So it's true: I'm a troll. The worst kind, too: condescending, pedantic, annoying, concerned. I guess we all have our failings, and these are mine. But so long as I'm going to be a purist, I have to rant like one. I like eating and I bet most people do too, that's my "motivation" here.

Hoss asks why urban (commercial) [not/for profit] {large scale/vertical} non-residential gardening is worthwhile. I was a good grrl, I didn't lose my cookies, immediately. But it's Saturday and I'm relaxed and silly, so this comment made me have a Sad:

Goddess E has just one of many examples of how the SuperFreaks mostly write dumb books filled with generalizations and incorrect, unscientific conclusions. FWIW, I never thought "Freakonomics" was very impressive or persuasive. It annoyed me that my Republican gf thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, when she read it. It annoys me more that she's not alone.

Sorry I haven't had the time to gardenblog. I've been, well, in the garden too much, and too wiped out after canning and harvesting to do pics. But I have some. I missed a period for good pics but I'll show some results instead. First up: Fleurs. Hecate has some going still, and I do too:
Mums did well, if a tad slow, this year. Nice and bright.

Baby pumpkins. So cute there's no need to carve them.

So I guess I hit a nerve with my food fight post, or rather, several of them. I think it's worth breaking down some of the comments and sub-discussions into a longer series. One topic that seemed to bring out the very Correntian best in folks: how we define "obese."

Reader Jeff W points us to this helpful link from the CDC, in which they have determined that there have been "noticeable increases" in the number of overweight or obese people in this country. Reader Aeryl questions the methodology with this link. Other comments in that thread had other definitions and methods to measure the size and number of "healthy" bodies.

I'm a long way from my scientific research days, but I'll say that generally, I think obesity is both a "nature" and a "nurture" issue. On the Nature side: I fully recognize that the FSM has been kind to people in my family; we're generally tall and thin with only a modicum of exercise effort and don't tend to "overweight"-edness until quite late in life, if at all. I doubt I could find the link for it now, but I recall reading a fascinating report about a group of indigenous people from South America, recently relocated from their ancestral lands to a reservation. Apparently, in a single generation they went from thin and fit to outrageously overweight. The report's conclusion was that they had evolved to live on a fat-poor diet for thousands of years before being relocated and fed "government cheese" instead of their previous natural, "jungle food" diet, and as a result their bodies were incredibly efficient in terms of fat storage. "Too" efficient when fed a more modern diet, and thus their current obesity.

I'm tossing out those two examples and asking for your thoughts, because before we can make policy progress on the "nurture" argument, it's important to correctly frame the "nature" part.

How do you define "fat" and "obese?" How should government, for the purposes of health and food policy? How important is identifying obesity as a public health "problem?" Then there are questions about how Big Industry (Fashion, Food, the Exercise-Industrial Complex, etc) define "fat." Definitions generated by the discourse of the Patriarchy play a role as well.

And once again, consider this an open thread for recipes, especially those good for people who want to reduce or change their body's shape. Warning: I will delete comments that are inappropriately insensitive to people who don't conform to mainstream body shape standards. Consider this is a safe space for people of all body shapes to contribute.

Tristero recently caused a bona fide flame war at the normally staid and Serious Hullaballoo comment community, in those two posts about food. I didn't really find too much of what he said outrageous or stupid, and I respect the fact that he came right out and admits that he eats what he likes because it tastes good. I confess I didn't think the Hullaballoo community had it in them, way to sling that pizza across the lunchroom, kids!

I just wanted to make a couple remarks and see what others think, because I believe that food is a critically important topic in many political debates, from those on the environment, health care, racism and more.

From my perspective, it's beyond obvious that far too many Americans aren't eating well. I was shocked, moving to this Heartland community where I now live, by the contrast of people's shapes here, vs places like DC and Chicago. That is, people in flyoverland really run to fat, in my eyes. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but the 'beautiful body' culture of my previous environment is almost nowhere to be found here, except among the Greek set of the local big state university. And I suspect those young women are not unfamiliar with some unhealthy food habits like binging and the dangerous, speedy drugs that make crash dieting an easy task.

Anyway, I bet I could get most of you to agree that the problem isn't just a regional one, and that there are many areas in which the quality of our food and the habits people have consuming it could be improved. But as the comments at those two posts remind me, a lot of people seem to have the attitude of "You can take my daily Twinkie when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands." What can be done to change that?

Further, I guess I don't understand the idea that people like me are overly righteous food snobs. Do people really want to have diabetes and be obese? I can't believe that. I understand that not all people have good food choices, but I would hope that if they did, they'd make them, at least most of the time. I'd also think people would enjoy the benefits that come with "progressively produced" food, organics and locally grown, food free of synthetics and chemicals and suchlike. That kind of food really does taste better. And if food is about satisfaction, well...I guess I just don't get the resistance to that.

A friend of mine recently introduced me to a terrific restaurant in this area, after long months of my despairing of ever finding a place that compares to the upscale, "progressive" dining option I had when I lived in big cities. It's in a town that defines "podunk backwater." It serves locally produced, organically grown, reasonably priced, fucking outstanding tasty food. And it's doing really well as a business, apparently, even in this Depression we're having in this state. So I know there's 'a market' for better food. My question is: why are so many people resistant to good food and healthy eating habits, in favor of unfood horror found at fast food restaurants or the junk food aisle? Marketing? Ignorance? Addiction to unhealthy but "good" tasting things like corn syrup and trans fats?

Also: consider this a Saturday Morning open recipe thread, if you've got any. I'm always looking for new cooking ideas, especially now that "chef" is practically my 4th job.

It's a bust out, quite literally, supported by your bailout dollars:*

"Executives at Schwing said its primary lender, Wells Fargo & Co., began tightening terms a year ago, after its three-year loan agreement with the company expired. At the bank's urging, Schwing paid down its line of credit with the bank to $21 million from about $45 million. Then, about two months ago, Wells Fargo began "sweeping" Schwing's operating account of cash in an effort to reduce its revolving line of credit with the company. Schwing had a 20 year relationship with Wells Fargo.

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Since I've been working for two days on a post and it still sucks and doesn't say what I want and doesn't say it the way I want, I went looking for diversions and found the above headline which amused my inner 12-year-old. And then the article interested the more mature side of me. Because it is about a species changing its ways in order to survive:

"Behavioural flexibility coupled with altered environmental conditions, e.g. food scarcity, can trigger astonishing innovations in animal behaviour," concludes Siemers. This innovative behaviour is not an isolated case and is probably passed on from generation to generation.

Is it possible, in 21st-century America? Katharine Sharpe tried it. World's Fair Summarizes, with links.

Goldman Sachs and its ilk, who received billions in taxpayer money through TARP to keep them in business, have recently posted high quarterly profits. But what do the taxpayers get for our largesse? This is not a non-sequitur, as a post in naked capitalism today makes clear; and at least 6 House Democrats want to do something about the situation. That is the PROFIT act, which Mary Jo Kilroy (D-OH) and six others (Reps. Brad Sherman, John Boccieri, Betty Sutton, Jackie Speier, Marcia Fudge and Alan Grayson) introduced to little fanfare last week.

We are trying something new this year. Growing potatoes in barrels. Basically you get a barrel or large bucket, something kinda deep and with holes in the bottom for good drainage. Throw in 8 inches or so of rich dirt and/or compost, then plant your seed taters in that. Once the "green shoots" emerge you keep filling up around the potato plant stems as they grow, gradually filling up the barrel with compost. Apparently potatoes will form throughout the barrel along all the buried stems. Seems like a good way to make efficient use of space. Also allows you to bring the barrels in the greenhouse come fall to keep the new potatoes coming year round. If you are careful you can dig and eat potatoes without killing the plant. We, as they say, shall see.

You may have heard of Hueco Tanks. Hueco Tanks is one of Texas' newest State Parks -- and among its most famous, having been profiled in a number of magazines including Southern Living. Climbing magazine online has this quote and image:

In the 1980s, Hueco Tanks earned an international reputation as a top rock-climbing spot, especially during mild winter months. In addition, a growing number of school groups from El Paso and throughout West Texas find the park to be an outstanding outdoor classroom.

Because of graffiti and other past damage to some of Hueco Tanks’ invaluable archeological treasures and its fragile desert ecosystem, park users’ access to the park has been limited in recent years in accordance with a public use plan. Park visitors must watch a 20-minute TPWD video that explains the history of Hueco Tanks, the importance of conserving its natural and cultural resources, and defines the park’s self-guided and guided-only areas.

The site used to be one of the world's most popular, and remains among the premier, destinations for rock climbers. These days -- as people often do, in previous years

people abused Hueco Tanks -- the fragile desert watering place with its connections to the past has tighter access controls, and some of them come from the climbers themselves:

Via the AP, a California producer is cooperating with the FDA.

Federal regulators say consumers should avoid eating pistachios or foods made with the nuts until they can determine that they don't contain any nuts that Setton has recalled. The FDA on Monday also advised wholesalers, retailers, and operators of restaurants and food service establishments against selling or serving any pistachios or pistachio products until they can figure out whether they came from Setton.

No illnesses from consumers eating tainted pistachios have been reported.

The contamination was discovered by a Kraft manufacturer in Illinois, where workers doing routine testing found the bacteria in roasted pistachios about to go into trail mix. Officials traced the source back to the Terra Bella plant that supplied the nuts.

Pistachios are used in everything from ice cream to cake mixes, and the FDA believes more recalls are imminent.

Salmonella, the most common cause of food-borne illness, causes diarrhea, fever and cramping. Most people recover, but the infection can be life-threatening for children, the elderly and people with weakened immune systems.

Roasting is supposed to kill the bacteria in nuts. But problems can occur if the roasting is not done correctly or if roasted nuts are re-contaminated.

The good news is nobody's sick yet.

Nouriel Roubini may have to give up his Dr Doom crown.



Paul Krugman spoke recently at the 2009 Forum on the Future of Agriculture in Brussels, sponsored by the European Landowners' Organization and Syngenta. You can watch the video here, or read the transcript here [pdf].

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I'm only able to write part one tonight, more later.

Gosh, Obama pissed me off today ["clean" internet users: skim down to the end for the non-DFH related point to this post].Yes, that's not new, and no news to this blog. Ironically, he did so on one of those verboten issues that "stains" bloggers like me just by their very mention: he giggled at the idea, put forth by lots of 'reglar' folks at one of his outreach websites/media tools, that marijuana normalization is Serious. Worse, he slurred the online political community in the process, furthering the meme that all of us who write, speak, read and think about policy with online tools are Dirty Fucking Hippies and Hopheads. You know, not like Real Americans, such as the Two Wetsuits Good guy, or Senator Diapers 'n' Hookers.

I guess I don't write about pot policy more because to me, it's beyond obvious. Everything that our government does with respect to pot is ass-backwards. It's racist, expensive, wasteful, hypocritical, stupid, anti-environmental, supportive of terrorism, and a lost cause. I assume that all thinking people more or less agree with me, or at least admit that research, science, the history of policy, and the example of other nations, pro and con, back that up. It annoys me how many "progressives" and liberals remain silent, in this period in which we make all the mistakes of alcohol prohibition, but more seriously and at greater cost. But such is the price of being a Loyalist- no Serious Democrat speaks about legalization, ever, nor of any kind. We've spent a lot of time talking about Big Problems like why the "bailout" plans are a horror; I'm going to spend a little time talking about why Obama's remarks today are a smaller scale version, but big example of the same problem.

How many reasons can you come up with, which suggest and prove that marijuana normalization is the right and proper course for a civilized society? Never mind me, Glennzilla will be speaking on this topic at CATO on the 16th of April; I'll let him throw down hard data and numbers for me. But just tossing off, let's see what I can come up with:   Read more…

This should make Lambert's cold go away faster:

Courtesy of Harvard professor Niall Ferguson in Vanity Fair:

The motto “In God we trust” was added to the dollar bill in 1957. Since then its purchasing power, relative to the consumer price index, has declined by a staggering 87 percent.

I bet we could turn this economy around by replacing "God" with "FSM." Just sayin.

Go ahead and make all the jokes you want; Detroit is and likely will be an easy target. But I found this Craig's List ad quite interesting.

We've got two options when it comes to all the soon to be unused real estate and "development" in this country. We can leave it to rot, and thus makeover the nation in the image of Detroit in the 70s; or we can accept that what a friend calls 'the suburban-industrial complex' model of the economy isn't ever going to come back, and thus different approaches to development are required.

Big Blue has yet another post about the collapse of the Inland Empire, and I'm sure a review of housing and real estate blogs would show equally grim news for overdeveloped regions all over the country. The truth is, the economic situation we find ourselves in comes in large part from the mythology of the ever-expanding American realty bubble. We let deregulation go too far, and the banking industry took that myth and fucked our entire economy with it when it burst. But like a lot of us hippy crunchy types have been saying for a long time: cheap energy, cheap imported supplies, and cheap credit can't go on forever. That day is here.

I don't know much about this Detroit deal other than the fact that downtown really could use some smart development, and I like the way this sounds. It's time for all of us to take steps to make sure those with different approaches to development to be given their turn. I often imagine what could be done with the decaying, empty strip malls and shuttered big box stores that are popping up with increasing frequency where I live. But I'm also not so hopeful that state and local governments will act in time, and repurpose those properties before the decay makes them uninhabitable. Perhaps I'm wrong in that, and approaches like the one found in this link will become more common than I'd imagined.

I agree with PW. In all this 'confusion' about what can and should be done to save those poor, helpless bankers, too often is left out discussion about banks that still have money to lend, are solvent, and who are looking forward to a bright future.

The financial downturn has affected but not badly hurt Northeast, Kavalauskas said, because the credit union did not get involved with sub-prime mortgages or embark on “toxic” investments such as mortgage securities or credit default swaps that have crippled the financial system.

He said while locally chartered banks are doing well, “a lot of the big banks are getting out of the lending area.” This could provide a market opening for credit unions, which offer auto and home loans along with money market, certificate of deposit and retirement investment programs.

“We are aggressively adding funds to lend,” Kavalauskas said. Northeast is beefing up its member relations staffing to handle increased customer needs.

I'm getting really sick and tired of hearing about how "no one knows the solution" to the mess for-profit bankers have gotten us into. The success of many credit unions demonstrates that the solution is right there in front of our eyes. There are likely thousands of competent credit union fund managers and investors who could be called upon to reorganize the "bad" banks, but of course the TARP-loving Democrats won't appoint or elevate any of those people, as they aren't proper Villagers. The solution to the banking crisis is simple: regulation, nationalization of insolvent banks, and removing those who mismanged us to economic meltdown from their positions. This won't happen any time soon, mainly because for some time now, the new administration has been taking its financial cues, and checks, from the very people who've proven least able to do their jobs.

The self-publishing revolution continues. My comments on this are mostly snarky, and I can't claim to have followed its developments very closely. But right off the top of my head I feel compelled to remind everyone that Lambert allows "self-publishing" on this web site for people, for free. There's a nice little button over to your right if you'd like to show your appreciation for that. Secondly, I'm hip deep in some reading about the Reformation right now, and I'm reminded again of just how powerful "self-publishing" has been in history. For example, English language copies of the Bible were actually eventually banned by Henry VIII; the "reformation" king of England was in theological terms, pretty Catholic in all but allegiance to Rome, and was disturbed by all the sects and dangerous ideas rising up during the period in which he allowed translations to flourish. Turns out this was not a genie he, or anyone, could put back in the bottle. The rest, as we say, is history.

Here, let me piss off some fans of our Leader. From the now Kristol-free Grey Lady:

The bankruptcy solution would not cost taxpayers money, as would mortgage modification programs that could become part of the government's huge economic bailout package. But it certainly would harm the bottom line for lenders and investors holding mortgages.

Ya got that, chicklets? A no-cost solution that could help keep millions in their homes instead of tossing them on the streets. Sounds great, it even has support, and people willing to attach it to the stimulus bill. But...wait for it...guess who's too chickenshit to let such a win-win provision get added?

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the chief Senate sponsor of the bill, said Obama persuaded him in a White House meeting Friday to remove the bankruptcy proposal from an economic recovery package -- to ensure it doesn't jeopardize the stimulus bill. But Obama pledged his support for the bankruptcy solution, Durbin said.

Obama said he would work with Durbin to attach the proposal to other ''must pass'' legislation -- with the hope that supporters of the overall bill would not vote against it because of the bankruptcy provisions.

This snapshot will focus on wind, which I am most familiar with and where most of the action is currently happening anyway.

From the Jan. 15 edition of Electric Power Monthly, a publication of the Department of Energy, came the preceding pie chart showing combined "alternative" energy sources at 3.2% of total power generation as of Oct. 2008 (latest available data).   Read more…

From the Border Fence to Global warming to the annual baby-seal hunt, humanity's crimes against our planet are legion. But here is something I think everyone should see.

Posing as a Bidder, Utah Student Disrupts Government Auction of 150,000 Acres of Wilderness for Oil & Gas Drilling --

... While many environmental groups launched campaigns to oppose the sale of the land, one student in Salt Lake City attempted to block the sale by disrupting the auction itself. Twenty-seven-year-old Tim DeChristopher posed as a potential bidder and bid hundreds of thousands of dollars on parcels of the land, driving up prices and winning some 22,000 acres for himself, without any intention of paying for them.

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via Historiann: several Correntians have already written about the disproportionate impact the current economic apocalypse is having on women's jobs as compared to men's and how the economic stimulus proposals do little to address that. At the Center for Research for Women and Social Justice, a group of feminist historians who study the New Deal has issued an open letter to Obama asking that a New "New Deal" address those inequities:

FEMINIST HISTORIANS FOR A NEW NEW DEAL

Open Letter to President-elect Obama

December 18, 2008

Dear President-elect Obama,

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hat tip: calculated risk

Just a little reminder, because I've got the snow-covered 5b Blues, and missing my blooms: the Seed Exchange is coming soon. I've got zillions, and I hope at least a few intrepid garden bloggers are interested in doing some exchanging as I would like to. I've got a few links in my gardenblog bookmarks that do exchanges, but I'd like to at the very least tie into that with something a little more separate and Corrente-specific. So consider this a heads up post, and if you know any good exchanges, or have participated in them before, share your links and thoughts here. Here are some I left for the birds to eat.