Okay. This? Although nothing new (the energy and environmental costs of the meat supply is old news if you read TreeHugger), it makes me want to give vegetarianism another whirl. I also need to finish Omnivore’s Dilemma. My only caveat: Why does meat have to go so well with wine?
Moe over at Jezebel has a little more to say on the topic.
As I was waiting for my small chai (admittedly in a paper cup, to go), I noticed that the café had a quote written on their chalkboard:
Only when the last tree has died
and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught
will we realize we cannot eat money.
~Cree Indian Proverb
…it’s a timely quote.
An ASL classmate just sent this to me- PepsiCo is airing a Super Bowl ad this year featuring a popular very old joke in the deaf community. Check it out:
Here’s a little more information about the creation of this ad, as well as a behind-the-scenes video.
UPDATE: I didn’t watch the Super Bowl, but it seems that the ad was aired during pre-game coverage, not during the game itself. A number of bloggers have already expressed their disappointment with the misleading publicity surrounding the ad. Not that it’s surprising that corporate hype failed to live up to the expectations it set, but still, kind of a bummer.
Adding insult to injury, it seems that PepsiCo did not caption any of the other ads they aired during the game. Le sigh.
S. is going to love this. This guy, Virgil, who aspires to “become the #1 hit on Google for the query ‘ virgil ‘, has data-mined Facebook to create Booksthatmakeyoudumb. Basically, he and a friend manually collected schools’ top-ten lists for books, and charted them by their average SAT and ACT scores. There are some obvious flaws here, but as Virgil tells you, that’s totally besides the point. [librarian.net]
Like a lot of women in my generation, I tend to err on the side of being complacent when it comes to feminist politics. It’s easy enough to take for granted that I’ve got the vote, a career, access to birth control, and so on. It’s as Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards write in Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future: “The presence of feminism in our lives is taken for granted. For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice we have it—it’s simply in the water.”
And yet, as Hillary Clinton runs for president, it’s impossible to ignore the appalling degree of misogyny from t-shirts that say I love [cunt]ry music or The good, the bad, the ugly, to Chris Matthew’s pinching Clinton’s cheek (after her alleged sob-fest in New Hampshire, which inspired political cartoons like this one), to the formation of a 527 group that basically exists only to call Clinton a cunt (be sure to check out their logo). I’ve watched as anti-Clinton Facebook groups were formed, in which members refer to Clinton as “that BITCH.” In this climate, it’s no wonder that Clinton’s wrinkles and cleavage are considered viable topics for discussion for some news outlets.
Thankfully, people like Bob Herbert, with his commentary, Politics and Misogyny, and blogs like Feministing (they have a “Hillary Sexism Watch”) and Jezebel (see their retort to some of Clinton’s wrinkle-gate), I’m more aware of the challenges women still face in this world.
When I was young, I learned in school that (almost) anyone can be President- this is something children are still being taught. But considering the amount of backlash Clinton has received, when the only fundamental difference between herself and her (dominant) white/upper-class/Christian/able-bodied/heterosexual colleagues is her sex, it depresses me to think of how much farther we have to go before what we teach kids is really true.
This is the kind of thing that breaks my heart: Brazil Amazon deforestation soars.
SOJA vs. FLORESTA / SOYA vs. FOREST / SOJFABO kontraŭ ARBARO, originally uploaded by leoffreitas.
My friend, L, sent this link along today, and I can’t help but share it.
Here’s the background information:
HEMA is a Dutch department store. Take a look at HEMA’s product page. You can’t order anything and it’s in Dutch but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens. This company has a sense of humor and a great computer programmer.
Also- be sure to have your computer’s sound turned on to get the full effect!
Back story: I was hanging out with some friends, when I asked one of them to align the palm of her hand up with mine, and then run a thumb and finger over where our fingers lined up. It was a trick I’d learned in grade school, but they didn’t get it and just sort shrugged and raised their eyebrows at me. This bummed me out.
But tonight, while watching The Science of Sleep, I was ecstatic to see the lead characters do this exact thing! So now I’m posting this video to show my friends that this is not something I just cooked up with my imagination.
Here’s another bit I’d underline from the Power of Nonviolence, if only the copy I had wasn’t a library book- on morality of the state vs. morality of the individual:
If “trust” is meant in a moral sense, it is unfortunately true that political leaders can rarely be trusted. The reason lies in the split between private and public morals: the state, having become an idol, justifies any immorality if committed in its interest, while the very same political leaders would not commit the same acts if they were acting in behalf of their own private interest. -Erich Fromm, “The Case for Unilateral Disarmament”
Fromm was addressing the question of nuclear weapons, but… ugh- lines from his essay could just as easily refer to the issue of torture and wire-tapping. It just makes me wonder how politicians rationalize the discrepancy between their personal and public codes of conduct.
I caught the stomach flu last weekend, which sucked for a number of reasons, not the least ’cause of the plans I had to cancel and the endless number of hours I spent in bed, completely unable to function.
In my boredom, I indulged in some paranoia: My roommate left for a cruise today, and at the time, I was terrified that she’d catch the stomach flu from me. Last year, I ruined her cruise last year by giving her a wallop of a cold.
Then I worried that her friends would catch the stomach flu, and then everyone else on the boat would catch it too. And what if all the passengers blamed the cruise line for food poisoning, ‘causing the company to go completely bankrupt?
And somehow, one thing would lead to another, and I’d have ’caused the apocalypse, which would kind of suck.
But since then, my roommate has assured me that everyone on this particular cruise will be too drunk to notice something as tedious as the stomach flu, and my coworker has informed me that I’m not important enough to cause an apocalypse.
Phew.
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