It seems like these things come in cycles. Did the Roarin’ 20′s bring on prohibition? Did the 60′s bring on the “war” on drugs and the Moral Majority?

I’ve been convinced for a while that somehow in the end, McCain was gonna pull it out, and for the first time it actually seems like it could happen. I’m actually pretty scared. I’m afraid of how many more rights we might give up in the name of national security.

But for some reason I just have very little faith in the Democratic party to be able to win an election. I mean, George W. Bush got re-elected. If that doesn’t prove they are inept, I don’t know what could. And now the Republicans have a vice presidential nominee who I personally think is the worst VP nominee in history, and somehow she’s actually helping McCain. It’s amazing.

Republicans seem to be pretty good at winning elections while ruining the economy and destroying the constitution. Democratic party, you have failed. Since I am pretty convinced that all 55 of California’s electoral votes will go to Barack Obama, maybe I’ll vote for a third party or independent candidate, just to record my vote of dissatisfaction with the two main parties, rather than simply not voting for president which is what I am usually inclined to do.

Who on McCain’s campaign thought it would be a good idea for him to go on The View in the first place? And man these guys can just straight up lie on TV and their poll numbers keep improving. So once again I gotta say… Democratic party, you have failed!

So if you’ve been having a great time the last decade and a half or so, enjoy it while it lasts, the backlash could be coming in the form of an ultra-right-wing evangelical Christian made for TV version of sharia law brought on while Sarah Palin goes and “reforms all of Washington” for John McCain!

-Bryan

At the time that I was originally contemplating this, news sources were reporting that there were about 800 cases of tomato-related salmonella. According to the CIA World Factbook the estimated population of the United States as of July 2008 is 303,824,646. It seemed to me that ~800 cases out of 300 million people is actually quite a small number of cases of salmonella, especially when you consider how many other potential sources there could be. Chicken, anyone?

In the midst of all this hub-bub regarding tomato-related salmonella, and all the economic disruption and inconvenience that it has caused, one thing I began to wonder and the one piece of relevant information I could not find in any reports on the subject was this: How many cases of salmonella do we really get in an average year?

So I decided to start poking around looking for some more data, and I pretty much had to start digging around old articles since all the recent articles about salmonella seem to be full of sensationalistic coverage (and no one is reporting how many cases there usually are, anyway), but I did find a couple of tidbits of interesting information.

According to this article from 2005, “approximately 600 to 700 cases of salmonellosis are reported each year in Minnesota”, and, “approximately 20 percent of cases require hospitalization”. 600 to 700 cases every year in Minnesota alone. The population of Minnesota: under 5 million people. Have we really brought the tomato industry to a standstill and lost all this revenue over a kneejerk reaction to an “epidemic” that consists of the number of cases we’d expect to see in less than 2% of the population?

This other article from 2006 says that there are 1.4 million cases and 400 deaths every year. It’s not clear whether these numbers are nationwide or global. However it also mentions that in 2005, “the government said that 16.3 percent of all chickens were contaminated with salmonella.” Again, all this is making me wonder… are we even experiencing any more cases of salmonella than we would at any other normal time? Certainly the number of infected tomatoes must be far smaller than 16.3%!

Of course now, a week later, I’m seeing quite a few news outlets reporting that maybe tomatoes are not really the problem. But surely I couldn’t have been the first person to wonder if tomatoes are really the culprit (or if there is really any epidemic at all). At least, I hope I wasn’t!

On some level, I do hope that the culprit really is tomatoes, as bad as that may turn out to be for their industry (but then again, how much more damage can you really do?). But if it turns out that everyone was wrong about tomatoes — who’s going to compensate all the hard working people who lost their year’s harvest due to sensationalistic reporting and kneejerk reactions? Which of the media outlets and government agencies would be willing to admit that maybe they could have handled things differently and caused less damage along the way? Probably none, is my guess. I suppose all I can do now is wait and see what the conclusion is going to be.

Of course, I’m probably missing some huge details which I don’t really have access to. But that’s why this blog is tentatively titled “No one should listen to what I say”, haha. I guess all I can do now is just wait and see what goes down in the end when we figure out what exactly happened.

-Bryan

P.S. Happy 4th of July!

Now I hope the animal activists and environmentalists don’t kill me but this has recently led me to the conclusion that this means that I need to eat as much beef as I can right now while it’s still affordable. I don’t want to look back on today from the Soylent Green future and regret not taking advantage of everything I had when I had it!

The way I see it, everything in beef production is going to get more expensive. I see costs skyrocketing every step of the way from growing the feed all the way to transportation costs for shipping the processed meat all over the world, especially in a future where oil is running out and alternative energy sources aren’t quite ready for prime time. The future I see for cheap beef is pretty bleak.

Now I’m not saying beef will go away completely. In fact, I think the average quality of beef will go way up as it evolves into an expensive, niche-market delicacy, similar to the role beluga caviar plays (though maybe not quite as expensive). And so, while beef will still be around to be enjoyed and appreciated, the days of going down to the local market and picking up a huge slab of beef for a pennies a pound will be long gone.

We simply do not have the resources to keep meeting the increasing demand for beef and go on living as an environmentally responsible society. Beef is extremely inefficient when you look at how much land and energy and effort goes into feeding the cattle compared to how many mouths you end up feeding in the end.

As resources dry up we’ll be looking for more efficient sources of food. We won’t want to waste so much land just for feeding cows anymore. The increasing use of biofuels will also cause a decrease in the available land for raising cattle feed crops. We’ll have to start feeding fewer cows, otherwise the quality of the beef will go down. I have seen the cows and eaten their meat in countries that really didn’t have enough resources for raising cattle, and believe me, it wasn’t very pretty, nor was it tasty. And so the large scale production of cheap beef will eventually go away, and what little meat there is left will be very expensive (but probably also very good).

Which brings me back to the beginning. I love beef, but its time is coming to an end. But since the industrial beef machine is already running in full swing, I might as well enjoy the cheap and high quality beef we have while it’s still around. In the not-too distant future that I see, the large scale industrial production of beef will become economically unsustainable and that will bring about the end of the beef industry far quicker and more decisively than any environmental unsustainability or animal activism could manage.

Oh and speaking of beef: Hey South Korea, what’s with all this rioting over American beef? I’m Korean and I eat American beef pretty much every day. Sometimes even the risky brainy parts they put in chorizo. I’m still ok! Just thought I’d let you know that. That and also that you guys should please not forget that if you want Korea to do good you need to play nice with America, that’s just the reality of the situation.

-Bryan