How to Grow Shiitake Mushrooms

This is a step by step guide to growing your own mushrooms from plug spawn, which is a small capsule that contains mycelia and will spread the mushroom's spawn all over a food source.

For this tutorial, the mushrooms will be planted outside in a log. There are a few things you'll need in order to do this.

• plug spawn
• an outdoor area
• cheese or wax
• electric drill, and
• a log

Step 1)

The first step is to get plug spawn. There is a medicinal mushroom research facility in my region, near Olympia, WA, called Fungi Perfecti. This company researches the medicinal benefits of mushroom intake and environmental uses of mushrooms, such as bioremediation of oil spills. If you watched the Leonardo di Caprio film, The 11th Hour, (about climate change), you would have seen the interview with Paul Stamets, the leading researcher at Fungi Perfecti.



You can order plug spawn from their website for about $13 for a container with around 100 dowels (or small capsules). There is no precise estimate for how many mushroom fruits each dowel will yield. But after a log is inoculated well, it will produce mushrooms for years. Each log should be plugged with around 30 - 50 dowels.

You can store your dowels in a cool, refrigerated place until you are ready to impregnate some food sources. As you can see by the picture above, I have been refrigerating my shiitake plug spawn for quite a while and the bag has begun to turn white with mycelia. (If you open the bag while its white you could have mushrooms grow right outside the bag.) But you don't want to break up these mycelium networks once they have begun spreading. You want this to happen inside the food source (not the bag).

Since, despite being delicious, shiitake has many medicinal benefits as well, and for this guide I will assume you are cultivating, like me, shiitake spawn. Shiitake mushrooms have anti-viral properties which come from particles within the mushroom that behave very much like viruses themselves. An important compound in shiitake, called leonthionine, creates a healthier blood circulation systems, and prevents blood buildups and clots which lead to strokes, heart attacks, thrombosis, hemostasis, and platelet deficiencies. Shiitake is also anti-carcinogenic, will slow cancerous processes, and can also help prevent allergies and arthritis.


Step 2)


After you have the plug spawn dowels in your possession, you must either find a cut log or cut one yourself. For all mushroom types, the log should have been cut at least 1 to 3 months prior, but not too much older than that. Since the log itself is the food that will feed the mycelia, you do not want the food source to be full of runny saps and other anti-fungal juices. The more sawdusty the better, given that many mushrooms will inoculate very easily in sawdust. The more sugar content the better, so you don't want the log to be too old. The log pieces should be 3 to 4 feet long.

The two types of logs that Fungi Perfecti recommends for shiitake spawn are alder and oak, because they have thicker barks and are hardwoods. Hardwood are less porous. I will be using a Douglas Fir log, which is a softwood - albeit more less porous than many softwoods. (This was the only thing I could scavenge.) Generally, the thicker the bark and the more cracks the better, since the mushrooms must find little cracks in the bark to burst out of when its time to shroom.


Step 3)


Once you have your log pieces cut, drill small holes to put your dowels into. Generally 2 inches deep, just enough to penetrate past the bark a little ways. The holes should be no less than 4 inches apart. 30 - 50 plugs per log.

After your plug spawn is placed nicely in its hole, give it a good whack with a hammer or punch it a little with the drill bit. This breaks open the dowel and makes colonization happen much faster. However, with my dowels already bursting at the seams with mycelia, I carefully pried them apart and made sure what bits and pieces of mycelia attached were left intact.

*Note* because shiitake is sensitive to anti-fungal compounds that can be found in the soils, do not let your spawn or the mushroom fruits come into contact with the soil directly.

Step 4)


This part is optional. To guard against adverse weather conditions or curious insects one thing you can do is plug the holes with either beeswax or cheese. The best time to plug your spawn will be in late Winter or early Spring, typically after the last hard frost. And there you have it. Wait six to nine months and your logs will begin spawning delicious shiitake outgrowths, which you can use for all sorts of recipes.

The varieties of mushrooms I am growing in my *new* backyard are shiitake, reishi and lion's mane. I can post more pictures once they begin to spawn.

Bamboo Garden

Probably one of the best vegan/vegetarian restaurants in Seattle is the Bamboo Garden. I was in that area eating with a friend not too long ago. When we first walked in and took a look at the menu, we get excited that literally everything on the menu is something we want to order. We're used to dismissing entres with words like "chicken" in them, and for at least the first minute we overlooked quite a bit. We had to remind ourselves that Bamboo Garden makes tofu imitations of everything: chicken, salmon, shark fin... it's very amazing and delicious.

Next time I go to Portland there are several vegan places I want to check out. Including the anarchist Red and Black Cafe.

The Tacoma Food Co-Op

More hyper-local journalism below. Sorry I have not had very much critical theory on my blog lately.

...

An enthusiastic group of Tacomans are working towards creating a Food Co-Op in Tacoma sometime within the next year. A Food Co-Op is basically a grocery store that is owned by the community and in accordance with that model, usually receives its groceries from local, organic farmers. Tacoma's Food Co-Op will be owned and run by paying members who have recognized “the need for an affordable urban grocery that provides organic, local, and natural food.”


The Co-Op organizers held a community event in People's Park in Tacoma's Hilltop Neighborhood last month to excite Tacoma and Pierce County residents about the idea. As of now, the Co-Op's membership costs $100 for a full year of local grocery shopping at prices that beat the chains like Safeway and Fred Meyers. As membership increases, however, the cost of membership is supposed to drop.

The location of the Co-Op is still undecided at this point. Since I have recently moved to the Stadium District and have noticed the lack of affordable and healthy grocery outlets in that area, I suspect the location of the Co-Op will be somewhere closer to Downtown or the Hilltop area. Most of the grocery outlets in these areas are small, overpriced and stocked typically with unhealthy foods. My neighbors all tell me they shop at the Proctor District Safeway, which is where I used to shop when I lived in the 6th Avenue “scene” district. I still shop at the Proctor Safeway even though I moved to an entirely different neighborhood. The Hilltop Safeway is mostly stocked with canned foods, surveillance cameras and candy.

One of the Tacoma Food Co-Op organizers, Adam Ydstie, is currently scoping out other Co-Ops like the one in Minneapolis, called The Wedge. This Co-Op has 13,600 members and is a sizeable 11,000 square feet. The money The Wedge makes, $20 million a year, goes “back into their community”.

“One of the things that stood out to me,” says Adam on the Tacoma Food Co-Op blog, “is that there is a common misconception that Food Co-Ops are non-profit. They are really just a different type of for profit. It takes a radical shift in understanding in a community.”

My friend Kendle Bjelland, a junior at UPS, and I are currently working on a documentary tentatively called A Guide to Eating Locally in Tacoma, which will highlight the development of the Tacoma Food Co-Op, as well as provide resources for people in Pierce County who would like to know where to get local, organic food. We are hoping that the Tacoma School District will adopt a similar model as the Olympia School District has, which has a healthy farm-to-school program that makes use of local organic farms. We are also suggesting the possibility of urban agriculture programs in the City of Tacoma.


Stay tuned!

Botany of Desire

This light-starved parsley is on the far side of my apartment, bending like an acrobat to reach the window. Look at it go!

Here is another angle:


One day when the world is too hot for humans to inhabit my entire house will look like this.

Building Civilization from Starch

Starch is so great. Think of all the things you can do with starch. But is a starch-based diet the healthiest? Here is a debate between vegetarian nutrition experts on the primacy of starch.

Every single society that has ever existed survived on a starch-based diet, says John McDougall. McDougall is taken aback by "niche theories," the point he makes is somewhat overlooked by other nutritionists. On the other hand, every single person has a different metabolic rate and needs to limit their caloric intake to suit their individual needs, says Joel Furston. There is a perfect balance between vegetables and starches and each person needs to 'do the math' to figure out what is best for them. I don't see these two views as incompatible - because McDougall is making his point far too generally, and Furston is confining the discussion to individuals.

To Become a Hardline Vegan...?

Being a vegetarian, it's actually difficult to justify on the same principles the reasons why I'm not a hardline vegan.

I became a vegetarian in 2002 because I was concerned about the environmental destruction that a meat-based diet can cause. I also was generally interested in becoming healthier. During stressful situations like finals week, however, it seems I become a kind of 'junkfood vegetarian' who drinks only coffee and eats chocolate wafers. And I feel as though I need to recommit myself to the principles that led me to vegetarianism in the first place, perhaps pushing myself in a more hardline direction.

Although many vegetarians shy away from saying that the animal liberation ethics played a role in their decision (I felt the same way too) I have been increasingly aware of its significance and less convinced by the reactionary and dismissive critical response that some animals deserve systemic enslavement by other animals. I feel as though if one were to become a vegan, this is the most crucial aspect of the rationale. I don't know of many vegans who based their decisions on health or environmental reasons alone. Most of those people remain simply vegetarian.

I recently came across the Hardline Manifesto on the Vegan Revolution website. It's not particularly authoritative. It's a statement, and a commitment, to a set of values. In many ways I've become more "hardline" in the last five years. I justify my vegetarianism on nearly the same principles that any reasonable vegan would. I've said, along with Robert Nozick, "Kantianism for humans; utilitarianism for animals." I've also said, along with the transhumanists, that there is no inherent exceptionalism for humans. I don't subscribe to the Singerian view of utilitarianism across the board to justify animal liberation. That view is pretty popular among vegetarians. I think utilitarianism is generally ridiculous and leads to all sorts of undesirable scenarios. And so I'm struggling to elaborate the foundations of my theoretical opposition to hardline veganism.

And I've come to the conclusion that my opposition is actually not theoretical. Although theoretically, veganism is a much more accurate extension of my views on individual choice, health and consumerism, it is also less practical. There are less vegan options when eating out, for example, and it would require finding substitutes for things like eggs, milk and vitamin B 12. However, being a vegetarian also seemed impractical to me at first. Just think! I had to find substitutes for meat and cholesterol. That actually was fairly easy to do, and contrary to what my cousins think during family gatherings, I don't "miss" meat or any meat-flavored artificial substance. And it turns out many of my friends are either vegetarian or vegan, so eating out isn't something to stress about.

As I write about this, it seems much more appropriate to become what somebody once called a "flexitarian". A flexitarian compromises his or her diet when it is less practical to uphold their principles. It's not a theoretical objection. But I generally think that view is dishonorable. It says one's principles are dictated by the social environment. If someone does not feel like speaking up and saying "I'm sorry, but I'm a vegetarian", it seems like a complete cop out to adjust your principles for the time being. Now, if it were impossible to uphold those principles in some circumstance, it seems reasonable. But if it's merely to be respectful to some dinner host, I don't buy it.

I think that veganism is something more people can be flexitarian about, however. Vegan foods are harder to come by in social settings and within consumer society in general. These could be considered 'non-theoretical barriers' or something like that, because, while they do not exist in theory - they exist in practice. However, buying and preparing vegan foods for yourself is easier and has fewer barriers. Twenty years ago there were greater barriers to the vegetarian, but as vegetarianism has generally become more practiced, the non-theoretical barriers have virtually vanished. The pragmatist's reply to vegetarianism now seems irrelevant. And the same may be true of veganism in the future.

So in the end, I think it is possible to justify becoming a vegan, but falling back on vegetarianism when the barriers are too high. And I think this is something I may be ready to do. The purpose of writing this is basically to demonstrate to myself that for me there are no theoretical barriers to practices like veganism, only practical barriers. And recognizing that has made me feel closer to veganism.

Human Exceptionalism

Human Exceptionalism is the belief that humans, above everything else, have special rights, special statuses, and unique capacities that justify human exceptionalist practices and ideologies. We can also call this human racism. Not everyone is in favor of human enhancement technology and the prospect of greater-than-human intelligence. Nor is everyone ready for this paradigm shift. Not everyone is in favor of extending personhood outside the human sphere. Or willing to allow non-exceptionalist status to human populations, for this would entail a kind of non-human status to humans. "Human status" here is synonymous with exceptionalism. We can see that by paradigmatic posturing that not everyone is willing to allow post-human paradigms to enter into consciousness. These 'human exceptionalists', a group that includes anti-transhumanist Wesley Smith, argue that being human is what matters, and that to give equal moral currency to non-humans is, to beg the question of human dignity and worth, a strict violation of human dignity and worth.

The opposing viewpoint to this is that of Non-Anthropocentric Personhood -- the notion that non-humans, be they animals, robots, or uploaded minds, have the potential for personhood status, and by consequence, are worthy of moral consideration. The heart of this notion of human exceptionalism is what drives the unethical treatment of non-humans, the consumption of non-humans, and the enslavement of non-humans. By becoming a vegetarian for ethical reasons or by embracing the ideas of transhumanism, one is acknowledging the dangers and provincialities of human exceptionalism. One is thereby acknowledging the multiple realizability of consciousness and the moral imperatives that follow. This is what mind functionalism ultimately converges upon: a non-anthropocentric vision of personhood and a detailed explanation for consciousness and its emergence in systems that do not share the exact chemical and biological makeup of human consciousness. Exceptionalists would have us think there is an ethical makeup to the human mind, which restricts the domain of personhood -- whereas if we deny this ethical makeup, we expand the domain of personhood at no ethical cost to "human dignity" whatsoever.

The Soy Republic

A friend of mine studied the economics of soy production in Argentina this summer, which is one of the three largest soy producers next to Brazil and the US.

Since Monsanto genetically modified soy to be resistant to its Roundup weedkillers, the European Union placed a ban on GMed soy imports. And since this, the WTO ruled that this is disallowed under international trade law. This ruling seems fair to me, from a consumer-choice perspective, yet the simultaneous ruling which stated non-GM products may not advertise their being non-GM is unfair. Information ought to be as symmetrical as possible, and the WTO ruled against this.

It simply gives undeserved credibility to Roundup Ready GM soy, and prevents consumers from making intelligent choices. It is reasonable to believe, as the legal jargon goes, that since there are studied and unstudied health affects of GM soy, many consumers would prefer non-GM soy. More than half of rats exposed to GM soy died prematurely compared to rats that weren't exposed. The fact that GM soy is exposed to much more Roundup weedkillers than non-GM soy should be a red flag. This is due to the fact that GM soy's DNA contains bacterial genes that allow the soy plant to survive heavy exposure to Monsanto's "Roundup" brand herbicide. Some 85 percent of the soy gown in the United States is Roundup Ready. Soy is present in the majority of processed foods sold in the United States, so most Americans eat Roundup Ready soy in some form every day.

Soy is the food of the future. Meat will be phased out if we are to live with sustainability on this planet. It is interesting, then, that the soy we eat is so infected with dangerous elements. GM soy is also grown carelessly--since there is little or no variation in GM products, the risk of an entire crop failure is much higher. Adverse weather conditions may affect a particular genetic makeup, and with little variation, the entire crop fails. Weeds all over the world have grown resistant to the now heavy use of Roundup weedkillers, and Monsanto is struggling to deter this. In Argentina, two weeds have grown resistant. In the US, an even larger number of weeds have grown resistant, due to our long practice of spraying herbicides.

Greenpeace and other organizations have documented the systematic environmental degradation due to GM soy production in Argentina. Run-off from Roundup ends up in major rives, polluting everything, and eventually reaching the ocean. Soy farm expansion, due to a favorable export price, increases deforestation. This in turn has led to floods, not to mention a loss of natural capital and habitat. In Brazil, of course, part of the destruction of the Amazon is due to expanding soy and cattle production.

What should be done?

The first step seems obvious--give consumers to freedom to choose their soy products, through the WTO. Free trade also means free information. Producers and distributors ought to be allowed to put the information they find relevant on their product. Since GM soy is often fed to cattle and other animals, cattle producers who don't use GM soy also ought to be able to advertise this.

Dogfighting

From an animal welfare point of view, dogfighting is one of the most serious forms of animal abuse. The dogs often suffer their entire lives from wounds and constant violence. A losing dog whose fighting potential is severely damaged is usually put to death by strangulation, drowning, hanging, gun shot, electrocution, or by some other method. "Bait" animals are often used to test a dog's fighting ability and instinct. For example, trainers might use smaller dogs, or cats, or rabbits as bait for fighting dogs. The National Humane Society reports that some dog's snouts are duct-taped to prevent them from biting back at dogs in training.


The secret culture of dog fighting is usually directed related to gang involvement and community violence. Dog fighting events are indeed criminalized, and so naturally at these events other criminal organizing takes place: drug distribution, racketeering, and other criminal enterprises. Just recently, American football player Michael Vick plead guilty to running a dogfighting ring which was conducted across state lines. At his ring was discovered piles of bloody carpet, and "rape stands" which are used to force unwilling female pit bulls mate. Michael Vick's losing dogs were allegedly executed by being crushed or by electrocution. This is certainly cruel and unusual, and this is why protesters quickly gathered outside the National Football League's HQ in New York. Michael Vick ought to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which is five years in prison and $250,000 in restitution, and this practice ought to be ended everywhere.

Vegetable Root Argument

premise 1) Inclination towards light

premise 2) Preference for being on surfaces

conclusion) Humans are basically like plants.

Fur fashion and the theory of the leisure class

Vanity of vanities.

Take a look at the picture to the left. Cruelty is a fetish that perhaps is the most difficult to dissuade people from. Violence is an anti-thesis to reason. And there can be no dissuasion where there is no reason. Especially when vanity is involved, cruelty is an irrational activity. Of course, there is always some morsel of reasoning going on behind the cruelness, some will to power. It does not suffice to say it is a rational activity in the classical sense.

The vanity of wearing fur is to display a peculiar indifference to suffering. Native Americans used to wear furs to survive, and some believed their souls would encompass the soul of the animal. And with almost all "higher" forms of culture comes from this kind of spiritualization of cruelty, an encodification of violence into culture. Without an element of violence at the heart of this spectacle, this theater of cruel animalistic tastes would not be possible. This is sadistic clothing, literally. It is a symbol of zoosadism. Holding the soul of a tortured animal on your body gives off a kind of spiritual fetishism with the symbols of the "leisure class".

One doesn't need to know exactly what happens at these fur plantations to know that it is a symbol of senseless violence and vanity. A mink must be romped on the ground, its head stomped, strangled while its fur is spread from its live body, and had its face crushed with a sledgehammer all for the sake of a Calvin Klein model pacing up and down a runway in 30 seconds or less. Beaten lamb from Karakul and skins of purposely aborted calves and lambs are considered to be especially luxurious in the fashion industry. Why not take PETA's advice and use their guide to shopping for compassionate clothing which outlines "cruelty-free" clothing like "sexy pleather" and synthetic polyesters. Fashion designers like Stella McCartney, Ralph Lauren, and Marc Bouwer have refused to work with real fur and leathers. But fur really does have a hold on gluttonous bourgeois dandies, and this is why the silly fashion-designers are still using rotting animal products to plush up their models. Perhaps the designers don't actually know that China, the great human rights violater, is also the largest exporter of the finished fur garments imported for sale in the US. China's fur farms have denied even the simplest acts of kindness to animals, not even the most minimalistic recognitions of animal rights, sort of like how the Chinese government treats the Chinese people.

There are some non-fashion arguments which are helpful here. Contrary to fur-industry propaganda, fur production does destroy the environment faster than alternative fur products. The amount of energy needed to produce a real fur coat from ranch-raised animal skins is approximately 20 times than needed to produce a fake fur garment. A fur coat isn't biodegradable either, since chemical treatments are applied to stop the fur from rotting in your closet. This Janus-faced industry is even so bold as to provide us with a list of "reasons to wear fur", and they make little sense when all of them rest on fur being simply "fashionable" and only two address real concerns like the environment and commodified cruelty, (which is pathetically legalistic). It is still legal, they say. Notice the circularity and contingency of this notion. And I find "warmth" itself to be a poor argument also, since so many other fabrics provide that too at less expensive rates and more manageable tastes.

Fur.org also provides the browser with a history section, and neglects to mention how trading fur is remarkably unsustainable. Early American fashion sensibilities for beaver hats drastically plummeted the beaver population. And of course the buffalo population, a keystone species in the North American Great Plains, was hunted to near extinction. Today only two continuously wild buffalo populations exist in North America--in Alberta and Yellowstone. The picture on the right is a disgusting mound of buffalo skulls, much to the pride of the hunters, whose names we have all forgotten by now. In the end, we must look at their silly 1x1 pixelated grins and wonder what sense was there in killing all those precious buffalo and leaving their carcases to rot on the open plain? (The answer, of course, is to make 1x1 pixelated buffalo skulls!!)

There is an anthropological reason as to why fashionists think fur is a symbol of higher status. Beginning with primitive tribes, the division of labor also divided class systems. The top-down political systems made it so groups with a higher status became the group responsible for war and hunting, usually men, while the farming and cooking was left to the inferior classes. The working classes did the bulk of the work, especially in peace-time, while the bourgeois classes remained warlike and aristocratic. The warlike classes have never been as productive or reliable. Their integrity relied upon their honorable "status" as protectors against foreign tribes, even as they banned the peasants from using weapons that could potentially make them stronger than the warrior classes. For example, knights forbade peasants from using crossbows which were more affective than a knight's sword. This was a pathetic legal exercise, and stood in the way of technological advancement to say the least.

The fashion industry similarly grew out of this type of "warrior-class" status, which became accustomed to doing nothing, since the warrior activities and responsibilities had also been shifted to the inferior classes. Yet the leisure class still displayed the warrior-like prowess and the tribalisms of the traditional warrior class. Only now the sole activity of this leisure class is to be leisurely and impress other leisure class-members, an endlessly self-reflective activity. These new "priests" of fashion are useful to no one, yet dictate the desires of the working classes through telecommunications and other means. As a symbol of their leisurely existence, they drape themselves in lavish, inefficient clothing. A symbol of their inefficient and sloth-like status in society.

The priestly status of fashionists neglects to mention the mounds of mink skull the entire project rests upon. The consumers care little about that, however, because this part of the equation is extracted from the codified simplicity of consumerism. Our culture also has ironically pointed out that the killing of other species leads to the killing of our own species. As many serial killers have testified, they enjoyed murdering small animals in their youth. A perusal of FBI records easily displays a link between a history of cruelty to animals in one's childhood as one of the traits that regularly appears in its computer records of rapists and murderers. It is worse when this atrocity is cemented into "culture". It then lies like a shroud over our perceptions.

Fur fetishism will perhaps be diagnosed as a personality disorder by psychiatrists of the future. Yet for now it is but a symptom of a deep societal disturbance. The French used to round cats up into a large net and lower them into a bonfire. Steven Pinker recounts that the French spectators "shrieked with laughter as the cats, howling in pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." How classy. How bourgeois. It is this kind of humorous sensibility that pushes me to question more contemporary forms of humor and entertainment. Consider the circus. Isn't it strange that watching wild animals perform unnatural tricks outside their natural habitats is oddly entertaining? Or that it might teach children something about the animals, or their endangerment? By displaying bears as tricycle-riding buffoons and by dressing elephants in tutus, circuses present animals as creatures whose purpose is to amuse us. The codified message is: animals are dispensable creatures, and one can freely laugh at their suffering and captivity. Parents at the circus are just as unreliable as the circus itself, and the child learns nothing.

The greatest folly in recent years has been the connection of our animal rights policy with our foreign policy. American soldiers in Iraq were known to have tortured, humiliated, and beaten Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, like Poland and Romania. This is not a recent phenomenon, but one that has surfaced recently due to technology. When I watched this video on YouTube depicting US soldiers in Iraq torturing a small dog, I couldn't help but feel disgusted by my society and its complete lack of respect toward animals. Even greater, the integrity of our foreign policy is at risk. The soldiers laughed hysterically, as if under a spell, at the dog's humiliated squeals and pained kicking. Kind of like how the 16th Century French aristocrats laughed at cats burning alive. And kind of like how the Americans at Abu Ghraib smile for the camera as Iraqis lie helplessly in heaps, naked, beaten, and exhausted.

Coffee and Your Health -- review of a study

It's not necessarily better for you than tea, since caffeine is a mild addictive stimulant. And coffee does have modest cardiovascular effects such as increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and occasional irregular heartbeat that should be considered. It seems studies have been largely inconclusive regarding coffee and its effect on breast cancer and osteoporosis for women. Coffee has been blamed for everything from moral turpitude to cancer. But none of the bad raps have stuck. Coffee may even be good for you.

Since most coffee-drinkers in long-term studies over the past thirty years have been smokers, most of the links that tried to single out coffee as the cause of pancreatic cancer or heart disease cannot be conclusive. A Harvard medical study actually shows that coffee in moderation can be healthy--and moderation is considered three cups a day!

The study reached some interesting conclusions.

• The caffeine in coffee will temporarily restrict your arteries, but only the ones that are far away from your heart--like the brain's arteries. And this is why in some analgesics, caffeine is listed as an ingredient, since it will relieve those "throbbing" headaches which are caused by dilated vessels, not necessarily due to a lack of an addictive drug.

• Coffee increases your blood pressure, but not by too much. And it doesn't cause chronic high blood pressure. And the study shows that blood pressure changes tend more to occur in people drinking coffee who don't usually drink it.

• Coffee does help you stay more alert. But drinking 2-3 ounces an hour will keep you more alert than if you drink 16 ounces in one hour.

• Coffee can increase levels of LDL cholestorol. (That's the bad cholesterol!) But paper coffee filters usually catch these compounds. It's those who drink espresso, French-pressed, or boiled coffees that will catch these toxins. (By the way, that's why French-press tastes so good!)

• Homocysteine is a homologue of the amino acid cysteine, which causes heart disease. Deficiencies of vitamins like folic acid, or pyridoxine can lead to high homocysteine levels. But so can coffee, apparently. Another study showed that coffee had no effect on homocysteine levels for people who had healthy diets, consisting of the proper amounts of folic acid and vitamin B12. For vegans who drink coffee, however, that could be a problem unless they get more of the daily value of B12.

• Heart disease--is not true for coffee. 1 or 2 cups in the morning will not affect your cardiovascular condition according to this study, which builds from other studies.

There are also some possible benefits to drinking coffee.

• Coffee has been shown to improve performances such as running, cross-country skiing, and cycling. Studies suggest this effect occurs at doses of 2–9 mg of caffeine per 2.2 pounds of body weight. This is about the amount of caffeine found in 2–5 cups of coffee.

• Research involving older men and women participating in the Rancho Bernardo Study found that lifetime coffee intake is associated with better performance by women (but not men) on several cognitive tests. No relationship was found between cognitive function and decaffeinated coffee consumption.

• Several studies have found a reduced risk of colon cancer in people who drink 4 or more cups of coffee per day, compared with those who rarely or never drink coffee. In 2003, German researchers reported that they identified an antioxidant in coffee called methylpyridinium, which boosts the activity of enzymes that may discourage the development of colon cancer. The compound is found in both regular (caffeine-containing) and decaffeinated coffee.

• Risk of developing type 2 diabetes is lower in coffee drinkers.

• Risk of developing gallstones is significantly lower.

• A strong association with drinking coffee and reduced risk of liver damage and liver disease.

• Several large studies show that a strong reduced risk of Parkinsons disease (the degenerative disorder of the central nervous system, affecting motor skills) exists in coffee drinkers.

It seems that, particularly for older people, drinking coffee is actually beneficial to their health. There are some mild cardiovascular risks and bone loss. But this mildly stimulating drink has been the target of criticism ever since it was introduced to the West from Ethiopia. Many leaders tried to quash enthusiasm for the drink. But the latest research discounts the notion that moderate coffee consumption — which we interpret to be about 2–4 cups per day — causes significant or lasting harm. Indeed, some studies suggest that coffee and caffeine may offer some real health benefits.

Kafka’s Portrait of the Modern Condition in "A Hunger Artist"

One theme in A Hunger Artist and other Kafka works is the negative effect industrialization and capitalism has on art.

Right away we notice the difference between Kafka’s pessimism and the optimism of Victorian literature. Kafka describes the hunger artist as the passionate starving artist who ignores his destitution and the necessity of a regular job. In defense of art, I believe this short story is a depiction of the modern condition. The cage is the artist's cramped apartment is where his artistic inspiration springs, and he never looks at his cage’s clock, that ultimate indicator of economics which signals when it is time to go to work. In fact, he never looks at anything else, either; he has total control over his own starvation. He is the "artist of his own life".

We immediately learn that the hunger artist is no longer so independent. He requires an impresario to manage the show, and the impresario sets a time limit for the fasting periods. More importantly, the hunger artist loses much of his free will when the impresario shakes him: “The artist now submitted completely.” Instead of a serious artistic endeavor, the fasting is turned into an entertainment designed to appease the public.

But what exactly is the hunger artist’s art? The impresario has commodified his art, making it something saleable, and not art for art’s sake. Kafka rejects “scale” as a new economic force whereby capitalists can gain greater profits and encompass more art forms due to so-called economies of scale.

The hunger artist himself, at least, seems to consider his fasting a serious practice of self-denial rooted in masochism and suffering; he is even referred to as a “suffering martyr.” He is obsessed with the limits of suffering. The first word is “unendurable” and “endure” pop up at different times; the words reflect a state of painful continuation. The hunger artist wants a “performance beyond human imagination, since he felt that there were no limits to his capacity for fasting.” This infinitude of fasting is ironic in that we usually think of infinity as a superabundance of quantity, whereas fasting is an absence of quantity (since nothing is being eaten; however, the fasting is then measured in how long one has fasted for).

However, the hunger artist complicates our appreciation of his art when he admits that fasting is easy to do. If we take fasting to be a metaphor for suffering, he is saying that suffering is easy. The artist as a suffering figure is nothing new; most art, it could be argued, and especially Kafka’s writing, emerges from suffering. The hunger artist is merely revealing his suffering to the world. Let us ignore the fact that he is not converting his suffering to a medium we are accustomed to, such as music or painting. His medium is his cage and the public performance. But how meaningful is this art, or any art based on private suffering?

Kafka explores the hunger artist’s complicated relationship with his audience, and in this relationship we can better see how each side appreciates the art. No one believes the hunger artist when he claims that fasting is easy. They do not understand his art at a basic level. They cannot empathize with his suffering because they are cruel, and this incomprehension frustrates the hunger artist. They also trivialize his art. They believe he is somehow cheating, and they often do not pay him the attention he desperately craves. He enters a vicious cycle of suffering, since he suffers more when the audience does not understand his art of suffering. Metaphorically, he is the misunderstood artist, alienated from everyone even through his art.

However, this alienation and misunderstanding may be precisely why the hunger artist continues his art. He needs to feel superior to the audience; his suffering must be more intense, emotional, and intellectual than theirs. Therefore, he happily watches them gorge on food he has bought while he continues his fast. The artistry of the hunger artist, then, seems meaningful only to him. Only he can possibly understand his own craft, and despite his claims to the contrary, this is just how he wants it. Perhaps he recognizes that his art is fraudulent and cannot bear the thought that it will be understood and criticized. It is much safer to maintain the inaccessibility of his art; no one can judge it except for himself.

So what does the audience take from the exhibition? It is not intellectually interested in the private art of suffering so much as it is fascinated by the public spectacle of suffering, or the suffering of anyone else (for example, their delight when the female escort cries). The watchers think the hunger artist is a cheat, and they often shirk their duty; after glimpsing his suffering, they are happy to move past it.

Since only the hunger artist knows he is fasting, he is the only one who can understand his art; and he is never satisfied. Usually we think of insatiability as a condition of excess; the spendthrift, the satyr, and the glutton are all insatiable. The hunger artist's fasting is, as previously commented upon, excessive in its nothingness. He is never satisfied with his own empty stomach, just as he can never be satisfied, or full, from the reception of his art. The audience, on the other hand, never has “any cause to be dissatisfied” with the show.

The great irony is that the audience does not understand the art yet is pleased with it, while the artist understands his art but is not pleased. We may say that the hunger artist’s exhibition is artistically unfulfilling inside the bars of the cage, while it is entertainingly fulfilling outside of the cage. The key to this divide of fulfillment is that the hunger artist still privately suffers. He does not relate this suffering to the audience, and Kafka suggests this dispersal of pain is the motivation behind the art: “if he could endure fasting longer, why shouldn't the public endure it?” Kafka is even-handed in his treatment of this drive; while sharing one's most private thoughts through art is a noble endeavor, there is also something selfish and hateful about it, as implied by the hunger artist's desire for the audience to “endure” his suffering.

Kafka draws a parallel between the hunger artist and alludes to another figure of suffering, Christ. This is not readily obvious when reading the story, and requires an understanding of its religious intertextuality beforehand. The hunger artist’s fasts are limited to forty days; Christ was “led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights” (Matthew 4:1-2). Christ’s fast, which he most likely did to allude to the forty years of wandering for the Jews, has now become Lent. However, this parallel ends at the point where Christ is thought to have suffered for humanity; the hunger artist suffers because of humanity.

While there is no specific reference, the hunger artist may share one other salient characteristic with Christ (originally): he appears to be Jewish. At the very least, the hunger artist is marginalized and cast as the outsider in society as Jews usually are, and Kafka, a Jew, often draws this parallel in his writings (for example, in the short story Before the Law). Backing up this contention is that the watchers assigned to his cage are usually butchers. While their profession says something about the gluttony of the audience, Jewish kosher guidelines prohibit pork and dictate specific preparations for meat. Judging by their lax attendance to watching the hunger artist, it is safe to assume these are not kosher butchers.

The conflict between the hunger artist and the fickle public takes center stage here as he is forced to commercialize his art even more. “Forced” is an appropriate word, since the hunger artist loses whatever free will he has left. Imprisoned in his cage, all the hunger artist has going for him, it seems, is his artistic freedom. Charlie Chaplin exemplifies this in his film Modern Times when he realizes the absurdity of modern life and embraces the irrationality of his artistic freedom. Others previously impinged upon this freedom in subtler ways: the watchers thought the hunger artist was cheating, while the impresario limited his fasting to forty days. But he still had the pleasure of controlling his self-denial, of scripting his own suffering. Now, the impresario makes outright lies about the hunger artist right in front of him.

It is notable that the impresario uses photographs to “prove” the state of the hunger artist’s exhaustion. The audience believes more in the visual medium of photography than in what is in front of its eyes; the static, recorded spectacle is more important than the live one, and they are happy to buy the photographs as well, which are of course on sale. As a measure of the hunger artist’s reduced free will, he does not even read his circus contract. At the circus, the hunger artist is reduced to this level of diversion. He places himself in a strategic spot as a mere obstacle for zoo-goers, rather than as the main attraction. His proximity to the zoo also demonstrates the corruption of his talent and an ensuing debased equation with the animals.

Predictably, the hunger artist hates seeing and hearing the animals ravenously eat. Unlike before, when he enjoyed watching the butchers eat breakfast in front of him, the idea of others eating now depresses him. Previously, he controlled the consumption (the breakfast was at his expense) and could maintain his superiority of controlled fasting over the animalistic, weak-willed men. Now, the others are actually animals, and hearing them feed is only a reminder of his loss of free will.

To counter this loss of free will, the hunger artist persists in trumpeting the importance of his art. Though he previously conceded that fasting is an easy pursuit, the sentence “Just try to explain to anyone the art of fasting!” seems in his aloof, alienated voice. Ironically, the greatest targets of the hunger artist’s frustration are not those who watch the animals, but those who stay to watch him only to defy the stampeding zoo-goers. Though he has reason to dislike them, since they are not really interested in him, his hatred seems like veiled self-loathing; he knows he has become a freak show, and he must project his depression outward.

Nevertheless, the hunger artist feels the world is “cheating him of his reward.” The art itself is not enough; he still needs acknowledgment of his brilliance, despite his condescending, loathsome attitude towards the public. This mixture of superiority and inferiority is the crux of his relationship with the audience, and perhaps signifies what his fasting truly is, an arrogant craving for sympathy and appreciation.

If we return to the metaphor of starvation as artistic suffering and creation, the hunger artist implies that the world is simply not designed for him, that it naturally produces suffering in him. If he were not so alienated, he admits, he would gladly eat. This statement undermines the free will of self-denial he previously coveted. Fasting is a mere reflexive action, not a conscious decision to suffer. Fasting is as much a non-art, then, as everyone else’s eating is. The hunger artist claims he wanted to be admired for his fasting, but his actions betray his real desire when he speaks “with his lips pursed, as if for a kiss, right into the overseer’s ear.” Never opening his mouth for food, the hunger artist could also neither give nor receive any love inside his cage. His body could never be used as a conduit for love, but only as a channel for suffering.

The panther at the end, which replaces the artist, is the inversion of the hunger artist. It’s the sort of modern fascination with novelty and entertainment, and its rejection of the profound and artistic. Kafka ensures we recognize it as a symbol of appetite and vitality by drawing attention to the freedom lurking in its “jaws” and the “joy of life” streaming from its “throat”. The panther overcomes the imprisonment of its cage and still feels free. The hunger artist, on the other hand, though he thought himself free at times through his self-denial, was always a captive of his own suffering and starvation.

The panther is the next spectacle for the audience, a horrific new entertainment from which the public cannot tear its eyes—a violent symbol of that which causes, not absorbs, suffering. The modernists are fascinated by the shock-value of the panther. Yet the slowly starving artist was not shocking enough and not believed to be genuine. The last line suggests the panther truly has supplanted the hunger artist as a much more accepted commercial art form. There is some bitter irony in the last line. It would not be surprising if the modern audience deserts the panther at one point, just as it has done to the hunger artist.

What the Teaosophers Say About Tea

The following list from Teaosophy.com is a list of tea qualities every teaospher should know about. The liquid produced from the tea's leaves is known as the liquor, not to be confused with distilled alcoholic beverages. When appreciating the liquor of tea, the teaosophers tell us to pay attention to the following things:

• Aroma: An attractive smell sometimes referred to as "nose" or "bouquet." High grown teas, such as Darjeeling, are prized for their distinctive aroma.
• Astringency: The lively, pungent sensation on your tongue that gives tea its refreshing quality. This is not to be confused with bitterness.
• Bakey: An unpleasant taste caused by using very high temperatures during drying ("firing") the leaves and consequently driving out too much moisture.
• Biscuity: A pleasant taste resembling fresh baked bread that can be found in some Assam teas.
• Bitter: An unpleasant bitter taste.
• Body: How the tea liquor feels in your mouth. A tea is described has having light, medium, or full body. Full-bodied teas have fullness and strength as opposed to being thin. A tea's body will vary according to the region in which it was grown.
• Brassy: An unpleasant, bitter metallic taste.
• Bright: Liquor looks lively as opposed to dull. This quality becomes more apparent after the addition of milk.
• Brisk: A vivacious, slightly astringent taste as opposed to flat or soft tasting liquor.
• Character: Distinct qualities of the tea that allow the taster to detect the region where the tea was grown.
• Color: Describes depth of color. The region when the tea was grown and the grade of tea play a part in the resulting shade and depth of the liquor color.
• Coloury: A liquor that possesses depth of color, sometimes indicating full body or taste, but not necessarily so.
• Course: An undesirable harsh, bitter taste.
• Complex: A multidimensional aroma or taste profile.
• Dry: A slightly bakey or scorched taste.
• Dull: A liquor that lacks a lively, bright character in both appearance and taste.
• Fine: Tea of exceptional taste and quality.
• Flat: Lifeless liquor completely lacking in briskness. This can be the result of tea that is old or has been stored improperly.
• Flavoury: Tea that has a pronounced, satisfying flavor. Pronounced flavour is more generally found in high grown teas such as Darjeeling, Nilgiri, Kerala, and Ceylon.
• Full: Tea possessing color, strength and body as opposed to being empty or thin.
• Hard: Tea that has penetrating and desirable strength, particularly used for Assam tea.
• Harshness: An unpleasant degree of strength.
• Heavy: Tea that possesses a thick, strong liquor with depth of color but is lacking in briskness.
• Hungry: When the characteristics generally associated with the tea variety or region of origin are not present.
• Light/Pale: Liquor that does not have depth of color but may be flavoury or pungent. Darjeeling tea is a good example of this.
• Malty: A desirable malted barley taste often found in Assam tea.
• Mellow: Tea leaves which have matured well produce a mellow tasting tea.
• Muscatel: Grapey taste. This is an exceptional characteristic found in some Darjeeling tea.
• Point(y): A desirable brightness and acidity often associated with Ceylon teas.
• Pungent: A bright liquor that has pronounced briskness and a strong, astringent flavor. Highly desirable.
• Rich: A pleasantly thick and mellow liquor.
• Round: A full, smooth-tasting liquor.
• Stale: Tea that has an unpleasant taste because it is old or has been stored in damp conditions.
• Strong: Liquor possesses strength of body and flavor.
• Thick: Tea that has good body as opposed to being "thin". Assam tea is known for producing a thick liquor.
• Thin: Tea that lacks body. This is not necessarily undesirable as certain tea growing regions, such as Darjeeling, are celebrated for their tea's thin, flavoury liquors. However teas from Assam should never have a thin liquor.
• Tired: Tea that is past its prime and consequently has a flat or stale character.
• Woody: Tea that has a sawdust-like character.