We have a disposable society. We love using things once or twice and then throwing them into pits in the ground. Cups, plates, gloves, hats…you name it. Perhaps this tendency towards the disposable is a reflection of our transient, liminal, earthly nature. Everything dies – everything, even our species, will be eventually “disposed of.” But more likely our love of the single serving is a sign of our inability to grasp the scale of our disposable lifestyle.

We are producing sterile, unusable trash outputs faster than we are receiving inputs from our planet. The scales are off. Units are wrong. We’re headed for trouble.

Luckily, a few simple changes in lifestyle can change our trajectory.

Try reuse.stanford.edu the next time you need something for your dorm room. Welcome to the craigslist of Stanford! Bulletin boards, desks, chairs and refrigerators abound. A sweet resource. And let’s face it, used stuff is super trendy right now.

Furthermore, if you’re feeling really saucy consider refusepact.org. This Stanford-produced idea is simple: refuse to use disposables. Bring your own plate/containers/silverware to those wonderful info session lunches. I know I go to them for the free food and am always dismayed by the predominance of flimsy disposable plates/forks/knives that are bound straight for the landfill with my saliva still on them. Join me in refusing disposables and bring your own! Feel nerdy or awkward bringing your own supplies? GET OVER YOURSELF. You are on the cutting edge of a snowballing trend. Be a role model and suck it up.

This summer I read a book that shocked me. It made me realize that I, an intelligent female, had put myself in situations where I could have been date-raped. And before I read the book, I never even realized how close I could have been. Now perhaps I'm slightly naive- but honestly, until it happens to you or your friend, who isn't?
I was lucky- I wasn’t one of the unfortunate women who said no and were ignored. But I want to share with everyone “The mindset of justification” that can lead some men into date-rape. Without remorse. Without regret. Without recognizing that they did anything wrong.

The following are sections of the book I read- How Dangerous Men Think. This is from the date rape chapter. (Note- the book was written in Australia, so some of the words are a bit foreign- like lift instead of elevator)

“I remember interviewing a young guy under arrest for the rape of a young woman he had met at a nightclub earlier in the evening. To my surprise he was quite happy to talk about the events of the evening, even to the point of admitting that he had had intercourse with the young woman in question when it was quite clear that she didn't want him to. In an attempt to defend his actions he told me he had been invited back to the woman's place, that he had been buying her drinks during the night and had even paid for the taxi. He added that they had already had sex once that evening and that about an hour later he wanted to do it again, but she wasn't so keen. He told me she "wasn't so keen" because she was yelling and screaming at him to stop and trying to push him off. I asked him what he did at this stage, to which he replied, that he held her down and had sex with her. When I asked if he could see the problem with that he said "mate, I’d been buying her drinks all night; I paid for the bloody taxi; we'd already done it once. Yeah she was saying "no", come on mate, they all say "no" what's the problem?” The “problem” was he had just admitted to committing sexual assault. The "problem" was he ended up going to prison for it. The "problem" was that he didn't think he had done anything wrong"

Last year, Stanford Dining began publishing the menus and nutritional information of their dining halls on its website. Since I ate in Branner and Wilbur dining halls exclusively, reading the nutritional information of the foods Stanford Dining requires all dorm dwellers to purchase made me rather queasy. Each entree offered often approached 600 calories, and sometimes more. After totaling the calories and fat consumed during my average dining hall meal, I started substituting salads and cereal, resenting the fact that I was required to pay $10 each dinner to eat Raisin Bran.

I moved into a co-op this year and I thought my connection to Stanford Dining would be minimal, limited only to eating occasionally at Tressider, the Axe & Palm and Olives. After reading the Daily article about the Axe & Palm's plans to renovate their menu with fresher alternatives, I wanted to look and see how healthy their menu truly is. After all, apart from the lack of vegetarian options, many of their salads, sandwiches, and breakfast items sound reasonably healthy and "Californian".

Looking at the nutritional chart was surprising. The Turkey Pesto Melt is deceptively over 750 calories and provides all of the protein you need in a day. A California Cobb Salad is 905 calories. Even not-completely-healthy menu items seem exorbitantly caloric. The Chicken Quesadillas are over 700 calories as well. The 50-50 Onion Rings and Fries Combo is reported to be over 1300 calories.

These food items, teamed with the many sweet offerings in the 400-800 calorie range, make a chain like Subway much more appealing. It's possible that the caloric analysis of the Axe & Palm may not be completely accurate, but if this is the case, how can we be sure what truly is healthy?

What implications does this have for the students required to eat central to the Quad for classes? Is Stanford Dining irresponsible for offering such unhealthy food in the first place? Could this have implications for those with restrictive eating, or provoke this behavior in others by providing a sense that there is no such thing as a healthy meal at Stanford?

Bottled Water- often considered a “healthy alternative” in very popular in the States- we currently drink about 8 million gallons of it each year. And while this bottled water is indeed healthier than drinking coke or pepsi, bottled water is incredibly bad for the health of our planet. And it turns out it may be bad for us as well. Several environmental organizations have declared war on bottled water, and are trying to show its ill effects on not only the planet, but also on us. The following is a recap of some of these problems.

Problem #1: it takes 3-5 times more water to create the plastic water bottle than will actually fit in the bottle. Considering each bottle should only be used once (to prevent the leeching of phthalates)- that is a lot of water that is wasted for each bottle we drink.

Before a live interview with Michael Moore on CNN, Wolf Blitzer runs a short video segment claiming that Michael Moore "plays loose with the facts" in his new documentary, Sicko. Boy did that make him angry. Check it out:

For Moore's online rebuttal of CNN's claims that he fudges the facts, see here. It's quite well-cited and shows that CNN isn't being very honest, either.

By the way, I saw Sicko and loved it -- if not for its balanced treatment of the issue, then for being a reality check on the downsides of our system. And as an artistic piece, it's priceless. I relished the absurdity of the scene where he sails to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba with three ailing 9/11 rescue workers on a little dingy, demanding that the 9/11 heros get "some medical attention, the same kind that Al Qaeda is getting."

"They don't want any more than you're giving the evildoers, just the same."

Guantanamo Bay being, of course, the only place on American soil that provides free, universal health care.

Every so often I’m going to review an eco-friendly cleaning technique for those of us who live in apartments and do have to clean them occasionally.

But first, how I was literally reduced to an eco-friendly method -

When you get married, inevitably the issue of a just division of chores arises, especially when one of you has a lower tolerance for dirt than the other. In my case, I’m the one who grew up with the belief that the bathroom sink should be routinely wiped down. In a trade-off for laundry (which I despise), vacuuming, and putting the dishes away my job is to clean the bathroom and the kitchen.

The problem – I live in married couples housing, in apartments in which some designer, in a fit of brilliance, decided that the bathrooms didn’t need ventilation. Lack of ventilation in the bathroom, especially when combined with the cheap vinyl shower curtain housing provides, is the perfect growing place for mold.

This article in the New York Times really makes you rethink obesity. Researchers found that fat people who lost weight looked like skinny people, but were metabolically more like starving people. They also found that people who were adopted had fat levels closer to their biological parents than their adopted ones, disproving that environment is the main factor in obesity. The reverse was true too: they had skinny people stuff themselves to gain weight, and it took months to gain 20 lbs. And as soon as they were off the fat diet, they quickly lost weight.

Makes you think twice about muttering under your breath when you see an overweight person eating at McDonalds. They can't really help it.