[lit-ideas] Re: Soil and Food


The slaughterhouses and other factory animal facilities are torture chambers.  
That's not debatable.  Given how people treat each other it's no wonder they 
don't care about animals or even where their water will come from in 20 years.
 
As far as 'regular food', regular food has created the population explosion; it 
*is* the green revolution, and billions of people are happy, thrilled, to have 
regular food.  Those billions include us.  Our entire food system is virtually 
built on corn.  Michael Pollan calls our food supply 'foodish' instead of food 
because it's mostly a reasonable facsimile of food.  The upside?  It's cheap 
(if one doesn't factor in hidden costs to health and environment) and 
plentiful, so who can complain?  
 
Changing the subject, you're probably all ahead of me on this one, but I saw 
the skit on John Stewart that Geithner can't sell his house that he bought at 
the height of the housing craze.  That shatters my conspiracy theory.  It 
means they were just as caught up as everyone else, thinking houses were never 
going to go down.  That means there is no conspiracy for world domination.  
Alan Greenspan really believed that Ayn Rand poop.  
 
On the one hand it's comforting that there's no conspiracy, but on the other 
hand it means they have no clue what they're doing.  GS are just gambling like 
any gamblers, and they run the country.  In this case the stakes 
are astronomically higher, plus there's no incentive to stop even if they 
wanted to because they can never personally lose.  Their bonuses and jobs are 
guaranteed by Main Street no matter what they do.  Capitalism has proven 
itself.  It's a failure.  Or, maybe more like Christianity, it's never been 
tried. 
 
Andy
 
 


--- On Thu, 7/30/09, Paul Stone <pastone@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:


From: Paul Stone <pastone@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Soil and Food
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thursday, July 30, 2009, 2:41 PM


On Thu, Jul 30, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Mike Geary<atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Yes, this was my reaction as well.  I know Paul enjoys playing the roll of
> curmudgeon to pet liberal scientific themes, but I think he missed the mark
> on this one.

I wrote: Here's an article especially for you, posted without
prejudice either way:

The arguments I see from Andy, John etc. are interesting, but I see
this (the organic food issue) as a similar 'decision' that I see in
many cases for being 'Vegan'. Now, discounting religious purposes, the
reasons that a lot of Vegans SAY that they practice that 'lifestyle'
is because it's healthier. But, the REAL reason is that they were
shocked into becoming a member of the cult by a film of poor little
bunnies being skinned alive, or a slaughterhouse propaganda film etc.
Now, I have no problem with a person's decision to practice
vegatarianism because they don't want to eat anything with fur, or
hooves, or a heartbeat etc. It's the deception that I don't like.

At the same time, if you want to eat 'organic' food to avoid the stuff
that IS in regular food, great, but this is not what this article is
about... and while short, it seems to hint that, while 'organic' food
does NOT contain a lot of stuff that regular food does, it also DOES
contain, just about the same nutritional value. So... I may have
missed Mike's mark, but his is different from mine.

curmudgeons-r-us
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