Along the lines of a couple of books by Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food & The Omnivore’s Dilemma) that I’ve been reading lately, here is a opinion article from the Strib that caught my eye.
The myth of cheap food.

So I was reading an article in the Strib today about a murder in Minneapolis’ north side. Generally reading about a murder doesn’t signify good times, except when I caught that it was the city’s 5th homicide of the year. Only the 5th? This time last year? Sixteen. Crime tends to trend with bad times… and we all know last year was a rough year. Maybe this is another sign of better times on the way?

Interesting post in the Times’ technology blog today about the rate at which our technology devices keep getting faster, or increasing their capacity, while physically shrinking. I particularly like this paragraph:

“Let’s stop for a second to take stock of the wonder of all this. The last flash memory card I bought for my camera held two gigabytes (16 billion bits). It cost me $6. And somewhere inside it is something that is counting electrons 40 at a time. An electron, in case you forgot your high-school physics, has a radius of 2.8179 × 10−15 meters. In layman’s terms it is pretty much the smallest thing you could ever count.”

Love it. Facebook, Flickr, Blogging, The Wii… all things that nobody* (*more or less) was doing even five years ago. What will we have in 2012?

Sadly I am not the least bit surprised about anything found in this article stating that the US in in the midst of a Narcissism Epidemic. Check it out…

Michele Bachmann isn’t as venomous as Ann Coulter, but the fact that the Sixth District here in Minnesota voted her back into office is frightening.

Bachmann’s latest is harping on a story from 2006 and trying to loop in Keith Ellison (MN’s 5th Districts representative, who is democrat, and the first Muslim elected to Congress).

Bachmann has become a darling in conservative circles and a rallying cry in left-leaning circles. I personally find her embarrassing and reaffirms some of my thoughts on those who reside in the northern edges of the Twin Cities.

However, there is one item in this article that really caught my eye:

“Later in her interview, Bachmann didn’t disagree with the host’s assertion that Ellison ‘is heavily involved in what amounts to a talent search for Muslims to fill jobs of some importance in the Obama administration.’
…
Jauert said that Ellison has ‘encouraged people of all faiths to get involved in government, to apply for jobs’ and that as part of that effort, assembled the résumés of several young Muslims.”

Replace “Muslims” with “Christians” or “Jews” in those paragraphs above, and I think people would be up in arms about it. I notice that Ellison’s spokesperson says that Ellison is encouraging people from all faiths, but he’s “assembled the résumés of several young Muslims.” Has he assembled the résumés of any young Christian or Jews… or Native Americans, or Hindus? I didn’t think so…