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The coming clean meat revolution

Review of the book Clean Meat: How Growing Meat without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World by Paul Shapiro rating *****

Back in 1993, just as the Internet was about to take off, I downplayed the coming digital revolution as nothing more than a glorified user forum. When Amazon first appeared on the scene, I couldn’t see that it would one day dominate online sales. I missed the boat on those opportunities. I don’t plan to miss the Clean Meat revolution.

Over the years, I have chronicled the many problems associated with the industrialized food industry. I’ve taken many steps to protect myself: I try to buy only organic; I look for free-range and 100% grass-fed animals for my meat, eggs, and milk; I buy wild-caught salmon. But other than substituting Impossible Meat in my burrito bowls, I just can’t give up eating meat.

I am well aware of the harmful effects of today’s meat industry:

  • The use of growth hormones
  • The inhumane treatment of animals
  • The problems associated with corn and soy products as animal feed
  • The adverse effects on climate change
  • The unsanitary conditions in factory slaughterhouses 

The solution to many of these problems is to grow meat from the cells of animals. Author Paul Shapiro covers the topic with a complete overview of the advantages, the obstacles, the technical challenges, and the promise of this nascent industry.

Companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have proved that there is a market for meat alternatives. Clean meat, on the other hand, has the potential to be revolutionary. I firmly believe that clean meat alternatives will do to the current industrialized food industry and fashion industry what the automobile did to the horse and buggy industry. As the author points out with examples of other industry disruptors, such as when kerosene supplanted whale oil, when you offer something better and at a lower cost, consumers will always choose the latter.

The potential that this industry has is enormous. Imagine a time in the not too distant future when every kitchen will have a 3D meat printer that can churn out beef, pork, chicken, turkey, fish, or whatever meat your stomach desires. The leather you’ll buy for your shoes, belts, and coats will be grown in a lab. Dairy products will not come from a cow but made in an industrial size milk brewery.

As of this writing, none of the companies working in this arena have gone public. There are no ETFs with a collection of clean meat companies. But when that happens, I plan to be first in line with my investment dollars. I’m not going to miss this opportunity and neither should you.

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Mt thoughts on the 2021 Oscars

I’ve been a movie buff for as long as I can remember. Thanks to streaming, I had a chance to watch many of the films nominated for this year’s Oscars. They were all good and deserving of recognition. I even got to watch a few of the films in a theatre. So, I was looking forward to watching last night’s show.

While I felt the 2021 Oscars was entertaining, it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. First off, why not show more clips from the films honored? And the decision to put the acting awards at the end, in front of the Best Picture Oscar, was a huge mistake.

As for the winners, I was glad to see more diversity, but I wasn’t in total agreement with the choices. I’ll start with Best Documentary. I was able to see all five. Of the five nominated documentaries, My Octopus Teacher deserved the win. It is a unique film, unlike anything I’ve seen before. But the best documentary I saw last year was A Thousand Cuts, which dealt with free speech, the power of journalism, and one woman’s crusade against the murderous regime of Rodrigo Duterte.

I was able to see four of the five films nominated for best original screenplay. I was a fan of Promising Young Woman, except for the ending, which I felt did not live up to what came before. I think The Trial of the Chicago 7 deserved the win.

In the adapted screenplay category, The Father was the right choice. Two of the films nominate contained nearly fifty percent unscripted dialogue. How did those films even get nominated?

Speaking of The Father, I got a chance to see the movie the afternoon before the ceremony, so Anthony Hopkin’s performance was fresh in my mind. He deserved the win.

Lastly, there was the win for Nomadland for Best Picture. I’m a fan of the book and film. It was another win for a nonfiction film. For me, though, having seen seven of the nominated films, The Trial of the Chicago 7 would have been my pick.

There is one film I saw last year that somehow slipped through the cracks. The one film that stood out for me was the film The Dig. When I think of a movie deserving of multiple awards, I can’t think of another film that I saw that set such a high bar in almost every category. If you haven’t seen it, watch it on Netflix.

Feel free to add your comments and observations below.

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The sad story of White Boy Rick

Review of White Boy Rick the documentary and film rating *****

I spend a lot of time writing about injustices in our criminal justice system. Most of the time, I’m writing about wrongful convictions. Today’s review is about an incredible miscarriage of justice surrounding the sentencing of Richard Wershe Jr., also known as White Boy Rick.

The story of White Boy Rick has been on my radar for a while. I knew it had to do with drugs and Rick’s work as a police informant. I also knew that Mathew McConaughey was in a movie with the same title. That was about all I knew.

So when Netflix came out with the White Boy Rick documentary, I thought I would start there. The documentary filmmakers use a combination of interviews, reenactments, and animation to tell Rick’s story. Rick’s involvement as a drug dealer begins when narcotics agents ask him to be an informant. His dad is facing potential illegal gun sales charges and working as an informant takes the heat off his father. Rick goes from small-time buyer to dealer in short order.

After a few drug busts, the informant gig dries up. But Rick likes the money that came with the drug business and starts dealing drugs on his own. Along the way, he gets involved with the niece of Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, who is married to a drug dealer serving a twenty-year sentence. He also almost dies from a gunshot wound and learns that he is a father.

The police eventually arrest Rick for his drug dealing. Before Rick goes to trial, the same narcotics agents who made Rick an informant earlier offer him a way out of a potential life sentence. All Rick has to do is tell the Mayor’s niece about a big drug shipment and the need for protection. The resulting investigation results in the arrest of several crooked Detroit police officers. The sting reaches the Mayor and the chief of police.

Rick eventually goes on trial for his drug arrest. His work as an informant is not allowed into evidence. This all happens during the war on drugs. The media paint Rick as a drug kingpin responsible for murders and other crimes. Rick receives a life sentence without the possibility of parole. He is seventeen years old.

Now that sentence alone would be a huge miscarriage. But that’s not the end of Rick’s misery. He has a target on his back. Years later, when life sentences for juveniles are ruled unconstitutional, Rick gets a chance for parole. By this time, Rick has been in prison for fourteen years. But Rick has enemies in high places and is denied parole. It will be nearly another twenty years before Rick gains his freedom.

After watching the documentary, I was able to track down the Mathew McConaughey film on-demand from FX. I was blown away by how accurately the film portrayed the events described in the documentary. I have no idea which came first – the film or the documentary. They both do an excellent job in telling a complex story that involves real people and real heartache.

Richard Wershe Jr. was released from prison in July of 2020 after serving over thirty years in prison.

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Review of Kidnapped by a Client

Review of Kidnapped by a client: The Incredible True Story of an Attorney’s Fight for Justice by Sharon R. Muse
Rating ****

Sharon R. Muse

You know how when you have a conversation with someone, and later as you reflect on what was said, you often think of all the things you should have said but didn’t? There is a lot of that in this book. That’s not a criticism. It’s an observation.

In telling her story, the author dissected her case in minute detail. In the process, she uncovered numerous things that she should have or would have done differently. The same is true with her encounters with the police, investigators, and the prosecutor. They should have done a better job collecting evidence; they should have taken photographs; they should have documented the crime scene better.

The author is also a lawyer. In recounting her kidnapping and sexual assault, she sometimes had the presence of mind to do things on her own to aid in any future criminal proceeding. Such as making sure the police took down the contact information of witnesses and having a drug test to counter statements made by her attacker.

If there is a lesson to learn from the author’s story, it is that no one is going to care more about your case than you. While it would be nice to think that everyone you encounter in the criminal justice system is professional and attentive to every detail, the truth is that more often than not, you are just one more victim in a sea of victims. Police make mistakes. Investigators overlook important clues. Prosecutors don’t always ask the right questions. It doesn’t always go down as it does on Law and Order.

The author tells of one instance where a clerical error could have resulted in her attacker being freed from prison ten years early. It is only through her persistence in following up with authorities that she was able to prevent the mistake.

My one criticism deals with the way the author decided to handle depositions and trial transcripts. Her choice was to reprint them exactly as they appeared. It would have been better to treat them as part of the narrative: The prosector turned toward the jurors; he fidgeted in his seat before answering, the judge asked the witness to speak louder, etc. It would have required more work, but the result would have made for more interesting reading (and listening). I listened to a good portion of the book. It was more than a little annoying when the narrator reverted to using Q and A when reading transcripts.

This book gives a realistic look at a criminal case from the crime, through the investigation, to the subsequent plea deals, trials, and appeals.

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All about slavery and the fight for equal rights

One of this site’s goals is to bring attention to books, films, and documentaries that you might have overlooked. There is a lot of great content out there. Sometimes I like to group things based on subject matter, as I did in my recent post about abstract art. This post will point you to hours worth of top-notch storytelling involving slavery, civil rights, and the equal rights movement. There is a bit of overlap, but you won’t go wrong with any of these suggestions.

First up is the six-episode docuseries Lincoln: Divided We Stand. So you think Lincoln was one of the best Presidents in history? The man who put an end to slavery? Not so fast. This docuseries tells the real story of a President who had many flaws, including racism, and whose moral compass shifted over time. Lincoln’s first stab at freeing the slaves was to suggest that they leave the country and go to Central America. The one person whose character, intelligence, and sense of decency rose above all others was Frederick Douglass. Imagine what our country would have looked like had he been elected President. Catch this one on CNN demand.

13th (Review of 13th) – The story behind the thirteenth amendment to the constitution and a history lesson on slavery in the United States. One thing you will learn as you go through this list of docuseries is that ending slavery was no easy task. We fought a war over it where 800,000 Americans lost their lives. Politicians, business leaders, and even the Supreme Court all sided with continuing slavery. Once it was taken away from them, those who profited from slavery did everything they could to continue the practice by whatever means necessary. Catch it on Netflix.

Amend: The Fight For America – Realizing that the 13th amendment didn’t go far enough, the 14th amendment was enacted with the goal of giving equal rights to all Americans. Jim Crow, Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, due process, it’s all covered in this two-hour Netflix documentary.

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My pick for the 2021 best documentary Oscar

Thanks to on-demand video and streaming, I’ve been able to see all five of the Oscar-nominated feature documentaries. I’m a fan of documentaries, but had these films not been nominated, I might not have sought them out. The one documentary that I felt should have been nominated but wasn’t was the film A Thousand Cuts, about a journalist’s efforts to expose Duterte’s human rights violations.

Here are the five nominated films:

Collective – A story about corruption and dysfunction with the healthcare system in Romania. After a nightclub fire kills 27 and injures hundreds more, preventable deaths of some of the survivors expose numerous problems with Romania’s healthcare system. Politics, graft, corruption, and outright fraud are exposed by a team of journalists. The real power of the story takes hold when a new health minister is appointed and he is forced to grapple with a broken system that has been in place for decades. This film had English language subtitles. I watched this on-demand from my cable provider.

The Mole Agent – When the daughter of a nursing home resident believes that items are being stolen from her mother, she enlists the help of a firm to expose potential elder abuse. That firm hires an eighty-year-old man to live in the nursing home for three months to see what he can uncover. What he finds is a nursing home that has some forty women residents and just four male residents. The eighty-year-old spy soon finds himself having to fend off amorous old ladies. The film is a humorous and also sad look at life in a nursing home. This film also has English subtitles. I caught this one on Amazon Prime.

Time – This film looks at the impact of a long prison sentence on one particular family. My feeling after watching this documentary was that it was a story that involved a long string of very bad decisions. The first bad decision was getting married at a young age. It goes downhill from there. One bad decision leads to the next: starting a family at a young age, starting a business destined to fail, deciding that the solution to all of their problems was to rob a bank, bad legal advice that led to one parent not accepting a plea deal that would have had him serve less than twelve years instead of the sixty-year sentence he received, agreeing to pay another lawyer $15,000 that resulted in that lawyer writing a letter saying that there was nothing he could do. There’s a lot going on here: the depressing life of being incarcerated, the impact on the wife and children forced to move on without a husband and father, sentencing disparities. If there is a message to take from this documentary, it is to not repeat the same mistakes. Another film covering a similar topic is the film Forty Years a Prisoner.

Crip Camp – A summer camp in the seventies for kids with disabilities. Former campers look back on their time bonding with staff and fellow campers. Catch this one on Netflix.

My Octopus Teacher – A diver forms a relationship with an octopus. Now here is a film that I can guarantee you I would not have sought out unless I was totally desperate for something to watch. Instead, I discovered a film that changed my view of other living beings. This film is so unusual that it commands your attention. It is beautifully filmed, emotionally narrated, and has a great soundtrack. Who knew that an octopus could be so intelligent? This documentary is available on Netflix.

My pick for best documentary (so far I’m about 0 for 10) is My Octopus Teacher.