A few weeks ago our bathroom flooded and the cheap, beige linoleum flooring was completely destroyed. So we ripped out the linoleum and we ended up ripping out the vanity and the toilet as well. We got new bamboo flooring and a new dual-flush toilet from Costco, and a great bamboo vanity from bathandgranite4less.com. Last week we got a faucet, towel hangers and a light from Home Depot and we put it all together.  On Saturday I spent 3 hours on the threshold and some smaller wood working stuff and now it’s finished!

Except for the biodiesel production, this was so far our biggest DIY project in the new house. We really like the way it turned out. The bamboo looks great and seems like a really sturdy material. And it’s a fast-growing, low-impact resource.This is also a bit of an experiment – we’ll see how the bamboo flooring holds up in the bathroom. Then we’ll decide whether to install more bamboo around the house.

(more pictures below)

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Less than Six Months to the Doughman – the race is on May 29 – so I figured I’d kick off Doughman Season  with a nice lunch-run to Dain’s Place. Oh yeah, baby! Lunchtime rolled around on Friday, I got into my running shorts and jogged the 1.1 Miles to 9th Street. Barefoot, of course.

Pretty interesting, running in town. This was my first time, and it’s a completely different experience from running in our semi-rural neighborhood or along a highway. You really have to watch your step. There’s dog poo, broken  glass, traffic lights … however, most of the run to 9th Street is along a nice trail on Duke’s East Campus. So it’s really not bad.

But running after a healthy meal – wow, that’s something else! Biking after scarfing down a meal was not so bad – you just have to will your muscles through the first mile or two. But running is hard. Your legs feel like lead and your stomach is filled with hot ball bearings! I had a cheese steak sandwich (with blue cheese and jalapenos) and a Seeing Double for lunch and I let that settle for about 30 Minutes. On the run back I was considerably slower – but that’s why I am starting to train now …

Photo of Scott Jurek and Arnulfo Quimare in Copper Canyon, 2006. Courtesy Luis Escobar.

Do humans suck at running? Apparently that’s what many experts in sports medicine think. Or is the human body actually perfectly adapted to endurance running and a lot of the running injuries are due to bad technique and expensive running shoes?

In his book  “Born to Run”  Christopher McDougall explores these questions, and from the title you can guess to what conclusion he comes. But as much as this book is about laying out an argument that running fast and very long distances actually shaped the human body on an evolutionary scale, its also a breathless, engaging tale of a personal quest with a colorful cast of lightfooted characters. Essentially the book chronicles the history of the Copper Canyon Ultra Marathon which every year joins members of the Raramuri (Tarahumara) native tribe with members of the gringo ultra-marathon tribe in a 50 mile (80 KM) race in the rugged Copper Canyon in Mexico.

Besides being an easy, fun read, this book also presents an important argument that running is a very natural activity for humans. It complements the “minimalist” or back-to-the-roots ideas of barefooters like Ken Bob and almost-Barefoot Ted. McDougall presents quite a bit of evidence that all the high-tech shoes with support and cushioning are ruining runners’ feet. His argument jives perfectly with the barefooters – we don’t need fancy shoes, we need proper technique, we need to take care of our feet and we need a good attitude for healthy, successful running exercise.

Not sure if this is funny or just sad … a middle school in Goldsboro, NC had the brilliant idea to try selling grades as a school fundraiser. Yes – $20 gets you 20 point on your next test. That can turn a B into an A or an F(ail) into a D (=pass).

Jay Leno thought it was outrageously funny and turned this story into a joke.

” A – it sends the wrong message to children … B – it penalizes poor children who don’t have 20 bucks … and C – whatever happened to cheating off the kid next to you?”

I think it’s a bit sad that the principal and a group of parents thought this would be a good idea. I am not (sadly) totally surprised, though. Everything seems to be for sale these days. And the public schools are really, really desperate for money!

Once the plan became public, the school district administration stopped it and directed the school to return any funds collected.

(For you dang for’ners: U.S. public schools regularly try to collect money from the community [=the parents] by making the children sell cookies, magazines or misc. useless crap. The children are enticed to do this by prizes for certain amounts of crap sold.  Of course all of this is run by an entire “school-fundraising” industry, which skims the profits and chucks the schools some money after the children sold the useless crap for free. Perfect example of “trickle-down” economics.)

Of course the schools are forced to try to raise money because they are so underfunded. So I guess the folks at Rosewood Middle School decided to sell the one real asset a school has: Grades. Integrity. Decency. Morality (?).

Twenty years after the border between East Germany and West Germany was breached, we now know that in that fateful press conference Schabowski simply read the wrong memo. But after Schabowski, a member of the Central Commitee of the SED,  had announced that all travel restrictions had been lifted for all East Germans – effective immediately – there was no turning back. At least not without violence. And I suppose that is really the miracle of the 9th November 1989. One can easily imagine an East German border guard commander ordering his troops to fire. Instead, though, they finally gave in to the thousands of people who were demanding to cross the border and opened the gates. First at Bornholmer Strasse, then everywhere.

I suspect that they saw that the winds of history were blowing in their face and that they might just be held accountable by someone else than the Stalinists who used to give them orders. They – the SED bosses – did not really get it yet. Schabowski himself was just like “oops” but he did not realize what had just happened. Yes, the big guys like to take credit for taking down the wall. Bush Sr, Helmut “Birne” Kohl and Gorbatchow like to pat their own shoulders for “taking down the wall.” But to me it looks like the crack that breached the wall and brought the Stalinist regime down was just a clerical error. “Ooops – wrong memo, guys.” Schabowski then just plowed ahead with his “effective immediately” bit.

The thing about this is that his announcement contradicted the orders of the border guards. They heard his pronouncement on the news. But they still had orders to shoot anyone who tried to leave. Their superiors tried to contain the situation by ordering the border guards to tell people to come back tomorrow. Yeah right! Then they started letting people cross and marked their passports – with the intention of refusing them re-entry. But this was too slow and thousands of people were converging on the border crossings, surging toward the boom that was still held shut by machinegun-toting border guards.

This was going to be the moment of truth. And I like to think that his humanity was the motivation in Harald Jäger to decide to open the boom at the Checkpoint Bornholmer Strasse and let the people go.

That was it. One after the other the border crossings were opened and the border guards were watching as thousands and thousands of people started surging across the border they had so faithfully guarded as a Stalinist bulwark against the evils of Capitalism and Fascism. I wonder what went through their heads as the relevance of their work was swept aside by history. The wall was breached 20 years ago – effective immediately – it fell and with it the German Democratic Republic. This was the end of the Cold War and the GDR was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany 3rd October 1990.

Congratulations to Ghana’s U20 football team!

At the U20 Worldcup final in Cairo on Friday Ghana beat 4-time champion Brazil despite being one player down due to a red card in the 37th Minute. Neither team scored during regulation time and overtime, and so penalty kicks decided this game. This is the first time Ghana won this tournament and having accomplished this historic feat on African soil is especially significant.

Ghana’s exuberant coach, Sellas Tetteh, said victory would inspire the continent before next year’s World Cup in South Africa, and also help African teams lose the label of being physically strong but tactically weak.

“This is a wonderful historic event for Africa. Now Africans can believe in themselves that they can do it,” Tetteh said.

“We’ve shown them the way. Africa will surely have a lot of hope and confidence (at the World Cup) that they can do it like we did here.”

Ghanaweb.com, Sunday, 18 Oct. 2009

This is a very significant feat for Ghana and for football in Africa. Developing new talent is absolutely critical to success. I know that this victory will build even more excitement for next year’s Senior Worldcup in South Africa across the continent.

Last weekend I made batch #40, which means that over the last 3 years I turned 2000 Gallons (8000 liters) of fryer oil into fuel for my cars, using my fuel production setup in the basement. Currently I collect oil from these restaurants in Durham: ElRodeo, Piazza Italia (at Brightleaf), Dain’s Place and the Down Under Pub. I share the oil with a friend, who makes fuel for his Ram truck. In an average month we probably collect 200 Gallons of good-quality used oil from all these places. That’s a great energy resource that won’t get trucked away to be turned into lipstick.

Today, I ran 3 one-mile stretches on the beach. Sand is a great training tool because your feet give you instant feedback at every step. On asphalt you get feedback, but sometimes only too late, when you already got that blister. In sand you can feel how deep your feet sink in and where. That tells you at every step whether you’re “pounding” the ground or tip-toeing. I found it interesting to see – on my way back – whether the heels or the toes of my old footprints had been washed out by the water first.  The only problem with sand I found is that it’s easy to get sloppy with your cadence because the ground is soft. But when you hit really soft sand you get back into a nice fast cadence, because you can feel the wasted energy from pounding into the deep sand.

Also, Sand is not boring at all. Every stretch of beach has a bit of a different character. More shells or fewer, softer  sand or harder sand etc…. Avoiding the shells is an interesting exercise – you have to focus on every step. That keeps your mind busy and distracts you from any pain …

Not sure if this is good news or bad news: Trafigura, the company responsible for the Probo Koala toxic waste scandal 3 years ago, settled with the lawyers representing the Ivorian victims for $46 Million – that’s a little over $1,500 per person.

Yes, that’s real money for most folks in Cote d’Ivoire – a bit less than the annual per capita GDP of $1,700 (2008 – #191 of 229 countries). And perhaps that’s about as good as one could expect from the multi-national petro-behemoth Trafigura when it comes to owning up to its responsibility and compensating the victims of its atrocities in West Africa. After all, there is not much precedent for large corporations ruining people’s lives and then owning up to that and making things right. Consider that Trafigura’s annual revenue is roughly equivalent to Cote d’Ivoire’s annual Gross Domestic Product ($33 Billion) – so 46 Million is pocket change for them and this settlement represents little more than a slap on the wrist.

So from that perspective that’s not really justice. A company that hurts thousands and kills dozens of people as a direct result of greed and a callous disregard for life deserves a more severe punishment than a  slap on the wrist. I think these criminals should be put out of business for good and their assets given to the victims and to charity. Dumping hundreds of tons of highly toxic waste into the sewers and waterways of a city does not only violate laws, it is an act so unconscionable and egregious that it should be classified not as a mere crime, but as “terrorism” or “mass murder.”

This is especially true considering Trafigura’s attempts at downplaying this disaster and covering up its responsibility for it, which has been well documented by several investigative reports, specifically by the NY Times, the Guardian and in a thorough documentary by the BBC in May 2009.

Just recently, the BBC found clear evidence that Trafigura knew how toxic the waste was and that its representatives were only interested in the cheapest way to get rid of it:

Trafigura chartered the Probo Koala and while the ship was off the coast of Gibraltar poured tons of caustic soda and a catalyst into the dirty oil to clean it – a rough and ready process known as “caustic washing”.

The method is cheap, but it generates such dangerous waste that it is effectively banned in most places around the world.

The e-mails obtained by Newsnight show that in the months before the waste was dumped the company knew about the difficulties they would face in disposing of the waste.

“This operation is no longer allowed in the European Union, the United States and Singapore” it is “banned in most countries due to the ‘hazardous nature of the waste'”, one e-mail warns.

Another e-mail points out that “environmental agencies do not allow disposal of the toxic caustic”.

The process left a toxic sulphurous sludge in the tanks of the Probo Koala.

BBC Newsnight, 16 September 2009

The emails Newsnight obtained, document clearly the utter disregard of the people in charge of this operation for laws or responsibility and expose their total focus on the cheapest solution to dispose of the toxic waste. Such cynical disregard for the health of others should be punished much more severely.

Next Tuesday, on the sidelines of a meeting of the UN General Assembly, President Obama will meet with several African heads of state for a working breakfast. According to (fr) the Togolese state news website RepublicOfTogo.com, President Faure Gnassingbe has been invited, too. Apparently the criterion for the invitation is troop contributions to UN peacekeeping. Togo contributes more than 800 troops (pdf) to the Blue Helmets – 10 times  the US contribution from a country of 5 Million people. So it seems like the President of Togo should definitely be invited to this meeting with Obama.

The World Togolese Foundation (WTF) will hold its first conference on Sept 12 in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). I find this particularly interesting because on our last trip to Togo we had many discussions with folks in our village Yikpa about how to rally the diaspora to help the development of the village. Apparently one  Emmanuel D. Abbey has decided to tackle this at the national level.

Looks like the WTF (?!) Conference will feature some interesting speakers and cultural events. Otherwise, the conference website does not show a lot of detail as to the agenda. But it should be great opportunity for the Togolese diaspora to get together, network and exchange information.

Clearly this organization is just getting started, as there is still very little concrete information on their website (not even a bio of any of their principals!). But they do have a forum, where folks hopefully will begin sharing their ideas and experiences.

Today was a nice, mellow late summer Sunday and I ran the Al Buehler trail around the Washington Duke golf course barefoot in 30 Minutes. It felt great. No sore spots. I focused on technique – high cadence, light tread, straight strides … I had a little trouble toward the end on downhills … started getting lazy and increased my stride.

Someone yelled “Hey Tarzan!” at me  – those Dookies … always good for an insightful comment.

Great run – nice trail. Could do that again … faster.

I had a couple more interesting runs. Sunday morning I ran 3.5 miles (5.3 KM) in the neighborhood. I picked one road because its old blacktop has been completely destroyed by log trucks and that rough, cracked surface is really interesting to run on. I think that one of the adventures of barefoot running is definitely finding interesting surfaces to run on.

Sunday I really focused on technique – high cadence, light touch, neither tip-toe nor heel, bent knees and NOT pushing off (that’s how I got my first and only blister). Run over water like a Jesus Lizard.

I also focus on my center (of gravity) – I use IT to control speed. Not my feet. My feet just run along. If I wan to accelerate I move my center forward – like on a Segway. The feet increase the cadence (not the stride!) because they must. Downhill is interesting. I keep the center lower and back to slow down. I can also increase speed and let gravity help, but the feet must be swift and sure-footed. (All this is based on Ken Bob’s advice – just put in my own words.)

Today I ran for the first time ever on the Al Buehler trail around the Washington Duke Golf Course – Durham’s most popular running trail  (because I was in the neighborhood anyway). The surface was new and fun – fine gravel on packed dirt. I also ran a bit on a small, messy, wooded access trail and on nice, smooth  pavement. The strange thing about the main trail was that on parts there was so much traffic that I had trouble focusing on my technique (which I still have to do quite a bit). After a mile running on gravel, walking in the grass felt really good! BUT no problems. No blisters … just a sore spot on the inside of my left foot – I think I roll the foot too much to the inside. I want to keep my feet straight and focused on my center.

As I slowly emerge from a draining summer of work-stress, my exercise routine is starting to take shape again. Besides martial arts I have also recently discovered running. Previously, I enjoyed an occasional run in the woods, but generally I preferred my bike.

Yesterday however, I ran for the first time barefoot – just a couple of miles in the neighborhood – and it felt like a total revelation to me. Yes – my feet are sore and I got a blister (just one). But the soreness is really mostly the muscle soreness I expected. An important point for me is to get a cardio workout that complements the karate training and helps my sparring endurance. Barefoot running seems perfect for that since we spar – of course – barefoot.

I did not quite expect how much more fun running barefoot is compared to shod running. In shoes a road is just a road. But barefoot I noticed all the different textures, the rocks, the mud, the branches and tree debris (we had a couple of serious thunderstorms recently). I cannot afford any more to just trample along the side of the road. I have to pay much more attention to the path and I have to learn to tread lightly. And the soles of my feet really came to life with all this stimulation and exercise. This reconditioning of my feet really is a fascinating process.

There is quite a lot of information about barefoot running on the web and I started reading about how to improve my running technique. The whole thing started earlier this year, when I discovered my current favorite shoes – my Sanuks which got me interested in low-tech footwear. Then recently I saw an interview with Chris McDougall about his book “Born toRun” about how he discovers barefoot running while working on a story about the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico. He is a serious advocate of barefoot running and that idea sparked my interest. So I googled “barefoot running” and started reading.

So far, my favorite website is Barefoot Ken Bob’s runningbarefoot.org which unequivocally advocates taking off your shoes and listening to your feet. He advocates starting slowly, but not avoiding rough or hard surfaces. That’s the advice I am following. Wikipedia has (of course) a page about barefoot running with more links and info. There is also a ton of info on YouTube, incl. Barefoot Ken Bob’s channel.

This evening I took a brisk 1-mile walk. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow. I’ll keep posting occasional updates here on my progress with this experiment.

President Obama today visited the former Nazi death camp Buchenwald near Weimar, Germany. From what I’ve read he was the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit since Eisenhower, who was the commander of the Allied Forces when Buchenwald was liberated. Obama’s great uncle was one of the soldiers who helped liberate Buchenwald.

I think Obama should challenge Ahmadinejad to utter his Holocaust-denial nonsense there, in front of the ovens that incinerated the bodies of those murdered by the Nazis. Over 56,000 men, women and children were murdered in Buchenwald camp by the Nazis.

Last Saturday I participated in the second edition of the Doughman – but not in the competition this time around. Instead I helped document the World’s premier Quadrathlon  as one of four volunteer videographers. Due to our trip to Togo I was a bit late with the registration, and by the time I got serous about registration all 50 team slots were filled.

This year the Doughman had quite the media circus going on because of Adam Richman’s team and their camera crew. Adam is the host of the Travel Channel’s Man v. Food show, and his participation in the Doughman will be covered in the upcoming episode of Man v Food. Suffice it to say that Adam did not make it through the event unscathed, but we’re still hoping he’ll give Durham a “thumbs up” anyway.

Considering that the even had grown from 15 teams to 51 this year, I thought it was well planned and executed. The athletes seemed to have a great time and the food – so I heard – was really delicious! I spent a lot of time at Dain’s Place (imagine that!) because I was assigned to cover this fine culinary establishment which was stage 3 of the race. I got some excellent shots of Gloria making 51 Chilly-cheese-burger-dogs.

Mark Mardell is the BBC’s Europe Editor and he wrote in his Euroblog about Freiburg, Germany – the town where I was born, and where I went to college. Mardell seems very impressed by how green and clean Freiburg is.

It’s possibly my imagination, but the air here seems to taste cleaner. This pretty city nestling between the green hills of the Black Forest definitely does sound different. You can hear birdsong and the skittery clatter of bikes on cobblestones. The noise of a delivery lorry pulling up outside the rather magnificent town hall is a startling intrusion.

What is missing is the constant low thrum of traffic in the background. It’s not that cars are completely banned from the city, but most of the centre, rather than the odd street, is a pedestrian zone. You pedal or walk to trams or trains. Freiburg can lay claim to being the greenest city in the world, and it’s all rather pleasant.

But it is a political act. The city is the largest in Germany where the Green Party are in power. The Greens currently have 43 members of the European Parliament, two of them from Britain, and feel somewhat under pressure with so many other politicians putting the environment near the top of their priorities.

Like many Southern German towns, Freiburg is heavily invested in tourism. So maintaining a “pretty and clean” image is essential. Strict building codes, and a plethora of rules and regulations are instrumental to that end.  But it is more than that – people in Baden also do take pride in cleanliness. Keeping the town looking neat is not just a matter of obeying the law; it’s also deeply ingrained in the local culture.

Combine a tidy Southern town’s drive to neatness with a major University’s cultural diversity and creative prowess and throw in a strong tradition of entrepreneurship, and you end up with a pretty, touristy green city that’s  bristling with solar panels and sports a tight web of public transportation. And it’s run by the Green Party.

(And a football club that’s playing in the Bundesliga again, next season!!!)

On the other hand, the green movement here in the US is still very much grassroots and messy. We talk about cooking biodiesel and building with strawbale or old shipping containers. Yet, due to the relative lack of rules and regs here, we can do all kinds of things environmentalists in Germany cannot do – like setting up a biodiesel reactor in the basement or building a straw-bale structure. Not that it’s always easy, but we can do a lot of things here Germans just cannot do legally.

Maybe Obama will check out the Accra Mall while he is in Ghana.  I am bummed we missed that when we were in Accra. We came through Tatteh Quashie Circle several times, but never saw any signs. The Accra Mall is the largest mall in West Africa, and it is remarkable because many of the stores sell “Made in Ghana” products – especially clothing. On out trip we had a bunch of clothes made by a local tailor, and made from Ghanaian-made batik cloth. So far the Accra Mall seems to be working out quite well. Check out this BBC piece:

The BBC reports:

US President Barack Obama is to make a week-long foreign tour in July that will include Russia, Italy and Ghana, the White House says.

…

In Ghana, the White House said Mr Obama and his wife looked forward “to strengthening the US relationship with one of our most trusted partners in sub-Saharan Africa”.

During the visit Mr Obama hopes to highlight the “critical role that sound governance and civil society play in promoting lasting development”, the White House said.

Correspondents say that Mr Obama, preoccupied with foreign policy challenges elsewhere in the world, has not yet articulated a detailed policy for Africa.

The German upstart car maker Loremo did a first test of its EV prototype on public roads. Eventually, this vehicle is supposed to be available in three flavors: gasoline (petrol), diesel or electric. The YT video below shows the electric version. Sadly – no sound, just ambient music bubbling along …