Nonfiction Kick Continues...

This month was....

Nudge by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
Subtitle: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness
This was certainly interesting, and I found myself referencing some of the basic principles in conversation quite a bit in the past month. The basic concept as I already wrote about HERE is that of libertarian paternalism – the authors support freedom, but recognize that you can keep freedoms intact and still subtly encourage people to make better decisions by choosing defaults in a paternalistic way and ensuring that information is readily available and positioned carefully to support better decisions. I really enjoyed reading it, but some of the examples of nudges were pretty far-fetched: attaching pictures of houses next to your retirement savings (a shack for a 2% savings rate and a nice urban condo for 10% savings rate) just seem farcical.

The Organic Foods Sourcebook by Elaine Marie Lipson
It’s very easy to slip into thinking of organic as one more privileged principle of the much-accessoried yuppiedom I have uncomfortably begun inhabiting. On Saturdays, we go to Costco, on Sundays we read the Times, in our grocery cart, the strawberries and raisin bran have to be Organic. Reading the original hippie handbook was a reminder to myself of the health-oriented causes of the panic around pesticides and a government with no incentive to support people over multinational corporations. Reading it now, interdependency shone as the most important theme and principle behind the organic movement. You can’t tinker with one thing without unknowingly affecting others. And it also produced a question which I’ve now begun researching answers to – how long before I could feasibly eliminate or radically reduce the pesticide residues in my own body. There is a transitional period in organic farming – land must have been farmed with organic methods for three years before its produce can be certified organic. But what is that same transitional period for humans? If I converted to an all-organic diet now, how long would it be before my breast milk wouldn’t contaminate my children? Three years, or ten years? Or is it even possible? The notion of interdependency in general also rings true on some other events going on in the news right now... hmm, what could I be referring to?