Corn: The Omnivores Dilemma

The Omnivore's Dilemma: a natural history of four meals

Author: Michael Pollan

I read this book a few years ago but recently discovered Michael Pollan has been making a lot of noise in the world of food and decided to re-read this book. My opinion regarding the politics of the agriculture industry and US food culture cannot possibly fit into one post on this blog so I’ll focus on this quote, which examines the role of the agriculture industry in our complex economic system.

"The free market has never worked in agriculture and it never will. The economics of a family farm are very different than a firm's: When prices fall, the firm can lay off people, idle factories, and make fewer widgets. Eventually the market finds a new balance between supply and demand. But the demand for food isn't elastic; people don't eat more just because food is cheap. And laying off farmers doesn't help to reduce supply. You can fire me, but you can't fire my land, because some other farmer who needs more cash flow or thinks he's more efficient than I am will come in and farm it. Even if I go out of business this land will keep producing corn."

The quote specifically raises questions about the US’s increasing dependence on corn and the subsequent subsidies and incentives to keep corn booming. As the age old saying goes; you are what you eat. And I think it’s wise to look at what we eat and where it comes from.

Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and, provided you know the chemical names it travels under, corn is what you will find. For modified or unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for the caramel color and xanthan gum, read: corn.

Growing digital space and data centers: The Economist

The Economist

October 27th, 2012

A recent article in the Economist encouraged me to clip this sound byte:

The amount of data being generated is growing at an eye-popping pace: IBM estimates that 2.5 quintillion bytes are being created every day and that 90% of the world’s stock of data is less than two years old.

The article focuses on the implicit growth of data storage as the internet grows. The fact that 90% of the world's stock of data is less than two years old is truly mindblowing. I hesitate to state that it shows the exponential of growth of the internet because that would mean we're already reached a crescendo but perhaps growth will slow and stabilize. 

I think it's easy to think about the internet as not actually existing in physical space, but every bit of data that we save on the "cloud" of the internet is stored somewhere...including this blog. 

Afterlife: The World As I See It

The World As I See It

Author: Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein is known for his profound scientific theories, though his theories tend to require a high level of knowledge pertaining to physics and mathematics and remain inaccessible to the majority of people. In fact, I recently tried reading a copy of his book “Relativity: The Special and General Theory” and found it nearly impossible for me to digest so quickly switched over to “The World As I See It”, a collection of essays and writings encompassing a variety of subjects. I was surprised at the variety of subjects in the book and it’s nice to see writings outside of disciplines regularly associated with Einstein.

Religion can be a touchy subject so I’ll let this quote speak for itself:

I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the type of which we are conscious in ourselves. An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, nor do I wish it otherwise; such notions are for the fears or absurd egoism of feeble souls. Enough for me the mystery of the eternity of life, and the inkling of the marvellous structure of reality, together with the single-hearted endeavour to comprehend a portion, be it never so tiny, of the reason that manifests itself in nature.

What is a sport?: Those Guys Have All the Fun

Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN
Authors: James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales

Those Guys Have All The Fun is an interesting book and not just for sports fans, though it certainly doesn't hurt if you are one. The book chronicles the rise of ESPN in a unique format, relying on lengthy quotes and narratives. The book provides interesting insights on cable network developments, the effects of increased media outlets(internet, smartphones) and the increasing integration of sports into America's culture.

I'm a huge fan of sports though I'm not such a huge fan of exhaustive media coverage(e.g. ESPN). However, the book provided an interesting passage regarding what qualifies as a sport:

My biggest complaint was that I’ve never believed golf is a sport. It’s more of a skill, in the same fashion as archery. And we used to have these wonderful debates back in SportsCentury about it. I think a sport involves either cardiovascular abilities or defense, one or the other, but generally both. Golf has neither.

The definition of a sport has been debated and defined but I really like the components of cardiovascular abilities and defense. However, under this definition chess would qualify, and I'm not sure that is quite a sport though we would certainly be arguing semantics. Throughout time and across cultures it seems sports, hobbies and games have intersected and the line has blurred. In the end I'm satisfied with any definition that includes competition, as that is one of the major aspects that I enjoy. 

Taste buds: What the Dog Saw

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Malcom Gladwell released a book that is a collection of articles from his tenure at the magazine, The New Yorker. The articles are generally very interesting and Gladwell’s habit of dissecting seemingly random, though influential people/ideas, is aptly represented in the collection. In one article he talks about the evolution(or lack of) of ketchup. He describes the science behind the ingredients of ketchup and mentions a few interesting facts.

There are five known fundamental tastes in the human palate: salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami. Umami* is the proteiny, full-bodied taste of chicken soup, or cured meat, or fish stock, or aged cheese, or mother’s milk, or soy sauce…

*MSG (an amino-acid salt that is pure umami),

Small children tend to be neophobic: once they hit two or three, they shrink from new tastes. That makes sense, evolutionarily, because through much of human history that is the age at which children would have first begun to gather and forage for themselves, and those who strayed from what was known and trusted would never have survived.

I think that most people would be able to name four of the five tastes but umami may be absent from the common persons lexicon. I’m sure we would all agree that the taste of meet was a unique and desirable taste but I’m not sure they taught this when I was in elementary school.

It’s also interesting to look at children’s reduced preference for a variety of food tastes after two or three. This really makes a lot of sense to me as I’ve lived all over the world and some countries local food is almost repugnant to me but the locals lap it up. It seems to be whatever you are raised on and I’ve certainly seen this reflected in the cuisine of various cultures (Nigerian’s preference for palm oil and Spanish preference for olive oil)

CIA ‘Agents’: How to Get Away with Murder in America

How to Get Away with Murder in America: Drug Lords, DirtyPols, Obsessed Cops, and the Quiet Man Who Became the CIA’s Master Killer

Author: Evan Wright

An informative, depressive and certainly disturbing, look at corruption and drug lords in America during the late 20^th century. Though Evan Wright’s investigative journalism is well researched and offers a good look at the relationship between the CIA, local cops, politicians and drug lords, one random passage stuck out to me.

(The CIA calls its full-time employees officers, not agents, as they’re known in movies; an “agent” refers to an outside asset recruited for a specific job.)

Yet another example of Hollywood ignoring industry terms and using a “sexier” vocabulary in movies.

This book is an excellent book if you’re interested in modern crime, the drug trade and corruption. It includes a very incriminating bit on the oft parodied and once prominent former State Attorney of Florida and Attorney General Janet Reno. 

What lies beneath: Confessions of an Economic Hitman

Confessions of an Economic Hitman

John Perkins

An excellent book written by an economic “hitman” during the late 20^th century, John Perkins does a wonderful job of mixing a first-hand professional and personal account of economic policy and planning in developing countries. The book rides a fine line between conspiracy and anecdotal experience but many of his stories provide evidence that is difficult to ignore. The story of economic policies created to encourage debt, dependency on corporations and suppress developing countries is as provocative as it is shocking. As the world becomes increasingly globalized, it’s important to look at how we got here.

Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice. This system, however, is fueled by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.

When men and women are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupting motivator. When we equate the gluttonous consumption of the earth's resources with a status approaching sainthood, when we teach our children to emulate people who live unbalanced lives, and when we define huge sections of the population as subservient to an elite minority, we ask for trouble. And we get it.

We need a revolution in our approach to education, to empower ourselves and our children to think, to question, and to dare to act. You can set an example. Be a teacher and a student; inspire everyone around you through your example.

We must hear the wisdom of the prophecies, open our hearts and minds to the possibilities, become conscious, and then take action.

Nigerian Proverbs: Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart

Author: Chinua Achebe

The seminal Nigerian novel, Things Fall Apart, is a powerful story following the protagonist Okonkwo during his life in a small Nigerian village during the late 19th and early 20th century. The story excellently highlights pre-colonial aspects of Nigerian rural life, specifically the Igbo culture in Southeast Nigeria where this story takes place. Scattered throughout the narrative are various Nigerian proverbs.  

Ibo say: “When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.”

This proverb especially hit home for me when I was living in a village in rural Nigeria with no electricity. The phases of the moon become so much more distinct and integrated in your nightly life when living without artificial light. Granted there wasn’t the total absence of light, people had flashlights, kerosene lamps and a lucky few had generators. But these devices cost money to operate so no one kept them on into the depths of the night and only used them sparingly. When the moon was full I always enjoyed the ability to walk around the village without a flashlight, the increased light seemingly urging all to explore the unknown of the night.

“As our people say, ‘When mother-cow is chewing grass its young ones watch its mouth.’ Maduka has been watching your mouth.”

Sometimes I think that humans believe we make rational decision, based on the complex operation of observation and critical thinking. But sometimes I think we forget the importance of simple emulation and also forget that sometimes we are emulating and while other times we are emulated.

But as the dog said, ‘If I fall down for you and you fall down for me, it is play’.

A strikingly clear proverb and interestingly enough, this could be something said between two dogs or between a dog and a human(and as it alludes to, human to human). The relationship humans have with dogs and some dogs(especially puppies) lack of understanding when “playing” becomes “aggression” makes this proverb easy to understand. 

Rat's in Experment for Survival: The Art of Choosing

The Art of Choosing
Author: Sheena Iyengar

This book has a nice mix of anecdotal and scientific evidence regarding how we make choices. Iyengar touches on cultural differences, individual psychology and marketing schemes. She gives this example of an experiment conducted in the 1950s.

When psychobiology researchers in 1957 put rats in individual jars of water to see how long they would swim before drowning, rats of similar strength swam surprisingly different time spans. Some sank almost immediately; others swam an average of 60 hours. In a follow-up, researchers put the rats in the water jars, let them “wriggle free,” caged them and immersed them, over and over. Put in the water for the last time, the rats all swam to exhaustion, averaging 60 hours. None gave up instantly. It seems they had learned that escape was possible, and they chose to live as long as they could.

Now that is a pretty intense experiment. 

Deep thoughts in 6th Century BC: Cosmos

Cosmos
Author: Carl Sagan 

While there are a thousands of interesting points in the dense yet provacative "Cosmos", one of the more interesting notes occurs as a footnote. 

The sixth century B.C. was a time of remarkable intellectual and spiritual ferment across the planet. Not only was it the time of Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras and others in Ionia, but also the time of the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho who caused Africa to be circumnavigated, of Zoroaster in Persia, Confucius and Lao-tse in China, the Jewish prophets in Israel, Egypt and Babylon, and Gautama Buddha in India. It is hard to think these activities altogether unrelated.

That's certainly a lot of great thinkers and apparently this guy has created a website dedicated to this very passage and it saves me a lot of breath. This footnote was borne out of a story Sagan tells about the development of the Pythagorean theorem and the importance it played in the development of modern science. He notes this kind of fraternity of 6th century BC thinkers...kind of like a collective conscious enlightenment period .  

Revolutionize yourself: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
Author: John Maynard Keynes

John Maynard Keynes is a renowned and respected economist who wrote extensively on economic development during the early 20th century. This was a very interesting time in the world as the post-industrialized society was busy globalizing and expanding. Economics theories had been developing since Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and economic theory during Keyne's era was growing complicated with the rise of communist economic theory.

Although I find Keynes book interesting and certainly influential, one of the things that caught my eye the most was one of his comments in the preface of the book:

The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones...

I find this statement to be extremely relevant with all types of innovation and changes; from personal development to economic policy. 

Artist's role: Another Roadside Attraction

Another Roadside Attraction
Author: Tom Robbins

One of my favorite fiction authors is Tom Robbins. He writes with a unique style and mixes ridiculous tales with relevant allegories often narrated by absurd, personable and unique characters. In his first novel, Another Roadside Attraction, Robbins drops this line of wisdom on us:

“The function of the artist,” the Navajo answered, “is to provide what life does not.”

When I think of an artist, I think of an extremely specialized person in a highly liberal art. For society to have a space for an individual with the title of "artist" this requires a pretty high level of sophistication, advancement and specialization in society. I consider artists and art to be in the same category as philosophers and musicians; this segment of society represents the fruits of a stable society where the exploration of "questions" unknown can be explored. It's not by chance that many society's art development was tied with religion.

So when an artist provides "what life does not", does this mean that it literally creates things or rather, does it aid our awareness and recognition of certain things that normal life suppresses? 

Life and Meaning: Man's Search for Meaning

Man's Search for Meaning
Author: Victor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning is a classic biography, psychology, philosophical and spiritual book. Frankl was a prominent psychologist in Austria during the 1930's and was a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps. The  professional framework and first hand account that Frankl provides is not only insightful when it comes to psychological and spiritual ideas, but humbling and inspirational to the human spirit.

As the book title implies, he focuses much of his book MEANING. As Nietzsche said, "He who has a Why to live for, can bear almost any How". I clipped these rather insightful passages in the beginning of his book:

Life is not primarily a  quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as  Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.

I can agree with the statement that life is a quest for meaning but I think it's important to acknowledge that society has perverted 'meaning' to be represented as pleasure and power. So in my opinion, you can't really blame those who define their existence with the pursuit of pleasure and power because society brainwashes individuals and builds social constructs to support and encourage this pursuit. This leads into his next point, defining meaning. 

Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something  significant), in love (caring for another person), and  in courage during difficult times.

Quite bold to categorize all of humanity's perception of meaning into three broad categories but this fits neatly with Frankl's most powerful point in his book: 

Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.

Constructions of Reality: The Cosmic Serpent

The Cosmic Serpent
Author: Jeremy Narby

The Cosmic Serpent is one of my favorite books that walks the line between sound science(biology), anthropology and spirituality. A narrative that follows a Ph.D student from Stanford on his field work in the Peruvian Amazon investigating the ecology of the area, shamanism and molecular biology. If that sounds trippy, you are very correct as the author is particularly interested in the natives use of the ayahuasca plant.

With effects similar to that of DMT, the ayahuasca plant is used as an intense spiritual instrument. Ayahuasca is quite a bit less synthetic than DMT and is quite interesting when you look at the chemistry of the drug. The active ingredient that induces hallucinations can only be activated when prepared with a plant that contains an monoamine oxidase inhibator. This basically means the two plants don't have any effect when used independently, but when used together they give a strong effect. And it's not like they just have to be mixed together, they must be boiled and prepared together. Seeing that the origins of ayahuasca are mysterious, it's no coincidence that a book based around ayahuasca is intriguing.

The passage highlighted below is pretty simple but when you really think about it, well, it can be reality defining and perception distorting. Although it may sound like a psychedelic idea, the statement is based in sound science and any biologist will agree.

We never see reality, but only an internal representation of it that our brain constructs for us continuously.

Whoa. 

Attitudes towards development: A History of Nigeria

A History of Nigeria

Author: Toyin Falola

I worked in Nigeria for 18 months and I read this extremely thorough and dense history of Nigeria. Although the book doesn't cover much pre-colonial Nigeria, it gives an excellent account of the rapid change of governments, social complexities and political mismanagement that have led to the current condition of Nigeria. I thought this quote was quite concise and insightful. 

Many were upset by the use of  forced labor, the greed for money that pushed young men out of villages  or into criminality, the increasing rate of divorce, fast-paced living, and  taxation. But their contemporaries were also impressed by the new amenities such as pipe-borne water, electricity, modern hospitals, and  schools. 

The author goes on to argue that these attitudes fueled nationalism in response to the desire to gain control but I think the statement influences a wide range reactions in society, including immigrating to larger cities, perceived necessity for centralized government and increased emphasis on natural resources. All of these things are influenced by the material gains of modern society and result in the loss of social capital.

Welcome to my Blog!!!!

Welcome to my blog. This blog was inspired by my "clippings" of various books, journal articles and news stories that I have read. The purpose of this blog can be summed up in a quote from economist John Kenneth Galbraith(he was originally commenting on a book on economics)

"This is a book to be read not for the agreement or disagreement it provokes but for the thought it invokes."