GladRags Gab

all of the world's most important seeds.

In an effort to preserve crop diversity in the face of a mounting environmental crisis and monoculture farming, The Global Crop Diversity Trust has created an Arctic seed vault that will store millions of seed samples.  These seeds are the foundation of our world's agriculture and their preservation is important for continued food production.

Ok, there is a slight freakout factor with the existence of such a facility.  It means that we have brought our world to such a precarious state that we need to take precautions like ensuring we don't lose our food sources and have to manufacture all of our seeds in a laboratory.  However, this is a very pragmatic approach to preparing for the future even if it does seem "doomsday"-esq.  The fact is that our world is in such a state and we might as well act accordingly.

Another important organization is Seed Savers Exchange.  I just donated to them because I pictured being forced into eating food from a laboratory just to survive and having to take up meat eating for lack of anything else to consume.  Yikes!

I hope that our united efforts reinvigorate heirloom seed preservation and guarantee a world free of genetically engineered agriculture.

Save the Seeds!

Diana

I was recently made aware of this new site, sponsored by Procter and Gamble, to market the Gillette Venus Breeze, a razor for women.  They call the site, the manquarium.  The premise of the site is as follows: you are a girl and you want to find a man.  The manquarium website will help you build the perfect man.  The site asks you to pick a body of a guy in swim trunks (animated of course).  You can scroll through man "types", like the geeky but cute one with glasses, or the person of color with corn rows.  Ok, so now that we have picked our man, we answer some questions about ourselves, like where we want to go on a date or what the best compliment would be.  We put all of this into the site and what we get back is an animation of our man swimming telling us things that the Proctor and Gamble team thinks we want to hear.  Like if you input that you want him to think you are smart, your man will tell you something like your intelligence is hot.

Ok P and G, what are we saying here?  I glean from this website the following…

• women should be looking for a man

• they should pick a man based on how he looks

• clearly we need to shave to find a man 

I mean, that is the bottom line.  This is an ad for a razor.  So we are all heterosexual women who need to snag a man.  

Shame on you procter and gamble.  Shame on you… 

I think one of the biggest problems confronting us today is media consolidation.  The implications of having only six or seven corporations who rule the airwaves and media outlets does not bode well for anyone beyond those who own those corporations.  Dissenting voices don't get heard and big business just gets to further its case.  As with most important issues, it's complicated. Here are some links to understand more.

Now with Bill Moyers (always a common sense voice of reason).

Media Channel (they watch the media) and this link takes you to Michael Copps dissenting statement on today's ruling.

 Seattle Times Editorial

The other day I was listening to an interview with Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and, more recently, The Shock Doctrine.  I like her creative and clear perspective on the waves of capitalistic thought that have struck the US.  She goes up against Milton Friedman, a die hard free market enthusiast whom I think took the concept a bit too far in its unmitigated simplicity, and whom Klein echoes as she states her case that the current free market ideology uses the tactic of shock to further its agenda.

So, I'm not much of an economic thinker, but it can be argued that economics effects everything we do in this society, all with which we interact.  Read the Democracy Now! interview for Klein's crash course on Friedman's economic thought and her interpretation of how it has shaped our country here.

Klein also created a video clip that introduces the viewer to her theory.

Trying to keep my wits about me,

Diana 

Information is shock resistance.  Arm yourself.

Endless hours can be stolen from our days as we search wikipedia for answers to any lingering query that we can possibly recall (or concoct) - what IS baby corn anyway?  Is it really just the younger version of grow-up corn or is it a different breed all together?  Does it grow in the midwest or Southeast Asia?  Can you make fuel from it, just like its bigger cousin?  Does it have to be husked?

Now, wikipedia has its place (wonder no longer, the answer is here) but maybe there are questions out there that you didn't even know you wanted the answers to.  Maybe there is a greater Internet guide that offers true browsing fulfillment.  A guide that doesn't just provide answers to the questions that we have, but to the questions that we should have.

Maybe that guide is StumbleUpon.  StumbleUpon is a browser supported and sculpted by users just like you and me.  If you come across the coolest site ever (like this blog) then you will just want to give it the StumbleUpon thumbs up so other users check it out.  That way, when they want to kill some time at the office, they can click that 'Stumble!' button and perchance happen upon GladRags Gab.  I already found this site and now pretty much want to stay in a tree house in Cave Junction, Oregon.

Pardon me, did I stumble?

Paz,

Diana 

Increasingly, the aerial view of city outskirts is a predictable pattern of lined houses filling standard sized lots with cul-de-sacs and swimming pools circularly accenting the rigid geometry.  I can zoom down and picture the added attractions as everyone tries to keep up with the Joneses – the basketball hoop, the play set (with a canvassed play house if you’re lucky), the pool floats for lazing about, the ATVs for weekend trips to the open country; there always seems to be too little paycheck for too much “Can you buy me that, pleeeease??!!!”  It’s like running a race on a treadmill – it’ll wear you out, but it’ll never get you to where you need to go.

As we plug away, trying to make a career, a family and a community, and to arrive ultimately at financial independence, how do we keep perspective?  How do we remain healthily critical of our lives so that we can avoid choices that waste resources and segregate communities, and remind ourselves of the things that are truly important in life?  How do we gently nudge our neighbors and loved ones when it seems they have lost this perspective and, worse yet, when that misguided sort of life is interfering with our own potential happiness and freedom?
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Whole Foods Market, national purveyors of organic and natural grocery goods, is in the process of acquiring Wild Oats, another national and natural grocer.  The over half a billion dollar deal was moving along as planned until the Federal Trade Commission threw a wrench in the works.  Citing antitrust law infringement, the FTC has filed a complaint against the proposed merger on the grounds that such a union would eliminate substantial competition in the premium natural and organic marketplace.

I never thought that I would so emphatically object to the FTC taking issue with the further consolidation of big business; large corporations often have the majority market share over the smaller players and I like to see these businesses have a chance too - this is America after all.  However, this complaint is incredibly unjust.  The FTC is limiting the natural and organic marketplace by failing to acknowledge the substantial competition that Whole Foods and Wild Oats face from the mainstream grocery market, which continues to add organic lines to their offerings.  The complaint not only ignores and skews this real competition, but it also comes before many more pressing antitrust infringement priorities that exist in this country.  Have they ever heard of Wal-Mart?  Economists and business analysts are left dumbfounded: why is the FTC wasting its time with this?

I am not prone to conspiracy theorizing.  With the attention that this government agency is giving to hindering these thriving businesses and the people's tax dollars that it is taking to do so, I am outraged with the obvious bias that is underway here.  There are associations for every industry in the country and I am sure that there is one for the mainstream grocers out there that has a fulltime staff of lobbyists  political pushers working to ensure that this progressive and successful competitor, Whole Foods, is thrown every barrier possible to entry in the larger grocer marketplace.

My ire stems less from my love of big business (I work at GladRags after all) and more from a desire to see people play fair.  The FTC has set the rules and they should follow them.  They are being preferential and discriminatory and their boldness is shameless.

For some wonderfully elucidating articles, check out the links below.

- Diana

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/06/06/is-whole-foods-building-an-evil-empire.aspx
http://retail.seekingalpha.com/article/37547?source=feed
http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20070605-000643-1522
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2007/06/wholefoods.shtm

I read this article on Sunday and it made me so depressed. It's about the Supreme Court's decision to support the interests of businesses over workers. It's the story of Lilly Ledbetter, an employee who file suit against Goodyear Tire and Rubber for wage discrimination.  She was clearly discriminated against but the Supreme Court decided to a enforce a strict time requirement for challenges to be made within 180 days of the first unequal paycheck.  Lily Ledbetter didn't even know she was being unfairly paid for years. This is a ruling that hurts not only women but all unfairly treated workers. Here's the link to the article by Oregonian writer Susan Nielsen.

-Brenda