I've had a lot of silly half-brained convictions in the past, but hopefully this recent re-hatched development of mine is more well thought out. Let me present some facts I've found.
"To produce 1 pound of feedlot beef requires about 2,400 gallons of water and 7 pounds of grain. Considering that the average American consumes 97 pounds of beef (and 273 pounds of meat in all) each year, even modest reductions in meat consumption in such a culture would substantially reduce the burden on our natural resources.
For the United States and other industrialized nations, lowered meat consumption would yield significant public health benefits, particularly a reduction in heart disease, several cancers, and other chronic diseases." [link]
"Globally, ruminant livestock produce about 80 million metric tons of methane annually, accounting for about 22% of global methane emissions from human-related activities." [link]
There's not much more to say other than that... the seemingly harmless and tasty burgers we chomp down are actually extremely wasteful and detrimental to ourselves and the world (and its inhabitants). I'm no expert on this subject, though; Maybe there's a positive side of the picture I'm not seeing here or maybe these facts are wrong and biased - please let me know if I'm misinformed (though there's probably plenty of other sad-looking statistics I didn't bother finding and adding to this note). With that said, this doesn't mean I fault anyone who's conscious of all these harms and still fully continues with their meat eating habits. What they choose to eat and how much they value their food is their prerogative. I also enjoy eating meat and having variety in my diet as much as the next person, but I feel compelled to draw my own line somewhere. (Also adding vegetarian options into your palette [pun] adds a different kind of variety to your meals that you may have never experienced before anyway.)
If you're still interested, I read an article that I can't seem to dig up right now (sorry for the lack of professionalism). It said that some people somewhere did a study and found that after beef, pork was the next worst offender in terms of leaving a carbon footprint, and chicken was next in line. If I remember right, beef did far more damage than anything else. Going vegan and buying locally was the best way to go.
And then even based on my own ethical reasoning - I would never dream of slaughtering my dog and cat (or any elephant or bear) and eating them. Why then should I find it okay to eat any cow or pig or chicken? It's easy to skip the judgment when the killing is done far away and by someone else and by the time it gets to me it's just a hunk of meat. Also to many of us, animals just seem like stupid mindless beasts of the world, but now with all this research coming out we're learning this is not entirely the case (elephants). There are so many things we don't know about these creatures, and only recently in history have all the field researchers and science begun to scratch the surface of it. Again, I don't fault anyone for thinking differently; This is just my purely subjective thinking. Likewise, don't scream at me if you see me eating meat because it is hard to hold these convictions 100% to heart in every situation, but it would be good to always keep this information at least conscious in our minds when we make our dietary decisions (and imo, we should be conscious of the impact of every decision we make).
on a final and semi-related note, with the rest of the world industrializing and with america continuing with bad habits as the leader and example, we could be heading into dangerous places.
These guys are amazing. This is all from the wiki page but everything seemingly has a valid citation. I simply copy and pasted a lot of interesting text I picked out but every single paragraph is astounding. It is wiki, though, so go ahead and check out the page and see everything and its citations for yourself.
- A wide variety of behaviors, including those associated with grief, learning, allomothering, mimicry, art, play, a sense of humor, altruism, use of tools, compassion, self-awareness, memory and possibly language all point to a highly intelligent species that are thought to be equal with cetaceans and primates.
Two members of the family were shot by poachers, who were subsequently chased off by the remaining elephants. Although one of the elephants died, the other, named Tina, remained standing but with knees beginning to give way. Two family members, Trista and Teresia (Tina’s mother) walked to either side of Tina and leaned in to hold her up. Alas, Tina was so weak she fell to the ground and died. However, Trista and Teresia did not give up but continually tried to lift her. They managed to get Tina into a sitting position, but her body was lifeless and fell to the ground again. As the other elephant family members became more intensely involved in the aid, they tried to put grass into Tina’s mouth. Teresia then put her tusks beneath Tina’s head and front quarters and proceeded to lift her. As she did so, her right tusk broke completely off, right up to the lip and nerve cavity. The elephants gave up trying to lift Tina but didn’t leave her; instead, they began to bury her in a shallow grave and throw leaves over her body. They stood over Tina for the night, and then began to leave in the morning. The last to leave was Teresia.
Elephants are thought to be highly altruistic animals that will even aid other species, including humans, in distress. In India, an elephant was helping locals lift logs by following a truck and placing the logs in pre-dug holes upon instruction from the mahout (elephant trainer). At a certain hole, the elephant refused to lower the log. The mahout came to investigate the hold up and noticed a dog sleeping in the hole. The elephant only lowered the log when the dog was gone.
A ranch herder was out on his own with camels when he came across a family of elephants. The matriarch charged at him and knocked him over with her trunk, breaking one of his legs. In the evening, when he didn’t return, a search party was sent in a truck to find him . When the party discovered him, he was being guarded by an elephant. The animal charged the truck, so they shot over her and scared her away. The herdsman later told them that when he couldn’t stand up, the elephant used her trunk to lift him under the shade of a tree. She guarded him for the day and would gently touch him with her trunk.
Elephants in Africa will self-medicate by chewing on the leaves of a tree from the Boraginaceae family, which induces labor. Kenyan humans also use this tree for the same purpose.
Elephants are the only other species other than humans and neanderthals known to have a ritual around death. They show a keen interest in the bones of their own kind (even unrelated elephants that have died long ago). They are often seen gently investigating the bones with their trunks and feet, and remaining very quiet. Sometimes elephants that are completely unrelated to the deceased will still visit their graves. When an elephant is hurt, other elephants (also even if they are unrelated) will aid them.
The entire family of a dead matriarch, including her young calf were all gently touching her body with their trunks and tried to lift her. The elephant herd were all rumbling loudly. The calf was observed to be weeping and made sounds that sounded like a scream but then the entire herd fell incredibly silent. They then began to throw leaves and dirt over the body and broke off tree branches to cover her. They spent the next 2 days quietly standing over her body. They sometimes had to leave to get water or food, but they would always return.
On many occasions, they have buried dead or sleeping humans or aided them when they were hurt.
Meredith also recalls an event told to her by George Adamson, a Kenyan Game Warden regarding an old Turkana woman who fell asleep under a tree after losing her way home. When she woke up, there was an elephant standing over her, gently touching her. She kept very still because she was very frightened. As other elephants arrived, they began to scream loudly and buried her under branches. She was found the next morning by the local herdsmen, unharmed.
Elephants have been seen sucking up water, holding their trunk high in the air, and then spraying the water like a fountain.
Kosik, an Indian elephant at Everland Amusement Park, South Korea surprised trainers when they thought there was a person in his enclosure but it was actually Kosik imitating Jong Gap Kim, his trainer. Kosik can make sounds imitating up to eight Korean words, including "sit", "no", "yes" and "lie down".
Elephants show a remarkable ability to use tools, despite having no hands. Instead, they use their trunk like an arm. Elephants have been observed digging holes to drink water and then ripping bark from a tree, chewing it into the shape of a ball, filling in the hole and covering over it with sand to avoid evaporation. The elephant later went back to this spot for a drink.
Elephants are able to spend a lot of time working on problems. They are able to radically change their behavior to face a new challenge, a hallmark of complex intelligence.
Koko worked out when his keepers needed a bit of ‘elephant help’ when they were transferring the females of the group to another zoo. When the keepers wanted to transfer a female, usually they would say her name, followed by the word 'transfer' (e.g. “Connie transfer"). Koko soon figured out what this meant. If the keepers asked an elephant to transfer and they didn’t budge, they would say “Koko, give me a hand”. When he heard this, Koko would help. Peachey firmly believes that after 27 years of working with elephants, they can understand semantics/syntax of some of the words they hear. This is something thought to be very rare in the animal kingdom.
On one particular day, there was a fire truck that came and parked outside her enclosure where a man had just had a heart attack. The lights on the truck were flashing red, white and yellow. When Ruby painted later on in the day, she chose those colours. She also showed a preference for particular colours that the keepers wore. (If you haven't seen elephants painting, see on youtube here.)
Youtube is great now and the official footage for one of the Radiohead concerts in Saitama was finally put on the air. I managed to get it and put up one song so far onto Youtube in awesome quality. Here it is and more to come. I was in this giant sea of people somewhere . This performance blew me away along with the thousands of silent fans and all their clapping. If you visit the youtube page directly be sure to click "watch in HD" or just use this link.
radiohead - fake plastic trees
a green plastic watering can for a fake chinese rubber plant in fake plastic earth
that she bought from a rubber man in a town full of rubber plants to get rid of itself
it wears her out, it wears her out it wears her out, it wears her out
she lives with a broken man a cracked polystyrene man who just crumbles and burns
he used to do surgery on girls in the eighties but gravity always wins
and it wears him out, it wears him out it wears him out, it wears him out
she looks like the real thing she tastes like the real thing my fake plastic love
but i can't help the feeling i could blow through the ceiling if i just turn and run
and it wears me out, it wears me out it wears me out, it wears me out
if i could be who you wanted if i could be who you wanted all the time, all the time
I've been struggling with how to put into words all the bits of Japan left lingering in my mind. Here is a product of that struggle. I tried to cut down the length, I promise.
Oct 1-2 - Osaka Municipal Central Gymnasium Night 1:
Songs I heard live for the first time: Dollars and Cents, Like Spinning Plates
Japan may be the best country in the world to see a concert in. Besides being a surreal experience for me, the crowd was so quiet and respectful it was as if we were listening to an orchestra peform. It was a huge contrast to the California shows, where obnoxious screaming and loud casual conversations are very common. Even in the middle of most songs, calm and sedating ones included, the California crowds would start cheering during quiet breaks in songs (like the breaks in Weird Fishes/Arpeggi and Nude). But at these Osaka shows the crowds were so quiet before and during songs that you could literally hear a coin drop in the entire gymnasium (or, put in another way, I could actually hear the band members talking on stage before a song). It allowed for such a chilling atmosphere - to hear the music resonate throughout thousands of captivated spectators. I think this concert is the reason I actually like Exit Music now. During the classic rock songs like The Bends and Paranoid Android though, the crowd did appropriately break a bit out of their silence shell.
Before Jigsaw Thom: Ready... Johnny: Hai! Crowd laughs. Thom aims mic toward Johnny. Thom: We're Japanese tourists.
Night 2:
Songs I heard live for the first time: Knives Out, Planet Telex, Fog
Thom throws an f-bomb into Bodysnatchers.
Before No Surprises Crowd member: You rock!! Thom: We rock but not on this next particular tune.
Sometime during show Crowd member: Radiohead!! Thom: Yes.
Beginning of 2nd encore Thom forgets the lyrics to Cymbal Rush and runs off stage. Then he comes back on, plays the intro for 30 seconds, stops, and admits stalling. Then he plays Fog instead (I didn't know what song it was at the time).
Oct 4-5 - Saitama Super Arena
Night 3:
Songs I heard live for the first time: Bangers and Mash.
The Tokyo crowd gets louder and rowdier than the Osaka crowd but they're still much more respectful than a California crowd.
This was the closest I had gotten to the stage so far. Before Radiohead took the stage, I was like, "This is awesome." Then they went on and everybody started pushing up and crowding and we just became a huge wave of people swaying and pushing (and some moshers). It was crazy and insane so I started inching my way out of the pack but all the shoving died down after the first few songs anyway. It was still a fun experience, but I think it's a bit dumb because at that point, the music loses a lot of its impact. It's just too distracting for me to have all these people rubbing against me and breathing down my neck and being all hot and drenched in sweat. So yea, when I was in that situation, the music was completely out of my focus.
Night 4:
Songs I heard live for the first time: Myxomatosis, My Iron Lung
Again, the crowd was insanely wild even though I was in the back section. But now in the back section, my view of the stage was completely blocked off so after awhile, I decided to just make my way toward the back and stay out of the giant swarm of people. Since I could barely see anything in my very obscured view, which included the back of a lot of people's heads, most of the time I just kept my eyes closed and focused entirely on listening. Wow - what a difference this made. The music felt so much more real and alive this way without the distractions. One of the highlights of the concerts was hearing Fake Plastic Trees this night. It was so... moving.
Oct 7-8 - Tokyo International Forum Hall
Night 5:
Songs I heard live for the first time: I Might Be Wrong, Kid A (!), Blow Out, True Love Waits (on rhodes)
This night was just completely indescribable. I had a third row ticket in possibly one of the best venues and it was on Thom Yorke's 40th birthday. I was so close to them. I can still picture Thom Yorke's gaze into the crowd when the band came onto stage and opened with All I Need as people around shouted happy birthday.
So there were these random moments during the show where any given band member would start staring into my area of the crowd. Being as captivated as I was, I would generally try to stare back at them and it was strange because they would just keep staring for a long time. It felt like they were looking into my soul. I was spooked afterward.
They played Blow Out, a song I didn't know at the time and that they hadn't played in 11 years. I also had been waiting to hear Kid A at every show I went to and even got to hear True Love Waits.
People around me were shouting happy birthday at Thom throughout the whole show.
Thom forgot to sing a line during Idioteque. Then Ed, doing backup vocals, looked over and Thom gave an "oops, my bad" look.
Night 6:
Songs I heard live for the first time: In Limbo, Wolf at the Door, Bulletproof
So after experiencing what I did at the last show, I was completely bummed out because for this last night I had a row 14 seat. I think it turned out to be a good thing anyway. Since I wasn't distracted by any awesome view and already had the light show pretty much memorized by now, I once again focused on the music and mostly shut off my eyes. This might've ended up being the best night in terms of an audio experience.
At the end of The Gloaming, Johnny looped Thom singing "we haven't stopped."
During Paranoid Android, Colin brings out a camera and takes a picture of the crowd. It was during the quiet part (rain down...).
While filming Blow Out again for youtube, a security guard came over and gave me a hard shove.
Some afterthoughts: I have a love/hate relationship for having a camera at the Radiohead shows and I'm not sure if I even want to bring one along the next time I go to one. I got a few pretty cool pictures, but for the most part it was just a distraction. Taking a picture completely takes away my focus from the music.
For whatever reasons, Radiohead decided to do the best set lists in Japan. Thom also has to say 'cool beans' at every show. Also, seats in a seated pit are a must-have if they're available.
From the first show in SF to the last show in Tokyo I feel like the way I listen to music changed a lot. I'm not sure how to describe it though really, but it's amazing.
