1. Why A Salad Costs More Than A Big Mac

The Farm Bill, a massive piece of federal legislation making its way through Congress, governs what children are fed in schools and what food assistance programs can distribute to recipients. The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.

The government also purchases surplus foods like cheese, milk, pork, and beef for distribution to food assistance programs—including school lunches. The government is not required to purchase nutritious foods.

Read the whole article here.

2. Sergey Brin on Google's China Decision

I don't actually think the question of whether this was the Chinese government or not is all that important. I know that seems strange. The Chinese government has tens of millions of people in it, and if you look at the associated army and whatnot it's even larger. It's larger than most countries by far. So even if there were a Chinese government agent behind this, it might represent a fragment of policy, as it were. There are many people there, and they have different views.

If you look at when we entered China with our Chinese operation in 2006, I actually feel like things really improved in the subsequent years. And I know there was a lot of controversy surrounding it, when we had to self-censor a fair amount, but we were actually able to censor less and less, and our local competitors there also censored less and less. We from the outside provided notification when the local laws prevented us from showing information, and the local competitors followed suit in that respect. So I feel like our entry made a big difference. But things started going downhill, especially after the Olympics. And there's been a lot more blocking going on since then. Also our other sites, YouTube and whatnot, have been blocked. And so the situation really took a turn for the worse.

Read Google's original statement on China here, and watch the whole interview here.

There's some repetition in the graphic, but it made me look. I'd like to see a list of what's not censored.

The New York Times' Jeffery Rosen wrote a nice article this weekend about the inner workings of Google's international legal team, in their efforts to comply with varying national standards of free speech protection. It's well worth reading, and I've posted some quotes here to pique your interest.

To love Google, you have to be a little bit of a monarchist, you have to have faith in the way people traditionally felt about the king. One reason they’re good at the moment is they live and die on trust, and as soon as you lose trust in Google, it’s over for them.

— Tim Wu, Columbia Law, former scholar in residence at Google

During the heyday of Microsoft, people feared that the owners of the operating systems could leverage their monopolies to protect their own products against competitors. That dynamic is tiny compared to what people fear about Google. They have enormous control over a platform of all the world's data, and everything they do is designed to improve their control of the underlying data. If your whole game is to increase market share, it's hard to do good, and to gather data in ways that don’t raise privacy concerns or that might help repressive governments to block controversial content.

— Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law

The whole article is a nervewracking look into the processes behind Google/YouTube censorship.

The idea of a 20-something with a laptop in San Bruno (or anywhere else, for that matter) interpreting community guidelines for tens of millions of users might not instill faith in YouTube’s vetting process.

Nicole Wong, the deputy general counsel of Google, and her colleagues arguably have more influence over what counts as valid and legal online expression than anyone else on the planet. (Image via)

Since they were acquired by Yahoo, Flickr has implemented a censorship scheme that is so poorly thought out, it’s offensive.

If you use Flickr, you are obligated to tag anything in your photostream which might be offensive. Later (at night, while you are sleeping, no doubt-- like the tooth fairy, but with uncompromising moral fiber), someone at Flickr will look at your account and verify that you have correctly tagged your offensive images. If you do not do this, or Flickr disagrees with your self-policing, your account is labeled as ‘unsafe’. Oh, and anyone else can decide to come along later and tag your images as offensive, too. Presumably, this could render you ‘unsafe’, as well.

I give them credit for making the whole scheme usable on their site, but the underlying logic is flawed. I would need a chart to graph the *numerous* ways this could potentially get under people's skin. Indeed, this is a no-win for Flickr.

Read More...