quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

I am tempted to give the ex-GS's naivete stance a little credit - he did mention he came to the US from south africa for college, maybe he was just really impressionable?

BACK on the scale of home economics, Laura MacCleery discovered that it’s not cheap to buy a chemical-free bassinet. “We had it made with nontreated wood, by Amish people,” she said. “I think it was 400 bucks.” The organic mattress was hand-stitched.

“And then the baby was born large,” Ms. MacCleery said. “She was like 8 pounds 10 ounces.”

Maya outgrew the nontoxic bassinet in a month.

That purchase may sound frivolous. But then how much would you pay to keep your baby from being exposed to the formaldehyde emitted by some particleboard furniture?

Janet Golden, a professor at Rutgers in Camden, N.J., who is writing a history of the American baby, sees the quest for the perfect green nursery as a kind of second job. It’s “a status marker for women,” she said. “You have to have a lot of money to throw away a perfectly good shower curtain.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/garden/going-to-extreme-lengths-to-purge-household-toxins.html?ref=style

Took me until the fifth line to work out that a bassinet isn't a cross between a bassoon and a clarinet.

that is a solid gold classic of the genre right there.

rutgers professors called for their opinions on overpriced baby furniture = CHECK

organic, hand stitched mattresses why oh why oh why

Depending on whom you ask, it’s a media-induced mass hysteria, an eco-marketing trend, a public health campaign or a stealth environmental movement — possibly all of the above.

Looks like the NYT is really pulling for option #1 here.

Chemical-free makes me rage.

http://www.jonathanrosenbaum.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/safe2.jpg

better not ever take that baby in a motor vehicle

haha, tracer otm

http://fnochemicalfree.tumblr.com/

http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmi1n1U6L61ql91lpo1_500.jpg

hahaha, I actually just had an argument with my aunt because she was like "I want to buy you this new fabric shower curtain. It's eco friendly" and I was like "Do you think it's eco friendly to throw away a perfectly good shower curtain, let alone to exchange it with one that has to be washed in a washing machine?"

Wait, do you think it's better to get a plastic one that you toss out? That's an honest question. I usually buy the polyester hotel liners rather than the plastic ones. (I say "usually," but that more or less means once every three years or when we move into a new apartment, whichever comes first.)

Yeah the washable polyester ones are great

In theory you can keep a plastic one going for a long time by hand-wiping the bottom down and making sure you don't get soap scum caked on it but I've never had luck with that in practice

The plastic one I got is supposed to be "mold and mildew resistant."

well a single piece of plastic is a bad thing to focus on if you're really thinking about being green or w/e, also in this case he'd be buying it for the sake of buying it because he already had one

That's a dirty lie, ime.

If it's any better, I don't wash the poly ones anywhere near as often as I should (feel kind of gross admitting that, please don't judge me).

Hahaha the "mold and mildew resistant" claim, not iatee's post.

my posts are usually dirty lies tbf

iatee owns five cars. He drives one to work, and has four hired drivers drive the other four to work, in case he wants to drive a different car home. FACT.

It did emit that nasty VOC smell when I first got it, but I figured I wasn't in the room with it very much. Although so did the mattress pad we bought, which we sleep on. I mean this shit is sort of scary -- even the article admits that every year there are all kinds of new compounds being introduced into our products without much examination. I mean these two things were made in some factory in china under the lowest supervision standards imaginable. The mattress pad didn't even have a tag on it, so I don't even think I could sue a manufacturer if it made me sick. Under the circumstances it's hard to blame people for going a little overboard with the "non-toxic" products.

The main things that annoy me are (1) manufacturers taking advantage of the fears in a situation where there's clearly no added benefit ("organic maple syrup" -- there's no other kind), and (2) people confusing eco-friendly with non-toxic. E.g. organic produce is really not a health issue for the most part -- pesticide is water soluble and washes off of most fruits very easily. The reason "organic" is an issue was originally environmental.

It did emit that nasty VOC smell when I first got it

Mmmmm, pthalates.

I mean I don't remember so much stuff having that smell when I was a kid. It really does seem like a new and possibly bad thing.

we are all already sponges for industrial chemicals anyway, there's no escape, fluoride and chemtrails, just use a rubbermaid storage tin as your bassinet and surrender

I pay to have all my new stuff offgassed at a private facility before bringing it into my home

I actually had this semi-cynical business idea recently to become a green/non-toxic baby products "consultant" -- the idea being that for a not insignificant fee I would actually navigate you through every single baby product purchase you have to make, since the shit it so time-consuming for NYC's overworked professional parents.

none of yr shopping habits are doing shit for the environment youre alls trapped in a quiddities and agonies of the ruling class thread of your own design

that's kind of a captain obvious point

oh im sry mr show curtain consumer reports

I mean the thing about "organic" is that its origins as a movement were very much tied to other habits like local consumption and reduced overall consumption. It was never meant to be this thing where, like "Oh, I can pay $1 more for the tropicana "organic" orange juice."

even habits like local consumption and reduced overall consumption are no solution to our environmental problems

voluntary human extinction now

onionarticle.jpeg

even habits like local consumption and reduced overall consumption are no solution to our environmental problems

― lag∞n, Thursday, March 15, 2012 10:36 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, ultimately nothing is.

not really sure what you mean by ultimately but i must disagree

I mean what the original organic movement had in mind was significant lifestyle changes.

They would make a difference, if most people really implemented them.

reduced overall consumption could mean a lot of things... take it far enough and it *might* be something of a solution? I mean except that we've probably passed a tipping point already?

I don't think the organic movement had a coherent political philosophy that involved whether or not people should take planes or eat meat or w/e

the thing is the majority of the worlds population is just trying to get the the level that rich people consider cutting way back or significant lifestyle changes, like people in india just want a refrigerator

right. That's why I'm saying that nothing is going to help, because we can't turn the train around. But in theory, yes, significantly reduced consumption would obviously help.

just weave your own shower curtain on a loom using the organic hemp u grow

reducing overall consumption could involve giving up refrigeration

bathe with a natural sponge and homemade lye soap, in a bog

I guess it's just a vague enough term that it seems like it could be a catch-all

don't shower

well significantly reduced consumption besides being the all time so not gonna happen maybe not even be possible because of the way the world is set up to support its 6 billion people, but its not true that nothing will help, the governments of the world just need to make people use diff fuel is all

stand in the rain and rub yourself with aloe and soap plant, catch the runoff in a handcrafted bucket and sell it as a protein shake

and that company became jamba juice
and now you know... the rest of the story