The Loaf Man

"Today, Center for Food Safety (CFS) released a new report exposing the well-funded organizations and..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:01:31 +0200

“Today, Center for Food Safety (CFS) released a new report exposing the well-funded organizations and highly-sophisticated public relations tactics propelling an increasingly defensive food industry.”

- Center for Food Safety | News Room | CFS Releases Best Public Relations Money Can Buy: A Guide to Food Industry Front Groups

bizarrebaobabs: I love this cover so much. Can you believe...

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:01:19 +0200

bizarrebaobabs:

I love this cover so much.

Can you believe that phone though, near the end?

"Let us suppose a wheat farm in western Kansas is abandoned, not an unusual event over the last 100..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:01:07 +0200

“

Let us suppose a wheat farm in western Kansas is abandoned, not an unusual event over the last 100 yr. For the first year or two after abandonment, the fields are covered with massive stands of sunflowers and Russian thistles (Salsola kali L., vr. tenuifolia Tausch). These two species, the former native and the latter alien, are on everyone’s weed list. But, the people have left and gone to town; there is nobody around to dislike them. Have they stopped being weeds? As a matter of fact, the weeds have now become useful plants in stabilizing the soil, preventing wind erosion, and reducing water erosion. It is true that weeds are often unwanted, but that is not what makes them weeds…

Indeed, Homo sapien is perhaps the weediest of all species, and the more he dominates the landscape, the more he seems to thrive. If we confine the concept of weeds to species adapted to human disturbance, then man is by definition the first and primary weed under whose influence all other weeds have evolved.

”

- Jack Harlan from Crops and Man

Do not call something a weed in front of a crop evolution expert you will get clowned!
(via goodaesthetic)
Weeds, like Homo sapiens, are a human construct.

peashooter85: Ancient Roman Dogtag, Inscription Reads: “Hold me...

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:00:49 +0200

peashooter85:

Ancient Roman Dogtag,

Inscription Reads: “Hold me if I am lost and return me to my master Viventius on the estate of Callistus”

I’d get one of those.

And yet, I don’t take sugar …

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:01:12 +0200

And yet, I don’t take sugar …

neoprovincialism: He studied painting and drawing at the School...

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:00:59 +0200

neoprovincialism:

He studied painting and drawing at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in the early 1980s…. Soon, though, he realized that farming was his true calling.

“I think people are hungering for a kind of unplugged reality,” he said. “That leads to a deeper self-understanding.”

He added: “It has a spiritual component — to what this is all about, what gives meaning to human life.”

Anne Raver, “Farm Equipment That Runs on Oats” New York Times. May 15, 2013.

Starry-eyed romantic? Moi?

sexpigeon: Too hard, had to google it. Is that awl?

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:01:00 +0200

sexpigeon:

Too hard, had to google it.

Is that awl?

fuckyesnewengland: potato farming in Presque Isle

Wed, 15 May 2013 13:00:46 +0200

fuckyesnewengland:

potato farming in Presque Isle

Me on 'International Waters' Podcast

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:40:06 +0200

Me on 'International Waters' Podcast:

robhuebel:

This podcast is a gameshow where Americans show Brits how dumb they are…

They Brits, or they Americans? Ambiguities like this one annoy the hell out of me. So lazy.

(via ILRI PhotoBlog — ‘Livestock Portraits’: Sheko cattle in...

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:00:52 +0200

(via ILRI PhotoBlog — ‘Livestock Portraits’: Sheko cattle in Ethiopia » ILRI news)

"The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 11:00:43 +0200

“The critics said his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology. They said his prose was swamped in a sea of mixed metaphors. For some reason they found something funny in sentences such as “His eyes went white, like a shark about to attack.” They even say my books are packed with banal and superfluous description, thought the 5ft 9in man. He particularly hated it when they said his imagery was nonsensical. It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket.”

- Don’t make fun of renowned Dan Brown - Telegraph

Too, too perfect.

"This is the kind of crap troubled teenage girls write in diaries .. not publish in books that..."

Mon, 13 May 2013 19:01:19 +0200

“This is the kind of crap troubled teenage girls write in diaries .. not publish in books that pretend to be literary & her some sort of wanna-be artist. Just as we’re shocked when we meet scientists that are religious (especially biologists that are creationists), we also think art & religion are mutually exclusive .. religious art is not art, but a craft. Not that we have anything against it .. we have lots of it gracing our walls.”

- Tit for (she-wolf) tat, mathematics & the rigors of rejecting & drawing conclusions

What kind of crap though did she write? You’ll have to visit to see.

alandistro: Adele… another victim of the loudness wars. The top track is “Rolling in the Deep”...

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:01:05 +0200

alandistro:

Adele… another victim of the loudness wars. The top track is “Rolling in the Deep” from the commercial CD/iTunes master of 21, the bottom track is from an audiophile reissue.

As you’ll see, when you turn the massively over-compressed master down to match the same volume as the reissue, the audio on the commercial release is hard-limited and has all the dynamics/life choked out of the waveform:

I become a giant squid of anger when I hear/see this.

OK, but how does one solve the problem every time?

nybg: jstor: Global Plants is here! Check it out. Yes! This!...

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:01:25 +0200

nybg:

jstor:

Global Plants is here! Check it out.

Yes! This! What a fantastic resource.

Oh boy! Rejoice!

cynical-romantic: stylecarrot.com How on Earth would you even...

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:01:11 +0200

cynical-romantic:

stylecarrot.com

How on Earth would you even begin to press what I think must be a youg gunnera leaf?

beautilation: “I’ll never forget the day Marilyn and I were...

Mon, 13 May 2013 11:00:50 +0200

beautilation:

“I’ll never forget the day Marilyn and I were walking around New York City, just having a stroll on a nice day. She loved New York because no one bothered her there like they did in Hollywood, she could put on her plain-jane clothes and no one would notice her. She loved that. So as we we’re walking down Broadway, she turns to me and says ‘Do you want to see me become her?’ I didn’t know what she meant but I just said ‘Yes’- and then I saw it. I don’t know how to explain what she did because it was so very subtle, but she turned something on within herself that was almost like magic. And suddenly cars were slowing and people were turning their heads and stopping to stare. They were recognizing that this was Marilyn Monroe as if she pulled off a mask or something, even though a second ago nobody noticed her. I had never seen anything like it before.” - Amy Greene, wife of Marilyn’s personal photographer Milton Greene

Funny; I heard this story in connection with Eve Arnold.

iggymogo: Food Distribution Systems: Modern Farming vs Natural...

Fri, 10 May 2013 17:01:33 +0200

iggymogo:

Food Distribution Systems: Modern Farming vs Natural Farming (illustration, P.M. Lydon)

The Maddening Simplicity of Good Food by P.M. Lydon

At the end of a week with Shikoku-based natural farmer Okitsu-san, my body is still smarting in places from the work of weeding — as a natural farm, this place has some major healthy weeds — but my mind is refreshed. The experience this week, which consisted of days in the field, and nights conversing with Okitsu-san over dinner, showed me much about the ‘truth’ behind natural farming. Perhaps even as much as the past year-and-a-half of research and interviews for The Final Straw documentary.

It’s funny, because the concepts which these farmers live by are so frustratingly simple, that it has been a difficult thing for the logical side of my mind to comprehend; everything always had to have some comlex series of reasons behind it, some logical truth that could be put into formula, or at least organized prose and thesis. But that’s not how natural farming works.

It’s more simple than any of that, and although this simplicity is the key to an amazing concept, it is also the issue behind our general lack of understanding. We don’t want to turn our neat and tidy system of categorical life management off, because it will confuse our world too much. For many, natural farming is a ‘simplicity’ overload.

Even the few small pieces of natural farming that you can view in a logical way seem again, far too simple. If we take the ‘distribution’ piece of natural farming, for instance, and place it against the system we know, we get something like this:

read more at http://pmlydon.com/2013/the-maddening-simplicity-of-good-food/

A book worth waiting for. Although to be fair, urban density makes the simpler distribution model much more difficult.

inothernews: WORTH THE WAIT Time magazine, NASA and the US...

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:01:24 +0200

inothernews:

WORTH THE WAIT Time magazine, NASA and the US Geological Survey have collaborated on something truly awesome, sifting through trillions of LANDSAT satellite images, culled from the past 30 years, to create “the world’s first multi-decade animated timelapse of the Earth.” Click on the image for the complete series; you will be blown away.

I was blown away.

Onions are absolutely fundamental to cooking. I may love garlic...

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:00:42 +0200

Onions are absolutely fundamental to cooking. I may love garlic more, but I need onions. When I’m in the kitchen, I know my onions like Adam knew Eve. I don’t just use them, I make love to them. (via Know Thine Onions | Flash in the Pan)

"MUNGER: We’re basically so old-fashioned that we’re boringly trite. We think you ought to keep..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 11:00:29 +0200

“

MUNGER: We’re basically so old-fashioned that we’re boringly trite. We think you ought to keep plugging along, and stay rational, and stay energetic. Just all the old virtues still work.

BUFFETT: But find what turns you on.

MUNGER: Yeah, you have to work where you’re turned on. I don’t know about Warren, but I’ve never succeeded to any great extent in something I didn’t like doing.

”

- How To Be Happy