2014 — 26 March: Wednesday
As there seems to be another clear window1 of weather opportunity we've decided to 'carpe' the 'diem' and go for another local walk this morning. I also need my next batch of fresh food-like substances so I shall be nipping/zipping out beforehand to stock up.
One topic...
... of our chat (yes! we can still manage to walk and talk at the same time providing the contour lines aren't too close-packed) may even be one of yesterday's filmic acquisitions as Mike, too, bought "Don Jon" but has already told me he gave up on it after 35 minutes awarding it the lowest permitted IMDB score of "1". Since my own evening video diet is currently House-bound I don't yet have an opinion. But our tastes often coincide; we agree to differ on perhaps 20% of the titles.
Including both "Casablanca" and "Citizen Kane" :-)
Must remember...
... to pick some up:
Basbanes points out that during the Second World War, the same long paper-making tradition that allowed Japan to devise bomb-bearing paper balloons rendered its cities uniquely vulnerable to incendiary bombs: more civilians died in the blazes spread by paper windows and screens than from either of the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Meanwhile, generals were deciding how much toilet paper to issue to soldiers: the British got three sheets a day, American GIs twenty-two.
I've never given...
... over-much thought to the process by which meat ends up in my diet. This probably says a lot about me as a primate at the end of a long line of killer apes. Not that apes tend to go in for CAFOs — a term I first met in Michael Pollan's "Omnivore's Dilemma" when I had a lot of other things on my mind. This is a fascinating, grim, well-written article covering very similar ground:
A secular and religious consensus exists that living an ethical life means accepting that my own interests are no more important than another's simply because they are mine. Basic decency, not to mention social cohesion, requires us to concede that like interests deserve equal consideration. If we have an interest in anything, it is in avoiding unnecessary pain. Thus, even though a farm animal's experience of suffering might be different from a human's experience of suffering, that suffering requires that we consider the animal's interest in not being raised and eaten much as we would consider our own interest in not being raised and eaten. Once we do that, we would have to demonstrate, in order to justifiably eat a farm animal, that some weighty competing moral consideration was at stake. The succulence of pancetta, unfortunately, won't cut it.
Hard to disagree.
Tanks for the memories
Amazing photos here.
The walk was a little cold, but not too muddy, and peaceful once we were away from the motorway. It's good for us.
It's not every day...
... I get the chance to introduce someone to the humour of Leo Rosten. (Hyman Kaplan? Once met, never forgotten!) I did so in return for the tip about a live klezmer band (She'Koyokh) playing on this evening's "In Tune" — even though I usually listen to that radio programme in any case. Thanks, Tom!