Author: swanksalot

Always good to have a second user look at things

Bookmarks for October 28th

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Some additional reading October 28th from 13:36 to 19:15:

  • One More on the Pile – " take however many tens of billions we’re considering spending on the auto industry and instead spend that money on direct assistance to people working in the industry and in Michigan more generally. Let the bankrupt firms go bankrupt, and let their assets be liquidated and redeployed in a more efficient way or under better management. The collapse of the US auto industry would be bad for a lot of people. Trying to help people is a good impulse. But trying to help people by propping up failing firms is an inefficient and ultimately unpromising way of doing so. Just help the people and let the firms die."
  • Macworld | Numark offers portable vinyl record archiving system – Need one of these for my next trip to Austex
    "Numark on Thursday introduced the PT-01USB, a portable vinyl record archiving system.
    The PT-01USB is battery-powered (it can also be powered using an AC adapter) and connects to a Macintosh or Windows PC using USB 2.0. It features a protective dustcover and integrated carrying handle, and is designed for portability. Software included with the device enables you to automatically rip audio from a vinyl record to MP3 file; EZ Audio Creator 2 is the Mac software. Audacity is also included, to help reduce the effects of clicks, pops and other noise in tracks.

    The device features a belt-drive motor and can operate at 33, 45 and 78 RPM. A built-in speaker lets you monitor your recordings, and you can adjust pitch control up or down up to 10 percent. The device also sports RCA line and headphone outputs, so you can connect it to a sound system if you want."

  • From scream to 50-state dream – "Ah yes, us loony bloggers, fighting for universal health care, to protect social security, to keep our government from unconstitutionally spying on us, and to promote a sane foreign policy that doesn't unnecessarily cost us blood and treasure. You know, loony things supported by a majority of the (apparently also loony) American people."

Michael Pollan’s Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief

swanksalot2 Comments


“The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals” (Michael Pollan)

Michael Pollan1 wrote a fascinating open letter to the upcoming new administration.

vegetables

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.

[From The Food Issue – An Open Letter to the Next Farmer in Chief – Michael Pollan – NYTimes.com]

Reading around the blogosphere2, there are already calls for Obama to hire Pollan as Secretary of Agriculture, or similar.

oops, never posted this article3, and now Obama claims to have already read the open letter:

was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.

[From Swampland – TIME.com » Blog Archive The Full Obama Interview «]

So there you have it…

Omnivore's Dilemma
Pippen reading Omnivore’s Dilemma

Footnotes:
  1. who we’ve mentioned a few times before [↩]
  2. yes! phrase coined by skippy [↩]
  3. probably because it’s pretty half-baked, and never going to be fully baked. Regardless, read the piece [↩]

Bookmarks for October 28th

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Some additional reading October 28th from 08:20 to 10:01:

  • Electoral-vote.com: President, Senate, House Updated Daily – "The McCain campaign apparently has a new theme this week: attacking Obama for wanting to "spread the wealth." But it is not clear what that really means. Many Republicans have bitterly opposed the federal income tax since the 16th amendment was passed in 1913. Is McCain going to repeal the federal income tax? If so, how does he plan to finance the government? Or does he mean that the difference between the top rate of 39.6% under Bill Clinton and the top rate of 36% under George Bush is the difference between communism and capitalism? The purpose of the progressive federal income tax is to spread the wealth. "
  • Daughter of slave votes for Obama – "Daughter of slave votes for Obama. 109-year-old Bastrop woman casts her vote by mail."

Bookmarks for October 25th through October 27th

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A few interesting links for October 25th through October 27th:

  • Biden TV interviewer was a joke: The Swamp – "WEST: You may recognize this famous quote: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." That's from Karl Marx. How is Senator Obama not being a Marxist if he intends to spread the wealth around?

    BIDEN: Are you joking? Is this a joke?

    WEST: No.

    BIDEN: Is that a real question?

    WEST: That's a question."
    hysterical. Fox News is unintentionally morphing into the Stephen Colbert Report

  • Barack Hussein Obama II – Oh, the election is not over, yet.
    "Rachel Hulin (former photo editor at Nerve) is doing get-out-the-vote in battleground state Wisconsin, and documents this choice example of anti-Obama propaganda flyers being stuffed in mailboxes, in the guise of a letter directly from "Barack Hussein Obama II.""

Bookmarks for October 24th through October 25th

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A few interesting links for October 24th through October 25th:

  • Guam 1971 – Mid-Century Snapshots – "Guam 1971, originally uploaded by swanksalot."
    What a funny website – just pages of snapshots from the 1960s and 1970s, of various strangers.
  • Apple – opposes Proposition 8 – "Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8."