Food Politics

Food! And nary a twinkie to be seen

Food politics is hard. Should you look for organic food? Try to eat things that are local and sustainable? Avoid GMOs? Survive on soylent? Move to Mongolia and become a subsistence herder? The more you look into them, the more these questions turn out to be complicated.

Here is a good piece, by Will Saletan at Slate on the immense global harm done by blanket opposition to genetically modified foods. And here is a piece, by Rachel Laudan in Jacobin, bemoaning food nostalgia. These two pieces, shared by people on facebook, follow a debate I’ve been observing online and in the real world about the locavore movement. Here is an excerpt from anti-local book “The Locavore’s Dilemma” by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroko Shimizu, dealing specifically with the environmental case for food miles, here is an appraisal of the book by Vancouver geographer Lenore Newman, here is a response to Newman by Desrochers, and here is more by Newman. What seems to be the case is that “food miles” is not a useful concept, but beyond that whether eating locally is at all good is complicated. If you haven’t had enough of the debate, grist has a whole goddamn symposium.

I will confess I am greatly predisposed to be against local, organic, anti-GMO movements a priori, which colours my judgment. For one, I think these movements are political moralizing by the well-to-do, and I think to make our lives better political moralizing should be curtailed as much as possible. For another, I hate the implied idea that you can consume your way to righteousness. Nevertheless, I am self-aware enough to realize that that’s a distinction between necessary and sufficient: consuming “right” does not make you a good person, but that doesn’t mean that all consumption choices are equally good to make.

But the choices in regard to food are all complicated and defy hard fast rules. As in all things, organic or not, local or not, etc. are best decided on a case by case basis. Local seems to be better for shrimp here in WA/BC (does not destroy mangrove forests), non-local for some but not all fruits and vegetables (takes less input energy to grow in warmer climate). On the other hand, you’re not going to research every piece of (gross) kale or (fantastically delicious) rocket for an hour before buying it. So perhaps, as James McWilliams says at the grist symposium, a truce between the sides in food politics is in order.

And yet, few things rile up our comfortable discussions as much as food politics. Among this blog’s small but excellent readership (“always outnumbered, never outgunned. Except when talking about actual guns, I guess”), there are people on opposite sides of the food politics debate who have described their opponents’ views to me not just as in error, but as “evil”. For an issue where the truth is so un-clear-cut, that seems crazy to me. I don’t want to use the lack of black and white to paint everything a uniform grey, however. Here are three things that, as far as I can tell, are hard fast rules about environmental friendliness and food, and make the largest difference you can make as a consumer:

1. It is good to eat less meat. Nathanael Johnson at grist lays it out for you if you don’t see why.

2. It is good to minimize the amount of driving you do to get food. (The statistics cited in “The Locavore’s Dilemma” about how much of a food’s carbon footprint comes from the consumer going to buy it at the store are telling)

3. Don’t buy food and then throw it out. Food waste is the largest contribution to the carbon footprint of food that we have control over as consumers

But to that I want to add another point:

4. Don’t be so damn moralistic about the food choices of others.

Iran Nuclear Deal Thoughts

The Iran deal was announced today, and your opinion of the deal, should, I think, depend on how likely you thought Iran was, prior to deal, to develop and use nuclear weapons. If you thought Iranian nukes were an apocalyptic scenario, the Iranian nuclear program is likely to be slowed down significantly by the deal, so you should be happy. However, if you didn’t think the Iranian nuclear program was an apocalyptic scenario, the world gave up a faster nuclear timeline for a much richer Iran that can and will act negatively in the world (I would guess highly increasing assistance to Hezbollah, Hamas and Bashar Assad). Since I didn’t think Iran going nuclear was apocalyptic, I think the fact of the Iran deal is bad.

Well, it’s not that clearcut, I suppose. I think the Iran deal is good for Iranian people, of whom there are a lot, so that’s not nothing. The things that I think are bad about the deal are consequences of Iran becoming a richer country while still retaining the Iranian government. The thing is, the Iranian negotiators were not going to agree to stop being the Iranian government as part of the nuclear negotiations. So I think “holding out for a better deal” was never an option. Whether it was possible to retain the sanctions regime further I don’t know: Peter Beinart’s article on the deal hints (via quotes from Europeans) that it would have been hard. So maybe the deal is really the least bad thing that could happen.

Oddly I think pretty much the reverse is true in terms of who likes the deal and who doesn’t from my argument above. And I don’t really see why. My first guess is that basically most of the people who claimed to view Iranian nukes apocalyptically actually don’t, and this claim was a shorthand for “we want to be tough on Iran”. Which, if that was their strategy, I think backfired immensely. As for the people who were not super scared of Iranian nukes but are pro-deal, maybe they are more optimistic about the effect the deal will have on Iran than I am. Jeffrey Goldberg’s article on the deal seems to imply this.

Or maybe I’m just misunderstanding completely. Thoughts? Opinions? Zuuko?

Please Assume I Don’t Know Things, But Believe Me If I Say I Do

I’ve been noticing that lately in arguments I have in real life and on the internet, I am less and less in a position of trying to find out the truth, and more and more in the position of trying to defend a side. This is making me unhappy for two reasons. Firstly, because it makes arguments a lot less informative and a lot less enjoyable. I used to love talking about politics. That seems crazy to me now. Secondly, because I think it might be a sign of getting old. Although I know plenty of people who are younger than me and less willing to change their positions, I think this transition in individual people is, like the increased difficulty I am feeling with picking up new languages, something that comes on with age.

Anyway, I am looking for ways to combat this tendency, and so I have been reading Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “How to Actually Change Your Mind“. It’s a mixed bag in some respects, mostly in that I don’t know if reading it is actually going to help me get better at changing my mind. But then again, that’s simply a difficult task to achieve for a book. Anyway, the book is a part of a vast wiki, and looking through it I accidentally found a very simple and succinct answer to my earlier meandering questions about Occam’s Razor. Apparently, the explanation for why we use Occam’s Razor is so obvious that it’s hardly even worth saying. It stems from the result in logic that P(A ∩ B) ≤ P(A) (probability of both A and B is always less than or equal to the probability of A). Thus any additional assumption makes a hypothesis less likely. And there’s even a formalized solution to how to test potential hypotheses based on this called Solomonoff Induction. I know a lot of people who have degrees in math or computer science. I know even more people who have taken some formal logic courses. Presumably the fact that Occam’s Razor was based on a simple law of logic was obvious to them. And some of them read this blog. And yet, nobody told me of this blindingly simple explanation. because they think – hey, zolltan’s pretty smart, he probably knows, or can come up with something that obvious. Well I didn’t.

But that’s not even the worst example (and this is embarrassing to admit). I managed to get a Ph.D. in physics without really being able to visualize Maxwell’s equations. I ended up learning them as rules, basically. And when I realized (some time last year) how intuitive they were to visualize – that they are pictures of electric fields and magnetic fields, it was a complete epiphany. For example the differential form of Gauus’ Law:

is just the statement that whenever you have a bump in an electric field map, it’s because there’s a charge there. And again, this is so obvious it’s completely embarrassing that there was a time when I was studying physics and didn’t get it. And yet I didn’t.

And I wish somebody had told me. Not because I didn’t like realizing it on my own – I liked it a lot. If someone had told me, I would not have had that pleasure of epiphany. But, for example, not being able to visualize Maxwell’s Equations made me really bad at electromagnetism. I fear that there are many things that people take for granted that I would know how to think about because they’re simple, but I don’t and what if I never learn at all? What if I’m like Blind Willie Witherspoon, playing an umbrella for 30 years? As Blind Willie says in the best part of the clip – that’s cut off – “That’s not funny.”

So tell me things even if you think I might know them already. On the other hand, maybe you shouldn’t, because a lot of people greatly dislike being told things they already know better than the person telling them. There’s a term called “mansplaining” and it’s one of the terms of social justice discourse that frustrates me a lot. But the idea originated from Rebecca Solnit’s essay “Men Explain Things to Me”, where when she told a man that she’d written a book about Eadweard Muybridge, he started expounding on how that was all well and good, but she should check out this very important book on Muybridge, that he then went on to describe to her … which of course was the book Solnit herself had written. Obviously, it’s frustrating if your knowledge of things you are very knowledgeable about is completely dismissed. But its reverse, if knowledge you don’t have is assumed, is also bad.

Luckily, I’m a man, so you don’t have to fear that you’re gonna be mansplaining things to me. Okay, let me not be flippant. Let me instead say that the way I would like to be treated is for a person talking to me to assume a low amount of knowledge but a high amount of understanding – but to adjust quickly. Like if you’re telling me something I already know, I think I should be fine to interrupt you with “okay, I already know that, go on” and you should trust me. Of course that might mean I might stop you mid-sentence. But that gets us into a slightly different, albeit related, issue about communication differences among the sexes…

Northern Elegy № 6

(A. Akhmatova)

Последний ключ – холодный ключ забвенья.
Он слаще всех жар сердца утолит.
–Пушкин

There are three stages of remembering.
And first – as if it was the day before
The soul resides beneath their blessed vault
The body feels the pleasure of their shadow
The laughter’s not died down, the tears flow on
The inkstain hasn’t been wiped off the table
And like an imprint on the heart, a kiss
The parting kiss, the unforgettable, the only.

But this can only last a little while.
Already it’s no vault above the head
But a lone house in some forgotten suburb
Where winter’s cold and summer is too hot
With dust on everything, and spiders.
Where fiery letters are already embers
Where secretly the portraits change their faces
Where people go as if to visit gravestones
And coming back, wash off their hands with soap
And wipe a little swiftly running tear
From tired eyes. And sigh a heavy sigh.
But clocks tick on and spring arrives
One spring after another, and the sky
Turns pink, the cities change their appellations
Events have no more witnesses and there
Are none to cry with or to reminisce.
And slowly then the shadows leave us
Shadows that we no longer call out to.
And whose return would cause us to be frightened.
And once, we wake and see that we’ve forgotten
Even the way to reach that lonely house
And breathless, then, with shame and indignation
We run there, but (as happens in a dream)
There all is different: people, things, and walls
And no one knows us there – we are strangers.
We wound up at the wrong place… God!
And that is when the bitterest time arrives
We realize that we would not contain
That past within the borders of our life
That it is nearly as alien to us
As it is to the man who lives next door.
That those who died – we wouldn’t recognize them
And those who parted from us through the will of God
Got along fine without us – and it’s even
All for the best.

On Tanking, Part II: Tanking Might Not Even Work

Previously, we discussed that tanking was happening, and that it shouldn’t be. I was going to lay out the different ways tanking could be curtailed in a continuation of this set of posts. Sadly, I was scooped on this by Down Goes Brown, even though I said I was going to talk about it in a previous post! How rude. It’s like he didn’t even read it. Other people who didn’t read part I include some people in this blog’s meagre readership. I was told that I should stop making really long posts about hockey because they are boring and make me look unprofessional. So I’m not going to talk about the ways of stopping tanking. DGB is a better writer and knows more about hockey. Although he is semi-constrained in the above piece by realism, and it’s also true that DGB is in my view inordinately excited about hockey-peripheral things like the trade deadline, free agent day and the draft. These things are exciting to hockey journalists, but it seems to me that they’re not actually all that exciting for people who are not hockey journalists. So if I had written about it, I’d be more for things like eliminating the draft entirely, having a limited free-agent signing session before the draft, ranking draft order by points at the trade deadline to partially eliminate rental trades, etc. than he is. Oh well.

Instead, I want to address the people that will surely encourage the Canucks to tank next year. The Canucks got eliminated in a highly frustrating fashion this week. I luckily only saw part of the 2nd period, or else I’d be sadder. But the Canucks exit will surely tempt those (like Canucks Army writers) who favour tanking to lament that they wasted this year by getting eliminated in the first round rather than try to get the best possible pick by sucking a lot. And try to get them to rebuild next year. But it’s not that simple.

The case for tanking is the graph I alluded to in the previous post: Corey Pronman charting what happened to the point totals of the best and worst teams over several years. It seems to show the worst teams becoming the best. But is that graph at all representative of what usually happens? I decided to pick another time slice at random and re-do it to check. The result is graphed above. From the dataset I picked, it appears that the worst teams stay bad, and the key to future success is actually to be a relatively mediocre “bubble” team. I’m not going to go around telling you that that’s actually true and the Canucks are destined for greatness. No, what it means is that the conclusion that “tanking works” is strongly dataset dependent, which means it’s very weak. Tanking is not highly predictive of future success. I suppose you could make the same point much more easily by looking at the recent drafting history of the Edmonton Oilers. But that tends to get deflected with “lol, Oilers” – which is fair. That’s insufficient to explain what we see in the above graph.

So I say, good job to the Aquilinis and Benning for not tanking. The future effects of tanking are hard to define. Whereas the effects on the present are easy to see: a really unpleasant time for the fans and everyone else involved. That doesn’t seem like a good bargain to me.

Advice on Buying a Car in the US and Importing it into Canada

When we started this blog years ago, we had hopes that it would be useful to somebody as well as entertaining for ourselves. It has been entertaining for me, but I don’t think I really wrote anything that would be of use to other people. So it’s time to remedy that. Here is some advice in case you are living in the US temporarily and will move back to Canada. You may be tempted to buy a car in the US, thinking that you can then take it with you to back to Canada when you move back. Advice: don’t do that.

Songbook of Days: UN English Language Day I

Today, the anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, is also UN English Language Day. To celebrate, I wanted to link to songs by some songwriters where I appreciate the use of the English language. But there are a lot of such songs. So I will start with non-hiphop, and then move on.

Leonard Cohen – he can be sentimental and romantic, and I think that’s what his songs are most known for. But he can also be absolutely brutal. Or he can be both at once. Or he can sound like a prophet, like on “Story of Isaac”. I was once asked who I, as a Canadian, am most proud to have as a countryman, and I said Leonard Cohen*. I don’t know if I would still make that choice if someone asked, but probably. Chelsea Hotel №2 · Sisters of Mercy · I Left a Woman Waiting · Johnny Cash – Bird on a Wire

Bill Callahan – whether under his own name or as Smog, Bill Callahan is always recognizable. I admire his earnestness and the beauty of his metaphors. When you are young and feeling full of emotion and possibility and huge sadness, teenage spaceship captures that feeling more than anything else. Teenage Spaceship · Devotion · Sycamore

Joanna Newsom – rather than having a whole song’s worth of coherent lyrics, Joanna Newsom goes for a more hiphop-like approach of trying for beautiful turns of phrase many times in each song. Sometimes it feels like she just throws everything she can at the wall just to see what sticks. It only works a portion of the time. But when it works, man, it really works. Does Not Suffice · In California · Good Intentions Paving Company

John Darnielle – what makes John Darnielle more than just your run of the mill indie songwriter is that what interests John Darnielle isn’t what would strike people as “cool”. Mountain Goats songs are countercultural in the best sense – it’s the nature in West Texas, it’s biblical verses, it’s pro wrestling, it’s a ward for troubled teens, it’s divorce, it’s street performers in Tallahassee. That makes them endlessly interesting. Oceanographer’s Choice · The Legend of Chavo Guerrero · The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton · Genesis 3:23

Tom Waits – he’s the chronicler of all America’s weirdnesses and weirdoes. A lot of his songs seem funny at first, and then turn out to be heartfelt and tender and incredibly sad (even if they still remain funny, like for example The Piano Has Been Drinking). And some of them are clearly incredibly sad right away. There is nobody else like him at all. Swordfishtrombone · Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis · You Can Never Hold Back Spring · Solomon Burke – Diamond in Your Mind

Jarvis Cocker – there is no one better at chronicling people’s relationships and pushing the boundaries of sleaziness, creepiness, desperation, even cruelty sometimes. It is easy to always try to be likeable. It isn’t easy to both sing in the character of death trying to seduce with “you have such a beautiful body/you’d make such a beautiful body” and to explain to a girl why you slept with her sister. I’m glad Pulp chose the latter route. Common People · Dishes · Disco 2000 · Lipgloss

Randy Newman – I like him primarily as a songwriter, because his voice is kind of annoying, and also because presumably having the songs be picked by other people helps restrain some of his excessive tendencies. Still, there are songs that he sings himself that are so sarcastic and biting that I can’t imagine that anyone else can sing them. I don’t think another song as devastating as “God’s Song” has been written. God’s Song · Nina Simone – Baltimore · Flamin Groovies – Have You Seen My Baby · Harry Nilsson – Sail Away

Stuart Murdoch – Belle and Sebastian songs are full of clever, funny lines that seem to be taken out of a really interesting story: “Lisa learned a lot from putting on a blindfold / when she knew she had been bad / she met another blind kid at a fancy dress / it was the best sex she ever had.” So you think, wouldn’t it be great if Murdoch expanded from that into a book or a movie. But then he did and it wasn’t that great. His songs work best as very specific still frames, letting you think there’s more to the story. I Fought in a War · Lazy Line Painter Jane · The State I Am In · The Boy with the Arab Strap

Alex Turner – the person carrying on Jarvis Cocker’s tradition of making brilliant pop songs which you sing along to, and then suddenly wonder at yourself singing something so cruel or desperate or just plain creepy. His lyrics are a little bit uneven sometimes, but on the other hand, I like the music and the delivery a lot, too, which isn’t the case for some of these choices. Cornerstone · Love is a Laserquest · When the Sun Goes Down · The Last Shadow Puppets – My Mistakes Were Made For You

Suggestions? What are your favourite uses of the English language in songs?

*Incidentally, her choice as a Dutchwoman – Herman van Veen – sings a beautiful Dutch version of Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne.