mmHg, still is. A normal blood pressure reading should be less than 120 mmHg (systolic = heart pumping) and 80 mmHg (diastolic = heart at rest), spoken as 120 over 80.

Your blood pressure is far from static. It changes constantly thought out the day and night, even from one heart beat to the next. Factors such as our internal clocks, drugs, alcohol, food and diet, exercise, even a change in posture have major affects on blood pressure. And of course there’s the big one — stress. For these reasons, if there’s any question about your blood pressure, get two readings. I think one reading at the beginning of your office visit and one at the end is a good system for a reliable average. The medical community hasn’t thought of this yet. You have to ask.

High Blood Pressure

When you’re healthy your arteries are elastic and muscular. They actually stretch when your heart pumps blood through them. But if the pressure becomes too great over an extended period of time your arteries become less elastic (aka hardening of the arteries) and therefore narrower and you guessed it, you get high blood pressure. Changes in other blood vessels, like the ones that supply blood to your brain or kidneys, become affected over time as well. Your heart will then become strained and maybe won’t work as efficiently as it should. When this happens you become at increased risk for heart failure and heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure.

Hypertension is the term used to describe high blood pressure. If your numbers are between 120-139 over 80-89 you’re considered in the warning zone and have pre-hypertension. Stage 1 hypertension is 140 to 159 over 90 to 99. Stage 2 hypertension is numbers higher than 160 over 100.

When you have high blood pressure and diabetes, obesity, smoking or high cholesterol, the risk of something going wrong increases several fold. It’s bad news, a double whammy kind of thing. If you smoke, drink heavily or take birth control pills, your risk goes up too. This is why you should know your numbers. They actually mean something and you can do something about them. Hypertension can develop practically overnight in the last trimester of pregnancy. Have your doctor keep an eye on this.

For most high blood pressure cases, the cause is unknown. High blood pressure runs in families, and is particularly prevalent in African Americans and women, beginning at age 55 when our bodies produce as much estrogen. But our risk for cancer goes down, so it’s a trade off.

Chemical Treatment

You’ve probably heard these strange words in TV ads or even on the news: beta-blockers, ACE inhibitors, calcium channel blockers, alpha blockers. These are the categories of drugs physicians prescribe for high blood pressure, and they help many people reduce their blood pressure. But they all come with a host of varied side effects such as kidney damage, insomnia, loss of taste, hacking cough, increase in blood sugar, cold hands or feet, depression, constipation, tiredness, skin rashes, and the big one no one wants to hear – impotence.

Natural Treatment

Luckily, high blood pressure is something that can actually be helped through natural methods, so discuss natural options with your doctor before going on medications. If you doctor isn’t interested in natural remedies, I’d suggest getting a new doctor.

The obvious natural remedies for high blood pressure are regular exercise or physical activity; limiting your alcohol intake (one drink a day for women, two for men); and the DASH Diet, in which sodium is limited to less than 2,400 mgs a day and fruits, vegetables and whole grains dominate, while fat and sweets are eaten in moderation. Hey, what do you know? This is the very same plan of attack for reducing your chances of getting cancer, diabetes and heart disease or becoming obese. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. (See end of article to learn more about the DASH Diet and what a serving size is, which is crucial.).

Natural remedies are great and actually work. The problem for most people is that unlike a little pill you just swallow (but might come with unwanted side affects), you have to actually work at and keep up with these natural remedies. Ok, some people are just too darn lazy to make this work. There, I said it. But it’s the truth. Excuses, excuses, excuses. Motivate yourself people.

Mind Control

Yes, various types of mind control can lower blood pressure. Meditation, biofeedback, yoga, even self hypnosis can do the trick. But you must keep at it, because they don’t really work unless you do them on a regular basis. Meditation is shaping up to be one of the best ways to lower blood pressure, and it’s just great for you in general. TM, or Transcendental Meditation, is the type of meditation that has been studied the most. There has been a statistically significant reduction in blood pressure by people who practice TM on a regular basis. Yeah, I know TM, they want to charge you. But don’t worry, you can learn to meditate on your own.

It’s believed that the powerful, deep rest achieved through regular meditation actually activates biochemical changes that help the mind and body reach a more harmonious state. This then triggers the body’s own self-healing mechanisms. Twenty minutes at a time, two times a day is optimum. But you can squeak by on one 20-minute session if needed. And you can totally teach yourself to meditate. There are many, many different ways to meditate. A basis for most types of meditation is breathing; breathe in through the nose and out through the open mouth while at the same time clearing your mind. You can either just simply follow or count your breath; stare at an object; recite a word, phrase or mantra; or practice guided meditation which is visualization of a sequence of events. Some people are better off taking a course to get started.

All types of breathing techniques, which are easy to do on your own at anytime, work very well at reducing stress and controlling your heart rhythms. No time you say? Do your breathing techniques or meditation in bed while you’re trying to fall asleep, or even at 3 a.m. when you’re, unfortunately, wide awake. Often people who practice mind-body techniques report an overall raise in quality of life. Biofeedback is a technique where you are actually trained to control involuntary bodily functions. That’s pretty cool. Blood pressure, breathing, even body temperature can be controlled by our conscious minds. Hey, it’s good for urinary incontinence too. You need a doctor or medical practitioner to learn how to do this. Yoga poses the corpse and the knee squeeze (instructions at end of article) are especially valuable for reducing blood pressure and for blood circulation in general. There are many New Age-y ways to control high blood pressure, too, like aroma- or sound therapy if that’s more your style.

Then You’ve Got Food

Potassium and calcium lower systolic blood pressure while magnesium lowers diastolic pressure. Garlic, celery, tomatoes, potatoes, melons, dark leafy greens, bananas are good foods for these minerals. In Asian medicine, turnips, honey, Chinese celery, mung beans, water chestnut and hawthorn berries are thought to lower blood pressure. Acupuncture and herbs are also effective. The supplements flaxseed oil, vitamin E, coenzyme Q-10 (co Q-10), hawthorn berry, ginseng, folic acid (a B vitamin) all show promise in lowering blood pressure as well. Right now, everybody — yeah you right there at your computer — try Dr. Andrew Weil’s breathing technique. It takes less than a minute – no excuses. See how easy it is? It’s good. Just do it.

Dr. Weil’s breathing technique:

* Sit up, with your back straight (eventually you’ll be able to do this exercise in any position).

* Place your tongue against the ridge of tissue just behind your upper front teeth and keep it there throughout the exercise.

* Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound.

* Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.

* Hold your breath for a count of seven.

* Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.

* Repeat this cycle three more times for a total of four breaths.

Try to do this breathing exercise at least twice a day. You can repeat the whole sequence as often as you wish, but don’t do it more than four breaths at one time for the first month of practice. This exercise is fairly intense and has a profound effect on the nervous system. Adding more breaths is neither necessary nor better for you.

More on Dr. Weil: http://www.drweil.com/

The DASH diet includes fruits and vegetables, low-fat dairy foods, beans and nuts:

*Sodium is limited to 2,400 mg per day.

*7 to 8 servings of grains

* 4 to 5 servings of vegetables

* 4 to 5 servings of fruit

* 2 to 3 servings of low-fat or non-fat dairy

* 2 or less servings of meat, fish, or poultry

* 2 to 3 servings of fats and oils

* 4 to 5 servings per week of nuts, seeds, and dry beans

* Less than 5 servings a week of sweets

Examples of Serving Sizes:

1/2 cup cooked rice or pasta

1 slice bread (yeah, that’s right, a sandwich is two servings of bread)

1 cup raw vegetables or fruit

1/2 cup cooked vegetables or fruit

8 oz. of milk

1 teaspoon olive oil

3 ounces cooked meat

3 ounces tofu

More on the DASH Diet: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/public/heart/hbp/dash/new_dash.pdf

Yoga Pose: The Knee Squeeze

How To Do It: Lie flat on your back and bend your right knee and wrap your arms around your knee cap. Breathe in for a count of 3 and then gently squeeze your knees towards your chest. Hold for at least 3 seconds and exhale as you slowly release your leg back down to the floor. Repeat this on the left leg. Alternate with each leg for at least 3 repetitions. Now breathe in for another 3 seconds and then bring both of your knees to your chest at the same time. Hold your breath for 3 seconds as you squeeze. Once you have the breathing and squeezing patterns down, you can then repeat the last steps only this time you will lift your head up between your knees, going as far as you can go and exhale. Note: it is very important to breathe in to a count of three before you begin hodling your breath and squeezing or else your lungs will not get enough air.

More on the knee squeeze: http://www.ymib.com/daily-inspiration/health-holistics/bites/yoga-defined-knee-squeeze.html

Official Transcendental Meditation (TM) site: http://www.tm.org/ (yeah, they want you to pay for the goods)

Basic meditation techniques:

http://www.wikihow.com/Meditate

http://health.discovery.com/centers/stress/articles/meditation/meditation.html

Other Sources and For More Information:

American Heat Association: http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=2114

National Institute of Health: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/hbp/detect/tips.htm

Mother Nature: http://www.mothernature.com/library/bookshelf/books/21/131.cfm

Science Daily: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071204121953.htm

Alternative Medicine, About.com: http://altmedicine.about.com/cs/herbsvitaminsek/a/Hypertension.htm

WebMD: http://www.webmd.com/hypertension-high-blood-pressure/guide/treating-hypertension-naturally

ABOUT THIS COLUMN: At no time in recorded history have we possessed so much knowledge about health and nutrition, or had such vast and effective means for disseminating that knowledge. Yet for all that, we essentially live in a high-tech Dark Age, with most of the global population ignorant or confused about the basic facts of their own biology. How did this happen? Well, that alone is a whole six-part miniseries, and this ain’t the Discovery Channel. Suffice to say that the bottom line of many a multi-national corporation depends on that ignorance, and vast sums of money are expended to keep us fat, dumb and happy. But mostly fat. There was a time when newspapers saw it as their duty to truth squad the debates over health, science and the environment, but that’s a luxury most papers can no longer afford — not when there are gossip columnists to be hired! To help remedy this violation of the public’s right to know, Phawker publishes the JUNK SCIENCE column by Elizabeth Fiend, beloved host of the BiG TeA PaRtY. Every week, Miss Fiend connects the dots to reveal a constellation of scientific facts that have been hiding in plain sight, scattered across the cold, vast reaches of the Internet. With a background in punk rock and underground comics, and a long career as a library researcher, Miss Fiend doesn’t pretend to be a scientist or an expert. She does, however, know how scientific facts become diluted by corporate-sponsored non-facts, and every week she separates the smoke from the mirrors. Why? Because she loves you.