Herd Mentality

[marcus_sez_vote]

I'm real tired lately as a result of the regular activities of the school plus the double fencing practice. It's always rough this time of year, but it seems exacerbated this time. Probably due to the new curriculum I'm integrating as well. Sad that I won't be able to attend Christmas parties outside of NY, but we will be traveling to Ohio to

Comments

[cliodhna]

Congrats to Miss bitsyboo! :)

RE: meat-eating... I recently finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which makes a pretty compelling argument not *only* for meat-eating (weirdly!), but specifically encourages local meat-eating - supporting small, local, as-close-to-organic/grass-fed-as-possible farmers through the purchase of their meats. Their animals are generally better-treated, their impact on the environment is overall less destructive, and you support a dwindling way of life by literally putting your money where your mouth is. Something to consider! :)

[rowan_syngwyn]

I SO want to read that book! I heard an interview on NPR about it, and I can't wait.

:o)

[egowumpus]

That Walmart, or any other store, encourages and enables a mob mentality is morally corrupt. I hope our system takes them to task for it - while I think that punishing the shoppers is also a worthwhile goal, if only to destroy the incentive to kill, or aid in killing, people, it's pretty clear who orchestrated the circumstances that led to the death, and why. And the why does not outweigh the result.

There is a significant societal interest at stake here, which I hope doesn't get drowned in the usual chant of "Corporations Good!", and the painting of the family as gold diggers.

[kiddens]

I'll admit that my farmer background is biased here, but I personally would like to see land converted to farm land so long as it wasn't rain forest before. Green pastures are preferable to strip malls. Unfortunately, the reality seems to be that factory farming is what is on the rise pushing out the smaller, friendlier farms. So that's less about green pastures and more about giant cement slabs.

That said, your article compares C02 per pound of beef and cheese to crops like carrots, but fails to compare to rice, the main staple in the most populated countries of the world. My data is a few years old here, but it was my understanding that, as of the mid 90's, rice produced more C02 than livestock globally, and if thisis to be believed, rice produces 24 times the carbon dioxide of beef pound per pound. Sure, it's hard to stomach that livestock are worse in this respect than transportation, but wetlands (including rice patties) produce more of the world's C02 than energy production

[psychotropek]

I agree that rice is a problem, but I think the point is that rice consumption isn't growing anywhere near the rate of beef consumption.
I don't think poultry are shown to be a problem here, and I certainly consider them livestock.

[kiddens]

I did a quick google search for "global rice consumption" and "global meat consumption"

Rice consumption expected to rise 50 million metric tons from 2005-2015

Meat consumption expected to rise 119 metric tons from 1997-2020

Those sound roughly on par.

[kiddens]

Oops. Left out a "million" in the meat consumption measure.

[psychotropek]

I'm thinking of giving up beef. I'm not supposed to eat red meat more than once a week anyway for my blood sugar. Perhaps I will limit it to once a month?

[conspiratrix]

I just read the article about the man who was trampled to death, and the more I think about it, the more disturbing I find it.

What kind of shopping bargain is worth a life? What has happened to us?
Here's another article about it:
http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/first-the-bad-news/

I know this sort of thing has happened after soccer games as well, but frankly I find this instance much more disturbing than that.

[hilariarex]

I wonder whether it's not just a sign of people greedy for shopping bargains but people desperate because they don't have any money to buy Christmas presents for their families. Is the desperation induced by normal Black Friday-sales greed? How much is it worsened by the failing economy, rising unemployment, and mortgage foreclosures? If the economy weren't so obviously tanking, would this have happened? Would people have felt such desperation for items that they trampled someone to death to get them?

I don't say this to excuse what happened at all, but my first thought on hearing the story was that it was probably the economic meltdown that was causing people to charge so wildly into a Wal-Mart.