Wolf and Hound

This person is my new best friend

In a minute.

So, taking it that you said you live in Arizona and “your family has a farm in Chihuahua,” A quick congratulations are in order. You’re an absentee landowner! You’re right at the peak of farming’s social pyramid. Living the dream.

So you probably don’t participate in the day-to-day management, you just collect checks. Pretty common situation for absentee landlords. From that distance, it’s understandable that you have a poor grasp on water, land, and how they play out in various types of agriculture.

But let’s take a step back.

Lots of cultures have used low or no meat diets. The Ganges valley, ancient Egypt, China, much of early Europe, ect.

Notice anything in common there?

They’re all very, very wet. Plants that are edible for humans grow readily.

They also had intense hierarchies where elites could just tell the lower classes they weren’t allowed to eat meat-whether via religious teachings, custom, or just straight-up economic exploitation to where animal protein was unattainable. But that’s a whole different discussion.

On the other hand, lots of cultures have used mostly or all animal diets.

E.G. The Bedouin, Mongols, Maasai, Inuit, ect.

What do these have in common? They’re in places that are either very dry or very cold. Either the plants that grow are very sparse & tough, or none at all.

Humans can only digest specific types of plant matter. We need tender stems, leaves & fruit; enlarged seeds, or energy storing roots.

The entire rest of the plant is inedible for us. Stalk, branch, dry leaves, ect.

And without intense irrigation, the only plants that grow in dry areas are entirely made of things that humans can’t digest. They’re almost entirely cellulose. Tough stalks, fibrous leaves covered in wax and hair, thorns, ect.

That’s why we call these areas ‘scrub’. The only use humans can make of the natural vegetation is to scrub pots.

But…cows, sheep, goats, horses, bison, deer, camels & other ruminants can digest all of it.

That’s what those 3 and 4 chambered stomachs are for. These animals GI tracts are fermentation chambers full of microflora that break long, tough cellulose molecules down into sugars and fatty acids that the cow can use.

We can’t do that. We eat straw, we just poop out straw.

That’s why people living in deserts, scrub & dry grasslands aren’t vegetarian. They’d starve. They kept close to the animals that can digest what grows there; ruminants.

(The oceanic food chain that Inuit & other maritime peoples are looped into is a whole ‘nother discussion.)

Failure to recognize the role of local environment in diet is a major oversight in the vegetarian community at large, so again, no personal blame here.

Traditional vegetarian societies are trotted out to showcase that low/no meat diets are possible. But it’s done w/o recognition as to why ‘those particular’ societies did it, and others did not.

Paying attention to local environment is a huge part of sustainability, and yet sustainability movements don’t always do so well at that.

We can also fall short by failing to recognize that for dry regions, the bottleneck in productivity isn’t land, it’s water.

As an absentee landowner, you may or may not be aware of how much irrigation water it takes to grow vegetables in a desert. Math time.

Let’s start w. cows. Best figures for cow carrying capacity in landscape similar to Chihuahua are for dry part of CO. Double that for Chihuahua’s longer growing season, and 10 cows would need about 73 acres to live on (wild scrub w no irrigation.)

Cool, so we don’t have to irrigate to feed those cows. All we have to do is give them drinking water. How much? A cow needs about 18.5 gal/day, so 10 of them for a year would need about 67,000 gallons.

67,000 gallons is a decent amount of water.

Now let’s look at how much it takes to grow vegetables on that same land.

Most plant crops need about an acre-inch of water per week.

For the non-farmers and absentee landlords following along, an acre-inch is just how much water it takes to cover an acre of land 1” deep.

It’s about 27,000 gallons.

An acre of crops needs that every single week.

Chihuahua’s got this amazing long growing season. So let’s say a veggie, grain, soybean or other plant protein farm in Chihuahua’s got crops in the ground 40 weeks out of the year.

73 acres x 40 weeks x 27,000 gallons/week = 79 MILLION gallons of water.

That’s a thousand times more water.

It takes a thousand times more water to grow an acre of crops for human consumption, than it takes to grow an acre of cow on wild range.

Again, as an absentee farm owner you may or may not be aware already. But for audience at home, most of Chihuahua’s irrigation water comes from the Rio Conchos.

The river’s drying up so hard that it’s the subject of a dedicated WWF preservation project.

“But that’s not a fair comparison. An acre of crops can feed 10x as many people as an acre of cattle.”

Exactly. A crop-only diet can feed 10x as many people. But it takes 1000x as much water.

In places where there’s limited land and a surplus of water, it makes a lot of sense to optimize for land, so there, grow & eat crops.

And in places where there’s a lot of land and limited water, it makes sense to optimize for water, So there, grow & eat ruminants.

It’s really interesting to me that the conversation around vegetarianism & the environment is so strongly centered on assumptions that every place in the world is on the limited land/surplus plan.

You know what region that describes really well? Northwestern Europe.

“The campaign against body hair on women originates in Darwin’s 1871 book Descent of Man, explains Herzig. Men of science obsessed over racial differences in hair type and growth (among other aspects of physical appearance), and as the press popularized these findings, the broader American public latched on. Darwin’s evolutionary theory transformed body hair into a question of competitive selection—so much so that hairiness was deeply pathologized. “Rooted in traditions of comparative racial anatomy, evolutionary thought solidified hair’s associations with ‘primitive’ ancestry and an atavistic return to earlier, ‘less developed’ forms,” Herzig writes. Post-Descent, hairiness became an issue of fitness.

An important distinction in this evolutionary framework was that men were supposed to be hairy, and women were not. Scientists surmised that a clear distinction between the masculine and the feminine indicated “higher anthropological development” in a race. So, hairiness in women became indicative of deviance, and researchers set out to prove it. Herzig tells the story of an 1893 study of 271 cases of insanity in white women, which found that insane women had excessive facial hair more frequently than the sane. Their hairs were also “thicker and stiffer,” more closely resembling those of the “inferior races.” Havelock Ellis, the scholar of human sexuality, claimed that this type of hair growth in women was “linked to criminal violence, strong sexual instincts … [and] exceptional ‘animal vigor.’”

What you have here are images of power, and do you really believe these characters are designed with titillating heterosexual women and bisexual and homosexual men in mind? Because I don’t think you do.

This is why the Hawkeye Initiative exists. Take common female poses in comics, put a man in the role, and see how “empowering” and “strong” it actually looks: 

Also: 

Hugh Jackman on a men’s magazine. He’s shirtless and buff and angry. He’s imposing and aggressive. This is a male power fantasy, it’s what men want to be and aspire to - intense masculinity.

Hugh Jackman on a women’s magazine.  He looks like a dad. He looks like he’s going to bake me a quiche and sit and watch Game of Thrones with me. He looks like he gives really good hugs.

Men think women want big hulking naked men in loin cloths which is why they always quote He-Man as male objectification - without realizing that He Man is naked and buff in a loin cloth because MEN WANT HIM TO BE. More women would be happy to see him in a pink apron cutting vegetables and singing off-key to 70s rock.

Stunning Cityscape Paintings by Evengy

Russian based artist Evengy Lushpin paints magnificent landscapes and cityscapes in idyllic settings that exude a romantic vibe, each composition a fusion of fantasy and reality.

Artist Valeria Prieto Composes Beautiful Illustrations on Fallen Autumn Leaves

Inspired by autumn’s fallen leaves, Iowa based artist Valeria Prieto has composed a collection of drawings on dry leaves. She confesses to Bored Panda: “Since childhood, I am in love with nature and I love to keep nature pressed in books. This time I wanted to go beyond, when I was walking around the new neighborhood I found so many big leaves, so I started to collect leaves during autumn, and suddenly I started to paint on them.

I work with acrylics and ink on the dry leaves.

I love the idea of keeping nature as art and preserve nature giving it a second chance to live.”

You can find her entire collection in her Etsy shop.

New York based Japanese artist Ayumi Shibata composes ethereal works of art using paper, each piece closely tied with Japanese philosophy and beliefs.

Quirky & Cute Matchbox-Cards Help You Profess Your Love & Feelings

Inspired by greeting cards, gift boxes and all things miniature, these tiny “cards” are handmade from real matchboxes at the Brooklyn-based boutique shop3xu. Along with the quirky and funny puns, the element of surprise and love reign high in these small vessels.

Each box contains a hidden message, which is directly tied to the cover. As an alternative to traditional greeting cards, the ingenious creations feel more intimate, personal and affectionate. The handmade aesthetic gives a lovely, cozy and warm effect, which is undeniably cute. You can find their entire collection and more cards suited for other occasions in their Etsy shop.

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