This week's compendium

Here’s this week’s compendium. This week…

1. on salon.com Francis Lam started a series on baking [1]. How exciting. And delicious.

2. evidence emerged that the US baseball legend Lou Gehrig probably didn’t have the disease named after him, i.e. Lou Gehrig’s Disease [2]. Whoops.

3. gizmodo.com posted an astoundingly wondrous series of diptych photographs [3]. Fantastic, fantastic.

4. the journal Circulation published research showing a moderate intake of high cocoa chocolate was associated with reduced heart failure risk [4a]. It can modestly lower blood pressure, too [4b].

5. and Tai Chi was reported to help fibromyalgia [5]. Sure beats medication.

6. an Iowa egg producer recalled 380 million eggs following a Salmonella enteritidis outbreak affecting hundreds of people [6]. It’s Food Inc. in action, folks.

7. an Australian survey reported in the latest MJA concluded the severity of sleep apnoea is increasing. Why? Because obesity’s increasing [7]. It’s Food Inc. in action, folks.

8. this beautiful profile of beautiful darling Kate went up on a fellow crafter’s blog [8]. I am so proud of Kate.

Finally, I wish you, dear Farmdoc’s Blog readers, a wonderful week.

'The Silence of the Lambs' personified

I found the film Wolf Creek so scary I couldn’t watch it after dark [1]. And I haven’t dared to try The Texas Chainsaw Massacre let alone The Silence of the Lambs. In other words, horror movies aren’t for me. And I’m not for them. So I avoid horror films. Like the proverbial plague. But sometimes one slips in under my radar. A cinematic wolf in sheep’s clothing. An example is the 2008 doco Food, Inc. [2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Last Tuesday night Sweetheart Vivienne and I watched it. Its name’s benign enough – though perhaps the Inc’s a giveaway in this era of corporate excess. But its content puts it fairly and squarely in the horror movie genre. To me it’s a visual depiction of Michael Pollan’s 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma [7]. Indeed Pollan’s in the film. As an articulate good guy, along with Joel Salatin [8]. But the bad guys are legion. And they’re all corporate – corporate bullies. Faceless and soulless agribusinesses. Out to screw the farmers on one side and the consumers on the other. And succeeding in screwing everyone including, I dare say, themselves – though they’re too stupid to know it. And how do we know the movie makers aren’t biased against them? Because all the bad guys declined to be interviewed. Oh, and the biggest bully? Why M**santo, of course. Easily. In summary, if you eat food you must watch, i.e. endure, Food, Inc. Its website says ‘You’ll never look at dinner the same way’ [9]. Oh yeah.