PUTTING 2 AND 2 TOGETHER

It's amazing to me how many people now accept that global warming is a real phenomenon, and are all in favor of years of research into various alternative fuels that may slow our increase in greenhouse gases, but won't do the one thing that can most affect climate change - opting out of the livestock industry. Similarly, while it's no surprise the President didn't mention anything about beef in his "momentous" State-of-the-Union sentence acknowledging the "serious challenge" of man-made climate change, it's hard to believe more people aren't scratching their heads over this passage:

There is a constraint, and that is the ethanol use today comes from corn, and we've got hog growers and chicken growers that need corn to feed their animals. And therefore, it's going to be kind of a strain, at some point in time, on the capacity for us to have enough ethanol to be able to make us less dependent on oil.

Uh, yeah, we've also got people who need to eat corn, more so than animals do. If there's a conflict, why should the animals get the corn? Or more exactly, why should the livestock sector, which is actively hurting the planet, get the scarce resources instead of the plant-based agriculture sector?

Seems like kind of an obvious question to me.

VEGAN OF THE MONTH

Heh. How long has it been since I've named one? I think we managed to skip 2006. Maybe we'll return to a regular schedule, but in the meantime, here's an Isa Moskowitz profile in the New York Times that helps dispel some of the cultural cliches about dour, self-righteous, ascetic vegans. Also, Moskowitz drops a bombshell that unfortunately isn't followed up: "[E]ggs are the big lie in baking. All the books say they provide structure, but that's kind of crap." How so? I'm no baker, and I know there are good alternatives to eggs for vegan baking, but in what sense is it a 'lie'? Anybody?