Weekly Link Dump

I'm still experimenting with how I'm going to run this blog, so instead of posting a link here and there, I'm going to try putting up all the notable links for the week in one post, and dedicating the normal posts to more original content. I think this is way too much news to post at once, but we'll see how it goes... the alternative would be to have 3/4 of my posts be just links to other sites.

Anyway, for the first link dump, we have:

The Guardian: I was wrong about veganism. Let them eat meat – but farm it properly

Veganism is still, all things being equal, better for the environment than omnivorism, but the case for green veganism has been overplayed. In fact, most of the pollution is from transportation, which affects plant foods roughly as much as animal foods.

They didn't write about this here - the other link about this I wanted to post I lost due to computer problems - but while plants are generally better than animal products, if you compared local, grass-fed beef to supermarket spinach, the beef would probably come out ahead, since spinach needs to be refrigerated the entire way. Highly-processed vegan foods, like Tofurky, for example, are also going to scale worse than local, grass-fed beef - although if you compared factory-farmed beef to spinach or Tofurkey, the vegan item would be better. So, the rule for greenies is first - buy local! and only then buy vegan - if we're strictly talking about the environment, that is.

And on that note:

Deseret News: Going against the grain: Grass-fed beef a niche for Utah farmers

Just to brag, a little.



A few on the economy:

Deseret News: State struggles with unpaid wage claims

Deseret News: Growing numbers of long-term unemployed face tough obstacles

Deseret News: Stimulus brought 18K Utah jobs, $1.9B for projects

And again Deseret News: Future hiring will mainly benefit the high-skilled



Immigration:

Deseret News: 'Birth tourism' a tiny portion of immigrant babies

Not exactly news, but I want to point this out...
Wikipedia: Illegal immigration to the United States

Under "Crimes committed by illegal immigrants", it states:

According to Edmonton and Smith in The New Americans: Economic, Demographic, and Fiscal Effects of Immigration, "it is difficult to draw any strong conclusions on the association between immigration and crime".

Skepticism:

LA Atheism Examiner: Crocodile sanctuary destroyed by mob inflamed by psychic

LA Atheism Examiner: An atheist finds ties between a Christian comic book & the Jefferson Memorial



Science:

Physorg.com: Why Americans believe Obama is a Muslim <-- Shamelessly stolen from Aranamuss!