… the online home of a librarian in Perth, Western Australia
Originally uploaded by Constance Wiebrands.
Paco and M are sitting in the backyard.
I am indoors putting finishing touches and tidying up the referencing for a paper LINT is presenting at VALA.
It’s a beautiful day.
Music: Huong Vietnam by My Phuong Hguyen and Thierry David (Buddha Bar 7).
Google Reader error
Originally uploaded by Constance Wiebrands.
Google Reader was doing strange things this morning. First there were no new items at all, then every single feed had six items to read, regardless of the actual number, and nothing got marked as read.
If you look at the screenshot on Flickr you will note that I am seriously behind on reading my feeds - 653 items to read from Techmeme, 487 items from Lifehacker, 320 from Techcrunch, and so on. Time to mark all read, I think. (I do love how easy it is to solve this problem!)
It’s funny how, sometimes when you start to think about one aspect of your life, you start looking more closely and more intensely. This whole diet thing? Well, officially the six week plan is over, but I don’t feel any desire to stop and revert to my “normal” diet. I started off wanting to put a stop to my bad eating habits, and I have, I think, but now I find I’m thinking more about how food is produced and the sorts of food that we are sold in the shops, and what do I want to eat?
Still pondering, especially having just read The ethics of what we eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason (Text Publishing, Melbourne, 2006). Highly recommended.
The five ethical principles (pp.247-248) the authors believe should inform our dietary choices are:
Transparency: We have a right to know how our food is produced. If slaughterhouses had glass walls would we all be vegetarian? The descriptions of what animals go through to become that piece of chicken, steak, chop - not pleasant.
Fairness: Producing food should not impose costs on others. They make a good point, that we in the developed world are happy to have cheap food, but the true costs, in terms of pollution and degradation of the environment are often hidden (or we prefer not to think about it).
Humanity: Inflicting significant suffering on animals for minor reasons is wrong. “Kindness and compassion towards all, human and animal, is clearly better than indifference to the suffering of another sentient being.”
Social responsibility: Workers should have decent wages and working conditions.
Needs: Preserving life and health justifies more than other desires. “…[I]f we choose a particular food out of habit, or because we like the way it tastes, when we could have nourished ourselves equally well by making a different choice, then that choice has to meet stricter ethical standards.”
