MEDIA MONDAY
What have you been reading, watching, listening to?

New Pollan Book
Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire is one of my favorite books ever. Beautifully written and a tremendously interesting idea. I'm thrilled that he has a new book out: The Omnivore's Dilemma; and even more happy that I've had this exact idea! Only mine was for a TV show, one that each week would take a meal and trace its origins: how/where the food was grown/transported/slaughtered/preserved/prepared/whatever. So, for those of you that laughed back then, HA! Now, it's a book by a bestselling author! I'm glad somebody did it. Can't wait to read it.

UPDATE: I just read the introduction, which is available online for free as a pdf. Here is an excerpt. Sorry, a little long, but I think you'll like it:

[T]here exists a fundamental tension between the logic of nature and the logic of human industry, at least as it is now organized. Our ingenuity in feeding ourselves is prodigious, but at various points our technologies come into conflict with nature’s ways of doing things, as when we seek to maximize efficiency by planting crops or raising animals in vast monocultures. This is something nature never does, always and for good reasons practicing diversity instead. A great many of the health and environmental problems created by our food system owe to our attempts to oversimplify nature’s complexities, at both the growing and the eating ends of our food chain. At either end of any food chain you find a biological system—a patch of soil, a human body—and the health of one is connected—literally—to the health of the other. Many of the problems of health and nutrition we face today trace back to things that happen on the farm, and behind those things stand specific government policies few of us know anything about.

Benkler Book
Professor Lessig says this is a must-read. I believe him. Plus, it's available for free download.

Music on TV
This week, you can catch Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, The Flaming Lips, and Neil Young on network tv! (Has anyone heard the new Neil Young or the new Flaming Lips? I am still absent both) But you should check the handy schedule, because turn on the wrong night and you could accidentally hear Mandy Moore, Jennifer Love Hewitt or Brooks and Dunn.
--Don

Not my first, or last, meaningless vote, but.
I guess I missed this story because my local TV stations' portion of our satellite service was out for several days, but apparently MY township voted recently to put a referendum on the November ballot that calls on bush to withdraw our troops from Iraq:

"Shall President George W. Bush and Congress commence a humane, orderly,
immediate and comprehensive withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel and bases
from Iraq?"

That's right, I will get to answer that question on my ballot in November. Maybe there's time to get an impeachment referendum on there too, as long as we're "voting".
- Deb

Weekend Box Office
1. Silent Hill
2. Scary Movie 4
3. The Sentinel
4. Ice Age: The Meltdown
5. The Wild