Quotable

“You drink deeply from wells of freedom that you did not dig."

- Corey Booker at Brandeis' graduation

He's got a hell of speechwriter.

More food for thought

Today's Post has an excellent piece on the cost of being poor, with a particular focus on the monetary and health costs of urban "grocery" options:

"Like food: You don't have a car to get to a supermarket, much less to Costco or Trader Joe's, where the middle class goes to save money. You don't have three hours to take the bus. So you buy groceries at the corner store, where a gallon of milk costs an extra dollar.

A loaf of bread there costs you $2.99 for white. For wheat, it's $3.79. The clerk behind the counter tells you the gallon of leaking milk in the bottom of the back cooler is $4.99. She holds up four fingers to clarify. The milk is beneath the shelf that holds beef bologna for $3.79. A pound of butter sells for $4.49. In the back of the store are fruits and vegetables. The green peppers are shriveled, the bananas are more brown than yellow, the oranges are picked over."

News to no one (Occidental's Center for Food and Justice, for one, has been doing work on on this for years), but it always bears repeating that being poor is expensive. And specifically that high prices and miserable produce offerings in urban stores aren't the result of greedy owners, and that consumer choice when it comes to locally-grown, sustainably-farmed, organic produce, is a myth for a lot of Washingtonians.

Veggiedag

Via Corby Kummer's "Fresh Feeds, " news that Ghent, Belgium's quirky Second City, has announced "a regular weekly meatless day, in which civil servants and elected councillors will opt for vegetarian meals."

I think this is particularly cool, and not just because I'm tickled that example-setting is considered a viable policy method by Belgian public officeholders - though that I certainly am. It's interesting to watch vegetarianism shift from an animal-rights movement to an environmental one (although I don't doubt that most vegatarians would assure me that the link between meat consumption and environmental degredation has been well-known, just not well-publicized, for decades), and I personally find it empowering.

A growing interest in food policy, and a good influence of a roommate, has helped me evolve into a what I like to think of as a thoughtful omnivore across the recent year or so, and I think it's helpful as a consumer to know that I don't have to foreswear the occasional Good Stuff Eatery (locally sourced!) farmhouse burger to bring my meat consumption - and with it, my carbon and water footprint - closer to what the rest of the globe considers normal. Cheers to Ghent for spreading the word.

And perhaps there's real-vegetarian hope for me yet, as the local Safeway's tragic closing has forced Steve and I to keep costs down at Whole Foods by expanding our meatless cooking repertoire. Last Saturday's chickpea-sweet potato coconut curry proved about as crave-able as anything we've ever made that once moo'ed.

Homegrown

On Slate's new full-site version of its Double-X blog, Stanford academic Terry Castle yesterday described the Times' Nicholas Kristof as "the greatest feminist journalist in this country today and perhaps the most passionate and effective media advocate for women's and girls' rights the U.S. has ever had." The more I think about it the statement, the less controversial it seems... I can't think of another American writer of any cultural background or either gender who writes as movingly about, and who maximizes their influence as effectively for, disenfranchised women and girls.

Although he usually does so in the context of Kandahar or Guinea Bissau. So his recent column on girlhood prostitution in Atlanta is particularly sobering. No additional editorializing here, really, just that it's awfully skillful of Kristof to point out that:

"The business model of pimping is remarkably similar whether in Atlanta or Calcutta: take vulnerable, disposable girls whom nobody cares about, use a mix of “friendship,” humiliation, beatings, narcotics and threats to break the girls and induce 100 percent compliance, and then rent out their body parts."

while resisting to the urge to hit us over the head with the shame we ought to feel as Americans. It packs enough of a wallop on its own.

This week in Design That I Want

Like every other woman in my housewares-purchasing demographic, I'm predisposed to love the brainchildren of James Dyson, inventor of the bagless vaccum cleaner, on account of his intensely charming accent, but his latest stands on it's on... two legs? four sides?

According to New Scientist, Dyson and his colleagues have filed a patent application to completely overhaul your kitchen:

"The Dyson team say the trouble with today's kettles, toasters, juicers, food mixers and coffee grinders is that each type of gadget tends to have a different space-hogging design... That means users must leave a large "footprint" around each appliance so that their handles and controls can be reached easily.

Their answer, given in patent filing US 2009/0095729, is a simple one: make all free-standing gadgets like kettles, toasters, juicers and food mixers in the shape of tall cuboids that can easily be pushed together on a worktop, with no wasted space between them. As the controls could be recessed in their flat lids or on the front panels, no space-wasting side access is required. The patent also suggests connecting the appliances together - presumably using a common power supply."

Brilliant!
Granted, this may have an especially unique appeal to me, given that my current kitchen is a supreme mess, housing three years of tenants' bake and cookware, spices, and gadgetry, so this vision is... a vision to my countertop-surge-protector-weary mind. All the same, I can't be the only one delighted at such an idea. US Patent Office, please expedite this patent approval so that cubist toasters and coffeemakers can jump-start consumer spending.

Just as long as you stand, stand by me

There aren't enough swine flus or international economic collapses out there to harden my heart against this beautiful little paean to globalization:

An exceptionally talented street busker in Chicago lays a base track of vocals and guitar of "Stand By Me," which travels to New Orleans for backup vocals and percussion from "Washboard Chaz," and then from the Netherlands to an Indian reservation to the Congo and beyond, with another musician contributing at each stop.

Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

More on the "Playing for Change" project behind this goose-bump-inducing video, including other global collaborations, at www.playingforchange.com.

Major in Religious Extremism, with a minor in Land Usage

An interesting piece from the Sunday Times on reforming the American university.

Much of the arguments focus on restructuring PhD programs and better regulating departments, which, while probably necessary, would likely require the hiring of additional oversight administrative staff (unlikely in these times of budget cuts) or demand that academics, opposed to the policies themselves, act as enforcement officers (less likely, still.)

But, one innovative idea that I like quite a bit:

"Abolish permanent departments, even for undergraduate education, and create problem-focused programs. These constantly evolving programs would have sunset clauses, and every seven years each one should be evaluated and either abolished, continued or significantly changed. It is possible to imagine a broad range of topics around which such zones of inquiry could be organized... Consider, for example, a Water program. In the coming decades, water will become a more pressing problem than oil, and the quantity, quality and distribution of water will pose significant scientific, technological and ecological difficulties as well as serious political and economic challenges. These vexing practical problems cannot be adequately addressed without also considering important philosophical, religious and ethical issues... A Water program would bring together people in the humanities, arts, social and natural sciences with representatives from professional schools like medicine, law, business, engineering, social work, theology and architecture."

As a product of an interdisciplinary program, I'm obviously partial towards them, but this goes far beyond the liberal-artsy offerings of my undergrad education (religious studies and politics? and history? Hold on to your hat!). A couple years out, one of the major criticisms my peers and I have of our education was how unprepared it left us for the practical demands of our early careers ("what's a pivot table?"), yet I don't think any of would be quite willing to trade the immersion in ideas, reading, and writing, either.

I could certainly get behind the approach of pairing coursework in business administration and theology, especially as it relates to the study of a single critical issue. That sort of program would graduate students with the same "learning how to think" skills as a liberal arts program, but also conversant in a number of useful fields.

And more importantly, as the author notes, the world itself is interdisciplinary. It follows that our students ought to be, as well.