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[JoshuaFH]

His TV show was great. It wasn't 'spend a day' it was 'spend a month'. And it wasn't him, usually, it was other people. Every season had one episode where he was part of it. Such as the 30 days on minimum wage, and 30 days working in a coal mine.

Anyway, I read an article recently called The Ubiquitous Matrix of Lies.

http://www.realitysandwich.com/ubiquitous_matrix_lies

It discusses the cheapening of the meanings of words. I was reminded of it in this thread, how Organic, All Natural, and Fat Free have become meaningless misdirections that people no longer care to notice.

That was a very nice essay... but ironically, I both understood it and barely understood it at all. It felt more like a very long, oddly arranged poem than an essay. So, sadly, I can see something as well written as that not making that large of a difference, since nothing in it really stuck out or moved me. Seems like he segwayed from topic to topic without any real effort to really pound the point home.

WAS quite depressing though.

I thought there was an awful lot of bloviating for a guy who's worried about words becoming meaningless.

Bloviating! That's the word I was looking for!

[Muz]

Heh, my girlfriend is doing her thesis on environmental stuff, and she says that the problem with growing your own crops in your backyard is that they'd suck up all the toxins from whatever city you live in. And ocean/river fish are very prone to absorbing toxins in their area. So the safest kind of fish would be the type from fish farms.. the "unorganic" type.

Sometimes there are things I didn't want to know.

[Zironic]

Duh. They wouldn't have as much as the genetically improved non-organic foods. It's pure logic. However, I would still tell you to drink milk that isn't produced by growth-hormoned cows, because that shit is in the milk and will slowly increase the growth rates of the population.

[Muz]

Ah.. so that's why milk makes you taller!

[Zironic]

Ah.. so that's why milk makes you taller!

AND STRONGER. It's too bad they stopped giving the rBGH to the cows.

[HAMMERMILL]

Eh, if anything the hormones in the milk would be estrogen-types and would just make your cup size go up.

That, along with beer, soymilk, tofu, beans and oilseeds with their high Phytoestrogen concentrations.

I think its the BGH stuff thats in beef that makes you roid-rage if you eat too much of it.

[chaoticag]

http://www.badscience.net/2009/08/check-me-out-i-bought-some-posh-chocolate-im-political/

Some company decided to challenge the studies, and this guy points out the problem in that company's logic.

[Leafsnail]

Man, I like that guy.  I got to see him live for free coz I live in Cambridge  .

[woose1]

http://orgprints.org/13728/

Wow, this is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo interesting...

[JoshuaFH]

Man, I like that guy.  I got to see him live for free coz I live in Cambridge  .

Why doesn't he pay for his own housing?

^*

[Leafsnail]

Yeah, that was pretty poor.  Anyway, it's because whenever an academic goes on tour they have to visit Cambridge.

By the way, he also appeared at another event I went to, but I probably can't mention it without derailing the thread.

[Vester]

Eh, if anything the hormones in the milk would be estrogen-types and would just make your cup size go up.

That, along with beer, soymilk, tofu, beans and oilseeds with their high Phytoestrogen concentrations.

I think its the BGH stuff thats in beef that makes you roid-rage if you eat too much of it.

Excess Estrogen does bad things to women (and men, I suppose. Scroll down to the cancer part). 

Where I'm from there isn't really a choice. Either everything you eat is soil-grown but subject to horrific pesticides, or you eat at McDonalds.

Well you could always go out into the forest and, I dunno, rummage for tubers, but then you'd probably get eaten by a snake.

[codezero]

Pretty crap report, the summary:
"We spent all our research money to conclude that our research isn't of a sufficient accuracy to assess the nutritional content of organic vs conventionally farmed food."

Something tells me the last thing the authors wanted was for this report to receive the press it did.

Also, because it's bothered me over the last couple of days.

Heh, my girlfriend is doing her thesis on environmental stuff, and she says that the problem with growing your own crops in your backyard is that they'd suck up all the toxins from whatever city you live in.

I don't see any problem at all.
1) What toxins does the plant soak up that the human body wouldn't process without the plant pre-processing it? And if there are any, there'd probably be toxins that it sucks up and makes safer. (eg carbon dioxide) .
2) People have been growing in their backyards since cities began, when did the toxins in a city peak to unsafe levels?
3) More plant growth and less reliance on shipping reduces the toxicity in a city.

[Aqizzar]

1) What toxins does the plant soak up that the human body wouldn't process without the plant pre-processing it? And if there are any, there'd probably be toxins that it sucks up and makes safer. (eg carbon dioxide) .

Lead, mercury, and arsenic are the main culprits here.  There's a reason you don't drink river water anymore, and ocean-caught fish are rarely sold in stores because farm fish pick up less mercury.

2) People have been growing in their backyards since cities began, when did the toxins in a city peak to unsafe levels?

First the 1960's before the Clean Air Act, then the 1980's onward after the EPA was gutted.

3) More plant growth and less reliance on shipping reduces the toxicity in a city.

Well, no, because food is a relatively small part of shipping (not by volume, but by weight), and things you can grow (vegetables mainly) are only a part of that.  More importantly, most of the toxins in your yard have nothing to do with exhaust - rather, it's stuff like acid rain, chemical fertilizers and treatments, mosquito poison, sewer seepage, and heavy metals.

[codezero]

Ahh yes, I was thinking about it from the view that the plant was sucking up toxins from the air that we apparently weren't. Didn't occur to me to gauge the soil, which might'nt be safe if you didn't know its recent history. But there's the option of buying the soil (mooting my shipping point admittedly), or preparing it by growing inedible shit on it for a while, and buffering it with trees.

It still seems obvious to me though that with a will you can grow cleaner vegies in a city than a huge monocultural farm can (or even an organic farm), standards are raised when quality is the only consideration, among growers of the same competence.

I've only just put a couple of vegies in now, so I don't think my words are gospel or anything.