The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 10:14 am**

I read this article in Harper's Magazine a few months ago now, and then I re-read it, and it's still haunting me. It's a little long, but I think it's super important for everyone in this country to understand.

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 10:17 am**

Jim of Seattle wrote:I read this article in Harper's Magazine a few months ago now, and then I re-read it, and it's still haunting me. It's a little long, but I think it's super important for everyone in this country to understand.

...uh...could you pharaphrase that? It's too long, and I don't feel like being intellectual.. just sum the damn thing up man!

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 10:44 am**

Harpers wrote:Food is politics.

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 10:48 am**

Phil. Redmon. wrote:Food is politics.

Only tastier, and rugby union is probably somehow involved as well.

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 11:50 am**

Leaf wrote:paraphrase

Unless you are Ted Nugent or pro-ana, you are killing the planet.

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:23 pm**

It's a mish-mash of valid ideas from physics and chemistry, transposed directly to industrial economics.

The central premise is that the laws of thermodynamics apply directly to a money economy. Thus wealth cannnot be created or destroyed, it can only be moved around, and the only reason America can have so much wealth is that much of the rest of the world has so little.

So, if the rest of the world starts to reap, produce and consume on an American scale, there will not be enough wealth to go round, because there aren't enough natural resources to go round.

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:28 pm**

See, Phil's answer made me feel all punk-rock, 15's made me cynically laugh, and now you've just bummed me out... mostly cause you made me think about it...damn. Well, I guess the answer is to kill more people so they can't take America's wealth eh.....oh...it's being done. Ok, next?

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 2:53 pm**

Leaf wrote:See, Phil's answer made me feel all punk-rock, 15's made me cynically laugh, and now you've just bummed me out...

bzl's made ME hungry

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 3:09 pm**

It also makes direct connections between the oil crises and the world's food supply. What we eat itself depends on oil due to petroleum-based fertilizers, without which our farms can't produce enough food to feed us, because we are artificially boosting the output of staple crops.

He also points out that crops like wheat and corn fare better where they are the only crop, thus pushing out more diverse ecosystems which help maintain the energy resources in the soil. Because we grow all this wheat and corn, we need to artificially enhance the nutrients in the soil and partly that is done through petroleum products.

He makes a case that the over-cultivation of the land over the centuries has a great deal to do with global warming and the deterioration of the environment, just like more infamous gas engines.

He makes a connection between the rise of industrial working classes and the increase in sugar consumption - that sugar has been used as a cheap way to fuel the new industrial economy.

and stuff like that

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 4:38 pm**

Just had time to finish the article.

Excellent read, a bit hard for dumb folk like me to read but truly interesting.

It should be posted at FARK with a 'scary' tag

but nobody will RTFA ...it's way too long

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 5:17 pm**

bzl wrote:
Phil. Redmon. wrote:Food is politics.
Only tastier, and rugby union is probably somehow involved as well.

Rugby Union? Is ths Caravan Ray baiting?

Didn't read the whole article - seemed a bit like a smarty-pants stating the bleeding obvious - I'll go bact to it later.

JoS is right though - the sooner we all get our heads around these concepts - the better we'll all be. Further reading I would recommend for those interested is The Future Eaters by Tim Flannery and Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond - for explanations of why some people are rich, some people are poor and some people starve. Also any history of the island of Rapa-Nui (Easter Is) gives a scary story of a world in a microcosm.

And of course if we all played rugby union - men would feel more comfortable hugging in public.

Posted: **Thu Nov 18, 2004 5:18 pm**

Hoblit wrote: It should be posted at FARK with a 'scary' tag

what's FARK?

Posted: **Fri Nov 19, 2004 11:42 pm**

Interesting in that he seems to be saying that farming was a bad idea from the very beginning. Yet, the forum he is making his point in would not exist without it, in some sense. Man, it'd be nice to be able to just step out back and shoot an elk.

Posted: **Sat Nov 20, 2004 10:56 am**

Caravan Ray wrote:
Hoblit wrote: It should be posted at FARK with a 'scary' tag
what's FARK?

dude, whats FARK? OMG..it's only like the best site on the whole gawd danged internet mah man.

It's a *cough* news site. Wait, it's not news, it's fark.

http://www.fark.com

it's a site where a conglemeration of news articles are posted. Some of it is links to solid news reporting while others are information peices... the best part is that for each news article posted, there is a discussion thread (message board like)

There is more, like audio edits (which I don't bother with anymore) and photoshop contests (which are hit and miss funny these days) It's a great site. Really, check it out... and lose your job.

Posted: **Sat Nov 20, 2004 11:00 am**

Future Boy wrote:Interesting in that he seems to be saying that farming was a bad idea from the very beginning. Yet, the forum he is making his point in would not exist without it, in some sense. Man, it'd be nice to be able to just step out back and shoot an elk.

Yeah, he is equating farming with the beginings of class seperation and resource depleting.

My favorite parts from it are the ratios of calories burned to the number of calories created. And other similar energy ratios he mentions. I think thats the real problem..the scary stuff. We've found ways that SEEM convenient as far as production and distribution...but in the end...it really defeats the purpose.

If we as humans can find a better sway to swing those ratios, we'd be alright.

As for the Elk, I'm not sure he factored in the energy it took to make the gun he used nor the energy used to convert the animal to food. Or the neccesary energy used to preserve the food.

Posted: **Sat Nov 20, 2004 11:45 am**

Hoblit wrote:There is more

dude.

boobies.

Posted: **Sat Nov 20, 2004 2:09 pm**

Hoblit wrote:As for the Elk, I'm not sure he factored in the energy it took to make the gun he used nor the energy used to convert the animal to food. Or the neccesary energy used to preserve the food.

Good point, but the energy used to store it is a sunk cost, meaning that somewhere somebody is going to be using energy to store that guy's protein. Also, the making of the gun was a single use of energy, one time, and it can be re-used over & over, till that original energy is spread oud very thin.

Posted: **Sun Nov 21, 2004 4:49 pm**

Hoblit wrote: Really, check it out... and lose your job.

Cheers!

That's an excellent resource. Between Songfight and random Googling, my day has been left with a few uncomfortable windows where I feel obliged to do do some work. Fark should plug those gaps nicely!

Posted: **Mon Nov 22, 2004 9:48 pm**

Jim of Seattle wrote:I read this article in Harper's Magazine a few months ago now, and then I re-read it, and it's still haunting me. It's a little long, but I think it's super important for everyone in this country to understand.

Thanks for postingthis Jim, I think more people "should" read it than likely will.
Rather doubt the vast majority will manage to wade through the mire of Richard Manning's often garbledy gookified, coma-inducing prose. But it's only a portion of a vast topic that he oversimplifies in some ways and overcompliates in others.

I did, however, enjoy the irony of Manning's summary point of his stance on the topic, which made "voting twice" was an interesting analogy.

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