Food Recalls Galore (But Going Vegan Won’t Help)

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A half billion eggs have been recalled. Tyson just issued a recall of deli meat shipped to Walmart. And the host’s comment on NPR‘s American Public Media’s Marketplace: “Vegan, anyone?”

Two quick responses: First, I hope that he is not sued under the veggie libel laws, as I really enjoy Marketplace.  (For that matter, I hope that I am not sued under the veggie libel laws.) Industrial agriculture has way, way, way too much influence in our legal system. The latest proposal in Colorado was to add a year of jail time to anyone who disparages and discourages the eating of Colorado Food… Terrifying; you may remember that Oprah had to spend $5 million bucks to beat the accusations of Texas cattle ranchers after her comments regarding a beef recall. Not all of us have those resources!

Second: Vegan is NOT the answer! Vegans would have been screwed by the Organic Peanut Butter Recall and the various spinach and salad mix recalls of the past few years. No, the answer–for those who can afford it–is to move away from industrial agriculture and enjoy local food. Not exactly local to me, but a wonderful stop on a camping trip last year was Polyface Farms. They have a truly sustainable, free range, and holistic setup for eggs, beef, rabbits, pigs, etc. Phenomenal food, enthusiastic workers, and beautiful land. They were criticized (and had legal action brought against them) for their open air butchering–which they do because they want consumers to know every step of the food process–by big Agriculture, but the action was dropped after they proved that their meat was exposed to a fraction of the bacteria present at the mega-rendering facilities. Better food through transparent methods (also works for software, legislation, and oil spill cleanup). Big fan.

America’s future will be built in Rural America. But it won’t be a continuation of these practices. Nope. Poliface is closer to what we will need than the CAFIs.

Exciting Weekend Ahead: The Tea Partiers are Coming

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The Tea Partiers are coming, the Tea Partiers are coming!

I am very excited about this opportunity to engage people from outside my narrow-minded neighborhood in intelligent discourse about the role of immigration in contemporary society. I might even get to meet one of those 19-percenters who hope to remove our foreign-born President* from office. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am pretty sure that I was born in Colorado, but I don’t have any newspaper clippings with my birth announcement, so I hope that they can see past my Canadian relatives and that we can talk like real Americans.)

As of right now, I am planning on meeting misguided people at the metro station and politely requesting that they not take advantage of my tax dollars on their way home–they should instead take a pedi-cab or a foreign-oil-fueled vehicle back to their hotels. Because this will only help inform their decisions on the way back, I have submitted a suggestion to Metro to add a special surcharge for all farecard-based travel this Saturday (after all, if someone has a SmartTrip Metro card, they are probably already subsidizing the system with their tax dollars) to offset any tax-payer subsidized taint of the transit system; I don’t want some innocent tea-partier to unknowingly encourage taxation during their visit!

Unfortunately, I have made a grave error in my plans for this weekend. I invited an immigrant. He is a nice guy, but, as an immigrant, he has taken an American job from the lovely people who will be gathering at the Lincoln memorial. Perhaps if I ask him to wear a pin that says “I am a Canadian and I am sorry for taking an American job. If you have a master’s degree in foreign relations, we can discuss how to return what is rightfully yours,” we might be able to get another American employed. It would be unfortunate for my friend to be deported, but one ought to be consistent!

*Normally, I would not footnote what I consider obvious sarcasm respectful disagreement over facts, but in light of the intense debate over this issue, please let me state unequivocally that the Earth is an irregular sphere, Newton’s description of gravity is pretty good for my daily life, and President Obama was born in the United States.

Another Privacy Problem with Facebook

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You might have thought that after their new privacy controls debacle, Facebook would have carefully checked the layout of their latest innovation privacy destroying tool, “facebook places,” before launch. You would be naive.

The latest update to the site I joined to share silly photos with friends-far from the prying eyes of employers and parents-now shares your location whenever you “check in” (read a message, accidentally leave the app open, etc.)

How convenient! Now everyone can know that you went to the opera… Or that when you called in sick, you were at the ball game. Or that you skipped church to go to Dawkin’s lecture.

But wait, you say, Ted is a Luddite. Facebook offers improved privacy controls. If you have your boss on limited profile, she might not get that update. And, better yet, you can just turn off places. Sure, it won’t help you in that last example, but you’ll be safe from getting caught playing hookie.

Wrong.

Your coworker didn’t turn off places and you haven’t restricted him from being able to share your info. It appears as though your coworker’s update may automatically share your location with the boss.

But you thought that after the last round of privacy mistakes that facebook would have tied the “no places” setting to the friends can’t share places setting? You thought wrong.

It’s time for another round of “find the right facebook settings” game. Hope you enjoy playing!

Nicholas Merrill, a Hero

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Hero is an overused word. In this case, it is appropriate.

Seven years ago, when Nicholas was the CEO of an Internet Service Provider in New York, the FBI brought him a  National Security Letter demanding a significant amount of information about several of his customers, and

although the letter’s gag order “was totally clear that they were saying that I couldn’t speak to a lawyer” about it, he immediately contacted his personal attorney, and together they went to the ACLU in New York, which agreed to represent him.

via Wired

Review: Candelas

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Set next to the San Diego ferry landing, Candelas is the most wonderful late night non-dive I have ever encountered. After one of my classic nine pm realizations that I hadn’t eaten, we headed off to an irish pub, the only place that was open on the island… Fortunately, the kitchen had just closed. Our waitress recommended that we head to Candelas for the “late night”happy hour.

Every night, the entire bar menu, and the entire bar, half off. A very tasty neuvo-mexican menu, a phenomenal wine list, and great service. Everyday after ten.

Pretty crazy and pretty awesome.

Here are pics of my tasty jicama, mango and carrot salad and my carne asada tacos.

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Apple and Ma Bell lose big

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Guess what: the Librarian of Congress and the Registrar of Copyrights are going to allow you to jailbreak your iPhones and other locked devices (read: anything on AT&T’s network): go EFF! In addition, it looks like you will be able to move content that you have legally licensed from one device to something new and different–at least in a few circumstances.

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AT&T: I call BS on your dropped call statistics

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Slashgear cites an AT&T claim that only 1.44% of calls on it’s network are dropped. I know that I am an atypical customer, insisting on my unlimited data plan and not caring for texts (I really wish that people would stop texting in the US. “Recipient also pays” is a horrible system!), but I have no idea how they come up with these numbers. Today I had three dropped calls in three different parts of the city. And this doesn’t even begin to look at the 3g dropping in the neighborhood. Thanks to the AT&T X marks the spot app, I have reported six of these in the past two days. Not that I have only had six complete data drops, mind you, but the app doesn’t seem to allow you to manually enter addresses or to cache reports when it can’t lock onto your location.

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Proprietary Software Sucks (but F/OSS Is Poorly Documented)

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A few weeks ago, I suffered a complete and total computing-system breakdown. This was problematic, as I needed to use financial data (I am, after all, enthralled to the US government), resumes (I am, after all, self-employed), and other essential data from those drives. This was Not Good!

How did this happen? Well. . .  I am not entirely sure. I have always been dismissive of those who succumb to virii–what were they thinking, not updating their systems, not running good anti-spy-mal-virus software, not working with a good firewall, clicking “yes” willy nilly. Ha. Shows me. I had a reasonably secure system. I was up to date. I was using a good combination of security software packages. And yet something spread throughout my network and infected everything (except, perhaps, Her laptop, ‘lil’, although a we did have to get rid of a few funny & perhaps unrelated daemons). I am thinking that some combination of security holes in flash/java/Windows was the likely culprit, but there is no way to know for sure. Why? Because the only people who can mess around with the relevant source code are restricted from sharing it with the outside world. Does this make it more difficult for the nasty people of the world to break into these systems? At first, sure. But, once an exploit has been discovered, it takes quite a while for those few “trusted” software engineers to fix it (and even longer to get it rolled out to the likes of you and me).

Where did this leave me? Desperately needing to get some sort of secure system up and running. And I turned to Linux.

And nothing would run on my desktop. Not even Linux Mint or Ubuntu (two of the most userfriendly distros out there). Why? Again, I was foiled by proprietary systems & safeguards. My system is about three years old, though it was fairly cutting-edge when I built it. I wanted to watch blu-ray movies on it. So, I picked the appropriate graphics cards, crazy cables, TV, and software. . . She and I spent many a lovely evening watching Wall-E and the Omega Man. . . and now, this seems to mostly for naught.

What does this have to do with the proprietary problems foiling my attempt to rebuild my electronic-life? Ah. Well. The Good People of the Motion Picture Association decided that they are Really Scared of Piracy. In fact–it costs them One Hundred Trillion Dollars every second*, and they are firmly convinced that Movie Piracy is the Original Sin. And they convinced the hardware manufacturers to adopt a crazy data protection scheme in order to be “certified” to run.

Linux, being a free and open operating system, doesn’t properly fit into this system. getting it to run has been a real pain. more another day.

*okay, not really, but their actual data is based on some really crazy assumptions such as “people would go see every movie that they may watch streaming over the net,” and “people in China can afford to purchase “official” DVDs of movies” and “most movies that get made are good.” Ha.

Sen. Reid: Let DeMint Filibuster. . .

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Why not shorten the Senatorial holiday? Doesn’t the attempted Christmas bombing warrant a vote on the proposed head of the TSA–an individual who has already received bipartisan support from two committees?

And, so what if Sen. DeMint (R-SC) is up in arms about the potential unionization of the TSA? Who cares that he is threatening to filibuster? We should let him. Why? Because filibustering this appointment, to refusing to allow an up or down vote to filling this crucial security position is making our nation unsafe. One might even consider it being soft on terror.

Unionization-puhleez! I didn’t know that it had prevented the first responders on 9/11 from acting. Oh, and Sgt. Munley’s union rep must told her that she wasn’t supposed to get involved at Ft. Hood.

Sen. DeMint should get up to the podium and talk for as long as he can. If he keels over, well: it’s a good thing that his health insurance came with a public option. He’ll get good treatment! Far better than I would, that’s for sure.