- Some kid on the Web has stolen my nick (Mycropht) and it’s ridiculous how much it bothers me. I feel like at 38 I shouldn’t care about petty geek stuff. Then again I also feel like at 38 I’ve used this nick for so long that it should be durned clear to everyone that the name is freakin’ taken. I’ve had it for more than 25 years in computer circles. I came up with it for a good reason–a better reason than this. Granted, the origin is the same–Sherlock’s older, fatter, smarter brother–but the derivation and addition of the ‘ph’ is a heck of a lot more thought-out than “it isn’t an ‘f’”. Sad how I am bothered by this, isn’t it?
- I don’t blog as much as I used to, and I don’t read as many blogs as I used to. But I’m glad I read Aunt B. on a regular basis. She linked to an article about a dude and the Slow Food Movement which convinced me that even though I am unable to maintain a full-fledged garden at present I can still do some little pots of plants on my deck. I’m so excited at the prospect of planting something again that I can barely keep from bouncing up and down in my chair.
- Speaking of the Slow Food Movement–how much do I hate it?!? The general idea is okay, I suppose. For those of you who don’t know what it is, the super short version is that it is the idea that it’s better for the environment and economy if you grow your own stuff instead of importing it from around the world. Want a tomato? Grow it yourself. This saves the gas used to transport tomatoes from, say, Chile and also saves the Chilean workers the torment of picking tomatoes for nineteen cents a day. Where I think SFM goes off the rails–besides the name, which begs a poop joke–is that it is yet another of these Lefty Plays Po’ And Brags On ‘Emselves deals that is so freakin’ insufferable. I happen to think it is a good thing that we can enjoy tomatoes in November. Free Trade Ends Wars. Free Trade Builds Economies. Tomatoes Are Yummy. I mean, I do see the general upside of not burning the gas and not encouraging what we in this country would consider slave wages. But why is it that the wealthy seem to think it’s so cute to play poor? I’ve frankly spent a lot of years busting my hump to get to the place where I can afford November tomatoes. Until I got ill I did do a lot of my own gardening and it is not an inexpensive hobby, frankly. I get that you may feel guilty about having a little money. But don’t go around to the rest of the world demanding that they pay a penance for your guilty conscience. Just grow your food and shut up. Phew. I feel better.
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I will get run out of hippie liberalism for saying this, but I feel similarly about the global warming hysteria. It’s not that I don’t think it’s bad to dump a bunch of stuff into the atmosphere. And I truly believe we need to lower our dependence on fuel based on millions of years old dead things, because we will run out of that.
But we had to go through an industrial revolution to get from being a backwoods farming nation where families had to have 19 kids to insure one of them would get to adulthood to take over the family farm to being a place where, though we have some issues, most folks don’t have to drink from water other people have, upstream, pooped in (at least, not without amazing cleaning technologies).
And I am unsettled by the idea of us running around to countries where people are still drinking from what amount to open sewers and having a bunch of kids in hopes that one or two will see adulthood and not able to grow or buy the food they need and us telling those countries they need to curb their emissions, too.
Okay, then, what should they do instead? Do they not get to launch themselves into modernity? Or do they have to continue to drink poop so that you can feel good about saving the planet?
Whew. Sorry. Ending rant now.
Kat, aren’t you sort of confusing the Slow Food Movement and the Eat Local Challenge? I thought the Slow Food people were all about cooking your own food, to order, avoiding processed shortcuts, taking your time over the meal, doing all the time-consuming things “our ancestors” have always done, whatever those happen to be where/who you are. Whereas the Eat Local people say you should try to eat food that’s grown as close as possible to where you are. They overlap a lot, but their emphases are different; in theory, you could eat locally produced food at McDonald’s, and live the slow food life using lots of imports.
I personally have been influenced by both of those movements (well, not exactly — I was into slow food before there was such an organization — but I try to pay attention to both of those things). And I don’t think I’m playing poor, or making a statement, or haranguing anyone about it either. I’m just doing what tastes better to me and leads to greater emotional satisfaction for me. Yes, I’m lucky to be able to make some of those choices. Does that make me a hypocrite?
There are few things as evil as NiMBYs at the top of Maslow’s pyramid.
Speaking of the Slow Food Movement–how much do I hate it?!? The general idea is okay, I suppose.
This I don’t understand. If the general idea is “okay” (or maybe even something you somewhat agree with) then why hate it? I don’t understand being hostile towards a cause just because some other people take it further and more to the extreme than you do. I think PeTA takes animal rights to the extreme, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna walk around kicking puppies.
I’m not really going after you on this Kat. Just finished readying a lengthy thread on Earth Hour with a bunch of “well I think I care about the environment, but I don’t like environmentalists so I made sure to keep every light in and to of my house on for the whole hour” and it’s just frustrating to me. It really makes no sense. Doing things that we don’t want to do, that makes us go out of our way, and even things that have a measurable negative impact on us, just because it’s the opposite of what somebody we don’t like is doing. I don’t get it.
Slarti, huh?
I eat one tomato a week….
But do you cook it slowly?
Sorry, nm – I probably should have let that one go. it’s part of a greater thesis I’m developing that I haven’t totally worked out.
Mostly a stream of consciousness of semi-random things, like the fact that the student body of Ivy U has far more communists than that of City College, and what that tells us.
Or the fact that the two major political parties in the US are a party of elites arguing for the interests of the poor, and a party of working class (some would say rednecks) arguing the for interests of the rich. Weird.
Mostly, I get angry about things like the 2001 Stockholm Convention, at which many western environmentalists argued for the lifting of the exemption of the public health exemption on the ban of DDT (used in vector control of malaria).
As Amir Attaran said at the time, “”Environmentalists in rich, developed countries gain nothing from DDT, and thus small risks felt at home loom larger than health benefits for the poor tropics. More than 200 environmental groups, including Greenpeace, Physicians for Social Responsibility and the World Wildlife Fund, actively condemn DDT…”
BTW, don’t get me started on how Earth Hour resembled, almost to a T, a secular Ash Wednesday. Full of repentance and symbolic calls for austerity, and an outward sign of that commitment.
Anyway, if I am understanding correctly, Kat’s main objection seems to be to the sanctimony displayed byt the more , uh, enthusiastic adherents to these movements. Not the rank and file, mind you.
And if that’s the case, I agree. Having been guilty of obnoxious sanctimony far too many times myself, I know how off-putting it can be.
Well, I’ve taught at city community colleges and at some fairly elite schools and I wouldn’t agree with you much about the relative proportion of liberals communists there. But mostly I’m just wondering about NiMBY in the context of Slow Food.