Vegans in Space (NASA)

Rose Y.Colón (finedininglovers.com, July 24, 2012); Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Worlds in space/sky (Sanskrit, akasha) are best visited by vegans (wallpapervortex.com). Below Mars image from Shutterstock engineers at NASA’s Synthetic Biology Initiative using life to create building blocks of life instead of shipping them (via inhabitat.com).

Mars is really more hospitable than trip there

We have Buddhists in space, Buddhists from space, Buddhists sending messages from space, so why not smart, compassionate, green (environmentally-conscious) vegans? 
 
The next time NASA sends astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, they will not be eating synthetic capsules, freeze-dried food, or liquid meals. That's so last millenium.
  
On their mission to Mars, NASA astronauts will eat 100% vegan meals complete with fresh fruits and vegetables grown on the spaceship.

  

How is this possible? [A better question is, Why? Could it be that even mainstream scientists know full well that a vegan diet is the healthiest for humans particularly those under the strains and stresses of space travel, while the fiction is maintained that here on Earth we need junk food and flesh?]

It is all thanks to the research being done by NASA's Advanced Food Technology (AFT) project. 

V is for Vegan tees (OnOurSleeve.com)

Since Mars has some gravity, the AFT researchers believe astronauts will be able to chop and cook vegetables and even grow their own plants with hydroponics using recycled water.

 

The six to eight astronauts who will participate in the Mars mission will require enough food for three years. Mars is so far away that NASA will not be able to send food every six months like they do for the International Space Station. Neither will they be able to preserve meat or dairy for such a long period, according to senior research scientist Maya Cooper. 

 

That is why Cooper and her team have come up with a menu of 100 vegan recipes. According to this video, NASA is still working to ensure the astronauts have healthy and varied meals.It is not clear how talented a chef will be onboard to prepare these recipes, but if this animated 3D short film is any indication, the astronauts are in for years of treats. AP/FDL VIDEO

(GoVeg.com)

 
Inhabitat:

• NASA harnessing the power of microbes to create building bricks on Mars
• How "soft infrastructure," like wetlands and green roofs, could save NYC
• Our World: giant pixelated LEGO map built from 1 million bricks!
• London’s Earth creature is super adobe dome by city’s smallest architects
• INTERVIEW: Architecture for Humanity’s Co-Founder Kate Stohr 
• "World’s Most Sustainable Gas Station" in the Netherlands
• UK scientists developing autonomous flying honey bee robots!

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Green Festival, Los Angeles (Nov. 17-18)

GreenFestivals.org; Wisdom Quarterly

The LA stop of the Green Festival is this weekend at the LA Convention Center. Connect with local communities to find ideas and innovations to help take the next green steps. Hundreds of speakers, exhibitors, DIY workshops... It stops in downtown Nov. 17-18. See the Online Event Guide. Admission is affordable on any budget. The fest is beinh held at the LA Convention Center: 1201 Figueroa St., intersection of the Santa Monica (10) and Harbor (110) freeways. Event hours are 10:00 am-7:00 pm Saturday and 11:00 am-6:00 pm Sunday. Exhibitors have have passed the Green America screening process for leadership in social and environmental responsibility and have earned the Green America Seal of Approval for their commitment.

See Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman, radio/TV hostess for the independent global news hour Democracy Now!, will speak and sign her latest book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope on Saturday, Nov. 17 at 1:00 pm. Goodman goes beyond the mainstream media’s obsessive focus on poll numbers and candidate gaffes to examine how people are organizing, the impacts of restrictive voter ID laws, and the massive influx of campaign cash following the Citizens United decision. More

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A Buddhist Earth Day Message.

Buddha's foundational teaching of interconnection and interdependence, or co-arising demands that we live in balance with the environment. If we are just as apart of a towering tree as it's leaves, then to recklessly destroy our forests, rivers and oceans is to slowly but exponentially kill apart of ourselves.

The Buddha's teaching on walking the middle ground between extremes of over-consumption and austerity fits perfectly into the modern, environmental practice of living in balance with nature. It's what we speak of today as "sustainability" or living within our means. It's not necessary to live like a cave man to be an environmentalist in the Buddhist sense, as that would be living out of balance in austerity. It's structuring our lives, so that when we utilize nature's resources, we do it in a balanced and sustainable way.

This "one or the other" thinking that exists in the environmentalist debate today is a less skillful approach. We don't have to choose between environmental sustainability and destructive over-consumption. The environment uses our byproducts of exhaled carbon dioxide to live, and our body waste (or that of animals) as fertilizer, so it's a symbiotic relationship of give and take. The problem comes, of course, when we take much more than is given and the entire ecosystem is throw out of balance, endangering all.

Another modern day environmental tenet is recycling, which, again fits snugly within the Dharma. Buddha's robes (and those of his fellow monks) where said to be fashioned from scraps of cloth found discarded and donated by generous families. They would even use scraps from the clothes of dead people donated by grieving families!! How many of us wear second-hand clothes made from discarded fabric?!! However, we don't have to adorn ourselves in tattered cloth in order to leave a soft footprint on the environment. It's a matter of repairing garments that are otherwise perfectly wearable, rather than throwing them in the trash.

Buddha also didn't have a fancy, extensive wardrobe to choose from, but rather only what was necessary. For us, today, that means buying less clothes than we need, which is not only in keeping with the middle path, but also the Buddhist ideal of balanced consumption. It also means donating old clothes, instead of throwing them in the garbage. And less garbage means a less polluted environment; thus, a healthier place to live.

In wrapping up the post, I want to come full circle back to interconnection. As Buddhists, we believe that all sentient beings are reborn upon death. Therefore, we should feel a strong commitment to leave a better world for those beings. To paraphrase a famous quote, the environment is on loan to us from future generations. Let's not ruin it for them--and us. Happy Earth Day everyone!!

~Peace to all beings~

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The Winds of Change.

changing winds swirl

clinging golden leaf shivers
smoke escapes cabin

By James R. Ure

Recently my wife and I did some cabin-sitting for our friends. Their A-frame structure is perched on a small hill deep in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado near where I live. It is miles from any sign of civilization, which is divine. They are nearly entirely, "off-the-grid" or self-sufficient thanks to solar panels and wind turbines that our friend manufactures with a buddy at his cabin a few miles away. It's a lovely home with a sea of green pine trees interspersed with small groves of quaking Aspens for a view from their front porch. We are often welcomed to come up and camp out on their property during the summer, so we were honored to give back to them by watching their homestead for a time.

Living "off-the-grid" means changing your focus on how you use energy and other resources. Knowing that the energy for the cabin was not unlimited nor on-demand like it seemingly is in the city made us much more conscious of its use. The irony is that we are already quite environmentally conscious. It underlined the truth that actually the energy we get in town isn't in-fact unlimited as we often think. It's easy to get complacent with energy use when we live in a city because it seems so permanent. Almost every time that we flip a switch, we are flooded with energy. This lulls us into thinking that this energy will always be there for us, which can never be true. Awareness of how energy is actually created; like seeing it work from wind gave me deep insight into how the way we live our lives is creating a deficit of suffering so to speak.

We put off a lot of natural suffering by our over-consumption of energy. We run our thermostat high, so we can wear shorts inside the house during the winter, and we plug in our cell phones while running the laptop and the television. This all makes for a very luxurious life to be sure, but each time we flip on the switch we are taking years off the livability of planet Earth. And, at the same time robbing our children and grandchildren from a healthy life. It's not unlike a country borrowing money to maintain a lifestyle that's unsustainable. It's a foolish game of borrowing against tomorrow to increase the enjoyment of today. And, like any form of karma this lifestyle will come back and reward us with exactly what we have invested into it.

But the hour is not too late. We can adjust our ways and live less greedily. It's easy to see greed by people who hoard money or take what isn't theirs but it's hard sometimes to see flipping on a switch as a form of greed. That's why I think if we invested in making everyone have a direct role in providing for the energy they use by hooking up all houses with wind turbines and solar panels that we could wake up in time. Awareness (as Buddha taught) is a powerful tool that can allow us to accomplish just about anything. If we don't know the full scope of what's actually going on around us, we really are living in denial and will be shocked back into reality. Isn't it better to see that reality now and adjust accordingly so that we are at one with that reality? That way, whatever is good for us will be the same thing that's good for nature because is it really a healthy life to have so much energy that we can go shopping for crap at 2 in the morning?

PHOTO: Cabin view from front porch by James R. Ure

~Peace to all beings~

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