« May 2006 | Main | July 2006 »

June 30, 2006

Tacky is as tacky does

BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » What goes around:


Now that TV is shrinking, it is getting tackier and tackier. See Master of Champions. This isn’t reality. It’s cheap beer.

Now that Jeffy has a job, he can finally drop that whole "cyber populist" act and start milking "citizen journalism" for all its worth. Not bad.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Posted by John at 7:52 AM |

June 29, 2006

I'll have the locally-raised vegan fish molecules, please

Veganism, foie gras and personal choice -- megnut.com:


I have been a vegetarian three times, the final most severe phase of which occurred from 1998-2002. During that stint I forsook all dairy products, all eggs, and all meat. I was almost vegan (AV) except that I couldn't give up fish and ate a four to five servings of it a week. This was not because I thought fish had less feelings than cows or pigs, I simply enjoyed fish too much to give it up.


Sorry, but if you're eating fish 4 or 5 times a week, YOU'RE NOT EVEN A VEGETARIAN, let alone anything remotely resembling a vegan.

I eat with eyes wide open, with the full knowledge that an animal was bred and slaughtered for my consumption. And I am OK with that.

Many people are fine with that, because it remains at that nice abstract level. Your only real contact with the meat is at the very end of the production chain, and I'm afraid reading Michael Pollan's book isn't an acceptable substitute. I've read Pollan's book as well, and what bothers me about it is that it is yet again, a cop-out for meat eaters. "How can we wring our hands about foie gras when we're still killing pigs and cows for food?" The underlying assumption, the one that makes it possible to maintain the argument, is that meat-eating is an unquestioned given, based on the pleasure trump card. It's not. Vegans want to see all the killing stop.

As for the compromise bit: yes, it is difficult to eat out all the time and be vegan. However, it's much easier if you eat at restaurants whose culture has a long vegetarian tradition: Indian, Thai, Japanese. Places where meat was never the centerpiece of the meal to begin with. You know, all those elitist countries. That being said, it is much harder to be a foodie and a vegan. I eat a much wider variety of foods now than I ever did as a carnivore, because once my focus shifted from "how can I decorate this lump of meat?" an entire new world of cooking opened up to me. But if the best you could do at home was a frozen Amy's vegan pizza, then you couldn't have been very interested in cooking to begin with.

And just one question: why won't Bourdain eat dog?

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Posted by John at 9:23 AM | | Comments (1)

June 21, 2006

Vox poopuli

Hey, I decide to stick with MT for this thing instead of moving to WP, and do I get a Vox invite for my troubles? Noooooooo. All them damn Kool Kidz is getting em. Perhaps I am just too old and cranky. On the other hand, I am not exactly prolific. moving to the seldom-seen third hand, I now hear that it's OK to not write all the time! Whoo! Man, do the same thing long enough and eventually everybody comes round to your side.

Technorati Tags: ,

Posted by John at 11:03 AM | | Comments (3)

More Like Lobster Misinformation

Accidental Hedonist - The Lobster Misdirection:

Recent information from Norwegian research has shown that Lobsters do not feel pain. Bob Bayer, who heads the Lobster Institute and is a University of Maine professor, has said that "They have no brain, he said. Therefore, they do not feel pain. It’s a judgment based on the anatomy of the nervous system. No brain (means) a lack of processing system".

As this Norwegian report has been around since a least Feburary of 2005, Whole Foods has most likely been aware of it. So what other motivation could they possibly have in discontinuing lobster sales?

More foodie justification. In the first place, this is one study out of Norway. Not a lot of corroboration.

Second, with regard to Mr. Bayer. He is indeed a professor at the University of Maine. However, rather than being the professor of marine biology you might expect to have authority in this area, he is a professor of nutrition and food science. Secondly, that Lobster Institute he's the director of? Here's its mission, from the Lobster Institute website:

Located at The University of Maine, the Lobster Institute is the only organization of it kind. It was founded jointly by Maine’s lobster industry associations and the University – and quickly spread to be an international presence. We now work for and with lobstermen and all sectors of the lobster industry from Long Island Sound to Newfoundland.

Gee, you think Mr Bayer might have a professional interest in promoting the idea that lobsters feel no pain?

I'm a broken record on this, but once more:

There is no humane way to kill an animal. It is a contradiction in terms: slaughtering it cannot be described as "compassionate" in any way. You can rationalize your desire for meat all you want, but given a choice, the animal would rather live, don't you think? So if you're going to eat dead flesh, despite the excellent environmental, health and economic reasons for not doing so, at least have the honesty to admit it without continually invoking this "humane slaughter" canard.


Technorati Tags: , , ,

Posted by John at 9:48 AM | | Comments (1)

June 20, 2006

And they still can't dance.

Scobleizer - Microsoft Geek Blogger » The screwing of the Long Tail:

When I spoke at Google's Zeitgeist conference last fall I heard all the CEOs and important people speaking of how they were going to make gigantic new profits: user generated content. What is User Generated Content? Well, when you blog. Or add photos to a photo sharing site. Or when you tag some info or Digg it. Or when you leave a comment on a forum. Or, post an ad to Craig's List.

People dislike it when you wipe the lipstick off their pig.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Posted by John at 9:51 AM |

June 9, 2006

He's a Rebel 2.0

ADT Live?

I've been trying to avoid participating in this year's Gnomedex for some time now, but a few days ago things became more difficult when Chris, Ponzi, Scoble, and Maryam called me from a joy ride in Maryam's new car. (Note: trolls should already be moving down to the comment section or, more wisely, clicking off to less elitest and more page-view oriented material elsewhere on the Net.) Ponzi in particular was not happy with my stance, which in short was that I didn't want to come to the show because I have a bad attitude.

Is there no end to this man's innovation? Now he's disintermediating high school cliques!

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Posted by John at 9:52 AM |

June 6, 2006

The remote local

Everything's local with Fed Ex -- megnut.com:

When Keller says we need to redefine local, he's admits he's talking only about the freshness/quality philosophy, and he acknowledges in the podcast that he's not talking about the environmental/moral issues. For someone who has the luxury of procuring the best ingredients, even if it means an overnight shipment of butter from Maine to Napa, it's easy to want to redefine local.

And redefine it he will. Sustainable, organic, local - all of these will be co-opted and diluted for foodie consumption to within an inch of their lives real soon. Slap another zero on that 100-mile diet, if not two. Sign up for a CSA, shop at a greenmarket, they're at least honest.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Posted by John at 7:02 PM |

June 4, 2006

Attention deficit

» Memo to Bill Gates | Steve Gillmor's InfoRouter | ZDNet.com

Head on over for the amusing spectacle of watching the flop sweat start to break out on Steve "Murrow" Gillmor's face as he tries a Hail Mary play out of the Winer playbook. Watch as Steve disintermediates cold calling. Maybe he should name it the Inattention Trust, or better yet, the Nobody Gives A Shit Trust.

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Posted by John at 9:40 AM |