The Carnivore's Conundrum

The Philosophy of Food

Our society has entered a new age of food. Recently, Americans have begun to seriously examine animal farming, and many of us are disgusted with what we have found. First there was the wave of realization; chickens, cows and pigs are all raised in crowded pens, fed terrible things to fatten them up, and then systematically killed by giant death machines. Then we entered a period of backlash; it has become rather fashionable to avoid eating these sort of mass produced livestock. The well-to-do have begun shopping at Whole Foods and eating meats that reflect the 5-Step Animal Welfare Standards.

First of all, I want to point out the level of animal abuse present in many farms by looking to the Whole Foods list. Many "great and humane" meats that are supplied by the elitist Whole Foods come in at Step 1 on this list. "Animals live their lives with space to move around and stretch their legs." Sounds pretty great to me. Just think about how the animals not lucky enough to make it to Whole Foods must be treated.

What is Animal Welfare?

The deeper issue at hand is the consideration of what exactly constitutes the fair treatment of animals. If Whole Foods clientele are so kind as to eat only Step 5+ certified meats, are they really doing a service to animals? If we compare animal centered farms to mechanized slaughterhouses, it appears that we are doing right by our animals. But there are two issues with this. The first is that our economy could never support feeding everyone Step 5+ meats; we could not meet the supply for meat if we raised all animals in this way. The second issue is that we are comparing killing animals on "happy animal farms" to killing animals in slaughterhouses. 

It seems to me that the concept of animal welfare really is defined by cultural attitudes towards specific animals. For cows, good animal welfare is considered to be a Whole Foods Step 5+ life, but for dogs it means living in homes alongside humans and being pampered with organic foods. But upon closer examination, both dogs and cows are high-functioning emotionally complex animals. It just so happens that in America, we like the taste of cows. 

A Corrupt Paradigm

The real issue is that our society creates standards of morality regarding animal welfare that happen to feel convenient. In our minds it is somehow fair to eat hamburgers, but the thought of eating a dog or a horse is enough to make stomachs turn. Whether we raise our pigs on organic farms or in slaughterhouses, we still cut their lives short by about 75% in order to sell them as bacon. The "lucky" pigs just happen to get sold at Whole Foods instead of Walmart. What an honor. 

Creating a cultural appreciation of farm animals would be challenging because so many of us, myself included, are accustomed to eating and enjoying meat. But the fact is, no matter where we shop for our meat, it still comes from an animal that has been killed so that we can eat it. 

I'm not asking anyone to switch to vegan diets per say, but I am asking that you ponder what's on your plate and consider how it got there. 

 

When Pedestrians Ruled The Streets

How Cars Captured Our Streets

It may seem difficult to imagine, but there was a time that our cities existed before cars. Today our city streets are clogged with stopped cars, honking horns and endless on street parking, all of which is occasionally interrupted by pedestrian crosswalks that drivers universally feel are somehow a nuisance. In the most progressive of cities, we sometimes see a few blocks of roads reserved for pedestrians: Times Square New York, Downtown Crossing Boston, Church Street Burlington. But imagine yourself standing in New York in 1900. What would it be like?

6th Ave. New York,  NY 1903

What happened to our cities? The automotive industry voted us out of our streets.

America: 1900

Our city streets existed as endless open-air marketplaces. Pedestrians shuffled about, conducting their business freely, strolling from place to place. Well developed networks of trains and trolleys moved us efficiently over long distances. Until the introduction of the Model T in 1908, this was largely the status quo.

At first, cars were wildly unpopular within cities. Pedestrians, whose rights of way had never been questioned in the streets, found themselves suddenly interspersed with high-speed steel deathtraps. Cars were essentially the monsters that vowed to trample innocent people in the streets. Take a look at this photo in the New York Times from the early 1920's. It literally depicts a car with a skull faced driver crushing children. At this time parents might think "What kind of idiot would drive in the street where my kids are playing?"

Death rates from pedestrian / car crashes rose and rose endlessly. The public at large was anti-car, at least at that time. The auto industry did not rest silently.

Cars Win The Battle For Streets

Slowly but surely, the norm began to change. By the 1910's, streets had become so dangerous across the country that cities had to act. Beginning in New York, traffic rules were gradually adopted. At first, cities regulated speed limits to about 10 MPH in an attempt to keep pedestrians safe. When this wasn't enough, they began using "Silent Policemen" cones to regulate left-turn lanes. 

This did little to help. By 1930, more than 200,000 Americans had been killed by cars, and the majority of these deaths were among children. 

In 1924 came one of the final pushes for pedestrians to remain in control of the streets. Cincinnati attempted to pass an ordinance requiring vehicle speeds within the city to be regulated mechanically to no more than 25 MPH. At this speed, few collisions were fatal. The auto industry launched a campaign comparing Cincinnati residents to "the backward Chinese" and the measure was defeated.

In 1927, the right of way was officially taken from pedestrians by the National Conference for Street and Highway Safety. President Hoover mandated that pedestrians were officially only allowed to cross streets at crosswalks or when traffic was not present. 

In 1928, the American Automobile Association, or AAA, sent memos to all public schools in America. Children were to be taught slogans such as 'why I should not play in the street' or 'why the street is for cars.' The derogatory term "Jaywalker" was soon developed to describe dull pedestrians who crossed into traffic. The age of the open-air street marketplace was dead.

America: 2014

The trend only continued over time. Suburbs sprawled out as cities reduced density. Streets and highways became wider and parking surfaces came to dominate cities. We now live in a world where pedestrian access to roads seems almost unimaginable. In fact, today, unless you are drunk, if you hit a pedestrian while driving and kill them, you will likely not be punished. Take a look at how our cities have changed. Here's a picture of Los Angeles today.

Today parents might think "What kind of idiot would I be to let my children play in the streets?"

Boston Begins Late Night T Service

Trains to Run Until 3 AM on Weekends

Starting on March 28th, Boston will join the handful of cities with late night subway service. The T will operate until 3 AM into Saturday and Sunday mornings. This late night service is being piloted by the MBTA for one year at a cost of $20 million, but if the service is popular, it will likely be extended into the future. I strongly believe that this will prove to be a great investment by the city. 

Youth Appeal

One of the most frustrating things about weekends in most cities is the fact that there is a mismatch between the time that bars and clubs close and the time that public transportation stops operating. That's if you are lucky enough to be in a city with public transportation at all! Before this new late night service goes into effect, the MBTA generally stops running at around 12:30 AM, but many bars and clubs are open for an extra hour. This can cause all kinds of problems related to drunk driving and the like.

Keeping the T operating until 3 AM will help Boston to offset some of the potential for getting stranded at the bar, drunk and with no easy way home. While we can't be sure how this will be received until it actually starts, I can only imagine that the new service will be wildly popular with young people. In Boston's quest to prove itself to be a world class city, late night T service is one of the best ways to compete with areas such as New York and D.C. 

If you want the late night hours to stick around, make sure to get out and take advantage of them!

Worcester Needs To Stop Being A Car Town

Why Worcester Should Embrace Public Transit

The city of Worcester currently has an unfortunate relationship with cars. Most people who live and work in the city commute by car; very few Worcester residents travel by bus, bike or on foot. If Worcester hopes to become a successful modern city, they will need to ditch their love affair with cars.

Congestion

The first argument to be made against driving through the city is that traffic in Worcester has become horrendous. This is a result of poorly designed roadways and too many drivers. There are neighborhoods throughout the city where streets can turn into carbon emitting parking lots for upwards of a half hour at a time. I have included a picture below of a particularly troublesome intersection. In this one area shown, there are about 5 - 8 traffic lights over short distances that halt traffic moving from any one point to any other point. I frequently have to drive from the bottom left corner of this picture to the top right corner. This distance is .5 miles, but will often take upwards of 10 minutes. 

Cost

Worcester offers four publicly run parking garages in downtown. The city additionally has almost endless street and off-street parking. Last year the parking infrastructure in the city ran a deficit of $476,000. Despite the fact that the garages lose money each year, they remain in operation. Worcester should close it's parking garages and build something useful instead.

Density

Now that I've bashed the city for it's failings, I want to point out a couple of areas of hope, the first of which is density. Despite it's large area, Worcester boasts a population density of about 4,600 people per square mile, which is actually quite high. Houston, TX, by comparison, has a density of only 3,500 per square mile, despite a population of over 2 million. 

The denser a city is, the more effectively it can be served by public transit. Because Worcester is dense already, it could conceivably operate a successful bus or even light rail network. Worcester is already served by a bus system, but ridership is currently quite low. In order to encourage residents to take the bus, the city has to reduce it's parking friendly rules.

The Future

Despite it's affinity for cars, Worcester is showing signs of hope in the realm of parking. In November, the city proposed changes to zoning laws which would remove minimum parking requirements for new buildings. That would mean that as new buildings went up, they would not need to provide off-street parking. This could help to further increase density and encourage people to walk or take the bus, as over time it would reduce parking.

The proposal never actually came to pass for the whole city, but it appears that it will be adopted by at least the downtown core. In a city of cars, I am starting to see some signs of hope, but there is still lots of work to be done. 

Young Men And Political Instability

The Relationship Between Young Men and Turmoil

Bank of America / Meryl Lynch recently published a study that shows that there is a strong relationship between young men and political instability. Now I can't say for sure why Bank of America was conducting this type of research, but I am definitely surprised by the results. The study found that approximately 50% of political instability is caused by the relative number of young men in a society.

See for yourself. The chart above shows the relationship between stability and men. Perhaps what's more interesting though is why this is true.

Stagnation and Impatience

When a society experiences a youth boom, several things tend to happen. First is that the economy tends to stumble, at least initially. This is because as young people begin to enter the workforce, it takes time before the economy can expand enough to create jobs for these people, which tends to lead to high unemployment. 

Unemployment rises, but so do prices because there are now more people who need goods and services. Often this leads to dramatic rises in home prices and increasing inequality. As the age pyramid rebalances, many of these issues tend to resolve themselves; however, when there are more young men than young women, problems often ensue.

Men V. Women

This balance is interesting: more men leads to two things. The first is, rather obviously, lower marriage rates for men. If there are more men than women, it makes sense that many men go without partners. In many societies, marriages and the children that often result represent a sort of stabilizing factor. 

This leads to the second factor: young men who are not tied to house and home have a greater ability to respond. This can be positive or negative. A young man may have the freedom to move across the world to pursue a passion, or if he is living in a stagnating society that is the result of an imbalance of youth, he may be more likely to participate in a protest or an anti-establishment movement of some sort. 

A Historical Truism

When at first I read this study, I thought that it was interesting but I wondered if there were any real examples of this. As it turns out, there are many! Three particularly prominent examples of this specific trend can be found in the Spanish Conquistadors, the French Revolution and the rise of the Nazi's in Germany. In each of these scenarios there were other factors at play, but the imbalance of young men was present each time.