Comments for desperate astronomy

Comment on Seven bands in three weeks by Stephen Byerley

Stephen Byerley — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:19:16 +0000

Julie’s right. I’d run out of blogging steam a bit by the time I got to the Josh Ritter paragraph, but I agree with everything Julie said. =)

Comment on Seven bands in three weeks by Julie

Julie — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 22:44:16 +0000

You describe the Josh Ritter show well, but somehow you don’t quite get across how MINDBLOWINGLY AMAZING it was. I’m still on a bit of a high from it two days later. To all you out there who like folk/rock/slightly-country-ish/slightly-blues-ish music, sometimes loud and rollicking, sometimes acoustic and intimate, with lyrics that are smart and dense and challenging and funny and heartbreaking and narrative and evocative, go listen to Josh Ritter. You won’t be disappointed. I’m kind of in love.

Comment on feverish wit by annie

annie — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 04:13:22 +0000

Dear god. You deserve a (gentle, loving) swipe upside the head for that. I hope Julie can deliver it for me!! :)

Hope you feel better soon.

Comment on Next time you eat a hamburger, consider the role of government by North

North — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:44:44 +0000

If you find a place that’s accessible for local meat - that butcher, or a farmer’s market, or even a farmer who’ll sell to you direct - you can always buy a chunk in advance and then freeze it. In Philly I was so spoiled that I didn’t even have to do that (the extra work involved to get good local meat was to call my girlfriend and ask her to bring some home from her job), but it’s what my parents do and what I’ve started doing now that I live in the Bay Area, where it’s a little harder than in Philly to find meat that suits my standards. You could try the local food guide for Western Mass or CT, or the CISA site. A lot of farmers will give you a discount if you buy, like, a quarter of a cow (and then split it with 3 friends, because that’s a lot of meat). I also tend to buy and store a lot of sausage. Anyway. Even if you still ate conventional meat when you’re away from home, this kind of thing would put a dent in your risk/impact.

Though yes, it’d be nice to have a competent regulatory agency for all this business.

Comment on Next time you eat a hamburger, consider the role of government by Slash

Slash — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 14:47:34 +0000

Stephen is absolutely right. “Shopping cart voting” is too time consuming. Though personally, I do try to support local business whenever possible simply because I make my living working for a small company and can understand where they’re coming from. It is hard to do the whole ‘local organic’ thing unless a convenient outlet is situated near your place of residence.

Whole Foods/Paycheck (I LOL’d hard @ that) is way too snobby for my tastes. It’s fitting for those who drive a hybrid car, while on an Iphone drinking Starbucks coffee with NPR blasting on the radio. *coughNicolecough* You would not catch me dead in that store just out of principle.

Just cook your beef longer, you’ll be fine…or don’t eat hamburger, its not very good for you anyway.

-Love, probably your only mildly conservative friend.

Comment on Next time you eat a hamburger, consider the role of government by Stephen Byerley

Stephen Byerley — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 05:06:28 +0000

There’s a Whole Foods(/Paycheck) in Hadley, which is on the way home, but not convenient-to-home. None in the Springfield area, I’ve looked. I’ve wanted to join a CSA ever since I learned about them a couple years ago, but we never know where we’ll be in the summer X months in advance when you have to sign up. It’s not like I live in a food wasteland, though that was somewhat more the case in suburban Hartford. I drive past a number of farmstands on my way from school to the interstate, and I buy from them when it works out, and during the summer there’s a farmer’s market not far from here. It’s too early in the morning for me, but Julie’s gone.

I guess ultimately what it comes down to is that you have to pick your battles. In principle, I’m totally in favor of food reform. I would vote with my shopping cart if it were easy (and I do to the extent that it is, I hope). I really admire the dedication of my food-activist friends, who do so much more than me, even though it isn’t at all easy. I don’t really have the spare cycles to keep the fridge stocked at all, let alone in a manner consistent with my ideals. Which, to bring this discussion full-circle, is why I really wish someone else (perhaps a federal agency paid for by my tax dollars) would keep the poop out of my ground beef.

Comment on Next time you eat a hamburger, consider the role of government by Mom

Mom — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:37:21 +0000

Andrew, you might see if there is a Whole Foods near you, or a Farmers’ Market, or a CSA you could join. Do this on a weekend, right *after* you’ve had a good meal.

Our situation is kind of like Rabi’s–we have a number of options, but not because we live in a big city, but because we live close enough to farms–and bunches of folks around here have decided that they want to help produce food sustainably. A new grocery store has opened up in the past year that specializes in local food–so when we found that our usual egg and chicken guy did not make it to Farmers’ Market this weekend, we were able to go to this other store and get eggs and chicken.

Michael Pollan thinks that government and certainly corporations are not going to move towards safety and sustainability unless pushed–and that what will push them will be a lot of people voting with their shopping carts. Kudos to Rabi for buying food the way she does because she can–hopefully her and our continuing to do so will eventually make it more possible for other people to have access to better food.

Comment on Next time you eat a hamburger, consider the role of government by rabi

rabi — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:30:39 +0000

(stringency, I mean. jeez.)

Comment on Next time you eat a hamburger, consider the role of government by rabi

rabi — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:54:38 +0000

right, I agree with you about the poop. to me that is just one relatively small part of the big picture of food system broken-ness, albeit one with the most immediate impact on personal safety. (but ultimately one with a tiny impact when you compare it to, say, the conditions endured by slaughterhouse workers, the environmental horrors caused by CAFOs, and the ridiculous carbon output associated with factory-farmed processed meat products. all of which should be better regulated.)

I think there are plenty of good reasons to feel like it’s difficult to eat within any particular set of principles, and most of them revolve around food access. For example, although my personal flesh-eating is so limited that I’m functionally a vegan in everyone’s eyes, it would be very easy for me to eat meat at every meal that was raised and slaughtered locally. my CSA is partnered with a farmer who raises pigs and cattle; the farmers market a few blocks from my house has lamb, turkey, goat, fish, pork, chicken, beef, and related meat products; even whole foods has labels, if not always local everything. BUT I have access to those things because I live in a city, because I have sought out a community of like-minded food activists, and because I have enough disposable income that I don’t government assistance to pay for my food. (and I don’t have to drive anywhere to go shopping.)

anyway, I do get it, I was just wondering about your perspective. hmm, I hope this doesn’t sound terrible — a big part of the stringentness of the guidelines I impose upon myself is due to my feeling that I have to compensate as much as possible for other people. so it’s not just that I’m eating in a way that would be sustainable if everyone did it; I’m trying to go beyond that because I feel like I have the time/energy/access to do what other people can’t or won’t do yet.

Comment on Next time you eat a hamburger, consider the role of government by Stephen Byerley

Stephen Byerley — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 05:46:14 +0000

My problem is that it’s not immediately obvious to me how to follow that edict and still maintain my lifestyle, where by “my lifestyle” I mean both eating a fair amount of meat (at least in part because I find my particular breed of hypoglycemia requires a protein-heavy diet) and not spending ten hours a week shopping for food. (It’s worth noting that while processed meat is a particularly troublesome case, the same issues apply to food generally.)

I’ll admit that I haven’t made any particular effort, but part of my point is that I don’t want to. A lot of my friends (you prominent among them, Rabi) seem to put a great deal of effort into eating locally and otherwise sustainably, and I applaud them for it…but while I enjoy eating, I consider it kind of a pain that I have to do it every three hours, and I don’t want to spend any extra time thinking about it.

So I guess my thing is, if I had the choice between meat that told me where it came from and meat of unknown provenance next to each other in the grocery store, I’d probably choose the meat of known provenance (although I also have budgetary limitations). But if I have to look online to find a local butcher, drive out of my way to get there, and they’re only open until 4 or 5…

Now, I’ll admit, as I was writing that I started thinking to myself, “you do sound a little pathetic.” So I googled “local meat” and my zip code, and found the website for a butcher with a store not far from me. Maybe I’ll try to check them out sometime soon. But they’re still in the opposite direction from the store where I buy most of my other food and sundries, and they’re only open ’til 7 at the latest. And if I need to go to another such place to get good-karma produce, and another for dairy, and another for toothpaste and shampoo, well, I spend too damn much time in the car as it is.

It’s hard to make this argument to someone who lives far more sustainably than me while simultaneously having a much hard job than I do without feeling a bit silly, I must admit.

Also, part of my thing is, I shouldn’t have to know where it came from to be confident that it doesn’t have poop in it. That’s what regulation is for.