where does food come from?

tonite i listened to a podcast from the abc (the science show) which included an interview from a anthropologist in the states who has been studying waste – particularily food waste. my fav bit was:

Robyn Williams: So where do young people or ordinary people, adults for that matter, think meat and milk and fruit come from?

Tim Jones: They don’t know. When you ask them they tell you they literally don’t know. It’s become so commodified now that they don’t realise it’s from a living thing. When you even start talking about the fact (let’s say, about meat) that you take an animal and you kill it and then you cut it up and then you make this…they get nauseated, they can’t eat, if you’re eating they stop eating, they’ll get up and walk away, it’s too terrifying for them. Those are the kinds of reactions that you’re getting from much of the population. There is still a core part of the population in America who understands all this. This is why we still have environmental groups and things like that. I can’t tell the percentages but it’s probably in the 30%-40% range, but the rest of the population doesn’t get any of this. The long-term conditioning of food as a commodity has got to a point that that’s where our obesity…that’s the core of the obesity issue that we have in this country, which they estimate costs us at least $100 million a year. It’s the core of the food loss problem, which costs us another $100 million a year, and it’s just not within the general public, it’s within everybody

later he mentions going to schools and talking to them about adding things like students growing & eating the food they grew AND going to a slaughterhouse! YES!!!!! i predict there would be a lot more vegetarians.

but really, his research is pretty interesting. the amount of food we toss is pretty shocking.

transcript: here

cause it’s just too funny….

i HAD to share the following bits from an email from one of my friends. all i will say is this friend lives in a very populated area and it’s not like there’s a shortage of cheap and fast eating establishments.

but last nite when they wanted something quick & cheap, they returned to a chinese place they had eaten once before. friend #1 didn’t want to go b/c of the memory of the place being gross. friend #2 talked friend #1 into going again EVEN THOUGH friend #2 also remembered the place being gross.

of course, the place was gross. i’m waiting for the follow up email to see if they’ve both gotten sick. but here’s my fav 2 lines of the email. enjoy folks!!! (and happy good friday!)

even the sushi was a little questionable

BAHHHHH!!!! LOTL!!!!

and

i had to load up my plate 3 times to finally get enough that i liked enough to eat

i predict there was puking.

your very own mba

and cheap too!

the personal mba is an idea (promoted by seth godin) is a website that recommends business books to read and then provides an online community in which to discuss them. interesting concept.

i didnt check out the community but i did scan the books & noticed there’s a few i’ve been wanting to read but none are books we read during my mba. our reading was lots of textbooks and lots of articles so not all that surprising. the list covers some marketing, finance, starting a company, etc but the biggest hole i noticed was the lack of org behaviour books. i didn’t see anything about teams, or change or faciliation. the closest they get is negotiation.

thursday here. moving slow this morning since i stayed up late to participate in a webcast out of nyc (which ended up having poor audio and wasn’t quite what i was thinking it would be so i left).

commonwealth games & art

there’s some new pix online.

sculpture at werribee. this is from last saturday. the boy & i went to this national sculpture award thing. some very cool art.

commonwealth games. these cover the lawn bowls event i went to (part of the games) and some of the free art that the games brought to town. including amazing coffins from africa.

games opening ceremony. if i didn’t post it already, here’s the pix from the evening of the opening ceremony.

one thing to notice about the pix is the clothing worn… the march commonwealth games pix and the april sculpture pix are 2 weeks apart and went from tshirts to coats, scarfs & hats!

brisbane in feb. only a few pix. i was v lame taking pix up there.

i LOVE this idea

the shitty tipper’s database. this is great!!!

melbourne happenings

i have always been disgusted by the lack of a ‘what’s going on in melb’ website, magazine, newspaper – like the voice, ny press or time out ny. sure there’s citysearch (yawn). found mcity this wknd. i vaguely think i looked at it before when they had 0 content and it’s definitely better now. still not what i’m looking for but better.

over the wknd

i found a collection of zines that had been liberated. as i was leaving the library, i noticed there was a survey they wanted u to do and next to the deposit box was a bunch of zines inside a plastic bag. on the bag was a sticker telling people to take the pkg & go to the website. it’s like bookcrossing for zines. now i have to figure out where to leave it for the next person.

we went to the helen lempriere national sculpture award on saturday. it’s a bit out of town at this huge mansion and the biggest sculpture prize in au. i took lots of pix which i havent posted yet.

it’s been COLD this wknd. big fuzzy orange coat and the kermit hat got a lot of wear. i ended up not wearing them but i did have my mittens along. now… i know it hasn’t been THAT cold. it’s been in the 50s f at nite. and that’s no where near the cold that nyc has even at this moment but i guess i’m not used to it and am really feeling it. we even bought an electric blanket (i know. i’m such a wuss).

and i watched a sad & entertaining tv show about cynthia plaster caster. it was also an interesting follow up to last week’s show my penis & i where this guy gets cast by cynthia while exploring his small penis issues.

so what did u guys do? geez u folks that read…. u can at least post a comment to show you’re alive!

autumn, art and the wknd

it has definitely felt like fall/autumn this wknd and i’m not thrilled. i think the weather this week is supposed to be in the 60s (the HIGH this wk). i did have a ‘i love melbourne’ moment on friday (yes, i do have those occasionally). i left yoga (my first yoga class in years & i managed not to fall over or die half way thru class) and it was dreary, slightly cold and looked like rain – that smell & feel of the first fall moment – so i put on wilco’s ‘california stars’ and just repeated it over and over as i got a nice warm starbucks & rode the tram home.

saturday was art day since there were several things i wanted to check out as part of the next wave festival. the coolest one was called ‘new ruins‘ and was held in an abandoned building which used to be part of the prison (apparently holding cells). the pieces were a combination of audio, video, and light. several of them were inside the cells (which were bigger than my dorm room which was odd). i didn’t take any pix but will see if i can find anything online.

it was also grand prix wknd here which means i can hear the cars whip around the track from my apartment. even though i’m sure there were tons of tourists here, it felt like nothing after all the tourists who were here for the commonwealth games.

speaking of the games, saw a post to an article written by graffiti ’star’ banksy about the cleanup here before the games and warning london of the same before the 2012 olympics. there was cleanup here but i am surprised it wasn’t worse. right near one of the big tourist spots is a popular graffiti place and that was left untouched. another big spot along the train line by st kilda wasn’t touched either. i saw cleanup (done in boring grey paint!) on the walls along the train lines though.