by Jason on November 12, 2010
I love international stories with non-English websites. It lets me put the imagination in translation. Translimagination, if you prefer. Dot com.
There is a dairy in Sweden called Skånemejerier, and despite what I just promised you, they have an English version of their website, but it is much sparser and doesn’t cover what I want to talk about today, which is their new system that lets consumers track their milk back to the local farmer who produced the milk. And yes, there’s an app for that:
So first off, I think they stole this idea from a beer company, but I spent 20 minutes looking for a link about that and all I got for my efforts was damned thirsty.
Secondly, does Hansson mean “son of Hans”? Because that’s his first name, and that just makes me want to share how I once met someone named Scott Escott, and parents can be nasty, can’t they?
Thirdly, and yes, it’s time to get to the point here, or at least as much of a point as one can find on Vegan Porn; I think there’s a long way to go when the farmer gets all the credit. Even on their site (the English version,) they say that “Milk is our most important raw material.”
That’s right folks, hard-to-spell dairy has figured out how to make milk without cows. Vegans rejoice!
Or not. My Swedish skills are somewhat lacking, but I think there just isn’t any credit being given where it’s actually due, at least not yet. Here’s the future I envision:
After all the mad cow, hoof and mouth, and other disease scares, there’s been a lot of talk about investing in new tracking systems so we’ll know the precise history of each and every animal on the planet, or at least the big ones like cows. This is a long way off, in my opinion, but let’s assume it happens.
There’s also a push for transparency in farming practices, or at least transparency of the kind that they think they won’t get in trouble for (I hear the hidden webcam in an Israeli chicken barn is problematic for some,) and at some point I could see this animal lineage information being made available to the public. Maybe not to everybody, but it just takes one person to open it up.
Then we get to this: you’ll be able to key in a code for the milk, and instead of seeing Hans Hansson of the Hansford Hanssons, you’ll see a cow that’s from the farm. And you’ll see how many male calves were sold off as veal. And how old they were when they were killed. And you’ll see a list of cruelty-free milk substitutes and GPS directions for where to buy them, because you’d best believe this app isn’t going to be written by the farmers.
And that won’t change very much in the world, but I’ll feel a silly sense of contentment when the story goes live.
by Jason on October 20, 2010
Hey hunters? 1986 called, they want to know if you got caught in traffic or something because what took you so long?
Every week or so lately, a handful of hunters have been getting together for a deer hunting competition, and they’re getting points and trophies, but no deer are dying. And this isn’t even a self-esteem building “everybody wins” event or a strange animal rights campaign. It’s serious hunters doing serious stalking.
The trick is that they’re using guns with special cameras installed (the shells are blanks) and the hunters are judged at the end of the day on the quality of their shots. In theory, it’s vegan-friendly hunting, but wow, that’s a weird thing to think about.
Here’s what I love about innovations in the fields of animal exploitation: by making improvements, they often point out what’s so incredibly wrong with the status quo. In hunting, all I ever hear about is “one shot, one kill,” but I’ve also heard that life isn’t like the movies and people do actually shoot at anything that moves and often miss or maim their targets. And of course “one shot, one kill” often turns out to be true, but on the wrong target – you can do your own searching for hunting accident news, the internet’s big enough that you don’t need me.
But what if this became the future of hunting? As the association who puts on the events points out, hunting season is short enough that hunters don’t get enough time to practice, but it’d be hard to police people walking around the woods with guns year-round; at the moment the only difference between a killing gun and a scoring gun is the ammunition, which I hear is easily changed.
In theory, they could come out with obvious fake guns to address that, but I doubt most hunters, at least of this generation, would find that appealing. Hunters already have the ability to walk out in the woods with a camera instead of a rifle. It’s the thrill of the kill that makes it fun for a lot of them (this is from conversations I’ve had with hunters in my area, the killers in your region may vary.)
Make no mistake, this isn’t a transition tool to less-violent outdoorsmanship, at least not yet – this is a tool to make people more efficient killers. From an anti-cruelty perspective, training people to reduce their risk of maiming wildlife is a good thing, but I’d be a lot happier with zero guns in the woods.
But let’s extrapolate: what if they made a fake gun that satisfied both hunters and the government, one that was obviously fake. What would a society that did that look like after, say, 50 years?
If you thought that was too deep, stare into this cake for a while that I found while researching images for this post. There is context in the original source, but I think it’s pretty awesome on its own:
by Jason on August 7, 2010
So I’m not sure what a “man” eats, exactly, but the folks at Esquire thought we’d be interested in a post from their “Eat Like a Man” blog about vat meat. And there’s nothing suitable in that last sentence to attach the link to, so here’s a useless sentence that serves the purpose adequately. The fact that it’s something the lab boys and girls are working on is certainly nothing new to most of us, but this was an interview with one of the scientists who’s actually worked on the problem, and I thought that was nifty.
I’ll be honest, while my mind’s not made up yet, because it’s a hypothetical along the lines of “would I install some kind of blender system in my right thigh for smoothies on the go if the technology were developed,” but I’m not 100% opposed to the idea of eating vat meat. This interval swayed me a bit in the “no” direction though:
Here’s the money quote though:
“And the whole point of growing meat in test tubes is the philosophy of surveillance, so there won’t be viruses or disease-causing entities. If small tumors start to arise, somebody would see it and get rid of that particular culture”
Let’s think about the magnificence of the US food inspection system, and then imagine how the screening process might work at the scale that vat meat would require. ”May contain tumors” is quite possibly the biggest deal killer I can think of at the moment. No kidding, I just skimmed a book called Where’s My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived
[affiliate link], which talks about all those things we were supposed to have in our glorious future, like, uh, jetpacks, and why we don’t have them yet. The 25th anniversary printing might well contain an entry called “Vat Meat: May Contain Tumors.”
But hey, maybe that’s what “men” eat. Zing.
Anyway, I think this post deserves this image, which I’ve saved for quite some time now:
(from the delightful Ignition City by Warren Ellis and Gianluca Pagliarani.)
by Jason on July 26, 2010
Hey, what say we get some posting going on, yeah?
It’s no real secret that I like the idea of things in cans, if not the actual end results itself. Your honours, I present exhibits A through B: our quest for pie in a can back in the day was almost eventful, and yet I prefer to pressure cook beans rather than use cans, though that’s pretty much due to the local grocery store’s refusal to install pneumatic tube delivery mechanisms between their establishment and my home. Because I’m 98% bean.
Anyway, today we found out about new canned food that I haven’t seen before: the sandwich in a can.
From the product site, the things don’t look like they’ve been released yet, but maybe “released” isn’t the right word. “Unleashed,” maybe. Or released could be good, in a “release the demon hordes” kind of way, because I’m gonna guess a launch to coincide with the end of the Mayan calendar.
I’m a little disappointed in the packaging. I always pictured this kind of thing as a flat, bread-slice shaped thing that would open with one of those keys like you see on canned luncheon meat. Mind you, I’d like to see soda pop that opens with one of those keys too. Something about the long strip of jagged metal that adds an element of excitement to meal preparation. I miss that in my salmonella-reduced kitchen.
Anyway, 2 of the 3 might be vegan, and because the 3rd one is chicken I get to mock it all. Of course, if the mocking was in the chicken, i.e. if it was a mock chicken sandwich in a can, I’d join vegans around the world in proclaiming this the greatest thing ever. Now it’s simply ridiculous, of course.
(via Laughing Squid)
Update: As a responsible journalisticalatician, I sat through a TV interview about this thing (watching, not being interviewed.) Turns out the can contains a bun wrapped in plastic and packets of spread. In other words, the can is basically a bun protector, the convenience is dubious, but it lasts a year. You know, in case you can’t find any other canned foods.
I’ve had this one queued up for a couple of days now, because what do you say about a bra that you can use to grow rice? You could say nothing and just post a picture, like so:
That in itself probably isn’t fair use of the photo, of course, which I’m told is by Kitamura/Getty, but ladies and gentlemen of the jury, how does one describe a rice-growing bra without a picture? It’s not what I thought it’d look like. Wanna know what I thought it’d look like? Like nothing. Like a void. Because I couldn’t even imagine such a thing. You can’t grow rice or support breasts with a void, so I think, your honour, that the use of the photo is valid.
Anyway.
So it turns out, the bra is just a promotional concept and won’t be offered for sale. I have mixed emotions about that. Even with the photo, I can’t imagine how this would work and how much rice one could expect (there’s no word on if there are multiple cup sizes,) and the scientist in me is curious. And research would let me look at boobs, which is nice, but I fear that it would change the way I look at them forever after, which is not so nice.
Anyway, this is Vegan Porn, and this… is Vegan Porn.
(via vegansaurus)
by Jason on February 17, 2010
In the summer of this year, BowLingual will be released for the iPhone. The who what where now? It’s an app that translates your dog’s “speech” into human. Of course. I know this is a real thing because it has a Wikipedia page, which means it will be the subject of many a grade-schooler’s essay.
This is proof positive that there aren’t any vegan venture capitalists out there. If there were, here’s the soundbite that would have come out of the pitch meeting: “can this technology work with other animals?”
Of course, CowLingual, CluckLingual, and PigLingual wouldn’t do the average consumer any good, since there’s no way any modern farmer would let you near an actual representative member of the Food Animal subset, but I can take this further, because I have been drinking. Coffee. Mostly.
Here’s the spoiler of the century: you know the show Lost, which is in its final season? The Big Reveal at the end is going to be that the story is real. And that means that Miles is a real person who can talk with the dead.
"So, why vegan?" "The dead talk to me." "Yep, that's understandable then."
Let’s play vegan VC now and combine the imaginary CowLingual technology with a digital Miles (who, you will remember is a real person, which means we can scan him or something, don’t pester me with details of a product that won’t launch for months from now after we’ve pumped the stock, dammit!)
Have you ever gone to the supermarket and wanted to talk to the spirit associated with the steak you’re thinking of buying?
There’s an app for that.
by Jason on March 27, 2007
I usually try to spread submissions out so this doesn’t happen, but I just realized that I posted two stories from Magic Stones in a row. And you know what? It felt right, and I’m going with it.
HAPPY MAGIC STONES DAY!
Next up: researchers at the University of South Carolina are working on some kind of dipstick that you can stick in your food to see if it’s going to kill you. The intended uses would range from double checking your leftovers (“did we have beans last week or last month?”) to checking restaurant food (now WHY CAN’T THEY MAKE A CHICKEN AND FISH DETECTOR? But I digress). The best part? The stick will change colour to indicate a problem. The colour of danger is now yellow. Why is this awesome? Because there’s a joke about yellow snow in there somewhere, and one that rhymes with mellow, and maybe even one that combines the two. Researchers in rival state North Carolina are reportedly working on finding the funny, but I think you can beat them to it – post your thoughts in the comments!
Oh, and have a great Magic Stones day – she deserves it, and so do all of you.
by Jason on February 27, 2007
SataMama reports that authorities have started using DNA technology to track ivory poachers. Maybe I don’t live in the right income bracket, but finding “faux ivory” never seems to be a problem for me, since I can’t think of anything I or anyone I know has that’s made of the stuff, except for Stampy the elephant. Still, the price of ivory has quadrupled as of late, which is motivating poachers something fierce. This brings us back to the DNA thing, which, since it’s used on ivory that’s already been removed from elephants, is too late for the victim, but can be used to identify the region where the elephant may have lived, which can lead to identification of trade routes, which can lead to — science justice attack! — arrests of poachers. So nice to see other uses for DNA than the OJ trial and Jurassic Park movies, no? Link.
by Jason on February 13, 2007
kunsjoi sent in a biodiesel story that didn’t once mention animal fat! Sorry, but if you read enough stories about alternative fuels you’d think that animal by-products were essential to the future of energy. However. In this case, the new fuel of the moment is to be derived from cotton and shrubbery, and if you want to tell all your friends about it, that’s no problem, because the fuel will be used to power the mobile phone infrastructure in India. A similar system is already in place in Nigeria, where they use groundnuts. Huh, huh, groundnuts. So what do the animal-based biodiesel people have going for them, besides some good press agents? A bazillion of pounds of increasingly concentrated animal waste that has to go somewhere or the entire factory farming system takes an economic hit while the planet takes another punch in the stomach. If people want renewable power sources, isn’t it about time they look at what grows? Link.
