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desaparecido76
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thedarkcleft
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destinyunbound
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thedarkcleft
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thedarkcleft
Google Buzz
“Google Buzz is easily the company’s boldest attempt yet to build a social network. Imagine taking elements of Twitter, Yammer, Foursquare, Yelp, and other social services, and shoving them together into one package. Now imagine covering that package in a layer that looks a lot like FriendFeed. Now imagine shoving that package inside of Gmail. That’s Buzz. If Google Wave is the future, Google Buzz is the present.”
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perpetuallyphil
The Vegetarian Myth
This is not a typical vegitrain slam of a book. It is a well researched and thought out dialogue about food soverignty, violence, industry, health and creating a better world. This book scared me at first, but after diving in more and learning more about the author Lierre Keith’s perspective, I have emerged to understand its importance. She was a vegan for 20 years and knows all of the arguments about why it was the right chioce for justice, but following more thurough research and asking tough questions, she has lots to say. Its clear that she does not advocate for factory farming, or cruelty, but rather understanding what our personal decisions really mean.
An excerpt:
“This was not an easy book to write. For many of you, it won’t be an easy book to read. I know. I was a vegan for almost twenty years. I know the reasons that compelled me to embrace an extreme diet and they are honorable, ennobling even. Reasons like justice, compassion, a desperate and all-encompassing longing to set the world right. To save the planet—the last trees bearing witness to ages, the scraps of wilderness still nurturing fading species, silent in their fur and feathers. To protect the vulnerable, the voiceless. To feed the hungry. At the very least to refrain from participating in the horror of factory farming.
These political passions are born of a hunger so deep that it touches on the spiritual. Or they were for me, and they still are. I want my life to be a battle cry, a war zone, an arrow pointed and loosed into the heart of domination: patriarchy, imperialism, industrialization, every system of power and sadism. If the martial imagery alienates you, I can rephrase it. I want my life—my body—to be a place where the earth is cherished, not devoured; where the sadist is granted no quarter; where the violence stops. And I want eating—the first nurturance—to be an act that sustains instead of kills.
This book is written to further those passions, that hunger. It is not an attempt to mock the concept of animal rights or to sneer at the people who want a gentler world. Instead, this book is an effort to honor our deepest longings for a just world. And those longings—for compassion, for sustainability, for an equitable distribution of resources—are not served by the philosophy or practice of vegetarianism. We have been led astray. The vegetarian Pied Pipers have the best of intentions. I’ll state right now what I’ll be repeating later: everything they say about factory farming is true. It is cruel, wasteful, and destructive. Nothing in this book is meant to excuse or promote the practices of industrial food production on any level.
But the first mistake is in assuming that factory farming—a practice that is barely fifty years old—is the only way to raise animals. Their calculations on energy used, calories consumed, humans unfed, are all based on the notion that animals eat grain.”
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You can get the book on her website, amazon, or better yet: ask your local book store to carry it.
(btw, I ate some grass ged beef the other day, it felt good, yikes)
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firstreason
Let me make this clear first of all, I have not read this book. that being said, it sounds like the author is assuming that being vegetarian or vegan is soley an attempt to boycott meat because of the cruel ways that it is acquired. I would like to point out that while that may be a reason for some, I would venture to say that most don’t eat meat because they don’t like to kill something and consume it carcass. Yes, there are better ways to farm meat, but I dont think that that is necessarily the problem, my problem has mostly been the killing part, the horrible living part was in second place.
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perpetuallyphil
I totally agree firstreason,
I am uneasy with deciding that something should live or die, no matter how good or bad their life was preceding my decision to kill them and eat their flesh.
The thing is that death is a natural part of life. Plants, animals, microbes, fungi and the like must die to nourish others. Not to get all circle of life, but really, that is what happens. To pretend that its not the case is to not understand how food webs work.
Next argument is to say that we don’t need to participate in the food web, because we understand it and can make the conscious decision to not kill other species for food. We can take a vegan stand and get all of our protein, vitamins and energy from plants. The problem with this line of thinking is that it forgets that plants need nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium to grow. NPK. There is no way to get those things without using decayed animal parts or chemical fertilizers that come from the petrol industry or that require extensive mining (which kills thousands of animals and disrupts whole food systems). Also, agriculture requires riding plants of “pests,” and even “vegan” growers who use neem oil, end up disturbing the cycles of insects that kills them, makes them sterile and rids the plant of fungus. Not to mention the fact the agriculture kills thousands of microbes as well. So at some point, we are deciding to kill, most of us just decide that its not ok to kill things with a face, directly… its a slippery slope for sure, and is why i love know where and why people draw lines. If we need to kill to live (which is how the rest of the plant and animal kingdom works) should we try to avoid it all together (which is seemingly impossible), or try to make it humane, reasonable and spiritually ritualistic?I have not read the whole book myself yet, but it has sparked me to research more and more. The more arguments i come up with to support my vegetarian diet, the more reasons i find that its not as simple as that.
One last thought. We have co-evolved with the plants we eat and the animals that we domesticated. They are totally different now than when we first started living with them, as are we. Did we change them, or did they change us? Evolutionarily speaking, is wheat more successful or are humans?
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perpetuallyphil
here is a good review of the book:
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/vegetarianmyth05032009/“Currently, 40% of Americans are killed by coronary heart disease. The rate of coronary heart disease has increased at the same time that the proportion of animal fats consumed by people in the United States dropped from 83% to 62% and the consumption of vegetable oils has increased by 400%. “
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thedarkcleft
That stat is not really saying a whole lot. If one year the amount of coronary disease dropped, good. Maybe it is because there have been changing their diets because there are so many people having heart attacks. People may be waking up. It doesn’t mean that the rest of the people, or even the people who have switched, won’t die next year from all the animal fats and the like eaten in the past.
Also, there are a number of other things that lead to coronary problems, such as all of the trans-fats in margarine, as opposed to butter. MSG, HFCS, they all play their parts.
Kinda tangental, sorry.
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oneshowatatime
Michael Pollan pretty well summed up my view on diet in a recent Time Magazine interview:
“Can you tell us what your current diet is? If it is not vegetarian, why not?”
Scott Yanoff, MILWAUKEE
“I still eat meat. But I eat a lot less. I have enormous respect for vegetarians, but I believe there are ways to eat meat that are good for you and good for the environment.”
Rest of the interview: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1955590,00.html
I believe that we evolved to maximize our efficiency and role in the ecosystem as omnivores, but I totally agree that the industrial food system is fucked and that we should also strive to eat less meat and eat lower on the food chain in general.
Just my 2 cents, I’m tired… good night.
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untamedyawp
Burning Man 2010
as is turns out, the man burns in 207 days….
created is a central blog solely for the purpose of organizing for the world’s most magnificent event.
please, first of all stop the questioning and admit that you will be in attendance this year and second, contribute your ideas and thoughts for how to make our camp the dankest around.
holleruntz -
absolutelylovely
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deadindenver
Run (Away) Sarah RUN
air date 2/8/2010
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absolutelylovely
grosssssssssssssss
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zabba
Great, I just got out of the shower… now I gotta get right back in.
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thedarkcleft
http://www.facebook.com/sarahpalin?ref=search&sid=569961739.1781758158..1
My favorite was, “We need to go to Washington and get our country back!!”
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thedarkcleft
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zabba
No V-day lover? Why not beat some ass?
“They can take your pillows… but they’ll never take our FREEDOM!!!”
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kbelly
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zabba
Ubersuperdeeduper!!!
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chiheezie
Haaahaha! Just had one of those obnoxious laughs
Cool Pics for shhhhure! My dad would love em’.
Pics+Robbins+Smokestack Lightning+Amanda= Trance into a good dream. Night all
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oneshowatatime
2010 Olympic Medals to be Made of Recycled Electronics
A friend sent me this article from Flavorwire this morning. I think this is a rad idea for the 2010 Olympic medals–pretty sweet orca artwork too!
Click the image to see the article and video about how they developed the idea.
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deadindenver
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zabba
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kbelly
crunch…
http://www.rense.com/RodinAerodynamics.htm
this dude is presenting a black hole with one polarity which can be applied to the structure of dna, spin of the electron etc.
same same as nassim i think, just uses number theory to represent the untz
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untamedyawp
marko rodin is totally fucking insane…it’s awesome.
if you have an hour and a half watch this:
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cheesepleas
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cheesepleas
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deadindenver
Thanks Dozmay
cleaning through my email inbox today…. I had kept all the youtube videos that people sent me as unread messages because of the unavailability of youtube in China…. found this little gem that Jason sent me on Fils birthday, the day before my birthday in 2009..enjoy
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untamedyawp
what a gem.
it just comes out of nowhere.
beautiful. -
zabba
two dogs, one…
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destinyunbound
David Hale Interview
Just came across this interview of artist David Hale. Was really diggin the way he approached answering a lot of the questions. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
http://www.hybridsessions.com/2008/09/hs-featured-artist-david-hale.html
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absolutelylovely
he’s the man
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oneshowatatime 6:26 am on February 10, 2010 Permalink
worst music ever?
chiheezie 6:47 am on February 10, 2010 Permalink
OH MY! Cooooooooooooooool.
Btw the shop i’ve been workin at is named: Off Piste (off the path in french)