The St. Louis Riverfront Times is carrying the story of Allison Burgess, who created and is now marketing a wide variety of meat substitutes under the name "Match Meat." I've eaten her beef substitute at a local restaurant and was highly impressed.
When you read about the environmental and social consequences of eating farmed shrimp, you'll think twice about eating them. This article, titled "Chemical Cocktail," was published by Public Citizen.
Geoffrey Miller has just published a new book, Spent: Sex, Evolution and Consumer Behavior. I haven't read it yet, but I am now ordering it, based on Miller's terrific prior work (see here, for example). In the meantime, I did enjoy this NYT blog review of Spent, which includes this provocative question:
List the ten most expensive things (products, services or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists.
If you're looking for simplistic answers, you won't get them from Miller. I won't spoil the answers he obtained or his analysis of those answers, but you'll find them here. [addendum] I found this one item refreshingly honest. Refreshingly, because I know a lot of parents, I see their faces, I hear their complaints (and their exhultations). I know that it's PC to say that having children is a continuous wonderful joy and that all parents are glad they did had children. Miller's research suggests that the answer is not this simple:[Here's an answer that appears [much more on the ‘expensive’ than on the ‘happy’ lists [includes] Children, including child care, school fees, child support, fertility treatments. Costly, often disappointing, usually ungrateful. Yet, the whole point of life, from a Darwinian perspective. Parental instincts trump consumer pleasure-seeking.
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi is one of my heroes. I've often recommended his investigative pieces at DI. Taibbi's latest Rolling Stone article is an all-out attack on Goldman Sachs as the culprit behind the bubbles and busts. No, they don't "just happen." [Note: the full article is here]. No, Goldman Sachs isn't the only culpable entity, but Goldman serves well as a deserving target for the kinds of criminal abuses that have destabilized the U.S. economy and crushed the savings of so many people. Here's one example of many by Taibbi, this one explaining how it was that so many shitty mortgages were approved by lenders across the United States. Step One for this problem (as it is for so many other problems with the economy) is to eliminate sane standards for evaluating the economic worth of commodities, individuals and entities. The first step has the intentional function of destroying the possibility of honest valuation, thereby setting the stage for confusing and misleading investors:
Goldman's role in the sweeping global disaster that was the housing bubble is not hard to trace. Here again, the basic trick was a decline in underwriting standards, although in this case the standards weren't in IPOs but in mortgages. By now almost everyone knows that for decades mortgage dealers insisted that home buyers be able to produce a down payment of 10 percent or more, show a steady income and good credit rating, and possess a real first and last name. Then, at the dawn of the new millennium, they suddenly threw all that shit out the window and started writing mortgages on the backs of napkins to cocktail waitresses and ex-cons carrying five bucks and a Snickers bar.
Beware, that if you watch the videos of Taibbi explaining this blatant robbery of investors and taxpayer, as well as the Democrat complicity with this mess, you will seethe. You will feel betrayed.
There is a brand new sculpture park in downtown Saint Louis. It will officially open tomorrow. My family and I walked through tonight and we were wowwed.
What used to be a bunch of office buildings (many of them less than inspiring) were transformed into a deeply beautiful and light-hearted extension of "City Garden," a modern sculpture park occupying two city blocks. I probably took about 150 photos tonight, but I'll give you my favorite 16 [If you don't see the gallery, click here ].
I'm shaking my head, thinking that the creators really nailed it. In my mind, the function of art is to challenge but to also draw an audience. This new park has succeeded in transforming dozens of sterile buildings into the all-too-willing background for a place that beckons people of all ages to come play, to walk, to talk, to ponder, to touch the sculptures and to stand back and admire.
[Epilogue 7/9/09: City Garden has turned out to be a powerful people magnet. Works of art draw in people, who draw in more people. It is truly one of the most remarkable transformations to hit downtown St. Louis. What used to be two big starkly empty lots is now a comfortable and beautiful place, open every hour of every day, for people to view the sculptures, to find themselves and to find each other. A big congratulations to the Gateway Foundation!]