ned's blog

"The UN's committee on human rights has just published a report criticising Britain's anti-terror laws and the resulting curbs on civil liberties. For many commentators the issues raised are mostly a matter of academic abstractions and speculative meanderings. For me, it is anything but. These laws have destroyed my life."

On a totally unrelated note: in an attempt to stop some of the comment spam here, you'll now have to answer a grueling series of statistical math problems answer a simple question to leave a comment. It's a work in progress; let me know what you think.

Cat and Girl:
What are the greyhounds chasing? Satisfaction
Lust for Life (they're talking about the Iggy Pop song, right?)

Biking to work = sweaty/happy Ned.

via 5 mushrooms comes another link to yet another interesting TEDTalk: Mark Bittman Talks About the Food Chain. Bittman says he'll probably never stop eating meat, but he argues that we should be eating much, much less of it. (He also makes reference to fart jokes, which apparently are world's oldest jokes, predating even penis gags - so David and Scott are just keeping it real, old school style).

Nicholas Kristof has a feel-good story about geese, and explains his views on carnivorousness in his recent column, A Farm Boy Reflects:

So, yes, I eat meat (even, hesitantly, goose). But I draw the line at animals being raised in cruel conditions. The law punishes teenage boys who tie up and abuse a stray cat. So why allow industrialists to run factory farms that keep pigs almost all their lives in tiny pens that are barely bigger than they are?

(Kristof, by the way, seems like a prettying interesting journalist and someone I should have been reading before now). The thing that strikes me now, as I've been thinking about being a little more careful about the flesh I consume, is that sticking to cruelty-free meat pretty much means not eating out like I have in the past. I had lunch at Shanti today, for instance - what kind of life did my lamb marsala lead prior to ending up on my plate?

I type this sitting at home with a belly bursting with mustard greens. I stopped by freak Kroger on the way home from work today and picked up a big bag of the pre-washed stuff which was marked down (since it expires tomorrow) to $1.50. After eating half of it (steamed, then tossed with oil and pepper) I decided to just finish off the bag, but it was too much (I was grazing on some other stuff too). These days I'm thinking about what's in the pantry and refrigerator, and how I should be finishing up what's there before worrying about buying anything more, but I'm not good at that. But I'd like to work on clearing out my supplies. True, I'll be glad for surpluses when the coming zombie apocalypse finally hits, but even in terms of that I'm not well-stocked.

Biking to work this week has frankly been kicking my tuckus. I probably haven't been getting enough sleep, but I've been feeling pretty worn out each day when I'm on the trail. And my gears are a little messed up, which is a mild irritant at times. On the other hand, I love the sense of scale I have for Bloomington right now. Years ago when I lived much closer to downtown PJ crashed at our place one night, and the next morning when we got up to go to the Farmer's Market he protested: "Bloomington's a walking town!" Back then I thought he was crazy. Even today I might not be interested in walking through a muggy hoosier haze to get to the farmer's market, but I can say that the idea of biking downtown no longer intimidates me as it once did. I've biked to Target on the east side - it's "doneable."

I'm thinking of garlic, even as my garden desperately needs weeding.

One of the things I miss about cable is Keith Olbermann. He could be a little full of himself at times, but he also did stuff like putting reporters on the spot when they played dirty pool. (via Altercation, a recent fav read of mine)

Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink and The Tipping Point) talks about spaghetti sauce. "People don't know what they want!" Pat was reading Blink while I was sleeping on his and Rachel's sofa - I'm reading it now. I was just about to link to another article from this site when I noticed this post. Interesting to see the author in action. Here's what I was about to quote:

There is plenty of good, organic whole food (no pun intended) at your local farmers market, but it comes with a price. You have to prepare it, and you have to know how to cook, and you have to get to the market when it is open.

I think that as our food chain continues to unravel, people will start to realize that the key to cheap foods is not the $1.50 packet of tofu at Whole Foods, but individual cooking skills and a greater public awareness of where to source inexpensive (not cheap) local food.

This website is addressing the first of these problems now, with cooing cooking lessons and a search engine so people can get ideas and recipes when their own knowledge is exhausted. We are also working on another nifty little tool for sourcing food, but it wont be ready for a couple more months. [Is Whole Foods tofu really the answer? at fivemushrooms.com]

But back to Malcolm Gladwell: "A critically important step in understanding our own desires and tastes is to realize that we cannot always explain what we want deep down." Rings true to this primate.

[update - make that Tuesday night] Tonight on PBS: Johnny Cash: The Man, His World, His Music

"I thought we were in this together! Against life as the exchange of free will for a paycheck. Success as how much money you make and the status of objects and experiences you spend that money on"

I can safely say that I've become a fan of Cat and Girl.

I keep meaning to post some thoughts and/or recollections about my great trip to Portland to witness the Clint & Kelly experience. As seems to happen, I didn't actually get to see as much of Clint and Kelly as I'd hoped, but I'll take what I can get. I'm glad I could be there for the nuptials. The whole trip was a blast, more on the rest of that later, mayhaps.

Each time I bike downtown it feels like a shorter trip. Eventually I'll stop counting, but this morning's ride was number six this year (three pre-Portland, three post). It feels good.