Sniped from the del.icio.us home page: “Breakfast” is a photo series by Jon Huck. Pretty damned interesting, too. While I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s a particularly novel approach or subject matter, it is extremely well-executed. I’m captivated.
Also: for all the diversity he represents here with respect to the food choices, let’s not kid ourselves. There’s really only two that matter. What we want and what we actually get.
Community Supported Agriculture
via Intervale Center (via Jill @ work)
via LifeHack.org: save $988 a year by bringing your lunch; put into perspective — that’s a Mac mini with upgrade RAM and hard drive (or) a little less than a year’s worth of mobile phone service (your mileage may vary on that one; or) about 120 bottles o
Semantic Flash: Slippery When Wet
via A List Apart (Articles): good essay on modern deployments of hybrid HTML/Flash designs; focus is on using Flash to automate or otherwise handle some of the fancy design elements while leaving the rest of the heavy-lifting to JavaScript and the rest of
Via the Wrangle: Vegetarian is the New Prius on The Huffington Post. *ahem* Let’s quote:
They noted that feeding animals for meat, dairy, and egg production requires growing some ten times as much crops as we’d need if we just ate pasta primavera, faux chicken nuggets, and other plant foods. On top of that, we have to transport the animals to slaughterhouses, slaughter them, refrigerate their carcasses, and distribute their flesh all across the country. Producing a calorie of meat protein means burning more than ten times as much fossil fuels–and spewing more than ten times as much heat-trapping carbon dioxide–as does a calorie of plant protein. The researchers found that, when it’s all added up, the average American does more to reduce global warming emissions by going vegetarian than by switching to a Prius.
This is bullshit. Anytime I’ve seen figures like the ones that they mention above, those figures are always in reference to the large-scale commercial livestock industry.
Just like the Prius argument is riddled with its own set of special problems (e.g., you still need regular oil changes, still contribute to road congestion problems as a driver, your tires are still petrol-based, etc.), saying that “vegetarian is the new Prius” is not an environmental argument — it’s an anti-meat argument. On its own, “switching” to vegetarianism doesn’t solve the problem. Much of the same arguments raised here (e.g., the harvesting & distribution questions) can just as easily be applied to your out-of-season fresh fruit and vegetables. The only real solution to that question is to go macrobiotic and buy local (if you buy at all).
I’m certainly no saint in this regard but I also don’t think that you have any business making an anti-meat argument like this if you’re not prepared to go all the way.
Via infosthetics.com:
When you consider that an entire plate of broccoli contains the same number of calories as a small spoonful of peanut butter, you might think twice the next time you decide what to eat.
Why 200 calories? We could have chosen any amount of calories for this project, but we wanted something that gave tangible volumes for the entire range of items. We felt that 100 calories of butter or oil would have yielded diminutive portion sizes; on the other hand 500 calories of celery would have been virtually incomprehensible.
See the rest of the feast at wisegeek.com…
A. gave me a juicer for Xmas and we’ve been having some fun trying it out, one recipe at a time. It’s interesting to try out vegetable juices and fruit/vegetable juice combinations — it’s not always easy to find veggie juices at the store (for example). Observe:
…all that said, we’re minding the expense through all this juicy enjoyment. Three pints of our tomato-based cocktail cost a little over $13 to make from scratch. I suppose you could argue that we are buying the vegetables and fruits at retail prices … and it does seem to take a lot of fruits/vegetables to make only “so little” juice … but it does make me reflect again today on Doctorow’s comments about how we measure quality of life in America. He mentions “bad food” and I don’t think he’s speaking strictly about greasy stuff — sadly, over-priced fresh fruits and vegetables are probably a big deterrent for many consumers.
For tonight: I’ll enjoy my juice. But I’m adding a bit more celery seed.
