meat v. machine

Okay, so maybe I will give away a hint or two about 'seamlessness'...take this article, for instance, which reports that a carnivorous diet can be responsible for releasing more CO2 and other greenhouse gases than a daily commute. From Food for Thought on Global Warming:

A November 2006 report published by the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) revealed that the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions - 18 percent - than transportation. The FAO also reported that the livestock industry is responsible for 37 percent of anthropogenic (generated by human activity) methane and 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide, both of which have a higher "global warming potential" than carbon dioxide. The FAO also blamed the livestock sector for heavy deforestation, and according to the World Resources Institute, deforestation is responsible for approximately 20 percent of all global warming emissions.

The FAO report followed an April 2006 study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago, who compared the amount of fossil fuel necessary to produce various foods, taking into account the fuel needed to run machinery, provide food for animals and irrigate crops. They found that the typical U.S. meat-eater is responsible for nearly 1.5 tons more carbon dioxide per person per year than a vegan (pure vegetarian), simply because of the difference in food choices. An American Journal of Clinical Nutrition report by David Pimentel and Marcia Pimentel indicated that it takes more than 11 times as much fossil fuel to make a calorie of animal protein as it does to make a calorie of plant protein.

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ch-ch-ch-changes...

A little while back, I came across a story about a poll done on the most annoying cliches. A quick google turned up this article, on CNN:

At the end of the day, it's the most irritating cliche in the English language.

That abused and overused phrase has topped a poll to find the most annoying cliche, the Plain English Campaign said Wednesday.

Second place went to "at this moment in time," and third to the constant use of "like," as if it were a form of punctuation. "With all due respect" came fourth.

The UK-based Plain English Campaign said it canvassed 5,000 people in 70 countries to find the most irritating phrases of all...

Personally, I find the use of the word 'literally' to be more annoying, though maybe that doesn't count as a cliche. No, I just checked, it does. Anyway, the use of 'At the End of the Day' as my blog title was an expression of my intent to up-date the blog, literally, at the end of the day. (See what I mean about that literally thing? Everytime I hear someone say it, I want to say "Still not using it right, Joey.") But yesterday, while listening to a podcast of Democracy Now!, I heard one interviewee use 'at the end of the day' 10 times in 5 minutes. Literally! No, actually he only used it three or four times, but it was annoying enough.

So, now I'm going seamless. And what does that mean? At the end of the day, I haven't decided - literally. But I'll let you know when I do.

Here's a thought provoking piece from Sojourners. Do we have any idea what the true cost of our consumption is? Ignorance truly is bliss, as we carelessly drive our economy, the environment, and the living standards of hundreds of thousands of people - including ourselves - right to the brink. What if we had to pay the full cost of a product - any product?

from
Everyday low prices are part of our American birthright. Right?

When we take a vehicle for repair, we get a bill that says something like, "Parts $55. Labor $300." What if the price tag of every item we bought broke down the cost that way? One of Karl Marx's more reasonable ideas held that the value of a commodity was comprised of the labor that went into it. Today we might add to that calculation the environmental damage. If we think of prices that way, when I confront a $300 personal computer or a $20 pair of blue jeans, I am witnessing a robbery. And when I buy it, I am an accomplice. But we rarely think about that because we have come to expect those everyday low prices as our American birthright and to believe that our consumer economy would grind to a halt if we ever had to pay the true price of our commodities.

Someday, if the earth survives our petroleum binge, people may look back at archived editions of early 21st-century consumer catalogs and think that same thought. "It's amazing what you can afford when you don't have to pay for the labor." Of course, our slaves are mostly in China, but the distance only makes us more vulnerable to the corruption of our unearned loot.

My favorite line comes at the end:

The point here is that when we don't pay the real price for things, we don't appreciate them, and, worse, we become addicted to filling our days with the acquisition of cheap disposable items...

The slaveholders of the 19th century left neo-classical monuments to their crimes. Our monuments will be giant heaps of broken plastic and crumpled shrink-wrap.