Altidude is ToddZ

Sadly though, the movie ended and I have nothing to do now. Except play Xbox and wait until next year’s Burning Man or for James Cameron to make another movie, whichever comes first. (I’m kidding. Cameron won’t make another movie for 20 years and next time it’ll be a movie where you are actually killed at the end of it, paddled back to life and then handed an African baby named after the film on your way out of the theatre.)

Well, the whole point of the public option originally was that if you’re going to mandate that people buy health insurance, then it is only a legitimate and moral thing to do if you actually provide them with a public-run program, so that the health insurance industry, which is notorious for gouging people and for engaging in all sorts of nefarious business practices, can’t use the mandate to essentially get 30 million new customers and then gouge them for profits while providing them with virtually no services. And the argument of Howard Dean and others is that this bill actually does more harm than good. The argument is not, well, since it’s not pure enough ideologically or it’s not perfect, it should be defeated; the argument is that it actually does more harm than good, because it reinforces the monopoly status of the private healthcare industry and, at the same time, forces huge numbers of Americans, many of whom will not be able to afford it, to buy products that are inadequate and that they do not want. It perpetuates the very system that supposedly was the impetus in the first place for healthcare reform to pass.

Of the 350 billion pounds of food produced in America each year, we throw away a gut-wrenching 98 billion pounds, 98 percent of which ends up in landfills. According to the EPA, landfills are the largest human-related source of methane in the United States, accounting for 34 percent of all methane emissions. Methane from landfills is generated when organic food waste decomposes under anaerobic conditions. Our rotting food is therefore a major contributor to global climate change. The retail food industry, which includes restaurants, is responsible for 54 billion pounds of this waste, and hemorrhages $44 billion a year in wasted food. Fortunately, a few chefs are working to reverse this trend…