Michael Pollan has a blog, too!

One of my favourite writers/journalists has a blog, about good agriculture and good food.

Check it out: On The Table

and make sure you read how agricultural policies of developed states influence the things we eat.

It’s a pity he does not update it more often…

Do supermarkets make our lives better?

The BBC radio program “World Have Your Say” points to an opinion piece by food critic Jay Rayner discussing whether or not supermaret are a good or evil force in our fight for better, affordable food.

I have to admit that I quite like his position, founding it well reasoned and far from the anti-supermarket crowd rants…

Yes, supermarket “are bloody convenient“, as he points out. But they are not the “the dismal and anonymous places” they are made out to be… The people working in there are just, well, people, and they are as likely to behave nicely or badly with their customers as any other “small-retailer” who has been put out of business by them.

Also, I may add, from my personal experience, in Italy the small distribution is suffering now the revenge of customers who until now were forced to pay extortion prices for goods often 1/3rd cheaper in the supermarket.

And as Jay thoughtfully points out, all those chef recommending exotic ingredients would not be able to offer recipes for less than 5 pounds if it weren’t for the big scale economies that allow big chain to sell these foods at a lower price.

There certainly is a lot to be done to force supermarket to pay an honest price to farmers… But as long as people pushes them to have cheaper and cheaper food, they’re going to attempt anything they can to provide them with it. Once people will start demanding high quality food, we will see a shift in the chains’ modus operandi. Not one second before.

Gufodotto’s Shared Items

Look up there…

Since I often comment about news I read on the i.net, and now I don’t get much time to wrte on them, I put up a new feed burner with a few of those I think it would be nice to share with you. It’s all thanks to google’s reader, which I restarted using since my blogroll was getting too long to keep a daily eye on all of them…

On the diary side of my life, I managed to start correcting the paper and hopefully will get it done by the end of the week. If I can get away from the internet, that is…

Look out, there’s a Lion behind that bus!!!

copy-paste from Null-Hypothesis , which dubs itself as The Journal of Unlikely Science. It came to me through the facebook group We’re scientists AND we’re sexy! Ok, I admit, I am a member of it. Yeah, right. Me. Sexy. Ouch! It Hurts.

I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat

Scientists in California have been busy flashing images at people again. This is a favourite game of psychophysicists the world over, being a nice way of measuring reaction times to… well, Visual Things. This time they’ve been looking to see if people pay more attention to evolutionarily salient objects like lions and impala rather than novelties like cars, tables and lamps.

The result will come as no surprise to the evolutionary psychologists in the crowd. When presented with pairs of images, each flashed rapidly and identical except for a tiny change, participants were much faster and more accurate at identifying changes involving animals (including humans) than those involving your aforementioned inanimate things, even if the animal was hardly visible at all. This also held true when a failure to notice the inanimate object in the scenes would normally be associated with sudden and messy death, such as is the case with cars.

The explanation? Well, back in the day, humans would have benefited from attention to things that they could hunt and eat (like impala) as well as to things that could eat them (like lions) and things that may have filled both categories (like… each other). Humans who ignored these objects moving about would presumably have died from either a) starvation or b) being killed and/or eaten, so a tendency to attend to animate objects became hardwired in to the human visual system. Things like cars, although life threatening, are just far too modern to have been incorporated.

So, the good news is that you are very likely to spot a big cat as it sneaks up on you with every intention of making you its lunch. Sadly, in moving to avoid it, you may just end up being crushed beneath the wheels of a bus you have entirely failed to notice. Ah well, swings and roundabouts, eh?

100 notable books from the NY Times

Too many to post them all in here.

So go and check them out there.

The Decline and Fall of the Animal Kingdom

Carl Zimmer has a new story up on WiReD.

Incredibly interesting piece detailing how the glorious animal kingdom decreased in size and importance in the last decades.

Courtesy of facebook which let me know about it.

Sardinia is the 31st best preserved island in the whole world!!!

Vi giro una notizia riportata da Ila/Alice sul suo sito…

La Sardegna tra le isole meglio tutelate al mondo

La Sardegna risulta l’isola italiana meglio tutelata e più incontaminata in un monitoraggio con 522 esperti di turismo sostenibile, pubblicato sull’ultimo numero della rivista americana National Geographic Traveler. Lusinghiero il piazzamento tra le 111 isole prese in considerazione, sparse nei cinque continenti.
GeremeasCAGLIARI, 7 NOVEMBRE 2007 – La Sardegna è l’isola italiana più incontaminata. È la prestigiosa rivista americana National Geographic Traveler a certificarlo, con una speciale classifica pubblicata sull’ultimo numero.

La Sardegna si piazza al 31esimo posto nell’elenco generale che comprende le 111 isole più affascinanti del pianeta, staccando notevolmente le altre isole italiane. Il monitoraggio, effettuato in collaborazione con la George Washington University, ha coinvolto 522 esperti di tutto il mondo che hanno puntato la lente su tradizioni, cultura, paesaggio e ambiente delle isole selezionate. Il risultato finale è stato sintetizzato in un punteggio: 71 è il voto assegnato alla Sardegna, 87 quello attribuito alle Far Oer danesi, prime classificate. In fondo alla classifica, St. Thomas delle Isole Vergini e Ibiza con soli 37 punti.

National Geographic Traveler sottolinea come le isole siano “micro-mondi” molto vulnerabili ad inquinamento, cambiamenti climatici e “tourism overkill”. È soprattutto il turismo “devastante” uno dei pericoli da cui guardarsi. È necessario piuttosto tutelare e proteggere le isole e promuovere un turismo responsabile. Non a caso svettano in classifica le “inarrivabili” Far Oer.

La Sardegna è descritta come una terra con montagne e villaggi nell’interno e chilometri di coste con lunghe spiagge. Senza dimenticare una “ricca e inusuale” cultura locale.
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Ed ecco la recensione di National Geographic:

Sardinia, Italy
Score: 71

“A rocky and mountainous interior dotted with remote mountain villages which preserve a rich and diverse cultural heritage. Miles of distinctive, unspoiled rocky coastline, with coves, caves, and long sandy beaches.”

“A rich, unusual local culture. I particularly enjoyed the Ferragosto celebrations in Olbia. The local wine, cuisine, and handcrafts are all worth exploring.”

“Countryside littered with debris. Poor transport networks and underdevelopment of tourist facilities. Aesthetic and cultural integrity of the island is good and needs to be protected.”

Ed io aggiungo, alla faccia di Goletta verde che anno dopo anno continua a dare bandiere blu a sproposito a destra e a manca. Con la scusa che E. Coli non si vede le spiagge e le acque limpide di casa nostra vengon tacciate di esser piu’ sporche di alcuni tratti devastati dell’Adriatico. Bah…

notare come la Corsica ottenga un punteggio anche piu’ alto, 75, mentre capri becca un misero (x la fama che ha) 59.

Cut-Off from the grid…

Some people are resorting to cell-phone jammers, illegal in the states (and elsewhere too), to avoid being pestered by loud people conversing close-by.

So say the NY Times.

I believe that the right of a person to enjoy silence is stronger than the right of another person to communicate when it is not strictly necessary…

What do you think?

I want to do it too!!!

I want to climb the kilimanjaro like the NY Times correspondent.

Oh, and between the various news, the NY Times is now on Facebook.

E’ morto Enzo Biagi.

Che altro c’e’ da dire?