The Oil We Eat: Following the food chain back to Iraq

Quick! Which is worse from an environmental perspective: a Hummer, or a bowl of breakfast cereal? Well?

What’s your answer?

When presented with this (ostensibly) laughably easy choice, most people would pick the Hummer, no contest. In fact, most people wouldn’t even see the point of the question.

Believe it or not, the question isn’t entirely frivolous. From “The Oil We Eat,” an article by Richard Manning (in Harper’s Magazine):

“A two-pound bag of breakfast cereal burns the energy of a half-gallon of gasoline in its making. All together the food-processing industry in the United States uses about ten calories of fossil-fuel energy for every calorie of food energy it produces. … That number does not include the fuel used in transporting the food from the factory to a store near you, or the fuel used by millions of people driving to thousands of super discount stores on the edge of town, where the land is cheap.”

Of course, demonizing breakfast cereal isn’t exactly the main point of the article. For the most part, Manning takes broader strokes, aiming mainly at the radical inefficiency of modern day agriculture. It’s enlightening, even if you do have some understanding of the costs incurred by the inefficiency (e.g., overuse of fertilizer, cross-country transportation of foods for year-round availability, etc.). You can find the article online—for the time being, anyway—at the Portland (Oregon) Indymedia web site.

It’s an excellent, excellent article. It’s long, but highly worthwhile.

If you’re still deliberating with yourself, wondering whether or not this article is for you, read on. Otherwise, read the article.

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The Deprived Dozen

Sayeth Forbes writer Tim Ferguson:

“Any modern economy that does not produce at least one huge fortune is, almost by definition, not creating the kind of wealth that is the earmark of a prosperous society.” (emphasis added)

The article goes on to earmark the twelve largest countries which, as of yet, have “failed” to produce any billionaires (if you’re keeping track: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Vietnam, Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia, Congo, Ukraine, Burma, Poland, and Sudan). As far as I can tell, this “article” is simply fluff—nothing seriously thought-out (it’s only four paragraphs long), but it still manages to be grossly arrogant, infuriatingly presumptuous, and horrendously, absurdly flawed. Not that, coming from the Forbes.com site, this is particularly surprising. Nonetheless, virtually every sentence contains an insult to anyone who believes that we should strive for equality and understanding over heavily consolidated wealth.

(Actually, I checked— there are two sentences that don’t really insult anyone directly. Unfortuately, neither sentence has any meaning outside the context of the article, so the point is moot.)

Don’t bother reading the Forbes article, but take a stroll on over to the Global Rich List, instead, where you can find where you stand wealth-wise. It’ll be an eye-opening experience, I guarantee.

(via Forbes: ‘The Deprived Dozen’)

P.S. Mueller…

…has an uncanny sense of the absurd, which is something I’ve known for a long time.

He also has a website, which is something I haven’t known. Until now. You should probably check it out; you’ll thank me later. (Or, if you prefer, you may thank me now and take your chances.)

LEWISITE smells like GERANIUMS

Mmm-mm-mmmm.

The Otis Historical Archives over at the National Museum of Health and Medicine has a somewhat curious collection of images (and a couple interesting posters) relating to military medicine, e.g., WWI and WWII photos.

Not that military medicine is inherently interesting, but for what it’s worth, this collection has a couple interesting images (as well as some that are frankly disturbing). If you check out nothing else, check out the WWII Gas Identification Posters (scroll down to see), which are downright bizarre. Particularly the one with the gas mask/elephant wrapping its trunk around a bundle of hay.

Headline: A pot in every chicken

“Frozen chickens and marijuana — a combination that put the driver of a tractor-trailer rig in jail.”

Now there’s something you don’t hear every day.

(via BoGlo: A pot in every chicken?)

Sweet Dreams Massacre: Another Fragment

When I first met Elvis we were standing, half-dazed, by the smoldering wreckage of a fire truck, our faces caked with blood and dappled with dirt. We both refrained from obvious jokes, I’m not sure why. Moon was there, too; she’d been riding with me in my car. All three of us were witness. To what, I’m not sure. It was a beautiful day and we stood in the median, the grassy valley in the middle of the highway, the angry incongruous form of a fire truck rising up above us. Smoking. We didn’t have much to say. Moon and I held hands and Elvis said how he somehow had a feeling Moon and he would never completely part ways.

There was only one fatality, a forty-seven year-old woman named Wanda White; this relative innocuousness for everyone not named Wanda White in spite of the tremendous violence and energy of the pileup, in spite of the visual impressiveness, the mechanical destructiveness of the act. Sixteen vehicles, all of them totaled, some mangled beyond recognition of being automobiles; inanimate, arcane heaps, it seemed, deposited on the highway by some higher power.

How it started, they never figured out. I talked to one cop who said it was just the dictates of chaos theory, it was something that simply happened, probably started by some kid on a bike in Sao Paulo; ten years and you’re bound to see an accident like this one, he said, if not more.

Elvis, Moon and I watched as pictures were taken and wreckage was cleared and surface wounds were tended to.

We were all suspicious, I think, of black magic.

Der Krieger und die Kaiserin

(English title: Princess and the Warrior)

(2000) – Tom Tykwer – Franka Potente, Benno Fürmann, usw.

Synopsis: Franka is Sissi. Sissi works in a psychiatric clinic. She has her problems. Benno is Bodo, who doesn’t work. He… does things to get by. (Okay, so he robs gas stations, but there’s a reason behind it; it’s more than the typical I-wanna-rob-gas-stations-to-make-a-quick-buck mentality [or, given the context of the movie, a quick DM].) He also tries out other things, but nothing really seems to work for him. It’s difficult to explain anything that happens without giving away potentially surprising plot twists, so suffice it to say that, through inconceivable coincidences, Sisi and Bodo are brought together in wholly absurd—and completely captivating—ways. The movie’s billed as a modern-day fairy tale. You can kinda see how it is, in a warped and frenzied kind of way.

Review: Critics didn’t seem to like this movie as much as its predecessor, ‘Lola Rennt’ aka ‘Run Lola Run.’ I’m not sure why, because while LR/RLR is definitely a good movie, it’s obvious that writer/director/composer Tom Tykwer has learned a few things in the interim. ‘The Princess + the Warrior’ gives off the impression of being LR/RLR’s bigger brother (or sister), more experienced and maybe a little bit arrogant but cut from the same cloth nonetheless. However you look at it, this is basically a well-done movie. I enjoyed it immensely. The first consideration you need to make when deciding if this movie is for you or not has to do with coincidences; namely, how do you respond to unlikely coincidences? Because this movie is filled with them. Big and small, wickedly funny and bitingly morose, etc. Ridiculous, absurd coincidences. This movie works because of coincidences. The reason I think these coincidences work (and don’t seem like unnecessary contrivances) is, the movie isn’t trying to emulate real life, it’s trying to tell a story. And it’s a good story. An interesting story. It’s life-affirming, in a depressing kind of way. It’s a love story, but a love story wrapped around madness (psychiatric clinic), loss (various partners’ & relatives’ deaths), and crime (robberies). ‘Brilliant’ is probably too strong a word, but it’s a very good movie.

Rating: [••••½] out of [•••••]

Etc.: Coincidence in Franka Potente’s real life story. From The Washington Diplomat, June 2001:

“Six years ago, I was studying acting in Munich,” Potente said in an interview. “I went to a bar. There was a casting agent who stared at me for a while and then followed me to the bathroom. While washing our hands, she asked me, ‘How would you describe yourself?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ Then all of a sudden, there’s a violin [figuratively playing]. She said, ‘I would like to audition you.’ I went there. I never heard from her again for months because that project fell apart. But then, by coincidence, a friend of hers, a young director [Hans Christian Schmid], tripped over my tape. Well, I ended up in his movie. That led to Tom seeing the movie and keeping me in mind for ‘Lola’ which happened two years later. It’s a nice chain reaction because it leads up to the present day.”

“We always say if it had rained, she wouldn’t have come to the bar,” [Tykwer] said.

Lost?


Above, one of the many curiosities to be glimpsed over at Found Magazine. This item consists of a group of Iraqi passport photos found in a desk drawer, the faces scribbled over for who-knows-what reason (a couple possibilities come to mind, though of course you can’t know for sure). The site has an interesting assortment of ‘found’ items, along with back-stories about their finders and the circumstances surrounding their finding.

You have to wonder about some of the things, though.


Go check out Found Magazine if this arouses your curiosity.

If not, go check out this column by Jimmy Breslin, which, as usual, kicks ass.

Newsflash: Reality TV shows portray their targets with “utmost respect and decency”

On one hand, maybe everyone should be allowed the privilege of ridiculing themselves on national television, no matter what their ethnic background, socioeconomic standing, gender, etc. Hey, if they want to do it, why stop them?

On the other hand, this is disgusting, particularly this part re: CBS’s upcoming effort to make an ‘Amish in the City’ show:

“We couldn’t do the Beverly Hillbillies,” the CBS chairman, Leslie Moonves, told TV reporters in January. But, he joked, the Amish “don’t have quite as good a lobbying effort”.

Or okay, fine, CBS, go ahead and make comments like this; but then don’t say something like “we sincerely hope that any judgement will be reserved until the show is produced” (actual quote) and expect people to listen to you.

(via the Guardian: Amish reality show provokes outrage)

Cultivating a bandit-friendly atmosphere

“Bank robbers once needed to take hostages, wield guns, or crack safes to get their loot. Now the job often requires little more than a pair of dark sunglasses and a menacing note.”

“‘Banks, which used to be structured like vaults, with armed guards, and all kinds of imposing structures that said, ‘Don’t mess with us,’ have in general moved to an open, friendly tone, as a means of encouraging depositors to come in and use the bank,’ says Alfred Blumstein of the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. ‘That same appeal could well appeal to bank robbers.'”

(via the Christian Science Monitor: “‘Stick ’em up’: Bandits rob banks with little more than bad spelling”)