Saturday Linkages: Cheapskates and Controversy!

airline food

What happens when you Instagram airline food. Photo by John Walton.

Cheapskates
Three Friends Make An Attempt to ‘Live Below the Line’ http://thebillfold.com/2013/05/three-friends-make-an-attempt-to-live-below-the-line/ …

How to make a cake pan banjo: http://boingboing.net/2013/05/10/how-to-make-a-cake-pan-banjo-u.html …

Controversy
Is Michael Pollan a sexist pig? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/28/is_michael_pollan_a_sexist_pig/ …

In Defense of Michael Pollan (Or, How Sexism Allegations Boost Web Traffic) http://huff.to/16ougcC 

When Master Gardeners Break the Rule and say they’re Master Gardeners | Garden Rant http://gardenrant.com/2013/04/when-master-gardeners-break-the-rules-and-say-theyre-master-gardeners.html …

Containers make lousy houses: http://lloydkahn-ongoing.blogspot.com/2013/05/containers-make-lousy-houses.html#.UYf3intXlQc.twitter …

Instagramming Your Food May Signal Bigger Problem, Researcher Says http://huff.to/18Tnzw8 

Will Google Glass End Distracted Driving?: http://blog.esurance.com/will-google-glass-end-distracted-driving/#.UYSRC4KyvdI.twitter …

Bikes
Bicycle hackers of 1948: http://boingboing.net/2013/05/08/bicycle-hackers-of-1948.html …

For these links and more, follow Root Simple on Twitter:

Leave a comment

5 Comments

  1. I thought about doing the “Live Below the Line” challenge, but there were problems.

    1)I have been in that position briefly. When you are down to the last $0.13 cents and there is not one scrap of food on your shelves, it does not have to be demonstrated.

    2) These people go shopping beforehand to get what they want to live on. I am quite sure that people who live on $1.50 per day in real life do not have the luxury of choosing exactly what will be in their stock of food. Comparison shopping is probably not possible.

    3) Choosing spices from the pantry and including the minute cost of those items is still not fair to get the full effect of the experiment. How many people in poverty can get the minute amount of a variety of spices, condiments?

    4)Because I had just bought 4 quarts of strawberries and 10 lbs of bananas, I was unwilling to participate. That is a purely selfish reason, I know.

    5)I could go right this minute and get dried beans from my pantry, dried bananas, cherries, and pecans, dried milk, turnip greens, dandelion greens and potatoes from the yard, and eggs from the hens (two eggs per day) and stay below the line with all the nutrients and variety that is probably not available to people who have no choice.

    6)It would be possible for me to quit at any time, cheat, or just tough it out. Others may not have all these choices that make it bearable for me to suffer deprivation.

    Am I making too many excuses? Maybe.

  2. gaawwwd!!!! that sausage or whatever it is in the picture is so extremely and grotesquely phallic.

  3. Thanks for the links to the “controversy” around Michael Pollan, or what is really the question of how to eat well when plugged into the machine of the normal American life with a 40 hour+ job, or multiple jobs.

    We’ve heard a lot about the cost of eating organic vs refined or fast foods, but not so much about the time costs of cooking, or the question of implicit social expectations about who is expected to cook family meals in the quest to eat well.

    I came across another article today in the NYT, also on the question of feminism and food, and how to find our collective way out of the legacy of eating manufactured goop masquerading as food: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/11/opinion/pay-people-to-cook-at-home.html?smid=tw-share&_r=1&

    One tidbit from the article: “In 1970, Americans spent 26 percent of their food budget on eating out; by 2010, that number had risen to 41 percent. Over that period, rates of obesity in the United States more than doubled. Diabetes diagnoses have also soared, to 25.8 million in 2011 from roughly three million in 1968.”

    I, for one, am enjoying this new thread of our social conversation about food. It is amazing how central food is to health, relationships, economy, environment, social mores and public policy.

  4. Yeesh on the Salon article, as Cicero would put it “This cause lacks nothing…but a cause”.

    1. The Pure food act was a result of industrial irresponsibility, not “poisonous” local foods. I mean, come on! half the examples she gives involve industrial additives “Until the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, penny candy might be colored with lead or arsenic, pickles with copper compounds.” talk about undermining your own argument…

    2. Flagrant use of the “straw man” fallacy. “Urban homesteader’s use per-industrial techniques and therefore they must all be backwards Luddites or silly romantics”. The reality is that people have looked to the past for inspiration, not dogma. Reclaiming useful techniques does not mean you must abandon present conveniences, the phrase “appropriate technology” comes to mind.

    3. Feminism, the mental acrobatics this airhead had to go through to fabricate this argument are astounding. As with any meaningful lifestyle the major factor here is freedom of choice. Women once weren’t allowed the opportunity to decide weather the domestic arts were their thing, the new age homesteader does. I’m a man and can see nothing but empowerment in choosing to live a self examined life focused on the only things that matter.

    4. The author was a troll and I took the bait damn…

Comments are closed.