From the glossy pages
Catching up on a bit of magazine reading and wanted to point out the lovely interview between Michael Pollan and Ruth Reichl in the June issue of Smithsonian. Here's a bit:
P: It's empowering, for them--for everyone. Food choices are something fundamental you can control about yourself: what you take into your body. When so many other things are out of control and your influence over climate change--all these much larger issues--it's very hard to see any results or any progress. But everybody can see progress around food. They see new markets rising, they see idealistic young people getting into farming. It's a very hopeful development in a not particularly hopeful time.
R: And it's something we all do. We've all been shouting for a long time, "You vote with your dollars." And it feels like when you shop in the right place, you shop in your community, you are personally having an impact.
P: And they see the impact because the markets are growing. There's this liveliness at the farmer's market and this sense of community, too. Which, of course, food has done for thousands of years.
R: But had not in America for quite a while. It had to be rediscovered.
Also, over at Alaska Dispatch I highlight a recent piece in The Economist about increased automation in the cockpit and the unexpected problems it presents. Here's a bit from what they had to say in the original column (entitled "Babbage") about the Asiana crash:
Babbage was recently shown a training report by a now-retired "standards captain" at United Airways, who had spent five years in Seoul instructing Asiana and Korean Air Lines crew. The account is not for squeamish passengers. The instructor describes how, when checking out even experienced crew, asking them to make a visual approach (ie, using basic head-up flying skills) for a landing "would strike fear into their hearts" -- so dependent had they become on the head-down operation of their automated equipment.
That explains how they flew the plane in to the ground - no one was paying attention. (Talk about definition of terrifying.)
Finally, very important piece in Orion about how breast cancer is such a popular cause in America but a cure remains out of reach. Most notably, we all need to way more careful about embracing the pink ribbon. A bit:
Even the American Cancer Society itself--whose board members, over the years, have held ties to the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, to drug companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, and to industries that produce carcinogenic products, such as the Sherwin-Williams Company (think paint stripper)--is not free from blame. With reported annual net assets of over $1.5 billion, the ACS "is more interested in accumulating wealth than saving lives," says the nation's leading charity watchdog, the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The ACS has a long history of obfuscating links between chemicals and cancer, according to an article in the International Journal of Health Services, and was conspicuously silent on California's Cosmetics Safety Act, which passed without the nonprofit's support in 2005. The Cancer Prevention Coalition says the ACS allocates under 0.1 percent of its annual budget to investigating environmental causes of cancer. Five radiologists have served as its president.
Also, this has nothing to do with any of the above but I have seen several previews for Gravity and decided my heart can not take watching that movie. Someone please tell me how it ends and then maybe I will endure it. :)
