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Everyone should see this film. Take the red pill, and pass it to everyone you know.

Link

Bruce Buschel in a New York Times blog put out a list off one hundred things which restaurant staffers should never do.  It might seem a bit finicky or pretentious to some, but I think this stuff is quality.  It’s not as if basic restaurant service is rocket science; I think establishments would be well served to establish these things, especially in this economy, and since so many restaurants fail.  I don’t work in or own a restaurant but it’s interesting nonetheless.

Things 1-50

Things 51-100

Interesting, informative, eye-opening, and a bit depressing. Even if you think it’s sensationalist, these should really be required viewing for all, as the Peak Oil phenomenon is not a question of if, but when. My takeaway: we all need to use less energy, and have fewer kids.

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This stuff is crazy, especially the cell phone flip catch.  I think we might be doomed.

This is the first part of Eckhart Tolle’s audio book The Power of Now. His teachings involve forgetting about one’s past and future and dropping the egoic mind, in order to focus in and relish upon the only thing we have, the glorious present.  Pretty interesting stuff.

playlist link

I previously posted a TED talk by James Howard Kunstler regarding his views on where suburbia has been and is headed, and I recently discovered this nice little documentary featuring him and covering much of the same topic.  It starts out somewhat light-hearted but takes a dark turn when it gets into the peak oil stuff.  I saw the full version though, I didn’t watch this abridged version, not sure of the differences. I love the Thomas Hardy quote in the beginning.

Apparently their works are in the public domain thus perfectly legal.  I discovered this trove after reading this article about how Orwell wrote 1984 while suffering from tuberculosis in the last years of his life.

Links: George Orwell, Charles Darwin, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, William Shakespeare

YouTube has recently added new sections of which you may not be aware, here they are in case you’d like to waste more time than you probably already do there.  There is a LOT of stuff available.

EDU: if you’re feeling cerebral.  Boatloads of vids from various universities.  Click Directory once there to see. There are entire courses available to view (e.g. @MIT)

TV Shows: impressive mix of classics and newer stuff.

Movies: ditto.

The NYT released an interesting graphic of which U.S. counties suffer the worst unemployment.  Go there and hover over them to see.  You can zoom in as well.

Link

..swing on the spiral..

Some vids about just how terrible trans fats, MSG, and aspartame are.  So much evidence is known of how bad they are, yet they’re all still legal.  The whole of it just speaks to how sketchy the system is, and how we should be so wary of anything processed or artificial lest find ourselves guinea pigs of the FDA.  Not just with foods either but all kinds of chemicals that we are poisoning the earth with.

Trans fats: The scary thing about trans fats is that even if it says 0g on the label, the FDA allows it to be up to 0.4g and it’ll be rounded down to 0 for the label.  You very rarely see anything containing any grams of trans fat according to the label, but I’d be willing to bet that tons of products have it snuck in there and they get to round down to 0.  They probably lower the serving size to accomplish this too.  A person could eat 6 servings of such things in a day, that could be over 2g of trans fats all the while the label said 0.  Again it could also come at a restaurant and you’d never know it.  “hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” oils.  Avoid them!  It’s a shame that whole cities (like NYC back in 2006) place bans before the FDA even thinks of it.

MSG: The scary thing about MSG (other than of course how bad it is for you) is how it’s disguised so innocuously as other things in ingredient lists.  Like “hydrolyzed vegetable protein”, “autolyzed yeast”, “hydrolyzed yeast”, “yeast extract”, “soy extract”, “protein isolate”, even just as “spices”, or “natural flavorings”.  Be deligent with your label reading, or better yet avoid that processed crap all together.  But it’s ALSO served up in restaurants, you gotta be diligent.

(watch parts 2a, 2b, 3, 4)

Aspartame:  This vid series is called Aspartame and MSG are Poisoning Us, but it’s really just about aspartame and how it causes brain tumors and various other things.  It’s kinda long but near the end is a pretty sad story about how a woman was convicted for poisoning her husband who died of methanol poisoning, the actual suspicion being that it was from the component of aspartame.  Stevia gets mentioned in the credits; it’s a joke how aspartame is still approved for food use but stevia isn’t.

(watch parts 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9)

Or this 60 Minutes piece which kind of sums up the above aspartame material in 10 minutes.

This is a French documentary entitled The World According to Monsanto. It reveals how “the gigantic bio-tech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years.” Please watch the whole thing, and pass it on. And just say NO to GMO. Trouble is that Monsanto fought hard so that GM products don’t have to be labeled as such, so the only reliable way to know your food is GMO-free is to buy organic.

Support local farmers at farmer’s markets, join a CSA, start a garden. Stop drinking milk, cut way back on or eliminate your red meat intake, and stop being so fat. Wake up America!

Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 classic Super Size Me is up on Hulu for free right now.  In it he eats McDonalds three meals a day for 30 days. The experiment is interspersed with tons of shocking documentary bits highlighting the growing obesity epidemic in America. It’s a must watch if you haven’t, and probably worth a re-watch if you have.   Click here to go to the Hulu page, where it’s a little bigger, you can click HD, lower the lights, pop out, whatever.  Love you, Hulu!

edit: it’s now up on YouTube as well:

I think that may be the Scientology guy narrating this, but this is an interesting view. Bit scary. Parts 2-10 after the jump.

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I used to listen to a pretty steady stream of old bootlegged Loveline radio shows which I got from a friend at work, so needless to say I’m a fan of Adam Carolla.   Back in 2005 he jumped from that ship to fill the void that Howard Stern left in the major corporate terrestrial radio morning show markets.  I never got into that, mainly because there wasn’t a local affiliate in the sticks I lived in at the time, but I also figured I would miss Dr. Drew and the hilariously dumb callers with their sometimes-amazing sexual and drug related topics.  But at the same time Loveline without Adam became unlistenable to me as well.

Well, The Adam Carolla Show was canceled last week amidst the station’s format change to yet another Top40 station, and his workaholic ass has decided to immediately start pumping out free daily podcasts.  Probably to keep the head of steam rolling on the expanded following he’s been enjoying.  After listening to the first two, I gotta say I’m pretty excited about it.  There is a major potential for sweetness here being sans commercials, censorship, and bullshit programming directors.  Check it and spread it:

Adam Carolla Podcasts

Here’s a link to it in iTunes

edit: for some reason my related posts plugin below grabbed some random iPhone post.  But if you have an iPhone you can also get Adam’s podcast directly:  Go to iTunes on iPhone, tap search on the bottom, and enter Adam Carolla.