The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

As a holistic nutriliun consultant, I have to comment on the recent article by Jennifer ()rmslon. I, too, have concerns with the status quo quest to be golden. ll Fems like some people will go to great extremes to look glorious, including the use of paints, dyes and lotions, which to some extent are also carcinogenic. The great perlem. however, is not colour. rather the inability to produce vitamin D. in the past few decades. advanced medical research has found a significant link in our own lack of vitamin D and multiple scle rosis, especially in young adult women. The incidents of MS and various cancers are currently on the rise. . ' What few people know is that we do Failure to need 20 to 25 minutes ofexposure to the summer sun to produce ade communicate quale amounts of vitamin D. To quote a famous movie line. Those with darker skin from tan- "What we have here is a failure to Don't let it shine on me for too long So where, exactly. do we go from here? One more question in an issue that has plenty, Waterloo city council has held. we assume, its last public meeting on the proposed development of the west side, There are no plans for another vote on the plans, and. right now. it's in the hands of the region's plan- ning commissioner, who is expected to come out with a decision sometime in the next few weeks. The general consensus seems to hold approval will come, and there will be a development of more homes along that area ofWalerlou. Mayor Brenda Halloran is taking a fair amount of heat for backing away from an election pledge to stop the develop- ment.That pledge, more than anything, was a rookie political mistake Experi- enced politicians know you have to leave yourself some wiggle room on issues. I don't think for a minute that Hallo- ran, as some have said, was trying to mislead voters on the issue. I think she genuinely thought that was possible, but facedovith the reality ofthe approvals already given at several levels and the possibility of legal action, she has had to back away from the stance. Is the development a good or bad idea? Truthfully, I dont know the answer to that ques- tion. I'm not sure that anyone does. l certainly don't possess the scientific and technical expertise required to, without any kind of reservations, come down on one side or the other. Some say they do. And we've heard those argu- ments on both sides for a long time, _ Some suggest if there is no conclusive answer. then we should err on the side of caution and not move ahead. But is that realistic?Where do we put the people that are moving here? Some will tell us we should concentrate on building up, increasing the population density in some areas. That process is already underway in Waterloo with the developments slated for the old Canhar lands along Father David Bauer Drive. But those changes take time, The population density of subdivisions is also increasing. Is that a good or a bad thing? What's next for west side? voutget lots of opinions on those questions. nihg or from birth as well as those slathered in sunscreen are proving to be vitamin D deficient. As Well. by the time the winter months set in, we have used up most of our protective reserves of vitamin D, leaving us vulnerable to a whole host of different concerns. if you are in the small group of people who burn with minimal sun exposure, you would be well advised to begin supplementing now with a good ish oil. Our grandmothers served us well by spooning out the yucky stuff. But they also reaped the benefit of lower rates of cancer and almost no MS or osteoporosis. Beats slamming on the sun screen! BRIAN BOURKE C0ls/r?tffiNT Answers, however, are considerably more difficult to find. In fact, from many of the people involved on both sides of the issue, there seems to be a signifi- cant amount of "lruthiness" at work. - "Truthiness" if you don't know, comes from comedian Stephen Colbert, host of TV's Colbert Report, It's defined as something people know inttr itively, "from the gut" without any regard for such disturbances as logic, or facts. Ofcourse, Colbert -_ would be upset with any dermition. As he says, you dont look truthiness up in I l M a book, it's"in your gut." is based on any facts. The end result, on any issue, is a greater divide than there ever was before, a chasm created by both sides clinging to their version of the truth no matter how many facts are placed before them. W i/iii/i' aidiviae that doesn't seem to close when the questions are decided. - . I l I - _-e-s-- --a ...~ .,---.._.__ _. ___ - Such are our times though, when opinion and ranting get more attention than studious attention to detail. Times when attentionspans are limited to just a few seconds, and when issues fly by at the speed of light. vr - - __ _ - 77., That willingness to accept opinion as fact is a much greater danger to us than anything else, no matter on which side of an issue you happen to reside. Diann Sch! Waterloo Brian Bourke, a member of the 105.3 KOOL FM morning crew, can be reached by email at bbourkeekoolfharrm Personally. I think "truthiness" comes from another source as well. It emerges in people who spend a lot of time reading other people's opinions (also drawn from odd places) and then accepting them as facts. More and more, it's become the way people formulate their thoughts on issues. Forget about doing any real research, or finding out the facts. Sometimes the only digging some peo- ple do on issues is searching for an opinion that backs up their own. That. I suppose. is why the spin doctors out there have such success. Repeat something often enough and it becomes the "truth" whether or not it communicate" Mayor Halloran, Your election platform was full of promise to protect our lands and reduce the urban sprawl as the pro- posed new subdivisions threatened the water table as well as pollution and added traffic to the delicate bal- ance of the land. I was impressed and I voted for you and was looking forward m a mayor who stood firm in the wake of threat to an already delicate balance of Land use in Waterloo. Now the waning has started and although the issues ofthe land have been studied over and over again since the early sos, you are leaning to approval of the housing develop- ments. The failure to communicate is ringing loud and clear from your supporters. the voters who put you into the mayoralty seat. We do not want these proposed subdivisions to compromise our groundwater and add pollution and traffic woes. Dan Sneddon Waterloo ile Edward Abbey was a lot of things - teacher. nat- Wralisr, philosopher and social critic -- to a lot of peo- ple he was best known as the writer of a novel called The Monkey Wrench Gang. Published in 1975, The Monkey-Wrench Gang was about four main characters: a wealthy doctor, a deranged ex-Green Beret, a polygamous riverboat guide and a philosophizing woman who, unlike her male compatriots, was known not for her employment, but for her sexy persona. The four had come to feel they were powerless to stop governments, industry, ranchers and environmentally unsustainable tourism from rolling over the natural world in pursuit of the almighty dollar. '“""'n“'*' -'" ,, . y _ As a result of these feelings of powerlessness. the four char- acters fell they had no choice but to participate in acts of mon- key wrenching - acts of crime. civil disobedience, or what others have described as ecological terrorism, on behalf of the planet earth. - - _ .l. . r. I I L‘III_,,,.J_AL“. ALA-- rm.» w. -te' The Monkey Wrench Gang sawed down billboards that they saw as Nights on the landscape - cutting only 99 per cent of the way through the structural supports so that the remainder would blow over some night when the - s. - we ,_, - culprits were miles away from the ‘ r . ‘ scene of the crime. They pulled survey l 'l ll l l.\ l stakes when they saw the develop- 'Mil U A] V merit in progress as a threat to great l ' ". , tracts of yet undisturbed land. They ‘ " plotted dynamiting hydro dams that ‘ , had been erected to provide inexpen- l , ' sive electricity to city people at the l I Sh Us cost of halting naturally roaring rivers ‘ El x and flooding out native cultures that l 1: If had existed for tens of thousands of i . Cg' years. And the Monkey Wrench Gang l a ' - poured gallons of molasses into the l M; crankcases of bulldozers and road ‘ graders left overnight and unattended \‘ ?tlig on project sites. ‘ - To identify environmental issues in E---- 1975 put Abbey at the front of the line for verbal abuse from those who felt that anyone articulating ecological concerns was part of a lunatic fringe that needed to cease and desist supporting such a "subversive science." - .. .. .. . . .,,,r,,LA.l While Abbey tended to avoid any discussion about whether he had actively participated in any act of monkey wrenching. he was clearly identified by those feeling threatened as being a proponent ofthe act. "I wouldn't actually push the plunger," he once told some of his students when asked if hed blow up a dam, "but I'd hold the flashlight." Dave Foreman. a defender of wilderness, led a team of Abbey disciples in the development of a radical environmental group known as Earth First! In the true spirit of the monkey wrenching principles put forth by Abbey's faction, Earth First! was a secretive group that under the cover of darkness report- edly spiked trees with steel products that had a tendency to fly apart when hit by a forester's chainsaw or a cutting blade at a sawmill. This destructive tree-spiking act (sometimes real but other times only perceived to be real) risked injury to those employed by the forestry companies or the mills. and the potentially incurring associated liability was an economic con- cern to the employers The FBI saw Earth First! as such a threat that they planted an undercover law enforcement officer in their midst, and when the radical environmental group was caught cutting down giant hydro electrical towers feeding a nuclear power plant on Long Island, Foreman did time in prison. While Fore- man is no longer directly affiliated with Earth First!, he is com- mitted to the protection of large tracks of wilderness lands. But now he carries out his environmental business using legal lob- bying practices rather than acts of disobedience and crime. "rr-CTF"-'-"--"""'" ' - Nevertheless, Earth First! continues as an entity in the fight to save the planet from forces strongly inclined to destroy it. While many of their targets remain the same as they were dur ing the Foreman era, new mad and golf course construction sites appear to be of higher priority to Earth First! activists in recent years. At least these are the sites that garner press while many of the traditional targets - forestry companies, for example - tend not to report these acts of violence commit- ted against them and instead accept the repercussions of such damage as the cost of doing business, Author known tttr monkey wrenching David Ward can be reached at dwat+Wrrting.ortxa. WATeltCo0 CHRONICLE . Wednesday July 25. 2007 . 9 l (ilIIiSl' ‘ b COLUMN I ‘1 l l ' , l, i N i, i f" l \i. . l DAVID ( WARD -