Brett Hutley's Blog » United States

What’s in your honey, honey?

brett — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 17:56:48 +0000

I just read this fascinating article from Food Safety News about honey. I had no idea that honey was such a dirty business!

Apparently over 75% of honey sold in US grocery stores isn't strictly "honey". It's been "ultra-filtered", a process that removes the natural pollen from the honey. A process whose only purpose appears to be to disguise the origin of the honey.

There are laboratories in the US that can determine the origin of honey by the different pollen contained within it. By ultra-filtering the honey, it becomes impossible to determine where the honey came from.

Ultra-filtering involves heating the honey, potentially watering it down, and then forcing it through extremely fine filters to remove the pollen.

The process appears to have sprung from the high tariffs imposed on China's honey producers in 2001 that were aimed at protecting the local US honey industry. The Chinese producers responded by ultra-filtering the honey and transshipping it through other countries without the tariffs - changing labels to hide the originating country in the meantime.

A fascinating insight into a small, dark corner of the food industry.

Kanban

Prison versus Princeton

brett — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 10:37:12 +0000

I saw this great info-graphic on The Atlantic comparing the costs of prison in the US with Princeton University.

Created by: Public Administration

Detroit – Ground Zero for Economic Collapse

brett — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:55:04 +0000

Here is a video showing how badly Detroit has been affected by the collapsing housing market. Towards the end of the video you can see some amazing mansions in the worst-hit areas of Detroit that you can supposedly buy at a massive discount.

Social Collapse – Best Practices

brett — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 18:20:03 +0000

Hmmm.... first I read this transcript from a speech by Dmitry Orlov entitled "Social Collapse - Best Practices", and then I saw on Boing Boing the post How are you coping with Collapse-Anxiety?

The first post describes what might happen if the US collapses in the same way economically as the USSR did in the 1990's. It then goes on to making recommendations about what to focus on - essentially food, transportation, shelter and security. I thought it was fascinating because although I have been thinking for a number of years that the economic situation was going to get bad, I didn't envision quite a collapse of that order of magnitude. As the crisis continues however, the possibility suddenly seems to become credible.

I found the comments interesting in the Boing Boing post. It seems as though quite a number of people were actually starting to find themselves in situations reminiscent of those described in the first post - primarily from posters in the US. Scary.

US Public Debt

brett — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:30:23 +0000

US Public Debt from 2006 until 30 Sep 2008