Super Freakonomics | Ottawa Public Library | BiblioCommons
A few chapters of this book were more interesting to me than others. “Why suicide bombers should buy life insurance” was a great chapter discussing health care and insurance. There is a good discussion of the difficulties of measuring a doctor’s skill (around page 106). For example: If a doctor knows their performance (and/or pay) [...]
Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture.
My interpretation of this book boils down to: If you & your neighbours are accustom to buying inexpensive pants which someone, somewhere was paid $2.00 CAD per hour to produce, then expect to be paid $2.00 CAD per hour to produce pants. There is a great chapter in this book on Cheap Eats & it’s [...]
Book: The Vegetarian Myth
An interesting book from a unique point of view that can certainly help spark some lively conversations amongst friends. Lierre writes about how she moved away from being a vegetarian and has included a few more living things to her diet adding to the billions of creatures she & her vegan friends were accustom to [...]
Eat this Not that – David Zinczenko
If you’re the type of person who stands in the grocery store with three different bags of chips in hand comparing all of the nutritional information, then this book’s for you. A very visual book, it’s worth borrowing from a library to pick up the various tips of what to look for when identifying ‘good’ [...]
Food Matters: A guide to conscious eating – Mark Bittman.
This book focuses on how best to navigate current supermarket (& farmer market) choices so that what goes in your mouth is healthy for you and healthier for your environment. The most interesting take-away so far: To produce one calorie of corn takes 2.2 calories of fossil fuel. It requires 40 calories to produce one [...]
Edible Action – Sally Miller
Wow. This book is a solid compendium of research quite relevant to anyone interested in developing Canadian food policy and to those interested in attempting to relocalize a global economy. A few things made clear to me in this book: The whole “vote with your fork”/”vote with your dollar” concept is certainly not the most [...]
It’s a Sprawl World After All. – Douglas E. Morris
It’s a Sprawl World After All. The Human Cost of Unplanned Growth – and Visions of a Better Future. This was certainly a timely read, as many of the same themes have been running through my head lately. The book has a little bit for everyone – those who hate sprawl, those who live in [...]
Edible: An Illustrated Guide to the World’s Food Plants
An interesting picture book, it added to my ever-growing list of travel to try foods: Peanut Butter Fruit (South America) Ice-cream Bean (Central & South America) Sapodilla (Mexico, Guatemala, Belize) Fresh Dragonfruit (Subtropical areas of the Americas, Vietnam, Israel, Australia) Ah, and posting this just reminded me to add “The Fruit Hunters” to my reading [...]
The Rebel Sell
Page 101 of The Rebel Sell: How is it that we can produce so much more wealth and yet fail to secure any measurable improvement in satisfaction? We constantly hear about how, as a society, we can no longer “afford” health care or public education. But if we can’t afford them now, how could we [...]