Blank Insurance Claims Submissions

Stuff to enhance human health and prolong
lives: insurance claims forms from
when Rich was in private practice

Day 114: Blank Insurance Claims Submissions

Our lack of diversity in agricultural crops is a disaster waiting to happen, a set piece for death by starvation at rates comparable to the Irish potato famine, scaled up to encompass the entire world. That was the message of the keynote speaker at this year's American Public Gardens Association meeting, Simran Sethi. Perhaps genetic engineering isn't the worst of Monsanto's sins; its worst sin (along with other agro-conglomerates) is relentlessly narrowing crop diversity. Like the 19th century investor who put his whole fortune in the steam engine, we are headed for ruin.

The message that wasn't included - that is never included - that is too hot even to speak aloud - is that a reduction in world population (for whatever reason) would be good for the environment. Famine, virulent disease and contaminated water may be bad for people, but they are good for the ecosystems in which people live. While solar energy may be better for the environment than burning coal, it won't really solve the problem. And the Affordable Care Act, while good for the average Joe, may have the side effect of increasing our lifespans yet again - and thus increasing the human population size.

Whatever happened to the conversation about population control? I remember this topic being widely talked about in the '70s. Didn't my mother tell me that she and my father had originally wanted to have four children, but decided to stop at three after they started thinking about the population explosion and its impacts?

When a species becomes too dominant, nature reaches out a hand and gives that species a slap. Sometimes, she eliminates that species altogether. 

And life goes on. Not human life, necessarily, but life.

Human beings have the ability to understand, analyze and plan for changes in our environment. If we can act for the public good, we don't have to wait for nature to cut us down or wipe us out. Resolving that each couple will have only one child would result in an immediate, dramatic reduction in the environmental impact of our species. If we persisted in this practice for 100 years, the earth might have the ability to absorb reduced humanity's greedy consumption of resources. 

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population." Could it be that Scrooge, the epitome of selfish greed, had his finger on humanity's best interests?

Cranberry Sauce

Day 24: Cranberry Sauce and Other Forgotten Foods

Many of these have not been
touched in months

I've been trying to figure out just how beneficial it would be to the American economy if everyone in the U.S. bought American cars. We build a lot of "foreign" cars in the auto corridor. It's also not clear how much country-of-origin impacts people's decisions about car purchases.

Food, on the other hand, is a much simpler question. Michigan is the number one U.S. producer of squash, beans, blueberries, tart cherries and a dozen other agricultural crops. You can head down to the farmer's market right this minute and buy milk, honey, meat, fruits and vegetables from the farmer down the road, and you won't need any complicated economic models to determine whether or not you helped the local economy. You did. 

And you won't need a PhD in chemistry to tell you that what you're eating tastes a whole lot better than the unripe food harvested two weeks ago and shipped 5,000 miles to your grocery store.

Of course, almost none of the stuff I got rid of today came from local farmers, except maybe my sister's homemade Thanksgiving cranberry sauce (so delicious, but I took too much!), stovetop popcorn and stale Avalon bread. All of which the chickens greatly enjoyed.

I would have given the chickens the "light" Spartan yogurt, except I'm afraid it might kill them. If I had noticed the "light" label, I never would have bought it. As if plain non-fat yogurt isn't "light" enough, this "light" yogurt actually has chemically-reduced calories. I don't know how they did it, but I can tell you that the texture resembles Jell-o more than yogurt. 

Does this count as food?

Which reminds me. It's probably time to get rid of the plain Knox gelatin we mixed up and applied to Emma's hair once upon a time, in order to create a hard Playskool figure shellac that kept its shape in the water. She hasn't been a synchronized swimmer in over five years.

Note to self: add yogurt to Calder Dairy milk order.