RIPTIDE

Take Survey Here

By Ian Butler, Riptide Correspondent

Through years of educational activities by the Pacifica Beach Coalition, Pacificans have a pretty solid understanding of the problems inherent in plastic. From plastic fouling our beaches to killing sea turtles and creating the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, we know more than most that plastic has a downside.

But after doing many beach cleanups, we all inevitably start asking the same question: How do we stop this insanity before it happens? An important piece of the answer is found in Beth Terry’s excellent book Plastic Free—How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too.
 
Yes, we already live in a community that has banned takeout Styrofoam and plastic bags at the checkout counter. Many of us have moved past the ridiculous bottled-water fad, but we still see the damaging effects of our throw-away society every time we walk on the beach. We want to do more, but what does the next step look like?
 
In 2007 Beth Terry had an epiphany after seeing photos of a dead albatross chick on Midway Island, its stomach filled with “small pieces of plastic that had no business being out there in the middle of nowhere. Pieces of plastic like those that I myself used every day.”

At that moment she realized that she was part of the problem: “But what could I do? I knew that while I couldn’t personally go out and clean up the gyre, I could start with myself.” So she undertook the daunting task of living her life, as much as possible, without plastic. She started a blog, now called MyPlasticFreeLife.com, and began sharing what she learned. Eventually it evolved into her book.
 
Plastic Free is essential reading for those inspired by Charles Moore, discoverer of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or Annie Leonard, author of The Story of Stuff. As Beth puts it, “There are so many books and movies these day alerting people to the environmental problems we face, but few offering real, practical solutions. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have a lot of them!”

And that she does. From food to cleaning products to beauty care, Beth has already spent seven years figuring out what might work—or not. With a lighthearted and often humorous style that cuts through our natural defensiveness, she doesn’t take herself too seriously. “I didn’t write this book to tell anyone what to do,” she says, “but as an invitation to join me in this journey of personal discovery.”
 
And lest we assume her discovery was a smooth path to change, Beth bares her darkest hour: “One night, around 2 AM, I found myself at the 24 hour Longs Drugstore down the street, frenetically pacing up and down the aisles…desperate to find something not made out of plastic.” Anyone who has been to a drugstore lately can imagine the absurdity of Beth's predicament. It’s exactly how an albatross might feel.
 
Plastic Free is available at Florey’s Book Co., 2120 Palmetto, Sharp Park, Pacifica.

Watch my "Wavelength" interview with Beth on Pacifica Community Television (PCT).

We are celebrating my unquantum physics article being published in a peer-reviewed journal: Progress in Physics. The article title is: New Experiments Call for a Continuous Absorption Alternative to Quantum Mechanics--The Unquantum Effect. It should appear soon, free to download online, at ptep-online.com or see my website at unquantum.net.

Concise Introduction to the Unquantum Effect
Quantum mechanics (QM) is synonymous with wave-particle duality: It means a particle is emitted, a wave associated with the particle determines the probability of where the particle will land, and the particle lands. Many physicists will admit there is no way to really understand QM because the wave must go everywhere, and then the wave needs to magically disappear. Spooks! It is not like a crime wave, because the effects happen one at a time. A famous example is the double-slit experiment, where single emissions make a wave pattern downstream. An early and nearly forgotten alternative model was called the loading theory (LT). In LT, emission of either matter or light initially would be quantized (a burst), but then can spread like a wave (not a particle). For absorption, the wave (matter or light) would load up to a threshold, then a particle-like effect would happen. This made perfect sense until the idea was unfairly misrepresented and banished, seemingly first by Max Born in his 1935 book, and by others. It has been misrepresented in our textbooks in several ways you will see in my writings.   The way to show the distinction between LT and QM is to test if one emission can make two absorptions in coincidence. Such a two-for-one effect contradicts QM and upholds LT. That is what my experiments do: two-for-one. It does that because a fraction of energy (or matter) was pre-loaded ahead of time, and the wave would complete one or more loadings. I have seen up to four-for-one, and have been substantiating my case for 10 years with various tests. Previous tests similar to mine were done with visible light. They call it photons, but I am saying there are no photons. They had no idea of what a workable alternative to QM might be. When they saw one-for-one in their beam-split coincidence tests (you need to read my work for the details), they thought they proved QM. But they were just measuring random noise. First, I figured out a workable loading theory, and then designed the experiments with gamma rays (light) and alpha rays (matter) that would see through the illusion of QM. Many will protest and quote other experiments, like giant molecule diffraction. But I examined their writings and found major flaws. It is my work against a world invested in QM for 80 years, even though many knew QM was sort of nutty. QM falls, and these new experiments reveal an understandable world.  No photons, no spooks. It needs to be reproduced, but it is simple. I was able to run my best experiment at my public Chit-Chat Physics demonstrations last November. Please see www.unquantum.net and its link to my YouTube video.      

Eric S. Reiter, February 26, 2014

Chronicle Book Review

(Posted by John Maybury, Pacifica Riptide, Pacifica, California)

NY Times Book Review

TED Talk

(Posted by John Maybury, Pacifica Riptide, Pacifica, California)

Download Tjgaard, Gustav, Windjamming to China - PR Final

CLICK HERE FOR AN INSIDE LOOK

Pacifican Rudie Tretten has written a book, Where Are We? Thoughts from an American Geezer, a collection of brief essays on society, politics, economics, education, and sports. Rudie worked with Amazon’s Create Space to self-publish his book. Some of you may know Rudie from his excellent travelogues published in the Pacifica Tribune. He also served on the Pacifica School District board for many years. Rudie and his wife of 57 years, Shirley, have lived in Pacifica since 1966. To buy the book, see Aaron Schlieve at Florey’s Book Co. on Palmetto, or help Riptide by buying the book at our Amazon bookstore (top right sidebar).

Click the link below for an article in the most recent newsletter from Book Passage, an independent bookstore in Corte Madera. It discusses the ethics of people who go to bookstores, use an Amazon app to compare prices, then go home and order the book online, for which they receive a $5 additional discount. But the most important information is about data mined from purchased e-books. Not that anyone I know is buying subversive or seditious books, but what bothers me is that info is gleaned by Apple, Amazon, and others, which share this info so you can be targeted. I know it is everywhere on the Internet and is unavoidable, but tracking one's reading habits seems more Big Brotherish than noting what toaster you buy. Even though I am a printed-book person, I think e-books have their virtues, but there needs to be more regulation of data collection and distribution.

JANET TAYLOR

CLICK FOR THE ARTICLE

Sailing is a proud tradition that goes back to antiquity, predating earliest recorded time. The stunning new memoir Windjamming to China evokes this tradition so it will never be forgotten. The book is set the first half of the 20th century, a time when almost all wind-driven vessels of the sailing age had already been discarded and replaced by steam and steel. It is about an American sailor, who speaks through the voice of author Gustav Tigaard. His story is told as a 15-year-old sailing the North Pacific in the 1930s, and about all the colorful characters he meets. The American sailor was born on the icy shores of Plymouth, was rocked upon the waves of the Atlantic, and cut his teeth on New England codfish. He built his muscles at the halyards of New Bedford whalers, and gained his sea legs atop the mizzen of Yankee Clippers. Windjamming to China sails on the fringes of history, propelling an unforgettable true story.
 
WINDJAMMING TO CHINA (ISBN: 978-1-60911-542-5) is available at Florey's Book Co. on Palmetto in Sharp Park.
 
About the Author: Gustav Tjgaard has always loved literature, having read Cervantes’ Don Quixote for the fourth time as a 10-year old. At age 85, he views the sailor as a legitimate folk hero. Originally from Decatur Island, Washington, he now lives in Pacifica, California, and has already written his next five books.

San Francisco Giants: Images of Baseball by longtime Giants fan Tricia O’Brien, who offers a personal and historical glimpse into the evolution of the team from its departure from New York to its 2010 World Series championship in San Francisco. Order from Florey's Book Co. on Palmetto. Highlights of San Francisco Giants include:

-New York Giants
-Welcome to San Francisco
-Willie Mays and Willie McCovey
-From the Tough Years to Triumph
-World Champions

My new firefighter mystery novel Code Blood is now available. For a limited time, you can buy the book on my website at a reduced price. It goes on sale on Amazon and in bookstores October 20: paperback $9.99 (signed copy),
Kindle, Nook, iPad e-book downloads $5.99 (signed postcard of the cover).

CLICK FOR INFO ON THE BOOK AND THE AUTHOR

Colt Lewis is a rookie fire paramedic, worried about his skills and obsessed with finding the severed foot of his first victim after she dies in his arms. His search takes him on a wild trip into the interconnected lives of a research student with the rarest blood type in the world and the fetishist who is stalking her. In the corridors of medical research laboratories, the shadowy underworld of body parts dealers, and underground Goth clubs of Los Angeles, Colt uncovers a tangled maze of needles, drugs, and ritual, all of which lead to death. But whose death? If you read the book, please send me your thoughts and comments.

KURT KAMM

BY DAN UNDERHILL, RIPTIDE CORRESPONDENT

I attended the Healthy Communities Forum #3 on August 18. There were two previous forums in this series that I didn't hear about in time to go to. The series explores the idea of sustainability vis-a-vis environment, economy, and social equity, and it contends that maintaining all three "bottom lines" is good for business in general.

The forum focused more on government and large corporations than small businesses such as my own. The focus on larger institutions is wise, of course, as the larger the institution, the larger the effect for good or ill.

The forum's central question was: "What would the top of the sustainability mountain look like in your/our community, and what steps. individually and collectively, do we need to take to get there?"

After introducing all the corporate and government sponsors, forum organizers showed the film So Right—So Smart, featuring Ray Anderson, founder and CEO of Interface Corporation and author of the book Mid-Course Correction. I had previously seen Anderson in the film The Corporation by Achbar, Abbott & Bakan. This film So Right—So Smart provides a much deeper understanding of Anderson's story and of what governments and businesses might do to transform themselves into being part of the solution.

Librarians (I really appreciate librarians) at the San Mateo Public Library, where the forum was held, set up a display of these books:

75 Green Businesses—You Can Start to Make Money & Make a Difference
By Glen Croston, PhD

Green Business
By Amy K. Townsend

Green Careers For Dummies
By Carol McLelland, PhD

Greening Your Business
By Daniel Sitarz

Doing What Matters
By James M. Kiltz

Companies on a Mission
By Michael V. Russo

Greening Your Small Business
By Jennifer Kaplan

The Plot to Save the Planet
By Brian Dumaine

The Green Collar Economy
By Van Jones

Climate Capitalism
By L. Hunter Lovins & Boyd Cohen

Green to Gold
By Daniel C. Esty & Andrew S. Winston

Pacifica author Arnold D. Gardner's new novel The Leadfeather Syndrome is available at Florey's Books on Palmetto across from the Pacifica Library. About the book: Michael Greer’s career as a journeyman private investigator takes on a promising cushy outlook when his assignment takes him to eastern Long Island’s North Fork, the resort and sporting playground where he’s slated to delve into the case of a local auto dealer who’s been officially reported missing along with an imposing chunk of pledged bonding company funds. Almost at once, Greer’s undertaking takes on an awesome dimension when the missing dealer's terrified girlfriend turns out to be an incomparable beauty who’s been directed to seek his help in uncovering possible lethal circumstances related to her boyfriend’s disappearance. P.I. Greer finds himself drawn into a nightmare of intrigue and assassination in uncovering the perpetrators in current and past murder scenes and manages his own survival by outmatching his adversaries in smarts and nerve. Greer's romantic involvement with two beautiful women closely aligned to the story’s events almost ends in his undoing as did a like affair in the immediate postwar days of his youth. But in love, as in the ordeals of war, he learns to live with the fateful outcome of his fortunes, and his intimate knowledge of the wisdom of Shakespeare helps him find words for it.

About the author: The Leadfeather Syndrome is the first published work by WWII combat veteran Arnold D. Gardner, an American educator and business executive who fought throughout the Italian campaign and afterward lived and worked in Italy. He and his Italian war bride Diana lived for many years among the splendid eastern towns and villages of Long Island's North Fork. Mr. Gardner's native roots go back to the scenic country areas along the northern borders of New York state.

Florey's Book Co.
2120 Palmetto Ave.
Pacifica, CA 94044
(650) 355-8811
open every day, 10am-6pm
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