Really I wonder if it works up north also. Seriously I need to get out and try this. And add a good dose of repressed commentary to the batch.
So the climate change debate has been dominated by the skeptics in the mainstream and often present a one-sided view that leaves out important research, ancedotes, and side affects. Actually, perhaps you shouldn't let the skeptics depress you because it looks like a good side of climate change has emerged: its so hot in Phoenix, Arizona that you can now bake cookies on a car dashboard.
Really I wonder if it works up north also. Seriously I need to get out and try this. And add a good dose of repressed commentary to the batch.
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A good article on the coming takeover of all our jobs by robots. Apparently, robotics has advanced to the point of being able to create machines that can easily do the work humans currently do. I've never much cared for the technocratic fantasies of robots actually becoming human, but drastic changes in the work area could be a reality.
Yet people keep poping out broods of kids like theres no tomorrow. Guess what, your kid will never have a job! The Grist is featuring a new "food writer" that claims to be taking a more skeptical, scientific look at the world of eating and farming. Johnson criticizes monoculture agriculture as well as instinctive nutritional advice and the unconstrained distrust of technology. Not bad so far. However, his almost middle ground stance is almost to the point of ideology in the denouncement of nutritional advice, conspiracies, and the long derided "fringe".
The skepticism over alternative (or natural) health is what primarily got my attention. Lately, I've gotten a bit fed up with so many on the leftwing sites exposing their lackadaisel knowledge in the area of health (alternet had an ill-thought out article on vitamins being a scam). Most people do not take nutritional medicine seriously. In my own life I've observed that they either ignore you, laugh at you, or listen in simple bemusement if you try to talk about potential nutritional cures though the field of orthomolecular medicine has been around even before modern medicine. And many scientists work in the field of nutrition (but the alternet article didn't care to interview any of them unfortunately). Now the criticism of industrial agriculture is right on and all the more contributes to the necessity of nutritional medicine. As for the whole elitist thing that supposedly pits low-income food buyers against high-income food buyers: hey, thats only a further sign that theres something truly fucked-up about our food system and society as a whole. Your not suppose to want junkfood. Fast food should not exist. Massive confined lots of animals is a blight on the otherwise green Earth. Change your mindset. Of course, the emotionally-illiterate, left-brainers the world over have to pick out and construct a rational side to every and any thing. While thats not entirely bad in itself still you must remember the baggage that comes with certain topics (parapsychology being amongst them). To add another thing, Grist like most of the environmental movement espouses vegetarianism. Anyone brought up on the idea of vegetarian diet being "healthy" could possibly face some real confusion as it pertains to nutritional information. Its not a healthy diet at all. Sorry, vegans! Truth hurts and worst than being told that artificial vitamins are useless. So is a popular environmental site turning anti-healthfood? Maybe not and perhaps I'm getting upset over nothing. But really the masses ignorance of nutrition and lingering belief that people have only been brainwashed by Pollan is too simplistic to take at face value. Perhaps that "gut feeling" in response to certain foods evolved for a reason. Food is not food. And what you grew up on needs to be questioned dearly when the TV is finally turned off. Food isn't even food. When you see a bag of cookies replace it with words like diabetes, depression, and cancer. Diabetes for sugars difficult for the metabolism, depression for the way sugar harms gut flora, and cancer for the way glycation has been implicated in its formation. I was pleased to see an article today on the modern revival of homesteading and DIY self-sufficiency. In my own life I've tried to implicate some measure of self-sufficiency and downgrading (buying less stuff).
Of course, the critics come out with accusations of simple living being an "upper-class" thing and expensive. Well, I suppose buying your own land and some of the start-up materials would be costly, but the whole point of simple living is to change your mindset about the way we live. Living by an industrial system that treats everything as a commodity is also very expensive though we may not see the initial price at the checkout counter. Mass production is supposedly cheap, but in reality it only keeps us further dependent. Now is that a good trade in for cheap? Probably not (especially when society inevitably collapses and DIY will be necessity not choice). |