Mark Watson's opinions on Java, Ruby, Lisp, AI, and the Semantic Web

I just sent this link to my family and friends with the joke that the news media, in this case the New York Times, feeling guilty for not doing their proper job during during the run up to the Iraq invasion has finally decided to tell the truth about food :-)

This article on food and nutrition strikes a cord with me for another reason: I have friends who worry about future shortages of potable water and energy. I believe that the solution to future resource problems is simple: let the free market determine the costs of the food that we eat. A case in point: why should Congress give the beef industry about $40 billion a year in free water subsidies?

Raising meat for food rather than plants does the following:

• Uses 10 times the water
• Uses 10 times the energy
• Generates horrendous pollution of the air and underground water supplies
• Raises health care costs caused by unhealthy eating habits

I think that it is fine to eat meat, but we only need tiny portions each day to augment a primarily vegetarian diet.

It all comes down to a personal choice not to be a glutton, be it gluttony for food, buying large fuel inefficient vehicles, or houses larger than your family needs for comfortable living that you will never be able to own (i.e., pay off the mortgage). I believe that water and energy resource problems are solvable with free market economics and raising our collective consciousness concerning the downside of gluttonous life styles.

Labels: economy, health, nutrition, politics

I have been using Rojo.com recently (both because they are a customer of mine and their service is very useful). I also use Technorati to specifically search blogs, but Rojo has a few results optimizations that makes their service a bit more useful to me.

I have been working on a customized information portal KBSportal.com for about a year. I took down the Java version a few months ago when I started on a newer version written in Ruby and Rails. I was hoping to have it back on line by now, but working on my new Ruby book and consulting for a few customers takes priority.

I created a 'knowledge based' recipes/cooking portal CJsKitchen.com last year and I also want to work on this technology more this year. I originally started to use the USDA nutrition database, then stopped when I realized how inaccurate estimating the nutritional content of recipes is given variations in cooking and quality of ingredients. Anyway, I want to take another shot at providing nutritional information along with displayed recipes. One cool thing about CJsKitchen.com is that you can keep a personal database on the web site of the ingredients you have on hand - and optionally only see recipes that you have the ingredients to make. I also have a first cut at an AI recipe agent to help you use up ingredients that you have.

Labels: knowledge management, nutrition