Books, the Future, and So Forth

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This blog entry from Tim O'Reilly is worth reading. Here's the money quote:

As authors and publishers explore the new world of ebooks, we need to do more than just translate print books to an electronic screen. We have a future to invent! And the time is now.

Put me in mind of my (too long) series on the Age of E-Quarius, although O'Reilly is definitely more of a high-brow brainiac than I am.

So, Hey, Just Go Read This Stuff

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If I weren't so hellbent, obsessed, and otherwise focused on finishing this chapter, I'd come up with a response to the (mostly idiotic) "food" edition of last Sunday's New York Times magazine. Or I'd say something about this, this, or this (the last one  is a bit unnerving in its, um, nannystate-ism).

But . . . I am hellbent, obsessed, and otherwise focused on finishing this chapter. So I won't. Read the stuff for yourself and, I dunno, talk amongst yourselves.

For God's Sake, Give the Man A Chance

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Hey, I'm happy President Obama won the Nobel. But now the media-chattering begins and I vote for the following observation as the Most Inane of the Day. The New York Times notes the award and then says:

But while Mr. Obama has generated considerable good will overseas — his foreign counterparts are eager to meet with him, and polls show he is hugely popular around the world — many of his policy efforts have yet to bear fruit, or are only just beginning to do so.

Uh, hello? The guy's been president exactly (more or less) nine months. Human being take that long to form. Peace policies typically take years. If some of his efforts are already beginning to "bear fruit," well, I'd say that's amazing. Especially given that the previous president had eight years to fuck things up.

How Would You Like That Burger? Safe? Or Cheap? Part 3 of 3

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Part One     Part Two

Put another way: people who shop at Sam’s Club for “inexpensive” meat are saving nothing. They could buy fresh beef at their local grocery store and pay the same price. They only need to add the labor of shaping the meat into burgers.

But many Americans, maybe even most of us, don’t think that way. We’d rather shop for a “bargain,” even if that bargain is wrapped in expensive three-color printed cardboard and a lot of plastic. (I’m assuming the meat itself was shrink-wrapped in plastic before being placed in its cardboard container.) Cargill knows that Americans love bargains and that they love convenience. (“Look! Someone else has already shaped this meat into patties. Whew! I don’t have to do that job.”)

But Cargill also knows that Americans rarely want to pay the true price for convenience; that is, the price of labor and materials that make "convenience" possible. Still, that's what Americans want and so that's what Cargill provides: “convenient” meat at the same price as in the grocery store.

But the only way to do that --- I repeat: the ONLY WAY TO DO THAT --- is by cutting costs on the product. Where to cut the price? By cobbling together enough “ground beef” from whichever vendor will sell its wastes to Cargill. Put another way: When someone picks up a package of pre-formed hamburgers at Sam’s Club and looks at the price, do they honestly believe they’re getting high-quality meat? Any person with any kind of intelligence --- any kind of intelligence --- would have to know that packaged meat that costs the same as unpackage fresh meat isn’t the same meat.

My point is this: Cargill is selling what Americans want to buy. I am saddened by the story of what happened to this young woman. I don’t blame her for being angry. (*1)

Americans need to stop lying to themselves about their food. We want inexpensive food, but we don’t want to pay full price. It’s too easy to blame greedy corporate bastards and/or farmers and/of the government. Or all three. My guess is that if Americans actually started paying for high-quality, safe food, and the price of hamburger rose to its real price --- somewhere between $15 and $20 dollars a pound --- the screaming over that situation would drown out the moaning we’re hearing over this tale of woe in the New York Times.

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*1: It is a measure of both her youth and her anger that her response to what happened is, literally, “Why me?” (Her words, quoted in the news story.) The implication is that it would have been okay if it had happened to someone else.