As the saying goes, you are what you eat. But, do you know what you're eating? Chances are, if you're buying processed food-stuff from your corner grocery and nowhere else and avoiding organic items because of the price, you're eating a lot of chemicals, dyes, hormones, antibiotics and fillers. Yuck.

Here are three resources to help you figure out what you're eating so you can make better food choices in 2011:

Here's a link to a great editorial in Sunday's Charlotte Observer about the chemicals in our world. As the author, Sabine Vollmer, points out, many of these chemicals aren't regulated, so don't plan on relying on the government to shield you from them. You have to educate yourself and know what to look for (and avoid) at the store. If you need some encouragement, here's an article from CBS about how chemicals in your food make you fat, which includes a list of chemicals and additives to avoid.

Want to support local farmers? Start by understanding the federal farm bill. It's expected to be reauthorized in 2012, but what's in it? A group of concerned citizens has a Facebook page for that; keep up with the discussion here; definitely check out the page's library. The more engaged you become, the more you'll learn about the food industry, farming and what you do and don't actually want to eat. (Hint: Eat local and organic.)

After last spring's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, you might wonder what seafood is safe to eat. SeafoodChoices.org is an excellent resource that will help you make wise food purchasing decisions this year. There's even a website, Fish2Fork.com for those of you interested in eating only sustainable fish. Unfortunately, they don't have much going on in the way of recommendations for Charlotte-area restaurants, but let's look at that as an opportunity to crowdsource their site.

Further reading:

EPA Warns of PCB Risks in Schools -- The Wall Street Journal

Pollutants in boys' blood tied to lower growth -- Reuters

By 2045 global population is projected to reach nine billion. Can the planet take the strain? -- National Geographic

DuPont to pay $3.3 million for toxic reporting violations -- The Charleston Gazette

More about Fish2Fork:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

Amazing. Gas prices have been creeping up for months, but because they finally roll over the $3 mark, numerous articles about gas prices start circulating. Wake up, folks. Gas prices have been on the rise for a while and no one's muttered a complaint, at least not in the media. And, gas prices are going to continue to rise. This shouldn't be any surprise; we've known this was coming. Neither should it be any surprise when oil and gas companies boast about record profits in a few months.

Of course, everyone wants to know why? Why? Why? Some of the most basic answers are the most obvious: There are more drivers in the world than ever before and there's less oil beneath our feet. What that means in economic terms is the supply is dwindling while demand is up; that equals higher prices. Also, some of the countries we get our oil from — Venezuela, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Angola — aren't exactly our best buds. Plus, petroleum is in tons of consumer products — plastics to name one major oil sucker upper. Again, a supply and demand issue; when we demand more and suppliers have less to offer, prices rise.

The new reality is that cheap gas is a thing of the past. But you can protect your wallet by purchasing smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles and by driving less. Also, keep up with area gas prices at CharlotteGasPrices.com so you won't get shocked at the pump.

Here's a video from three years ago, explaining why oil prices are rising. Again, this isn't new news ... we just tend to forget what's up.

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is being accused of overestimating the economic benefits of recycling coal ash by more than $20 billion and underestimating, and even ignoring, some health and environmental costs of coal ash exposure.

During a conference call this morning, hosted by the Environmental Integrity Project, senior economist Frank Ackerman, of the Stockholm Environmental Institute (an affiliate of Tufts University), said he re-evaluated the EPA's cost-benefit analysis and "found it to be full of mistakes, large and small." (Read his testimony during the EPA's coal ash hearings here.)

That cost-benefit analysis was conducted by the federal government after the EPA proposed two coal ash regulation options, one of which will list the substance as a "special," or hazardous, waste.

Ackerman says his analysis makes a "strong case" for a hazardous waste classification.

If you'll recall, during the coal ash hearings the EPA held across the country, one of which was in Charlotte, the coal industry repeatedly used the word "stigma" to describe the hazardous waste classification. The fear is that if coal ash is called "hazardous," people won't want to use coal ash in their products, like concrete and asphalt, even though the EPA has gone to great lengths to protect those businesses already allowing for its "beneficial use." Meaning, if a company can use coal ash in such a way that it can't contaminate our waterways, then the EPA is encouraging them to do so, which makes the industry's cries of "stigma" curious.

Ackerman took that curiosity a step further and said, "The stigma argument isn't grounded in any real research."

In layman's terms, the coal industry is full of shit. And, it appears the EPA is helping them with this bullshit cause instead of doing what the agency is charged with doing — which is to protect the environment and the health of the citizens of the United States.

Back in the 1970s, coal ash went through a period where it was called "coal trash" and, as they are now, the industry cried "stigma." But, because coal ash is a much cheaper product than its competitors, businessmen eventually got over it and business when on as usual. And that's exactly what will happen in this case, regardless of how coal ash is classified since, ultimately, the impacts on their bottom lines will be minimal one way or the other.

The EPA promised tough coal ash regulations following the Tennessee Valley Authority's massive spill in Dec. 2008. It is unclear when they will finalize their ruling. The public comment period ended in November.

Starting at 4 p.m. today, you can listen to a replay of today's conference call here.

Further reading:

Is coal ash poisoning Charlotte-area drinking water?

Here's a video from the Knoxville News outside of the EPA's last coal ash hearing which, as you can probably tell, occurred just before Halloween:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

Don't know about you, but over the past few years, I've choked on the price of concert tickets and gotten a lot pickier about the shows I attend. Turns out concert fans may be in for some much needed relief ... show and diva depending, of course.

From the News & Observer and the Associated Press:

Now, rather than charge high prices early and offer discounts later, some promoters say they'll offer cheaper tickets from the start, partly because they know fans will spend as much as usual on beer and tchotchkes when they arrive at the venue.

ZZ Top, for one, expects to set prices below the 2010 average of $55. Some tickets will go for as little as $10.

"It's time to give the value back," said Carl Stubner, manager of the long-bearded rock band from Texas. "We'll find other ways to make money."

That doesn't mean all acts will be cheap - not even Cheap Trick, whose tickets for 2011 are selling for around $80 with fees. Fans of hot performers including Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga also shouldn't expect to get much of a break.

Neil Diamond, for instance, who's continuing his comeback tour in New Zealand in February, said he'd like to bring ticket prices down but can't because of the size of his production.

"As the shows get bigger, the expenses get bigger, so it's got to be translated somehow to the ticket price," he told The Associated Press. "If I just used the guitar, it'd be a lot simpler, but then I'd have to put 50 people out of work."

Read the entire article, by Ryan Nakashima, here.

Check out the prices on some of these tickets from the '80s and '90s:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

He may or may not be a sexual offender and he may or may not be indicted on espionage charges by the United States, but what we definitely know about WikiLeaks' Julian Assange is that he loves exposing big organizations. And yesterday, after several weeks of speculation that has Charlotte's suits shivering in their Uptown towers, an article confirmed — maybe (see below) — that Bank of America is the next target.

Either way, expect leaks about one of America's big banks early next year, and expect heads to roll ... uh, maybe.

From Yahoo! News and the Agence France-Presse:

Assange also confirmed that WikiLeaks was holding a vast amount of material about Bank of America which it intends to release early next year.

"We don't want the bank to suffer unless it's called for," Assange told The Times. "But if its management is operating in a responsive way there will be resignations," he said, without giving details about the material.

Shares in Bank of America have fallen amid speculation that it was a WikiLeaks target.

Read the entire article here.

But, wait! Forbes magazine is reporting the opposite, though they still can't decide if BofA execs should relax now.

In the furious storm of speculation over which institution will be the subject of WikiLeaks’ next document dump, the media’s definition of “confirmed” just got a little blurrier. But calm yourselves, Bank of America executives: your secrets are no more or less certain to be exposed than they were yesterday.

Read the rest of this post, by Andy Greenberg, here.

According to The Charlotte Observer and other sources, a Bank of America executive's hard drive may or may not have made it into the hands of WikiLeaks. While the bank shrugged off the rumors in the past, the new rumor is BofA's Internet security is now as tight as a homophobe's sphincter.

No the fuck wonder WikiLeaks exists, the media can't even get its own story straight. In the meantime, Charlotte's banking darling is beginning to secure domain names that could be used to rail against their new leader, Brian Moynahan.

From Domain Name Wire:

The company has been aggressively registering domain names including its Board of Directors’ and senior executives’ names followed by “sucks” and “blows”.

For example, the company registered a number of domains for CEO Brian Moynihan: BrianMoynihanBlows.com, BrianMoynihanSucks.com, BrianTMoynihanBlows.com, and BrianTMoynihanSucks.com. Just to be sure, it also picked up the .net version of these names and some .orgs as well.

Read the rest of this post here.

P.S. A special thanks to Jeremy Markovich (@deftlyinane) for his Tweets and links on this topic today.

Meanwhile, several parodies and documentaries are starting to roll out in support of the rouge organization. Here's one of them:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

Uhhh ... yes. Of course, the proposed sale — meant to help prevent the state's budget from busting — has riled up liquor lobbyists who want things to stay exactly as they are.

The lobbyists are freaking out because, they say, local governments will no longer get their cut even though their cut is already less than it used to be. And, as State ABC chairman Jon Williams points out: They're already getting a cut of beer and wine sales and products sold in convenience and grocery stores. So, why wouldn't they get a cut of liquor sales again? Maybe they've been enjoying too much of their own products.

From MSNBC.com and WCNC:

Most ABC boards and their liquor stores are not like Charlotte's.

Some are tiny. "I know of one where the entire operation is one employee who earns minimum wage," says Jon Williams, Chairman of the North Carolina ABC Commission.

Some of those tiny systems are not exactly efficient.

Last year five of them actually lost money.

Operating expenses are growing faster than sales and when that happens distributions to local governments goes down.

Those distributions used to be about $60 million, now it's closer to $50 million.

Read the entire article, by Stuart Watson, here.

Anyone remember the simple days, back when all you had to do was wait for future NASCAR stars to haul likker down from the mountain? No? Then check this out:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

In late November, the news was WikiLeaks' next target is Bank of America ... even though Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' controversial leader, only said a big bank was in his cross hairs, not specifically BofA. So far, those leaks haven't happened and the bank shrugged.

Now, the news is the bank has joined other financial institutions in an attempt to shut down WikiLeaks' income stream. Immediately following that news, WikiLeaks posted a couple updates on Twitter encouraging their followers to close their accounts with Charlotte's big bank. Meow.

From The New York Times:

In a sign of the increasing tensions between WikiLeaks and the corporate world, Bank of America has said it will no longer help process payments for the organization, which released a huge cache of secret State Department cables in late November and has threatened to “take down” a major United States bank with another data dump.

“Bank of America joins in the actions previously announced by MasterCard, PayPal, Visa Europe and others and will not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for WikiLeaks,” the bank said in a statement issued on Friday. “This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments.”

In a Twitter post put up soon after Bank of America’s announcement, WikiLeaks called on supporters to boycott the bank, urging that “all people who love freedom close out their accounts at Bank of America.”

Read the rest of this article, by Nelson D. Schwartz, here.

The thing about trying to quantify foodborne illnesses is that a lot of people don't report minor illnesses, so I don't know how much we can trust the latest tally. Trying to slap numbers on our country's food contamination problem is so complex and confusing that even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently dropped their estimates. So, exactly how many people get sick after consuming contaminated food each year? Umm ... a lot, too many.

Read more from Reuters: Tainted food sickens 48 mln each year: CDC

What we know for sure is that, over the past couple centuries, as our species has gotten away from raising our own food, we've come to rely on food manufacturers to produce quality, affordable food. And they've done that; there are very few people in our country who are completely without food of some kind.

But, as Michael Pollan, the author of Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food and Food Rules, points out, much of what we eat these days is so heavily processed it's more aptly described as food-like substances than anything remotely healthy.

Meanwhile, we place a great deal of trust in food manufacturers to accurately describe their ingredients and manufacturing process, and to take appropriate measures to prevent contamination. We also trust them, perhaps unwisely, to put the public's health above their profits.

Enter the U.S. Congress. For the first time in decades, Congress is on the verge of passing federal legislation that will allow the government to recall tainted food and inspect processing plants more often, though meat products aren't included in the bill.

Is this an ideal situation? No. In an ideal world we'd all know exactly where our food comes from, what's in it, who produced it, how it was transported and when it was last inspected. In an ideal world, people's health wouldn't be sold for profit. In America, "ideal" only lives in Hollywood. For the rest of us, we've got to rely on watchdogs to protect us ... in this case, for better or worse, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Here's Pollan on Real Time with Bill Maher discussing his beef with beef, our food's food, food marketing, Twinkies and his involvement in the documentary Food, Inc.:

Humans are a funny species. Like felines, if we can see something we often are able to convince ourselves it doesn't exist or impact our lives. Look no further than the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the one we're kinda-sorta involved with in Korea. No one's dying and nothing is blowing up stateside, so the wars often aren't on our mind.

Coal ash is something we produce all day, every day by simply using electricity; because we don't see it, we don't think about it. It's a waste product, and around these parts we store it in huge ponds, held in place by earthen dams.

The four unlined coal ash ponds near Charlotte, all owned by Duke Energy, drain into the Catawba River's lakes (Norman, Mountain Island and Wylie). This makes monitoring the ponds, and the heavy-metal-laced waste discharged from them, critical since we get our drinking water from the Catawba ... and since we know the discharge includes things like arsenic, which flows into Mountain Island Lake at the rate of one to three pounds per day.

In good news, the same Duke University scientist, Avner Vengosh, whose team studied the aftermath of the now two-year-old Tennessee coal ash spill, recently sampled the sediment in Mountain Island Lake — where 80 percent of our drinking water comes from. Specifically, he's studying how coal ash impacts the river. (He took the samples when he was in town for the EPA's hearing on their proposed coal ash regulations where he spoke out in favor of categorizing the waste as hazardous.)

While we await the results of his sampling trip to the Q.C. and the EPA's decision on coal ash's classification, here's a snippet from Chemical and Engineering News about what Dr. Vengosh discovered in Tennessee (you can purchase access to the full study here):

For their current report, the team collected over 220 surface water and sediment samples during an 18-month period of TVA's clean up. They measured concentrations of five leachable coal ash contaminants, including arsenic and selenium. The researchers found that anaerobic bacteria in the sediments produce conditions that reduce arsenic from the common pentavalent form to the more-toxic trivalent form, As3+. Meanwhile, selenium leeches out of these anoxic sediments and migrates to the more-oxygenated surface water.

EPA's testing protocol does not predict these findings because it does not consider redox chemistry, explained co-author Helen Hsu-Kim: "The test is only concerned with acid-induced leaching." So it underestimates risks from arsenic under anaerobic disposal conditions, Vengosh says.

The team detected the highest contaminant levels near the spill site in a cove, which received a flowing waste stream during the spill. Given its isolation from the rest of the river, this cove concentrated ash pollutants, whereas in downstream areas with more water exchange, pollutant levels were more diluted. While surface water concentrations of selenium were high only in the cove, As3+ levels were high in sediments throughout the 300-acre spill site and surrounding watershed, Vengosh says.

Read the entire article, by Charles Schmidt, here.

Meanwhile, the coal ash dredged in Tennessee is being hauled to Perry County, Ala., a poor, rural area of the state. Here's the trailer for a documentary about the county's new toxic resident:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.

Can we start calling Teabaggers what they are now? And, what are they? I think they're a bunch of ignorant, frightened, conspiracy theorists whose political aspirations are funded by corporate giants.

Here's one of the fools' latest conspiracy theories: Sustainable growth is bad for America because it will take away our rights to be wasteful, ignorant drones who suck up everything corporate America sells us and never question the sustainability of those products. In other words, they'd like us to continue to be blinded by our shiny gadgets, preoccupied by our commutes and too busy hustling to pay any attention to what's really going down in our world.

From Mother Jones:

First, they took on the political establishment in Congress. Now, tea partiers have trained their sights on a new and insidious target: local planning and zoning commissions, which activists believe are carrying out a global conspiracy to trample American liberties and force citizens into Orwellian "human habitation zones."

At the root of this plot is the admittedly sinister-sounding Agenda 21, an 18-year-old UN plan to encourage countries to consider the environmental impacts of human development. Tea partiers see Agenda 21 behind everything from a septic tank inspection law in Florida to a plan in Maine to reduce traffic on Route 1. The issue even flared up briefly during the midterms, when Colorado Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes accused his Democratic opponent of using a bike-sharing program to convert Denver into a "United Nations Community."

Agenda 21 paranoia has swept the tea party scene, driving activists around the country to delve into the minutiae of local governance. And now that the midterm elections are over, they're descending on planning meetings and transit debates, wielding PowerPoints about Agenda 21, and generally freaking out low-level bureaucrats with accusations about their roles in a supposed international conspiracy.

Virginia activist Donna Holt is among those who believe that Agenda 21—unveiled during the UN's "Earth Summit" in 1992—is really a plot to curtail private property rights and deprive Americans of precious constitutional freedoms. In reality, the document will do nothing of the sort, but it has nevertheless been the target of conspiracy-minded UN haters for years. Holt and other tea partiers are taking their cues from people like Henry Lamb, a WorldNetDaily columnist and founder of Sovereignty International and Freedom21, groups designed to fight Agenda 21 and its ilk. He has been arguing for decades that the UN is secretly plotting to herd humans into crowded cities so that the rest of the world can be devoted to wildlife preservation.

Read the rest of this article, by Stephanie Mencimer, here.

Back in reality, we need to preserve our green spaces for several reasons: To quell urban flooding, for food production,  green space sucks up carbon dioxide and releases oxygen ... among other important reasons, not to mention the fact that urban living helps us cut down on the use of valuable resources like oil and gas. See, ideally, if everything is within walking or biking distance, we'll walk or bike instead of drive. And, for things across town? We can take mass transit instead of our own, individual gas guzzlers.

Meanwhile, constant development is gobbling up green space at an alarming rate. Protecting that green space isn't an effort to herd humans, it's an effort to save humans.

Further reading: The Lynx Blue Line revisited: A possible $200 million in cost cuts puts the fate of proposed extension, stations and park-and-rides in the balance -- The Charlotte Observer

Here's a video from UNC Charlotte Urban Institute about our area's urban growth:

Rhiannon "Rhi" Bowman is an independent journalist who contributes snarky commentary on Creative Loafing's CLog blog four days a week in addition to writing for several other local media organizations. To learn more, click the links or follow Rhi on Twitter.