Category: news-chum

📰 Oh, Look, A Package from Amazon

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Let’s open another package from the news chum tree, shall we? How about this one from Amazon…

  • Fighting the Marketplace. Increasingly, Amazon is less a seller of goods than a network connecting a buyer and a seller, while pretending that Amazon is doing the selling. I’m sure that you’ve noticed this more and more. But the market isn’t quite so clean as you might think. For sellers, Amazon is a quasi-state. They rely on its infrastructure — its warehouses, shipping network, financial systems, and portal to millions of customers — and pay taxes in the form of fees. They also live in terror of its rules, which often change and are harshly enforced. A cryptic email from Amazon about a purported complaint can send a seller’s business into bankruptcy, with few avenues for appeal. Amazon’s judgment is swifter and less predictable, and now that the company controls nearly half of the online retail market in the US, its rulings can instantly determine the success or failure of your business. Amazon is the judge, the jury, and the executioner.
  • Counterfeits and Amazon. Another big problem at Amazon is counterfeits, which often benefit Amazon. Mixed in with Amazon’s inventory of authentic merchandise are crude copycats. Some look like the real thing but didn’t include a real vendor’s name. Others bear the name but aren’t made by the real company. Often, there is no way for even the savviest Amazon shopper to avoid the threat of counterfeits. The goods may look real online, but there is no guarantee of authenticity — whether sold by a brand, a third-party seller or Amazon’s direct-sales arm. And the reviews don’t help, because of review gaming.

Perhaps brick and mortar has a purpose after all?

Here are a few more technology items of interest:

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📰 As If By Plan or Design

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Look, there are still boxes under the news chum tree. Take this pretty one. So carefully wrapped, as if there was design aforethought to it:

  • Only the Best. When you think about interesting designed retail in the 1970s and early 1980s, one chain comes to mind: Best Products. I’ve noted a few articles on this subject worth sharing. The first looks at the abandoned architecture of the Best stores. The second explores the nature of the Best Product showroom architecture, incorporating environment into design. As the latter article notes: “The intentionally crumbling brick at that Houston store, known as “Indeterminate Façade,” and the eight other showrooms SITE designed, were simultaneously iconic and controversial, and most importantly for BEST, they brought in customers.”
  • Prime Numbers. Prime numbers are great for many because they are so unpredictable. But — surprise, surprise — researchers have discovered a pattern in prime numbers. Specifically, a team of researchers at Princeton University have recently discovered a strange pattern in the primes’ chaos. Their novel modelling techniques revealed a surprising similarity between primes and certain naturally occurring crystalline materials, a similarity that may carry significant implications for physics and materials science.
  • British Place Names. Ever need to decode British place names. Don’t worry, there’s a pattern there too.
  • ADHD Storytelling. Yes, there’s a pattern to that as well.
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📰 Ouch! I Got a Paper Cut! Time for Urgent Care!

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

So many boxes under the news chum tree! Which one should I open next? How about this one, with a lovely blue cross and a blue shield? I just hope I don’t get a paper cut opening the package — you know how insurance can be.

  • Why People Avoid The Doctor. The results of an interesting Medicare Advantage survey shows why people avoid the doctor: alas, their presentation is a slideshow, but reasons range from the cost, to not having the time, to thinking there is nothing wrong with them, to preferring natural remedies. Me? I figure that if I make my schedule so busy, my body won’t have time to fail. Alas, that’s not working.
  • Insurers Don’t Make It Easy. Dealing with Insurance is probably one reason people don’t go to the doctor. Take CPAP machines. Sleep apnea is a fast-growing health complaint among Americans, and that has triggered a set of deceptive and unethical measures by US health insurers to shift the cost of using CPAP machines (the forced air machines that sleep apnea patients rely on to stay healthy) to the people who use them, with the effect that it’s often much cheaper to pay cash for your machine and its consumables than it is to get them through insurance. NPR also had an exploration of the problem.
  • Doctors and Computers. Modern medicine. Computers were supposed to make it easier. But doctors hate their computer systems. A 2016 study found that physicians spent about two hours doing computer work for every hour spent face to face with a patient—whatever the brand of medical software. In the examination room, physicians devoted half of their patient time facing the screen to do electronic tasks. And these tasks were spilling over after hours. The University of Wisconsin found that the average workday for its family physicians had grown to eleven and a half hours. The result has been epidemic levels of burnout among clinicians. Forty per cent screen positive for depression, and seven per cent report suicidal thinking—almost double the rate of the general working population. Doctors are among the most technology-avid people in society; computerization has simplified tasks in many industries. Yet somehow we’ve reached a point where people in the medical profession actively, viscerally, volubly hate their computers.
  • Standing Desks Don’t Help. If you are like me, you’ve (reluctantly) been moved to a standing desk, because the old sitting computer desks with ergometric key trays are harder to find than unsalted fries at a McDonalds.  Research, however, suggests that warnings about sitting at work are overblown, and that standing desks are overrated as a way to improve health. Standing is not exercise, and it isn’t necessarily better for you.
  • And Sex is Overrated. Well, at least in the eyes of young people, who according to one article are having a lot less sex. The stock markets aren’t the only thing that is tanking, the Atlantic says we are in a sex recession. From 1991 to 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey finds, the percentage of high-school students who’d had intercourse dropped from 54 to 40 percent. In other words, in the space of a generation, sex has gone from something most high-school students have experienced to something most haven’t. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
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📰 Calzones Under The News Chum Tree

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Oh, look, there’s much more under the news chum tree. What’s this? It looks like a lovely wrapped calzone…

  • Tacos, Sandwiches, and the Cube Rule. Categorizing and classifying food is difficult. Is a hot dog a sandwich? Is a ravoli? A taco? Where do these things fit on the spectrum. Two articles I’ve seen attempt to address this. The Cube Rule is perhaps my favorite. It classifies using the number of sides of a cube. Just a bottom? Toast. Top and bottom? A sandwich. Bottom and sides? A taco. Top, bottom, and sides? Sushi. Everything but a top? Soup in a bread bowl. All sides? Calzone. No sides. Salad. Another approach uses a three axis decision path: soup / salad / sandwich. It claims to contain the full spectrum of human consumables by plotting them as (x, y, z) coordinates in (soup, salad, sandwich) space. However, none of these address the question of whether cereal is soup.
  • The Oil Economy When you go to the market, you’ll see lots of oils on the shelf: olive, avacado, walnut, grapeseed, soy, rapeseed (canola), peanut, and even vegetable oil, which they get from carrots. What you won’t see is cottonseed oil — at least in raw form — because cotton is poisonous to humans (as food). The problem is that the seeds, like the cotton plant’s leaves, contain little dark glands full of something called gossypol. Gossypol in and of itself is a toxin. It’s helpful for the cotton plant, because it helps fend off insect pests. But it makes the seed unhealthy for people to eat. It’s toxic to most animals, too. But cotton produces a lot of seeds — more seeds that fluff. Cows can digest it. You can get the oil and purify it. But one scientist got the idea to genetically modify the plant to not produce Gossypol, and the FDA has approved it, and now the seeds can be used as broader food.
  • Enjoy Your Christmas Watermelon. Vegan on Christmas. How about a baked watermelon instead of a ham? While we’re at it, here are some more interesting facts about watermelons.
  • Thai Restaurants and Cambodian Donut Shops. Have you ever wondered why there are so many Thai restaurants? Thank the government of Thailand, which intentionally bolstered the presence of Thai cuisine outside of Thailand to increase its export and tourism revenues, as well as its prominence on the cultural and diplomatic stages. In 2001, the Thai government established the Global Thai Restaurant Company, Ltd., in an effort to establish at least 3,000 Thai restaurants worldwide. As for those Cambodian Donut Shops, that’s all thanks to the Donut King. His story is told in two episodes of The Sporkful (part 1, part 2). Ted Ngoy arrived in southern California in 1975, as part of the first wave of refugees to flee Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge genocide in the late 1970s. They arrived in Orange County, near LA, with a few suitcases and no money.At first Ted worked as a janitor, but then he started working nights at a gas station to make ends meet. That’s where Ted saw his first donut shop. He made that a success, opened more. Soon Ted and his wife sponsored visas for refugees, set them up with donut shops, trained them in the business, and took a cut of their profits in return. By 1985, ten years after Ted arrived in California with nothing, he was making $100,000 a month.
  • All You Can Eat. Have you ever wondered why you see so many buffets at restaurants? Restaurants love them. The reason why is that they are a certified moneymaker. Variety and Volume make a killer combo. When you load up a buffet with lots of choices, customers get excited. And since the self-service model is much faster than the waiter-and-menu system, guests are in and out quicker. They are also major labor-saving devices, and therefore cost-saving devices. They are also specifically laid out to get you to fill your plate with the cheaper options first, so that you have no room for the more expensive items.  They provide a way to repurpose leftovers.
  • Fish and Cheese. It was a joke in Come From Away, which we saw Friday night. Yet Cod Au Grautin is a thing in Newfoundland, so much so that the Ahmanson Theatre tweeted a recipe for the dish. But why is there so little combination of fish and cheese? Where did the prohibition come from? It is ancient and strong, but localized. Although some think it is a universal rule, but there are dozens of centuries-old dishes combining seafood and cheese that are beloved outside the United States—in Greece, Mexico, France, and even in specific pockets of the U.S. itself. So who do we blame? The Italians. Italians are very religious about mixing cheese and fish or seafood, it just isn’t done.
  • What Has Man Wrought? While we’re sharing items from Gastro Obscura, here are two more that taken together say quite a bit about modern man and our relation to food. First, according to a recent study, the broiler chicken, now the most populous bird on the planet, will someday be a defining feature of the Anthropocene, a greasy marker of our epoch. This for a bird  that has an average life expectancy of six weeks, has been bred to live fat and die young, with a fragile skeletal structure, porous bones, and extremely massive bodies that render them totally incapable of surviving without human-created technology on modern farms. Second, Americans have planted so much corn it has changed weather patterns. Studying observed data, researchers found that between 1910-1949 and 1970-2009, average summer rainfall in the central U.S. increased by up to 35 percent. According to subsequent 30-year regional climate simulations, they determined that increased corn production appears to be boosting average summer rainfalls by five to 15 percent and decreasing average summer temperatures by about one degree Celsius.
  • The Burner Culture. If you are like most people, you have a four-burner cooktop. Two large. Two small. Have you ever thought about why that is, and what burner you should use for what task? Probably not, But there is rhyme and reason to burner placement. The largest burner is called a “power burner,” and it’s specifically designed for searing meats and boiling water quickly. The medium-sized burners are “all-purpose” or “standard” burners. And the smallest burner, which is known as a “simmer burner,” is designed for low-flame cooking (think delicate work like tempering chocolate).
  • And a treat at the end. Just for you. All of See’s Candies are gluten-free.
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📰 Plastics

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Oh, look, there’s another pretty box under the news chum tree. It’s oddly hard. Let’s take off the wrapping. Hmm, it seems to be made of plastic:

  • All That Glitters. We’ve all seen glitter, but have you ever wondered how it is made? Here’s an in-depth exploration of the process of making glitter, or as it might be better known, aluminum metalized polyethylene terephthalate. What is it made of? Think mylar. Think very fine aluminum. Think a process similar to those potato chip bags you hate. There’s holographic glitter. Iridescent glitter, with over 230 layers, each as think as half the wavelength of light. Most significantly: all the modern plastic glitter that has ever been created is still right here with us. According to Dr. Victoria Miller, a materials science and engineering professor at North Carolina State University, the plastic film from which most glitter is made takes about 1,000 years to completely biodegrade on Earth. Snap, chuff, sparkle, sparkle indeed.
  • Plastic Sustainability. A major problem with clothing is the waste. Most of the clothing we wear, when it gets old, goes into a landfill. Most plastic goes into the same, never to biodegrade. It’s a big concern (listen to the Articles of Interest podcast on blue jeans, and you’ll be amazed at the waste). So it is interesting to read that Everlane’s new collection of puffer jackets, fleece pullovers, and streamlined parkas is made from recycled plastic bottles. Adidas has a goal of using recycled ocean plastic in all of its products by 2024, and Everlane’s “ReNew” collection of outerwear is the first step in a wider push to entirely eliminate virgin (or newly made) plastic from its operations by 2021. That will involve substituting all of its synthetic fibers with renewed alternatives, replacing the virgin plastic bags it ships products in with recycled bags, and getting rid of single-use plastic in its stores and offices.
  • Plastic Pens. Think about the humble Bic plastic ballpoint pen. Disposable. Yet it has had a significant effect, changing how we write about the world. Yes, the ballpoint pen killed cursive. The ballpoint’s universal success has changed how most people experience ink. Its thicker ink was less likely to leak than that of its predecessors. For most purposes, this was a win—no more ink-stained shirts, no need for those stereotypically geeky pocket protectors. However, thicker ink also changes the physical experience of writing, not necessarily all for the better. As for me, I’ll stick with my pocket protector — and my fountain pens!
  • Plastic Souvenirs. I think I posted this a while back, but it caught my eye again. Do you remember the “mold-a-rama”, the machines that would make plastic souvenirs out of plastic pellets. There are two companies that make the machines, which are still going strong.
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📰 Politically Astute

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

userpic=trumpAnd what is the first box under the tree, Santa? Such sparkly red and blue wrapping, but the colors seem to want to stay away from each other? How odd. Oh, look, you got me some political news chum. Just what I … wanted …

 

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📰 The Beautiful People

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy1 Comment

[This post makes me feel like Ira Glass. So perhaps I should assume the persona]

Recently, we’ve been seeing a whole lot of ugly. Ugly behavior in politics. Name calling. Bullying. Lies, innuendo, and gossip. But I’m tired of talking about that. I’d like to focus on a different type of ugly — one triggered by a number of articles that I have read, and a podcast I listened to on the way home. Some of this makes me think of someone we know… and I’ll leave it at that.

So the question is: What makes a person beautiful? Is it how they look? How they smell? Their size? Their behavior? Here are some items I’ve seen of late that explore the issue, and like Ira Glass of This American Life, we’ll divide it into four acts.

Act I: Beauty is Only Skin Deep

Most of us — at least in the technical field — don’t care about makeup. We see the inner person, and judge beauty based on how someone behaves, how they treat other people, and what they do. But there is a subculture of young women (and I’m guessing some guys) that are obsessed with looks and makeup. I’ve seen this first hand: I know someone who is obsessed with makeup — so much so that their Instagram is filled with faces of their face with various different makeups. There’s a name for that phenomenon: Instragram Face. Alexandra Jones describes it in a fascinating piece from the BBC:  “the make-up look that has dominated social media for the past three years… Search the make-up hashtag on any social media site and you’ll come across it. The unique flaws that make us who we are, that make humans so attractive, have been replaced by one face. The Face. Photo-perfect skin and sculpted, contoured cheekbones, wide almond-shaped eyes which taper up into a feline point, and that full, inescapable mouth. This look is what Twiggy’s lashes were to the 1960s and what Kate Moss’ dewy skin was to the 1990s.”

I know it well. The person I know worshiped that look, which we all thought hid her natural beauty. But she would not be deterred. Jones’ piece, which is well worth reading, describes her quest to live with that look for a week. What was once a quick dab before she left because a routine that took, at best, 45 minutes in the morning. She couldn’t go out in the sun because her face would melt. Men start making lewd comments at her; it is something my wife refers to as a “fuck me” face, designed to be attractive to the male patriarchy (and, due to the time and cost, it keeps women in 2nd place). Further, it actually makes skin worse. Take off the makeup for a year, and your skin is much much better.

Then there is what this makeup subculture does to people. Gimlet’s Reply All touched upon this recently in the 2nd “Yes, Yes, No” segment of their show “Alex Jones Dramageddon”. They explored a recent incident in the Beauty YouTube subculture where a number of beauty vloggers had to make apology videos due to their poor behavior. I’ve known folks that are addicted to watching these videos, faces in screens for hours at a time. More on that in Act IV.

People need to realize that the best makeup is … none. Our flaws and our imperfections are what make us beautiful, what give us character. We aren’t all the same; we shouldn’t look the same.

[ETA: A reader in another venue pointed out that my commenting with my attitude on makeup may be sexist. That certainly wasn’t the intent — I feel the same way regardless of sex. However, it was a fair comment in that it was judging on looks, which is wrong. If you find makeup something that improves your self  esteem and makes you feel better, go for it. I do suggest you read the linked articles however — they were talking more about doing it based on a cultural pressure from others. If you use makeup, or make other fashion choices, do it because it is right for you.]

Act II: Something is in the Air

My wife likes to tell the story of an exchange student that lived with them when she was in high school. This person never bathed; instead, they used excessive cologne. As someone who suffers from migraines, I can just imagine what that fragrance in the air would do. A recent article explored how fragrance is the new second hand smoke. As the article notes; “Hundreds of studies over the last two decades are finding “fragrance” in beauty products and household cleaners are just as bad or worse for our health than secondhand smoke. Is it time for fragrance-free workplaces, hotel rooms and sections in restaurants?”

As a migraine sufferer, I can say, “Yes, please”.

Let’s look at two things fragrance does, both bad. First, it covers up the smell of clean, which is…. nothing. Using fragrance to mask BO is silly; just take a shower instead. You want your house to smell clean: air it out, instead of using air freshener, use fresh air. And as for perfume: why try to imitate animal pheromones when your natural ones will attract much better. People should be attracted for you for who you really are, not a fake image created through makeup and perfume. That image will always be destroyed when they see the real you.

As for fragrance, it can be bad for you. As the article notes:

“The average U.S. consumer today is as uneducated about the dangers of synthetic fragrances as the average American was to the dangers of second-hand smoke in the 1960s… Those dangers include chemicals that are known neurotoxins, carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, DNA mutagens, allergens,  hepatotoxins  and  reproductive toxins all hidden under the simple ingredient label “fragrance.” Manufacturers of beauty and cleaning products don’t have to disclose the hundreds of potential chemicals that could be used to make their fragrance, because they are considered “trade secrets” by the FDA. Around 90% of the chemicals included in the label “fragrance”  are synthesized from petroleum or coal tar.  Toxic chemicals commonly found in products with “fragrance” on the ingredients list include acetone, phenol, toluene, benzyl acetate, limonene and formaldehyde. A 2008 analysis of 6 top selling laundry products and air fresheners found “nearly 100 volatile organic compounds were emitted from the products, and five of the six products emitted one or more carcinogenic hazardous air pollutants which the Environmental Protection Agency considers to have no safe exposure level.”

Act III: The Last Acceptable Discrimination

Society is increasingly frowning on discrimination and making fun of the attributes of people (well, unless you’re the President or those who find his behavior acceptable). Sex, race, religion, orientation — all are out for teasing. But fat? Fat seems to be the last area where you can discriminate, where you can make fun — because we all know that obesity is bad for you. But what if it isn’t?

A great article in the Huffington Post was going around Facebook recently titled “Everything You Know About Obesity is Wrong“. The article talks about how obesity has grown in society, and notes the establishment response to it:

And the medical community’s primary response to this shift has been to blame fat people for being fat. Obesity, we are told, is a personal failing that strains our health care system, shrinks our GDP and saps our military strength. It is also an excuse to bully fat people in one sentence and then inform them in the next that you are doing it for their own good. That’s why the fear of becoming fat, or staying that way, drives Americans to spend more on dieting every year than we spend on video games or movies. Forty-five percent of adults say they’re preoccupied with their weight some or all of the time—an 11-point rise since 1990. Nearly half of 3- to 6- year old girls say they worry about being fat.

But, as the article goes on to note, the solution of dieting doesn’t work. Most people that go on diets gain it all back. Further, “the second big lesson the medical establishment has learned and rejected over and over again is that weight and health are not perfect synonyms. Yes, nearly every population-level study finds that fat people have worse cardiovascular health than thin people. But individuals are not averages: Studies have found that anywhere from one-third to three-quarters of people classified as obese are metabolically healthy. They show no signs of elevated blood pressure, insulin resistance or high cholesterol. Meanwhile, about a quarter of non-overweight people are what epidemiologists call “the lean unhealthy.” A 2016 study that followed participants for an average of 19 years found that unfit skinny people were twice as likely to get diabetes as fit fat people. Habits, no matter your size, are what really matter. Dozens of indicators, from vegetable consumption to regular exercise to grip strength, provide a better snapshot of someone’s health than looking at her from across a room.

Our society wants to have someone we can intentionally hurt and look down upon. But why?

Act IV: The Screens

Earlier, I mentioned the young person we know that was addicted to Beauty YouTube. How many of us know young people that are addicted to their screens, and who seem to have no attention spans. How do we address it? ADD medication. Perhaps that’s the wrong answer. Perhaps we need to address the screens.

A recent study shows a connection between heavy screen use and ADD in teens. It’s not at the level of a causal relationship yet, but studies show that teens who spend a lot of time using digital media show an uptick in symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). That doesn’t mean parents should panic about teens texting at the dinner table; it just means that if your kid is a heavy media user, maybe you should have a conversation about why they like it so much. The study monitored ADHD symptoms in a group of nearly 2,600 high school teenagers. Students who used multiple types of digital media multiple times a day were roughly twice as likely to report new symptoms of ADHD over a two-year period than their less digitally active classmates, according to the study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Now, combine that with the images they are seeing — the prevalence of Instagram Face, the emphasis on weight, our leadership role models — and we wonder why kids today are as they are.

Take off that makeup, get rid of the fragrance, don’t worry about how you look, and pick up a good book. You’ll be much happier.

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📰 The Last Straw

Posted onAuthorcahwyguy

Humans are technological creatures. We invent new technologies. We embrace new technologies. Quickly. Often before we fully consider the ramifications or consequences. As we’ve seen over the last few years, the Internet is a great example of that. It has enabled marvelous new things. It has allowed us to keep in touch with friends and relatives across the globe, and to write and express our opinions with ease. Perhaps too much. It has also amplified the voices of the haters, enabled them to discover each other and grow their propaganda. It has enabled foreign countries to manipulate our media and propaganda easily to achieve their goals, and we’ve seen who and what those goals have elected to our highest offices, here in America. A two-edged sword indeed — with remarkable benefits, but with a terrifying downside.

But I’m not here to write about the Internet and Trump. I’m here to write about a different technology, one that was immortalized in that famous exchange from The Graduate:

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There’s a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?

Have you ever thought about how plastics have changed the world? Look around you. How much of what you see is made of plastic, or depends on plastic, or has components of plastics? Think about how much of our lifesaving medical marvels depends on plastics, on how much of our technology depends on plastics for cases and insulation and structures. Just imagine what life would be like without plastics — a world where we only had fabric, wood, strone/concrete, metal, rubber/latex, and glass.  Now think about where much of our plastic comes from. Do you know? Petroleum. The big risk of our dependence on oil — a limited resource — is not the fuel for our cars, but that one day we may not be able to make more plastic, or that it will be very expensive. Look around you, and think of that impact the next time you throw away your sandwich baggie.

But our dependence on plastic and our acting like they are an unlimited resource is not the only problem we didn’t consider. There’s also the disposal problem. Plastics last in the environment for a long time. Unless specifically engineering to biodegrade (and that’s a different can of worms, so to speak), plastics will be in landfills for many generations to come. We can’t recover the oil from plastic, just like we can’t recover the sand from concrete. Lightweight plastics find their way to the ocean, together with microplastics from so many cosmetics and containers, and everything we discard in the street that goes down storm drains. There they get smaller and smaller, forming the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other trash eddies. Sea life eat these and absorb the plastic, and we eat that sea life, and … you get the picture.

This brings us to the actual point of this article: banning straws, and other news about plastics. First and foremost — why are we banning straws? To be precise, they aren’t being banned, but they are moving to “on request only”, as some people need plastic straws due to disabilities (ADA). There are lots of reasons, but the simplest is: it’s a low hanging fruit. Straws and lightweight grocery bags are easy things to ban because reusable alternatives are easily available, or can be made from other substances. They increase visibility of the issue without being a major pain, except from the Conservatives who use the issue to make fun of Liberals. There would be much more impact from banning disposable styrofoam take out containers, disposable cups, plastic eating utensils. But straws and grocery bags are easy. Some companies are even finding ways to thrive.

What may be next? Balloons. True, these are more made of latex or different plastics, but they create significant problems — both for power companies with the mylar metallic coated plastic that causes electrical shorts when they hit power lines, to the traditional balloons that go up so pretty …. and then deflate and come down for animals to eat. There is a move afoot to ban balloons, or to at least ban releasing balloons. Another area of concern is glitter. Glitter is a lot of small pieces of plastic mylar, that easily goes down the drain and to the ocean, to be consumed by animals.

What about all this consumption? We tend to think of plastic as something inert and non-reactive. It isn’t. Research is increasingly showing that using plastic for food — especially heating and microwaving food — is potentially very bad. [ETA: Even supposedly BPA free plastic appears not to be food-safe.] Consider this (from the linked article):

Most of our food containers — from bottles to the linings in aluminum cans to plastic wraps and salad bins — are made using polycarbonate plastics, some of which have bioactive chemicals, like bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates.

These man-made chemicals can leach from the containers or wrappings into the food and drinks they’re holding — especially when they’re heated. Research released earlier this year found that more than 90 percent of bottled water from the world’s leading brands was contaminated with microplastics, sparking a review of plastics in drinking water by the World Health Organization.

The main cause for concern is that these chemicals can mess with our hormones. Specifically, they can mimic hormones like estrogen, interfere with important hormone pathways in the thyroid gland, and inhibit the effects of testosterone.

There are those who opine that this one reason for the marked decrease in male fertility and births in recent decades. It could also be behind increases in cancer. What ever it is, there are reasons to use glass for food instead. Of course, manufacture of glass requires sand (another limited resource), but glass can be recycled.

Do you feel better now? Do you have a better understanding of why the humble straw is just the tip of the concern?

P.S.: Of course, there’s always more to be worried about. Millennials may killing mayonnaise, and all those pesticides we use on our crops (such as Roundup) may be ending up in our breakfast cereals and granola bars.

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