Hung Truong: The Blog!

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: Book Report!

I just finished reading Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. While it took some time for me to read through all 411 pages, it was a really enjoyable experience. From my library account page, I can see I renewed the book 5 times!

The Omnivore’s Dilemma basically states that there is something really wrong with the way that America is eating. This is probably already very apparent by the amount of obesity, diabetes and eating disorders that we all hear about on the news. But besides the insane portion sizes and amounts of sugar, there’s also something horribly strange about the way our food is produced. Pollan takes a journalistic approach to get to the bottom of the issue, following the trail of corn to his McDonald’s meal, the life of his CAFO (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation) steer, a meal cooked on a “sustainable” farm and his own “perfect meal” that was created solely by himself via foraging and hunting.

As a vegetarian, I’ve always been pretty picky about my food. After living on my own and making my own decisions on grocery shopping, I tried to further educate myself on what to eat and what not to eat. Typically, I follow some general rules (sugar is better than corn syrup, organic is better than non-organic) but I couldn’t say I knew the reasoning behind them. That’s the way, Pollan argues, that most of America regards food. He finds it funny that people care more about the person fixing their car than the person producing their food. While an automobile’s upkeep is pretty important, isn’t our health just as important?

The book is pretty huge, and there’s really no point in me going through it, writing about the whole thing. There are a few things that I really appreciated about it. For one, it confirms my decision not to eat meat. CAFOs are pretty horrible in terms of causing suffering for animals. They’re also really bad for the environment. I also think it’s healthier to abstain from eating hormone-laced animals. From a great number of viewpoints, it makes sense to not eat mass-produced meat. I simply take it a step further and rule out all meat. Pollan argues that animals evolved with humans to be eaten by them. After all, many animals in nature are carnivorous. While I agree with that, I think that on a personal level, I’d rather not have that blood on my hands if I can help it. In that regard, I think I’m lucky to be living in a society where it’s possible to choose to not eat meat and still be healthy.

Another interesting idea is that in order to produce the huge amounts of corn needed to make all kinds of food items, farmers need to use synthetic fertilizers. These fertilizers are created using fossil fuels. So in order to grow corn, we’re using oil. It makes me wonder how efficient the ethanol from corn that fuels cars really is. So not only is the corn that we put into our food not necessarily natural and healthy, it’s also depleting our fossil fuels and polluting the environment. It seems so ironic, but I guess that’s what the government wants to spend money subsidizing.

I think I’ve already written a lot about this book. Really, it’s a good read and everyone who eats should take a look at it. But you don’t have to take my word for it! [audio:rr.mp3]

Did Library School Change Me?

Looking back on my old posts from before I went to school at a hybrid Information/Library Science school, my opinions of librarians seemed fueled by a bit of prejudice. For example, in my visiting days post I wrote:

I sat down at a table whose occupants were librarians. Pretty much everyone there was an LIS (library and information services) specialist. This wasn’t really a great first impression, since I applied under the HCI (human-computer interaction) specialization, and to be honest, libraries aren’t really my thing.

What, exactly, did I have against librarians and libraries? I think I mostly felt that, from the school’s website (or the parts of the website that I studied), the program was more for people who were generally interested in information from a more technology-oriented viewpoint. So I was hoping to see more technological-minded folks at my table.

I still, however, decided to enroll. And I’m glad I did. Slowly, I think I started to understand what libraries are all about. I started using the local library. A lot. It probably also helped that I worked at a library my entire time at the school. I wasn’t studying to be a librarian, but I was exposed to the culture. Computer nerds and librarians make a good team.

So did library school actually change me? Or was I somehow intrinsically drawn to the program where computer nerds and book nerds collide? Maybe a little of both. I’ve always had a secret love for organizing and archiving things.

For example, pretty much no one in my family seems to care much about backing up files. I, on the hand, am a bit obsessed about it. I still have files from middle school preserved in their original file formats and directory structure in place. Who knows, some day I might want to look back on that stuff. I’m also kind of a nut when it comes to properly organizing and applying metadata (and preserving said metadata) from photos. Oh, and also backing everything up, both on-site and off-site (using multiple online services).

I also get really irritated when I go to the library and see something like this:

Is that a Drama and Horror blu-ray disc I see mixed in with the Action ones!? Usually I will take the offending discs and put them in the right place. There was also that one time I saw Harry Potter in Comedy when it should have gone in Fantasy. The worst is when a DVD gets mixed in with blu-ray. That’s like the same as a book being in the CD section! Oh man, now I’m rambling.

The point is, I think I already had some Librarian/Archivist in me before coming to library school. Hanging out with like-minded people probably reinforced the behavior mentioned above. And probably for the better. If you’re a computer nerd, I suggest you check out libraries (and librarians!). If you’re a library nerd, I suggest you check out computer nerd stuff (and computer nerds!). Together, we can make the world a more information-y place.

Vitamin Water Sync: Free MP3s and Economics

I’ve become kind of a Vitamin Water fan. Not because I think it’s actually healthy or anything (the second most common “vitamin” (ingredient) is sugar), but because I like the taste. I’ve actually been drinking the stuff for like a year now. Anyway, I recently noticed (like a month ago) that there was a new flavor available called “Sync.” The cool thing about this flavor is that it includes a code on the cap that you can redeem at AmazonMP3 (for some reason it says the music comes from MySpace) for a free song. By “a free song,” they really mean $1.29 of credit, since some songs cost that much, but others actually cost less.

Because of this added value of this flavor (the other ones don’t have free songs), I’ve been kind of loading up on Sync. This also leads me to a semi-interesting economics problem. If I regularly bought MP3s from Amazon.com, I’d be doing myself a favor by getting $1.29 worth of “music” for ~$1, along with a free sugary, sorta-vitamin-y drink. This price difference was even greater when I went to Kroger and got 10 Vitamins-Water for $5!

To Google Voice or Not To Google Voice?

I recently got a new iPhone 3GS (32GB!) and with it a new phone number. I’ve had a Google Voice number from way back when it was called GrandCentral. I never used it because I found the integration a bit lacking. As I now must inform people of my new number, I was thinking about giving them the Google Voice one instead of the “real” one. This is also as Google Voice is getting considerable buzz since it’s finally giving away invites after closing off the service quite some time ago.

Here are some pros and cons to either choice.

Pros:

• I don’t have to ever tell people I’m changing my phone number again in the future.
• Neat voicemail transcripting.
• Routing calls from phone to phone (I might want it to go to my work phone at certain times, mobile at other times)
• Googliness?

Cons:

• The voicemail system won’t be integrated into my iPhone
• There isn’t an official iPhone app for Google Voice yet.
• SMS doesn’t work with short codes (40404 for Twitter)
• Calls made through voice won’t count as “mobile-to-mobile.”
• Other integration issues.
• Possible dependency issues.

For me, Google Voice is pretty cool, but not cool enough to rely on because of its crappy integration. By crappy integration, I mean that Google Voice just simply cannot expect to integrate itself well into other companies’ phone systems. There are a number of examples of this. One is that if I want to send a text to someone, I need to use Google Voice to do it instead of my phone. This adds a layer of obfuscation to the process. Here’s what the help doc on Google Voice says:

Call, Voicemail and SMS Issues: Receiving SMS on phone from 406 numbers

When you send an SMS through Google Voice, the SMS appears to be sent from your Google number. When someone sends an SMS to your Google number, and it’s forwarded to your mobile phone, it won’t appear as from the sender’s actual number (e.g., the SMS may appear from 1-406-xxx-xxxx). This is so that when you reply to the 1-406-xxx-xxxx number from your phone, the SMS you send appears to be sent from your Google number and will be saved in your Google Voice inbox.

Holy crap, that’s just confusing! Another example of Google Voice not playing well with existing companies’ systems would be mobile-to-mobile calls. If I call my sister using Google Voice, the call probably won’t count as “free” since it’s going to Google instead of directly to her phone number. Though apparently if you add the Google Voice number to T-Mobile’s “Faves” you could get some pretty interesting free call results…

Another peeve I have about Google Voice is that they’ve decided to make the mobile apps for Blackberry and Android thus far. I wonder if this is because the iPhone is a competitor to their own Android platform or if they just decided it would be easier, or for any other reason. It kind of shows a “Microsoft Moment” for lack of better term for Google; writing software to serve their own ends versus writing software to reach their customers on the platform they use. I don’t have any numbers to back this up though (are there more Android+Blackberry users than iPhone?), so at this point I’m just complaining because I have an iPhone and it doesn’t have an app.

For now I will ditch Google Voice (or just not use it) until it can be integrated effortlessly into my own mobile phone’s system. The whole point of using Google Voice is to simplify things. I can see it’ll be a really complicated road ahead for Google to actually implement this, but I hope they do. It almost surely means they’ll need to work with phone companies directly. This will probably take time and lots of money. I’ll just stick with my own phone’s capabilities until then.

Segway Tour Impressions

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This weekend, I was in Gettysburg, PA visiting a pal. Besides enjoying history, there are many other things to do. One of these things is riding a Segway around the historic battlegrounds. I guess that counts as enjoying history as well…

Emily, Katie and I set up an appointment at SegTours of Gettysburg for a “Segway Experience.” This did not include an actual tour. While we were getting ready for basic training, the lady asked us if we’d mind going on the real tour (she claimed she wanted to get more practice doing the tour). We were really happy to get a free upgrade since the reason for choosing the “experience” was to lessen the burden on our pocketbooks.

Basic training consists of Segwaying around in a parking lot until you get the hang of it. There are also cones involved. I got going pretty quickly. It probably has to do with the fact that I do Wii Fit a lot and thus am quite aware of my balance most of the time. The Segway accelerates backward and forward based on how much weight you put forward or backward. Staying stationary is kind of a challenge as you must keep your balance completely in the center. The video above is of basic training. There was an older couple who also did the training but didn’t feel confident enough to go on the tour. They were nice though; the older gentleman was smoking a pipe on his Segway.

The actual tour had us going through the Eastern battlefield. I must say, it was really fun going through alleyways and roads on the way to the actual battlefield. We also went through a hotel parking lot and passed a swimming pool. It’s really fun just effortlessly accelerating around while everyone else needs to walk up a hill. While the others complained about the Segway being a lot of work to ride, I thought it was pretty decent; just like standing.

What did I learn on my tour? That I want a Segway. I should really just get something more reasonable like a bike (which I think would provide the same kind of exhilaration, but with pedaling). Segway-riding is really fun and I hope to do it again some time. Oh, and history is also good, I guess.