Monday Links: July 21st, 2008

I have pages of notes from the conference this weekend that should become blog posts in the next few days.  In the meantime, a few links:

• Ezra Klein, reporting from Netroots Nation, talks about meat and global warming in the context of Al Gore (did I tell you that Al Gore made a surprise appearance?).  Gore was asked why energy-intense meat production isn’t a larger part of the global warming conversation, and he essentially admitted it needed to be, but that the political realities of encouraging vegetarianism are tough.  Ezra responds:

Gore plays up the political difficulties of advocating for vegetarianism, but there’s a smarter, middle path: If you price carbon, and you rob meat of the massive corn and grain and land subsidies that make it artificially cheap, the market will begin to correct itself in a way that naturally balances the facts that folks — myself included — like burgers and the fact that producing burgers is pretty energy intensive. The problem isn’t that people eat meat, but that we’ve made meat much cheaper than it actually is. Make meat cost what it should cost, and diets will shift to reflect that.  [...] You can deal with meat without advocating vegetarianism.

• Start Cooking is a really slick and cool set of videos for those of you who want to (say it with me) start cooking.  Check out this fried rice demonstration for an example.

• SwitchAbit allows you to update multiple platforms (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc) at the same time.  LifeHacker explains:

A valid reason for never getting back to all those social webapps you signed up for is that updating them all with big news—or just a funny moment—requires a lot of logging in, typing or uploading, and then switching over. switchAbit, a free social syndication tool, offers the tools to create multiple “switches” for all your cool tools. So you can, say, upload a photo on Flickr, then have a link or thumbnail of it show up on your Blogger, Twitter, and your Facebook page.

• Here’s a clever promotion from bluetooth headset manufacturer Jawbone: if you live in a state or city with a hands-free cell phone law, and you get a ticket for not using a handsfree device, just send in your ticket number and you’ll receive a $20 discount.  As a Jawbone user myself, I recommend the device…even more so if you’re getting tickets.  Wear it in your car, but not walking around town; I’ll let you in on a secret: those people look ridiculous.