The Department of Defense is a sprawling monument to bureaucracy. The department has layer upon layer of agencies and bureaus and who knows what. I doubt any one person knows everything that goes on in there.

Yet I am still shocked to learn the DoD engages in breast cancer research. I first heard about it from MSNBC who mentioned it in passing in an article. I went in search of more information and found their website – the DoD’s Breast Cancer Research Program. What business is disease research for the DoD? Why in the world did Congress set this up? Even if they make an effort to avoid duplicating the research of other agencies, they’re still going to duplicate the administrative cost. This is just dumb.

This program will cost $138 million this year; a pittance in the entire DoD budget, but it still means something to me. This is only a part of anonymous medical research effort of the DoD. Categorized as “Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs“, I get the feeling the DoD has no interest in this and would rather deflect any criticism to Congress. Besides researching breast cancer, the DoD has programs for: ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, chronic myelogenous leukemia, neurofibromatosis, tuberous sclerosis complex, autism, brain injury, Gulf War Illness and prion diseases. They even cover research into “minority & underserved populations”. All this for a total of $235 million this year. Yeah, yeah it’s a drop in the bucket.

Thankfully the DoD has a FAQ explaining how this money was thrown at them:

Why is the Department of Defense involved in funding this kind of research?

In 1992, a highly visible lobbying campaign by grassroots advocacy organizations, primarily the National Breast Cancer Coalition, increased awareness among policymakers of the need to expand funding for breast cancer research. These consumer groups emphasized the need to fund research in ways that were different from those employed by traditional medical research organizations such as the National Institutes of Health. In response, the United States Congress allocated specific funds for breast cancer research in the Department of Defense appropriations budget. The Department of Defense was chosen because of its long history in performing medical research studies and because its administrative structure was designed for flexible and quick responses to changing needs and priorities. The success of this effort has resulted in an increase in the number of disease research programs for which Congress has mandated funding through the Department of Defense. The Department of Defense Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs now administers programs funding breast cancer, prostate cancer, ovarian cancer, chronic myelogenous leukemia, neurofibromatosis, and tuberous sclerosis research.

 

So there you have it. Congress needed to shut up some obnoxious lobbyists, so they killed two birds with one stone; disease research received more money, and the DoD got a budget increase. I can’t imagine this is an efficient way to do anything. The DoD exists to prepare for and conduct war. Disease research is simply outside its expertise, and I don’t believe it can be cost effective in this responsibility. It’s like entrusting the Department of Transportation with running VA hospitals.

This commercial is the most brutal political ad I’ve ever seen, probably ever. I love it, but then again I do love mudslinging. It shows the candidates care.

I first watched this with the sound off, accidentally. The second time I saw it with the music. It’s definitely more effective with no sound.

This would be great to see on TV, but after chopping out the superfluous serial killer comparisons.

So I’m driving home from work and I get stuck in some unexpected traffic. In front of me I find a Toyota Camry with a bizarre bumper sticker.

If you can’t read my fuzzy cell phone pic, it says:

It’s a planet not an empire

And to the left of the text is a picture of Earth. What could this possibly mean? Is it political? Is this some obscure anti-Bush/Cheney slogan? I certainly don’t get that because I can’t remember either of them trying to establish the Earth Empire. Can anyone out there explain this?

Speed limits are a complete sham! There, I said it. That felt good too. Any law that criminalizes the majority of the population is a sham.

Some students decided to make a short film about the ridiculousness of the speed limit. Four of them got together to line up on an Atlanta-area highway and obey the 55 mph speed limit. Watch the video to see how they completely screw up traffic flow by obeying the law.

Speed limits make criminals out of everyone. By creating a category of laws that don’t really need to be followed, you erode respect for all laws. It also erodes public respect in their local government by turning traffic enforcement into a reverse lottery where if you’re unlucky enough to be picked out from the crowd you have to pay the penalty.

If you want to have any limits, which I’m not convinced is a good thing, they should be set above the typical speed to give people a speed cushion so they can behave normally. The government that supposedly represents us shouldn’t be coercing us in a dubious bid for safety.

We’re all brainwashed to think speed limits are about safety. If that’s the case, why is there a hard limit? Wouldn’t it be logical for the limits to vary by traffic density? What sense does it make to have the same limit at 2 pm when I’m surrounded by cars, than it does at 2 am when I might only see one other car on the road? Besides, if you accept the argument that lower speeds save lives, where do you draw the line? If 65 mph is better than 75, isn’t 55 just as better than 65? Why not go down to 35 mph? Why even have cars? Maybe the government should ban personal cars and save hundreds of thousands of lives each year.

Speed limit laws are just another manifestation of government overreaching into everyone’s lives. The safety whiners get their wishes and the government levies a hidden tax. I guess things will never change.

I found this old Craigslist post linked on Gothamist a few weeks ago. I made a note of it, but forgot about it until right now. I guess this is just another sign I’m old before my time, because I was pretty surprised by it. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by anything that goes on in NYC, but I can’t help it.

Does this pass for a modern, urban romance story? Girl meets guy on crowded subway train. Guy fingers girl on crowded subway train. Girl misses guy and tries to find him on Craigslist. Maybe this could be the basis for a 21st Century Jane Austen novel.

I don’t really know what annoys me more about this. Actually, scratch that. I realized it almost as soon as I typed that. I’m really annoyed this girl wrote “red line”. That is unacceptable! You were fingered on the 1 train, 2 train or 3 train. Actually it must have been the 1 train if you got off (Ha. Ha. Double Entendre!) at 116th Street/Columbia University. There is no such thing as the red line in NYC.

It seems a little insane to me that this happens at all. It’s one thing for a couple who needs the sick thrill of getting caught in a lewd act, but this is two random nobodies who bump into each other. I suppose this counts as kismet? I just hope that guy had clean hands.

I suppose I should be happy that there are stupid criminals out there. It’s better than all of them being smart, right? Still though, I read a story that gave me pause. In Texas a 21-year old man was arrested for attempting to cash a $360 billion check. Yeah, there’s no typos there, as if it mattered. Any billion dollar check is pure ridiculousness.

The guy, Charles Fuller, was apparently attempting to commit check fraud. Upon receiving the check, the bank contacted the checking account’s owner and they said Fuller had no permission to take any money. So it’s not as if Fuller had a legit check that he altered in an attempt to get more money. This is just a plain jane case of fraud. And yet Fuller chose to write $360 billion? I wish I could have been there at the moment he put pen to check to witness this. Did he think the bank actually had billions in cash lying around? Did he expect to just carry out $360 billion in cash? This is a step beyond stupid.

Oh yeah, and when the police arrested him they also found a weapon and some weed. Way to go. It always makes sense to carry weapons and drugs when you intend to commit fraud. You wouldn’t want to make things difficult for the prosecutor’s office.

But Fuller has some company in his fiduciary foolishness. Last year a Pittsburgh man tried to spend a $1 million bill at a supermarket and collect the change on it. Three years before that a Georgia woman did the exact same thing. I wonder if they were trying to pass off those novelty Statue of Liberty bills as real. It’s a mindbogglingly stupid plan. How much money could you possibly spend at a grocery store – $200? These people expected to collect $999,800 in change? I weep for humanity when people, criminal or not, can be this dumb.

I found another one of those future predictions articles from years past. I do really love these because they often have such a distorted view. We always make the mistake of thinking the stuff that’s important today will still be important later. This article comes from the November 1968 issue of Mechanix Illustrated.

You can read the article straight through if you follow that link above. You probably should since it’s more of a narrative than a list. Here, I’ll break these predictions down point by point.

“…sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.”

This is half ridiculous. I’m sure at the time it sounded crazy. 1968 was solidly inside the giant car era. Why have a roadster? Frankly I find the idea of an air-cushioned car weirder than the national traffic computer. If I understand “air-cushioned” right, this futurist is predicting hovercrafts would replace wheeled automobiles. A centrally controlled traffic computer is an idea that was expected to occur, probably up until the early 1990s. I think the Internet killed that futurist plan though. Before the Internet people didn’t imagine separate computers being networked would be of any great use. Decentralized computing is now the norm. Eventually we will have autonomous cars, but it won’t be because the government is running a giant computer that controls all of them.

“The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road.”

I don’t really understand why, if all cars are controlled by computer, they need to drive slower in the suburbs. Maybe the traffic is denser but so what? The computer controls all the cars. Plastic roads are an interesting idea. I don’t know anything about hovercrafts though, so I guess riding on plastic would make them go faster? But they hover so why would the road surface matter? They shouldn’t be touching it.

“The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart.”

Why keep them apart? The traffic computer should pack as many cars as possible on to the road. It would be more impressive if these cars were traveling 200 mph and were only inches apart. The problem here is that this futurist isn’t thinking this idea through to its end. They are making the mistake of applying the rules of human driving with the ”reality” of computer controlled driving.

“You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round.”

Domed cities on Earth. There are so many things wrong with that. Forget any kind of environmental concerns. I’m looking at this from an economic perspective. Cities will bear the expense of constructing domes over hundreds of square miles. Then they will pay to heat and cool these hundreds of square miles. You know these domes will have to be transparent because otherwise the population will complain about never seeing the sky. The air conditioning equipment would be enormous to cool down these gigantic greenhouses. Perhaps cities with cold winters would luck out and get free solar heating. However since the dome is enclosed, you need to constantly ventilate it. I assume internal combustion engines will be banned so the air shouldn’t be as particulate filled as today. I guess fans would have to be scattered throughout to keep the air circulating and huge filters would be needed to clean it. So each city will pay hundreds of billions just so it can stay 72-degrees all year round. Sure, that’s really worth it.

“Suddenly your TV phone buzzes…”

Again the obsession with video telephones. I’m not sure if this TV phone is attached to your car or not. If not, then we’re there. Cell phones can do video calls if both phones have the front-facing camera and a service provider that supports it.

“A business associate wants a sketch of a new kind of impeller your firm is putting out for sports boats. You reach for your attache case and draw the diagram with a pencil-thin infrared flashlight on what looks like a TV screen lining the back of the case. The diagram is relayed to a similar screen in your associate’s office, 200 mi. away. He jabs a button and a fixed copy of the sketch rolls out of the device.”

Done! Buy a Tablet PC and get a wireless network card from your cell phone company, and you can do this right now. Draw on your tablet, email your sketch to your business associate and he can print it out in his office.

“…you slide beneath the dome of your destination city. Your car decelerates and heads for an outer-core office building where you’ll meet your colleagues. After you get out, the vehicle parks itself in a convenient municipal garage to await your return. Private cars are banned inside most city cores. Moving sidewalks and electrams carry the public from one location to another.”

This isn’t an exciting prediction. If your car can drive itself, it can park itself. I brought this section up because I find amount of government control disturbing. The government controls the traffic computer, and by extension, controls where you go. The garage you park in is owned by the government. Are there no private garages in this world? You can’t even take your car into the city. You must rely on government controlled “moving sidewalks and electrams”.

“…U.S. population having soared to 350 million…”

Close. We’re at 303 million on May 2nd.

“Giant transportation hubs called modemixers are located anywhere from 15 to 50 mi. outside all major urban centers. Tube trains, pushed through bores by compressed air, make the trip between modemixer and central city in 10 to 15 minutes.”

Modemixer, what a stupid name. I’m sure the government owns the tube trains. No taxis in this future! Anyway, compressed air trains are not a new idea. Alfred Ely Beech tried to build a compressed air subway in New York City way back in 1870. It didn’t work then and it wouldn’t work now. Sure it’s fine for a short distance. I bet that block long Beech subway was very comfortable, but you can’t scale that up to a 15 mile trip without busting your budget.

“A major feature of most modemixers is the launching pad from which 200-passenger rockets blast off for other continents. For less well-heeled travelers there are SST and hypersonic planes that carry 200 to 300 passengers at speeds up to 4,000 mph. Short trips— between cities less than 1,000 mi. apart—are handled by slower jumbo jets.”

This is an interesting breakdown of future air travel. Intercontinental flights will be done by rockets. The poor people will have to settle for hypersonic planes. I can’t imagine why this guy thought this up. Being blasted into the upper atmosphere by rocket is not comfortable. Rich people aren’t going to pay to experience multiple g-forces, when a hypersonic plane is perfectly comfortable. I don’t care how fast a rocket goes.

“Dwellings for the most part are assembled from prefabricated modules…”

Pfft, no. I think people are still predicting assembly line homes for the future.

“Homes in Mi’s 80th year are practically self-maintaining. Electrostatic precipitators clean the air and climatizers maintain the temperature and humidity at optimum levels. Robots are available to do housework and other simple chores. New materials for siding and interiors are self-cleaning and never peel, chip or crack.”

Is an electrostatic precipitator the same thing as an Ionic Breeze fan from Sharper Image? We have roombas for vacuuming and scoobas for mopping. Okay robots can’t do every household chore but we’re getting there. I have read about self-cleaning building materials but it has always been in the context of skyscraper construction. I never heard of anything like that for a residence.

“The housewife simply determines in advance her menus for the week, then slips prepackaged meals into the freezer and lets the automatic food utility do the rest. At preset times, each meal slides into the microwave oven and is cooked or thawed. The meal then is served on disposable plastic plates. These plates, as well as knives, forks and spoons of the same material, are so inexpensive they can be discarded after use.”

Ah, blinded by 1960s culture. If housewives are freed from housework by these computers, why didn’t anyone ever figure women would get bored at home and want to get their own careers going? By the way, why do the meals get cooked at preset times? What if I have to stay late at work? The computer is going to cook my dinner and let it get cold? Oh and were disposable plates and utensils expensive in 1968? I thought they had this stuff back then. Why would this futurist assume everyone would switch to disposable stuff because it’s “so inexpensive they can be discarded after one use”?

“The single most important item in 2008 households is the computer. These electronic brains govern everything from meal preparation and waking up the household to assembling shopping lists and keeping track of the bank balance.”

Don’t you love that phrase “electronic brains”? We can see more of the obsession with centralization this guy had. Your single household computer would govern everything that goes on in the house. What a relief there’s no government controlled household computer that tells everyone when to eat and when to wake up.

“Not every family has its private computer. Many families reserve time on a city or regional computer to serve their needs. The machine tallies up its own services and submits a bill, just as it does with other utilities.”

Ha! So society can afford to convert cities into arcologies but computers will still be too expensive for everyone to buy. I’m sure they will be so small, they will only fill up one football field.

“Money has all but disappeared. Employers deposit salary checks directly into their employees’ accounts. Credit cards are used for paying all bills. Each time you buy something, the card’s number is fed into the store’s computer station. A master computer then deducts the charge from your bank balance.”

This guy can’t even get terminology right. He mentions credit cards, but then goes on to describe a debit card system. It’s not credit if the charge gets deducted from your bank account! By the way, who knew direct deposit was a sign of the bright, modern future. It always seemed too mundane and obvious to me.

“TV-telephone shopping is common. To shop, you simply press the numbered code of a giant shopping center…Much of the family shopping is done this way. Instead of being jostled by crowds, shoppers electronically browse through the merchandise of any number of stores.”

Well we have had the Home Shopping Network for quite some time but I don’t think this guy meant that. I think he would be disappointed by the human operators and your inability to choose what products you want to see. I think similar systems were tried in the 80s but the Internet has replaced all that. The vague idea of shopping at home is there, but the implementation is all wrong.

“The average work day is about four hours.”

No! Why is it futurists always seem to think that productivity means completing the same amount of work in less time? Didn’t anyone ever think we would do more work in the same amount of time?

“The pace of technological advance is such that a certain amount of a jobholder’s spare time is used in keeping up with the new developments—on the average, about two hours of home study a day.”

Well this is only marginally correct. I’m not really sure what this guy expects future people to be studying. “Technological advance” is an awfully vague phrase. In a broader sense I think this guy was arguing that people studying to advance their careers would be more common. I don’t know if that’s true. I hope so. I’d like to think people today want to improve their skill set. I don’t know if more people do that than in 1968.

“Most of this study is in the form of programmed TV courses, which can be rented or borrowed from tape libraries. In fact most schooling—from first grade through college—consists of programmed TV courses or lectures via closed circuit.”

I heard of this idea many times and real effort went into trying to make it work. It never caught on though and now distance learning is all done through the Internet.

“TV screens cover an entire wall in most homes…”

If only! Well a 42″ plasma screen would be astonishing to someone from 1968.

“…and show most subjects other than straight text matter in color and three dimensions.”

Not quite. Maybe they wouldn’t be as impressed as I thought.

“In addition to programmed TV and the multiplicity of commercial fare, you can see top Broadway shows, hit movies and current nightclub acts for a nominal charge.”

There’s On Demand service and pay-per-view. This is solved.

“A typical vacation in 2008 is to spend a week at an undersea resort, where your hotel room window looks out on a tropical underwater reef, a sunken ship or an ancient, excavated city. Available to guests are two- and three-person submarines in which you can cruise well-marked underwater trails. Another vacation is a stay on a hotel satellite. The rocket ride to the satellite and back, plus the vistas of earth and moon, make a memorable vacation jaunt.”

This feels like a very tired, common prediction from the mid-20th century. I have to question if people really believed this. I suspect people just parroted this back in any discussion of the future because it was so oft repeated.

“Farmers are business executives running operations as automated as factories. TV scanners monitor tractors and other equipment computer programmed to plow, harrow and harvest. Wires imbedded in the ground send control signals to the machines. Computers also keep track of yields-, fertilization, soil composition and other factors influencing crops. At the beginning of each year, a print-out tells the farmer what to plant where, how much to fertilize and how much yield he can expect.”

This is mostly true. Farmers are less and less the dirty rube of yesteryear. I don’t know what a TV scanner is, but GPS systems control tractors. Farm equipment is getting bigger and more automated. Satellite imagery is used to plan for planting and harvest. No wires are embedded in the soil though.

“Mariculturists have turned areas of the sea into beds of protein-rich seaweed and algae. This raw material is processed into food that looks and tastes like steak and other meats.”

Soylent Green is made out of people!

“Heart disease has virtually been eliminated by drugs and diet.”

I laughed out loud when I read this. The next time you see one of those futurist shows on Discovery or TLC, and they make some crazy prediction about cancer being wiped out and people living to 150, remember this prediction.

All in all, a pretty enjoyable list. I’m glad not to live in this future though. It’s a little too automated for my taste. I’d love a car that drove itself but I’d like to choose where it goes. I don’t want a domed city either. It feels like such a bland, sterile life. This future takes away a lot of interaction. I don’t just mean between humans either but you do lose a lot of that as well. Your car drives itself. Your house cleans itself. The kitchen cooks your meals for you. The convenience is great, but I think I’d be losing out on making decisions for myself. I would be stuck following all these programmed schedules.

One of Ronald Reagan’s famous lines is “There you go again.” Reagan used that in a debate with Jimmy Carter. It was a real “in yo’ face” kind of moment; so much so that I don’t think anyone remembers what Carter was talking about. Well as I was wasting time browsing YouTube, I found a clip of that line.

Can you believe way back in 1980 politicians were talking about a national health insurance program? If we could go back in time and ask 1980 Carter some questions, I would bet he would tell us the US has a health care crisis in 1980.

Ah, nothing changes, but no one remembers that.

Living in the US I never ever see Greek TV. So when two of the blogs I visit daily post commercials from Greek TV, I notice it. First, just watch these two commercials and see if you notice a common theme.

Did you catch it? Yes they’re both ads for the Chevrolet Matiz. Oh and they both feature a really hot girl. Is this typical for Greek TV? I never see anything like this in the US. I guess there was that sleazy Paris Hilton/Carls’ Jr. ad but that was more leeching off Hilton’s celebrity rather than a straight up “sex sells” ad like these two. Not even beer commericals parade women around anymore.

I’m not in advertising so I don’t know if these ads are effective. I’m sure they’re attention getters but do they get the product into your mind? Well after watching I was vaguely aware the ads were for GM but there’s no way I would ever have remembered Chevy Matiz. These ads certainly left me with some desire, but not for the car.

I used to read Time as a child but I outgrew the magazine. I haven’t read a copy in years. Recently though I did stumble across an interesting photo essay on their website. “What the World Eats” takes 15 snapshots of families around the world with their typical diet for a week. Rather than steal of all Time’s pictures, just click along with my commentary below.

1. Japan: The Ukita Family

What jumps out at me in this picture is the lack of color in most of their food. The fruits and vegetables to the left are a small punch of color but everything else is so pale. That one bottle of soda in the center is yellow (are they drinking pineapple soda?). The large amount of fish is so pale they blend in with their styrofoam trays. Even the packaging is pale. There’s lots of white bags or clear bags. That pancake mix seems to be the only container using bright colors. I don’t know what this lack of color says about Japan, but it sure stuck out in my mind.

I don’t really care for this diet either. I don’t like fish or all those super salty (even briny) packaged snacks I see too. I’ve tried Asian snacks before like shrimp chips, fish jerky and even packaged slices of seaweed and never liked it. That seaweed was like a punch to the face. I would like to visit Japan but I couldn’t live there with that kind of food.

2. Italy: The Manzo Family

No Atkins for Italy! Look at all that bread! The Manzo’s go through 11 loaves in a week. I’m surprised at how little meat there is though. They have a big array of fruits, including more persimmons than I have ever seen in a person’s house, but barely any meat. I think they have some sausages and another cut of meat I can’t identify but it looks like only enough for two meals.

3. Chad: The Aboubakar Family

I wish I could save this one for the end because it’s the most shocking to my fat American palate. You have a sack of rice, a sack of brown beans and a sack of green beans. Not much variety in this diet. It’s hard to believe this is what six people live on for a week. It looks like they have a few random vegetables in front. No doubt this is the tiny bit of variety in their diets. This wins the most depressing diet award. Although I do find it interesting to see you can buy 3 large sacks of food for about a dollar in Chad.

4. Kuwait: The Al Haggan Family

Okay what jumps out at me here isn’t even the food. That kitchen is so strange to me. The floor is fine. It resembles the travertine tiles you see in a lot of new construction. Maybe that’s what it is. The rest of the kitchen bothers me. It looks so industrial. I wouldn’t expect to see this in a home. The materials look more like what you would find in a commercial cafeteria. The space is also enormous. You can tell that table was placed there to stage the picture since there’s no room for chairs. When they remove that table the kitchen must look cavernous. It needs an island badly. Where is the refridgerator by the way?

The Kuwaiti diet looks pretty close to what I’m used to. Too little meat though and those fish look like plastic. They carry a lot of bottled water. I see Kraft macaroni and cheese (don’t like it but it’s familiar). I see a bag of frozen french fries I could eat. I think I see ketchup and BBQ sauce in the lower left corner. There’s a stack of pitas I could get used to. I don’t know what that Kitco bag is filled with but it doesn’t seem scary. It’s probably just rice. All in all the food is much closer to Western than I would have guessed.

5. US: The Revis Family

I’m glad to have a US family I can compare my own diet to. Looks like the Revis enjoy some Pizza Hut (I’m basing that on the boxes. They look like Pizza Hut to me). Points off there because Pizza Hut is revolting. Even Domino’s schlock is better. The fruit and vegetable section seems to consist only of grapes (2 varieties) and two tomatoes. Okay I eat more fruit than that. Four people only drink one gallon of milk it seems (Don’t be fooled. The other two gallons are water. Compare the coloring). I use up a milk gallon in less than a week and I’m only one person. Those people cannot be getting enough calcium. They also drink a ton of sugary juice. There are 8 big jugs of it to the right. At least their meat portion seems right.

I also noticed some Uncle Ben’s instant rice on the counter. I feel not enough Americans know this so I’ll mention it here. Don’t waste your money buying that instant rice. Living with Asians has taught me it is incredibly easy and cheap to make normal rice. All you need to do is buy a rice cooker. Don’t complain about the price. Amazon sells 94 different ones between $0 and $24. Then you buy those giant size rice bags in the ethnic aisle of your supermarket. When you need to cook rice, scoop out your portion from the big bag and rinse it off in the sink. Throw the washed rice into your rice cooker, pour in enough water so the rice is covered but not drowned, put the lid on and press one button. Cooking cannot be easier. If you’re like most Americans that one big bag will last you a year and you’ll save money per portion over buying the name brand instant rice.

6. Mexico: The Casales Family

Oh dear, Mexicans really do love Coke. They have 12 two-liter bottles in the background. That’s more soda than the Americans! They do eat a lot of fruit and vegetables though. They have a whole table for that. Is that shrimp in that basin next to Mrs. Casales? I only see some sausages next to that shrimp so I’ll have to declare this another low meat diet. Looking at those tables I just don’t see much of what would fill me up. I have to have some kind of meat for lunch and dinner. I don’t see how I could keep that up here.

7. China: The Dong Family

It doesn’t seem like the Dongs eat much. It doesn’t seem like they drink much either. They have that water dispenser but I don’t know where the water is coming from – bottled or tap. Either way it doesn’t seem like it’s meant to dispense much. There are 4 juice bottles next to it and some cans in the center. They may not have much but that shredded pork with sweet and sour sauce sounds tasty. By the way did you notice the McDonald’s and KFC containers? No matter where you go in the world, we’re all united by a love of greasy, fried food.

8. Poland: The Sobczynscy Family

It looks like the Poles have a diet heavy on the vegetables. They must have two dozen carrots on that table. Looking to the extreme left, if those are yogurt containers, they sure eat a lot of it. That meal of pig knuckles with carrots, celery and parsnips…. Doesn’t that sound like soul food? Well, except for the parsnips. More notable than the food though is the patriarch’s facial expression. He definitely does not seem pleased to be on display for this photographer.

9. Egypt: The Ahmed Family

Okay I had no idea green peppers were so important to Egyptian food. And what are those white things next to them? Lots of vegetables and rice, and some shredded meat (probably beef). Nothing too surprising here.

10. Ecuador: The Ayme Family

Well this is a depressing display. I’m declaring this the second saddest family. Interestingly I think they have the biggest smiles of any family here. Now not only is the array of food so sparse, but look at their home. I’m not sure what that is. Is that a mud brick house? But getting back to the food, do you see any meat in there? It doesn’t even seem like they have a lot of vegetables. I think one of those sacks are filled with potatoes but the rest are some kinds of grain. They don’t even have fruits besides that pile of lemons. Oh and all of them seem to be sporting the national hat of Ecuador. How did that tradition get started?

11. US: The Caven Family

What’s really striking about the two American diets we’ve seen is how much processed food there is. I see a little bit of broccoli and three potatoes. There’s some bananas, apples and cherries in the background too. I see a package of ground beef and some chicken. Everything else on that counter is premade food such as the frozen pizza, those grocery store bagels (an affront to bagels btw), cookies scattered about, the tortillas and a big box of corn dogs. How odd is it that there are fountain cups of coke in the background too? Americans don’t make anything from scratch anymore do they? I don’t think I grew up with quite so much prepackaged food. We got our meat at a butcher shop. We bought fruit and vegetables, fresh, several times a week. Yeah I had cereal and peanut butter and all that, but I don’t think it was in the same proportion as I see on this table. It really surprises me because this looks like a very traditional family. I would be surprised to find out that mother works. I would expect she would spend more time cooking if she’s a stay-at-home mom.

12. Mongolia: The Batsuuri Family

Okay the only thing green on that table are those cucumbers. I have never seen so much meat in a residence before. Doesn’t it look like they butchered that animal themselves? It looks like there are organs in that collection. And wow check out all those eggs. Oddly enough my eyes are constantly drawn to that pile of bread in the background. Those round loaves looks like they’re hearty, crusty breads. Almost a meal unto themselves. I don’t really see many drinks. I think there are two beer bottles in the center of the table, but that’s it. And are those packs of cigarettes between the bottles?

13. UK: The Bainton Family

Aside from the different brand names, doesn’t this look pretty much the same as the American diet? They drink a hell of a lot more milk though. Look at the mantle. I think there are six one-gallon jugs. Oh there is one more difference. The Brits eat much more candy. Look at the huge package of Mars bars. I will give these people the award for grossest favorite food. Who eats a mayonnaise sandwich? Is it as plain as I’m imaging? Is it just mayo on bread, or does it come with other unnamed stuff?

14. Bhutan: The Namgay Family

This looks like a very traditional diet. Lots of vegetables and a big sack of, what I assume is, rice. I don’t know anything about cooking in Bhutan but I’m guessing stir fry is probably the most common way of preparing a meal. Can you identify those two baskets of red things in the center of the pile? Are those chilies? This must be some spicy stir fry. I can’t seem to find any meat in the pile though.

15. Germany: The Melander Family

Whoa, the Germans like to drink and it’s not even just beer. There certainly is more beer than I’ve seen elsewhere but there’s a ton of bottled water, wine and those cartons which could be filled with milk or juice. They really exercise their kidneys over there. They seem to be big fans of Yoplait as well. Contrary to stereotypes though is the lack of sausages. Are there any on the table? They may be in those plastic packages next to that plate of meat but I can’t say for sure.