Saturday Surfing

Finds of the Week:

• 8 New Punctuation Marks We Desperately Need, College Humor — to start things off on an amusing note.
• Food Policy Action — The 2013 National Food Policy Scorecard ranks each member of the Senate and House on their votes on food issues.  Wyoming legislators fail.  How do your legislators do?  (hat tip, Marion Nestle)
• In the Belly of the Beast, Rolling Stone — “Ever since the Fifties, when Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson told American farmers to “get big or get out,” and his assistant, Earl Butz, later Richard Nixon’s Ag secretary, exhorted them to plant single crops from fence to fence and mass-produce animals like cows and chickens as if they were Fords and Chevys, we’ve dined out on the idea that nature is our dray horse, to be treated as we see fit. But the economies of scale that brought us pink slime and fast-food patties (not to mention an obesity epidemic) are built on a trap-door assumption: that the resources used to grow these delights will be there as long as we like.”  If you eat meat and eggs or drink milk, please read this.
• Invisible Child, NY Times — A lot of serious stuff this week.  Profile of a 11 year old homeless girl in NYC.  It’s in 5 parts and well worth the read until the end.
• Organic whole milk provides best heart-health benefits, study says, LA Times — A new study which looked at hundreds of samples found that organic whole milk offered more of the fatty acids good for the heart than conventional milk.
  
• The Other Side of the Story, Texas Monthly — A retrospective narrative from a woman who had a relationship at 14 with a 23 year old man who had been her teacher the year before.