Completely off-topic post about health, fish and clothesline

I occasionally have days when I let myself just surf the Internet. I read an article, and follow the links, and then I read another one, and follow the links on that, too.

(from xkcd)

Today I went looking for this clothesline:
(from backyardfarming)

which I bought, but I found this great site about backyard farming linked to it. I love urban farming, even though it took 5 years for my poorly created compost pile to finally become dirt (in Arizona, you have to add water, something the books tend to leave out).

I also found this fascinating article about salmon farming. I’m always fascinated by practices that are supposed to help the environment and fail, which apparently salmon farming is good at doing (up to 95% of migrating juvenile wild salmon are killed by swimming past salmon farms and getting infections from them). It’s a philosophical problem, actually; why do some people try to do good, but actually create evil happenings in the world? And why do some purposefully do evil, but actually create good from it? (Consider Steve Levitt’s book, Freakonomics, which presents the theory that legalized abortion has reduced crime).

Lastly, I found this graphic, listing rates of obesity by state, really interesting.

Here’s a great post by Get Fit Slowly about an actual bill in Mississippi that would make it illegal to feed fat people in restaurants, complete with a new term: obesism.

And, by Googling the term, I found this great article on a fake NGO ironically called TOAST (The Obesity Awareness and Solutions Trust) that was supposed to help obese people, but was actually linked to the diet industry.

How’s that for a rabbit trail?