Here’s some Tasty Tidbits for the day:
- “The Man Who Won’t Listen to Anyone”?
- Flash! Discriminatory law enjoined because it might discriminate!
- A second look at CAFOs.
- Sculptures you can live in.
- Spotify.
- Tech Bubble II?
- Discrimination is inevitable.
1
Obama boring? Yeah, actually, now that you mention it.
But “won’t listen to anyone”? That doesn’t really ring true. He’s always been astonishingly good at summarizing his adversaries’ opinions — sometimes even improving them in the process. But no conservative opinion appears ever to have changed his mind as he mulled and paraphrased it.
2
I’m too tired (I’m typing this Wednesday night) to feel too elated, but pro-lifers in New York City won an important case yesterday, blocking a mean-spirited law (two can play the “mean-spirited” card). Jody Bottum summarizes it well at the linked item. In the morning, I expect to feel gleeful that the friends of consumer protection for women pro-abortion politicians got one of their arguments thoroughly ridiculed by the judge.
It may be a sign that the abortion distortion factor is weakening that the Friends of Feticide couldn’t pull this one out …
Morning update: The New York Times, which presumably would consider pro-life pregnancy resource centers (that’s who the local law targeted) part of an extremist movement, reports a bit more than Jody Bottum does, including the Judge’s comment that “because the new law ‘relates to the provision of emergency contraception and abortion — among the most controversial issues in our public discourse — the risk of discriminatory enforcement is high‘” (emphasis added).
Duh! D’ya think?! The folks who brought you dishonest dodges like “just a blob of tissue” found it offensive that, according to NARAL (hardly a neutral source), some PRCs were insufficiently apprising women that there were some options that weren’t offered within their walls. But the law only purported to deal with dishonesty by pro-life centers, not by abortionists, who were notably not required to advise women in bold print that the only solution they offered was <lies>safe, legal and rare removal of a blob of tissue</lies> because helping women see their pregnancies through wasn’t sufficiently profitable, would require some emotional investment, and the world has too many of “your kind” already.
There! Now I’ve attained glee, if not fairness and balance.
3
I’ve been known to think unkind thoughts about CAFOs, “Confined Animal Feeding Operations,” on animal welfare and environmental grounds. But I spent some time yesterday with a very thoughtful farmer, who is not doing free range or the other fun stuff like Polyface Farms in Virginia, but who defended modern feeding operations vigorously.
I paraphrase here:
From every standpoint — performance [weight gained per pound of feed], animal welfare and environment, modern feeding operations are superior. It’s swell to see Bessie the Cow grazing on intensely green grass on a fine Spring day, but they never show you 3 inches of cold rain, 12 inches of mud, sows farrowing in zero degrees with piglets dying of the cold. My animals are warm, dry, well-bedded, and have reasonable room to move. Their manure isn’t running off the hills and dales where they graze.
I never doubted that a CAFO with a controlled feed mix would out-“perform” free range, but I hadn’t thought of the animal welfare and environmental benefits.
This guy is doing some innovative things by combining proven technologies to turn waste into profit centers, and is very serious about protecting the environment from things like the smelly manure ponds at many CAFOs.
What he’s doing strikes me as economically viable even without subsidies. Because “Green” technologies that do require subsidy have a dubious future, I think you’ll be reading about him outside this immediate area before too long. He’s had some press around here already.
(If I don’t say it now, I’ll be adding an update, so here goes: I’m not ignoring, but merely prescinding, the possibility that, for instance, pastured, grass-fed beef is healthier because it’s leaner and higher in linoleic acid. My friend’s litany of CAFO superiority didn’t touch on that.)
4
A quirky guy builds quirky houses of stone and straw in the Catskills, where all creatures great and small seem to live — except for actual human children. (From the New York Times, so it may count toward your freebies.) Still, I could learn to like homes houses like these.
5
A new music service, Spotify, debuts in the U.S. today. (From the New York Times, so it may count toward your freebies.) It’s big in Europe. Hard to imagine it topping Pandora, but it has more extensive social media features and incentives to buy music.
6
What’s Facebook worth in the market? Some are speculating that the market would value it at $100 Billion (WSJ – pay wall, probably).
Can you say “Tech Bubble”? Can you even remember “Tech Bubble”? How stupid are people?
The only excuse for this kind of financial insanity is that money will sooner or later seek better returns than today’s bank interest rates.
7
Notwithstanding my headline for item 2, above, discrimination is inevitable because it’s just a synonym for “discernment” that has gotten a bad name (as it has come to be a sloppy shorthand for “invidious discrimination“).
How much niche marketing — the effort to discern and cater to a particular demographic — should be allowed? Whites only? That one’s pretty well settled. Men only? Not if you want public funds.
Straight-only? Gay-only?
Adults-only? (WSJ pay wall, but you can Google the joint, McDain’s Restaurant and Golf Center in Monroeville, Pa.)
Bon appetit!
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 