Dreams of you all through my head

Is it just me, or are Led Zeppelin slightly out of time at about 45 seconds into Black Dog, as performed on the 4th album? I'm not an expert on this in any way, and keeping time has actually always been my biggest challenge when playing the trumpet. I'm the guy playing right through the pause and missing the cues and playing four quarters in succession all at different lengths. So listen to Black Dog for me, and tell me what you think. I know the song is intentionally complex, but that section of the studio recording seems out of time, even to me, but it could just be that it's way over my head and I simply can't process the complexity of it.

And while we are on the topic of Led Zeppelin, I'd like to conduct an informal survey. This is one of those questions where it's impossible to not have an opinion, and it is essential for every person to know the answer to this question, so that they know who they truly are. On the inside.

Which is you favorite Led Zeppelin album?

And if your answer is something like "I don't know", "I don't care", "I don't have one" or "What cookies?", you better start making up your mind. The answer to this question is more essential than Elvis vs. Beatles and may forever determine your fate, and the fate of the world. I will reveal my favorite, with a detailed explanation, once there are some responses. This is not a threat.

Eating dirt

I can't even imagine how much people are suffering in Haiti right now, and the fact that the destruction prevents much-needed help to arrive make this so much more tragic. PBS repeated this report yesterday, which serves as a reminder of how wealthy we all are and how much Haitians have already been suffering every day before the recent earthquake.

Feed me Seymour.

Not sure if you read this investigative piece in the New York Times, launched by a woman's tragic fate after eating a hamburger. It's so maddening to read the practices of the meat industry and might push Ginger even closer to becoming a vegetarian. I highly recommend reading that article and if you haven't already, also read Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation", which was first published in 2001 but does not seem to have lost any relevance. I mean, think about it, McDonald's advertises their great ingredients so proudly, but when anyone says "100% Beef" on their product, it really has no meaning at all. All those fat trimmings, no matter how much feces they are contaminated with, are considered beef. Oh, and if you're you're a patty-maker and would like to test the stuff other people supply you with, they might just stop supplying you because of that. That's how confident they are in their hygiene practices. So disgusting.
This industrialized process of making food is a serious problem, and I'm sure we'll hear about a push to irradiate our food to kill e.coli, but that would only fight the symptoms, not the cause. To paraphrase Eric Schlosser, irradiating meat might just lead meat manufacturers to be even less rigorous with hygiene standards, as they know they can just zap it afterward. So in the end you would end up with even less good meat, but more irradiated feces on your plate. Enjoy!

Talk of the town.

Man, two nationally televised presidential speeches in just one week. Obama is keeping busy. I watched a repeat of the back to school speech and saw the speech yesterday live on TV. I like the idea of addressing the kids directly like that, as they most certainly deserve to be shown that kind of respect. I didn't like the speech itself very much, though. The message was good and positive over all, of course, but nothing new that attempted to rattle a jaded teenager. Not that a single speech could achieve that.

My main criticism consists of two things: Firstly, he mentioned no blue collar jobs, disregarding the important contributions that every person in the workforce is making. Secondly, because of this emphasis on the small percentage of people that rise to the very top, he puts additional pressure on kids, and makes those that end up as the school janitor, and somebody in our society will have to do that job, most definitely feel like losers. Of course every student should try to take their talents as far as they can and realize their full potential (Lyndon B. Johnson had some great things to say about wasting resources and potential), but Obama painted an outdated romantic picture of children that want to be lawyers and doctors one day. I, for one, never had that dream. I imagine being a lawyer is mostly boring and I feel a lot of them lack a sense of moral wrong and right, focusing only on the legality of things. And what about all those accident lawyers? Did they really achieve something great? Judging from the ridiculous lawsuits we hear about all the time, I beg to differ. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a truck driver, or operate some other kind of heavy machinery. Then, for the longest time, I had no idea what the heck I wanted to do. Fact is, people fixing drains, picking up trash, repairing roofs, selling books or programming databases all contribute an equal part to making sure that our society is functional and prosperous. To suggest otherwise is an affront to any hard-working person out there. What I think is great about an good education, is that it offers you a choice. It allows you to try different things, until you find the right fit. If you quit high school without graduating, your choices are severely diminished. That, I think, is the message we should teach our kids.

Oh, yeah, parents that had their kids miss the speech for fear of indoctrination are obviously fanatical paranoids.

The health care speech was really great I thought. I felt his attempt to show that he is willing to consider objections and new ideas was genuine, while he made clear how much reform is needed, and how much of a moral obligation it is to provide better health care. I guess that is what I don't get. It is plain to see that health care in the US is not distributed according to need (I got a whole 'nother post in the pipe on supply and demand in markets) and that this is a huge moral challenge. Now why would anyone in their right mind oppose giving people access to the care they desperately need, but simply let them die (and that is actually what is at stake here) in pain and poverty instead? You'd have to be a paranoid fanatic.

Freedom like a shopping cart

This has the potential to be long-winded, but I want to write more often and in order to do that, I need to be more concise. So, I just read an article on people taking their guns to protests in Arizona, simply because they have the right to. That's it, no other purpose, just doing it because they are allowed to, and somehow feel like this is their patriotic duty. What really blows my mind is that those folks are carrying semi-automatic rifles to exercise their rights. These are weapons built for the sole purpose of inflicting and threatening to inflict, serious, if not mortal, injury to another human being. Maybe I'm missing something here, but people that feel the necessity to carry such an instrument of death in public, and thus expressing an utter contempt for the sanctity of human life, are putting themselves in the company of people that I'm glad not to belong to myself. I would be hesitant to completely forbid owning these guns, and at the same time I think stricter gun control laws don't infringe on the constitutional right to own weapons. But I think that as a society, can't we all agree that that kind of gun, again built for a very specific condemnable purpose, has no place where people are publicly gathering.

I think an argument could also be made that stricter gun control does not undermine the foundations of a free society, as a limitation of free speech would, for example, but that is really beside the point. Also, why do some Americans think that they are so much more free than the rest of the Western world? People have asked me questions alluding to this ever since I started visiting this country, and while there are some things you are allowed to do here, there are a million more that you are not. Anyway long story short, I think equal access to health care is very much in the spirit of equality and freedom for all. I was going to argue that the US Constitution guarantees the right to anti-depressants, but then I would not be concise anymore. But ask me about it.

How to save the world in 1 easy step

Step 1: No more plastic bags from the supermarket.

Once you start paying attention to it, those plastic bags will be everywhere! When we moved out here, a month's worth of trips to the grocery store left us with what felt like a life's supply of plastic grocery bags. So our first step was to reuse those bags instead of adding to the collection with each new trip. But that wasn't really satisfying. We had already started using a linen bag when walking to the grocery store here in town, which has the added benefit of showing some hometown pride for the town I grew up in. In the car we had this black bag we got as a gift from a mattress store. When we went to Indiana the last time, they were selling linen bags at the store there as well, and we got two of them. They are about the size of the black bag, but not pictured here. Those three bags usually provide plenty of room for all of our groceries. But you probably noticed that handsome orange box in the picture as well. I added the apple for size reference.

These kinds of collapsible boxes are really nothing new. My family has been using one for as long as I can remember, and you can get them in a lot of supermarkets in Germany. The one we have now is from The Container Store. Unlike the bags, it wasn't free or really really cheap, but it wasn't overly expensive either. It's great for transporting items that don't bag well, like yogurts and bread. And with the box and the three big bags, there only is one problem left. Bagging the meat. We still use plastic bags for that, recycling the ones we already have, purely for hygienic reasons. Anyway, using our own bags is not at all inconvenient, I even find it easier to carry our stuff inside now. And when I think of all the people that use up so many bags every day, just from the store where we shop, and think about all the other stores in the state, and in the country. And then about how many bags that makes in a week. In a month. In a year. Well, you get the idea. It's a stupendous amount and to reduce that number to near zero is within everyone's power. Easily. Nonetheless, we have yet to see another person using their own bags at the grocery store. As a matter of fact, we see tons of people using two bags. Plastic AND paper. Why anyone would do that is completely beyond me.

So in observance of Earth Day, go and get yourself some reusable bags, preferably cloth ones, and not ones made from plastic, even if it's recycled. If you can't find one in a local store, there are tons of them online. It's too late right now for me post links. Or get a nice collapsible box. It will make you feel better every time you shop.

Buy Buy Buy.

It's been so long that you probably don't remember what this is following up to, but it seems like to every post I write these days, I have to do a short follow-up. So let's keep it short: What are your feelings about juice from a brand named "Looza". Look deep inside of you.

I kinda feel like I keep writing about the same thing, but once again I made some observations while fulfilling my capitalist duties. Now, I like shopping at Walmart as much as the next person, but while I think most negative aspects about shopping there are merely questions of degree, there is one thing that really bothers me above all. It's those edited CDs. They shouldn't even exist, and, at least to me, represent some of the things about the US I'm not particularly fond of. First, there is the hypocrisy of selling plenty of violent movies and games, but a few naughty words, and instead of helping to devise a system similar to movies and video games that restricts the sale of some items to people that are too young, they don't even give you a choice. Instead they think it's much better to censor the artists. And what's up with people leaving their shopping carts in the parking lot? I'm not the only one to notice, but it's becoming an epidemic. In Germany, most supermarkets make you put in a coin to get a cart, which you get back when you return it. And guess what? No carts in the lots in Germany. I'm convinced that 90% of the carts left in lots are left there because people are lazy, not because it was physically impossible or unreasonable for the person to return it. Lazy Americans!

I'm starting to think that maybe my heightened awareness of things related to consumerism is an aftershock of the year we spent in New Zealand. Another thing I became more aware of when we were there are the ingredients in the different kinds of food. The other day we accidentally almost bought no-fat yogurt, and when I looked at the calorie count, I noticed a difference that the absence of fat alone could not explain. And guess what, a regular yogurt has about 15-20 of its total 150-190 calories from fat, yet a no-fat yogurt has almost half the total calories. The REAL difference is not the fat content, as its prominent placement on the cup and lid would have you believe, but the sugar. No-fat yogurt has none. It uses Aspartame (aka NutraSweet aka E951 aka Equal aka Canderel aka ...) instead, which accounts for the more significant difference between the two. Yet, most yogurt makers find it more important to point at the fat content. Sure, it's just clever marketing as health-conscious buyers try to steer clear of artificial sweeteners, but I can't help but feel it's downright misleading and dishonest. It's like selling water as Diet Coke, and calling it Diet Coke Clear, or some better comparison you can make up yourself. I'm multi-tasking today and following College Basketball while writing this. Also, if my math is vaguely right, full-fat yogurt should only have about 20, maybe 40 calories more than low-fat. That is so insignificant, it's not even funny.

In other news, I'm so glad that daylight savings time is just a few short days away is finally here! That's how long it takes me to write posts these days.

Thanksgiving!

As some of you may or may not know, England is pretty much Germany's archenemy in soccer. Followed right by the Netherlands, and after the last World Cup, Italy ranks high on that list as well. But it's nothing compared to the rivalry we have with the Brits. Anyway, in the spirit of this tasty holiday I would like to thank the pilgrims and Indians for making this happen. I will spare you my detailed analysis, but it's time the world realized that David Beckham just isn't any good. At all. And he does not deserve his fame, nor qualifying for anything. He does, however, deserve his wife.

In a related note, check out the EPA's Green car guide.