Again, it's pretty easy to point out things that clearly *are* junk food: donuts, candy bars, snack cakes, etc. It's also pretty easy to point out things that are *not* junk food: vegetables, lean meats, whole grains, etc. OP was proposing a tax on junk food though, that requires a specific, legally defensible, definition of "junk food" and there are a whole lot of edge cases as I point out.
Do we say snack cakes are junk food? What if I make a whole grain organic snack cake that's (relatively) low in calories, high in fiber and got lovely raisins and nuts for some extra nutrition? What about energy bars? Arguably, consumed as intended, they're not really junk food, they're a calorie dense supplement for people who do a lot of exercise. In practice many people eat them as candy bars that they feel slightly less guilty about. What about Starbucks Lattes? In theory it's just coffee, but add in the cream and sweetened syrup and they can rival any muffin you buy with them for calories. What about "healthy" snack foods like rice cakes and such? How much honey and/or chocolate turns a rice cake from a healthy snack to "junk food"?
It's easy to say "just use common sense" but bureaucracies are notoriously short of such things. People who don't want to pay more will lobby to make their particular nom of choice not considered "junk", companies (especially huge ones like Coke or Hostess) will tweak products so they are *precisely* outside of any legal definition of "junk". You'll have "Coke - AZ" tailored to have exactly one less calorie, point zero one less carb grams, and just enough vitamin C added to make it "not junk food" by the AZ tax codes. My initial reply was a response to a specific idea "tax junk food" with a specific problem "It's hard to legally quantify junk food". That's not the fault of fast food merchants (though they certainly don't help matters).
Also you have to subsist on a bean and lentil curry for a week or more straight. Don't get me wrong, its sounds tasty, but as I said in my original post "How many times can you eat beans and rice in a week?" In your case it appears to be "many, many times", but people in general like a little variety in their diet. You have to have realistic expectations of people. If you plop someone down in a modern supermarket and give them $50 to spend on groceries, the chances that they'll show up at the register with a big bag of rice, a big bag of beans and some spices is pretty slim. Even if they can live off that quite healthfully (and probably spend a lot less than their $50). They're going to attempt to get the best variety they can within their $50, and that's probably going to involve some potato chips and Little Debbie snack cakes.
It's a Hobson's choice for poor people, at least in terms of diet (smoking is another matter entirely). Bad food is cheap, good food is expensive. Check the prices of fresh veggies verses potato chips sometime. What's the cheapest cut of meat? The fatty cut. McDonald's food is cheap as Hell and it's all empty calories. There are, if you're careful, inexpensive and reasonably healthy alternatives, but how often can you eat beans and rice in a week?
You're also ignoring the fact that while statistically being obese (or smoking) is going to mean you're sick more often, even people who live healthy lives do get sick. Poor people typically have nothing or a pittance left after paying for the basics. What do you suggest they do when (inevitably) they get sick despite a generally healthy life? Just die?
No, unless he's some kind of regulator empowered to make decisions about what is or isn't junk, he really isn't. Many low fat food have added sugar.. Are they diet or junk? Many natural foods are quite unhealthy for you, or quite fattening. I try to limit my sweet intake, but once a week I get an organic cookie from Earth Faire (the local Whole Foods-a-like). It's all organic with real sugar, unbleached flour, etc... It's still a cookie though. Junk or not? What about high fat (but also high nutrition) red meats? In moderation they're quite good for you... in excess they're a hug contributor to obesity. Then there's all the stuff that you wouldn't expect to be nearly as awful as it is. A Starbuck's Carmel Latte seems like a small indulgence till you realize that it has nearly as many calories as a sleeve of Oreos.
It's really easy to point at Krispy Kremes and say "that's junk food", but like anything the Devil is in the details. For every Twinkie or bag of potato chips there's an item that is "low fat" (but high in something else), and item made from all natural ingredients (but still full of fat and carbs), an item that is good in moderation (but often eaten in excess), or an item that is just as bad as the Twinkie (but you never really realized it).
It's pricey, but Brookstone sells a nifty iPad case with a built in flexible Bluetooth keyboard. You unfold the case one way and the keyboard is tucked out of sight behind the device and it just acts like "normal" iPad case, unfold it another way and the device is set vertical (or near vertical) like a screen and the keyboard is in front of it like a laptop. I don't have an iPad so I didn't play with it enough to really judge the usability, but the concept at least seems pretty reasonable.
Linky I saw one while wandering through the Airport Brookstones in Baltimore on a layover.
I hate to agree with the AC, but I'd have been shocked if they *could* have answered your question. I am willing to bet that if you go back with your guitar and and iRig (Which I assume is a way to connect the guitar to the device) they'll give it a go. Not only will they potentially sell you something, but everyone in the store will see the lengths that they'll go to helping you out and get a small show out of the deal. That's like gold wrapped in diamond paper from their point of view.
Also, while all signs and reviews point to the Xoom and similar being good products, they're actually slightly more expensive than and iPad for what appears to be a mostly work-a-like item. There are cheaper Android Tablets, but those don't appear to (as a rule) be as good of a product. Apple seems to have found a pretty good sweet spot on price to quality in this case (somewhat unusually for them, I love Apple but they do tend to be bit expensive), they have first mover advantage, and people identify with the product (having a long line of iPods and iPhones to look back on). I suspect the iPad will continue to dominate the market for a while yet, at least until tablets become common enough to be commodities.
At least for now, iPads continue to sell fast. I was visiting in Massachusetts last week and had the bright idea to hop over the border to New Hampshire and grab one sales tax free. No love. At least at that particular Apple store, they still have people lining up for opening and sell out 20-30 minutes after opening daily. Granted this was in Nashua, which is one of the border towns where people from Mass like to go for sales tax free large purchases, but still...
I'm not 100% sure, but doesn't iPad iOS allow file sharing? I don't have one, so I can't easilly verify. That might be the larger issue if I'm correct.
What evidence do you have the iPhones (or Android phones for that matter) still have accessible data after a wipe? I've not heard this before. Regardless, the article is *not* about "securely" wiping the phone. It's about people foolishly trying to manually wipe a phone and missing stuff. Given that this is the only story you've *ever* commented on, and the fact that you're clearly spining facts, I'm inclined to believe the AC above who accuses you of being an astroturfer.
Actually it's trivially easy to wipe an iPhone. Dunno about Android, though I assume they have the same feature, but on an you can set up an iPhone to self wipe after four failed PIN attempts. That's right, if for some reason you can't figure out who to use the large "reset to factory default condition" button in iTunes, you can turn on the PIN function and force it to wipe itself after four failed attempts. But hey, it's a lot easier to bash products you know nothing about than to actually post accurate information.
And damn did I misread them too. Now is the time I wish I could edit Slashdot post. So profits of 70 *million* on income of 2.4 billion. Still way more money than changed hands on Huff post, but no where near to the level I initially stated. I don't know how I misread that so badly. My point stands, but not nearly to level it did.
Your sibling goes into part of why that is. Huffington doesn't post original content. She and her staff link to and give opinions on real journalist's work. Don't misunderstand me, there's value in that. I've read and enjoyed (and read an disagreed with) Huff Post articles. She's by no means a do nothing and she adds value; there's a long and useful tradition of aggregation and editorializing in journalism she is an heir to that (as are people like Micheal Drudge on the other side, who also makes a damned good living on his site).
That's not the point though. It's cheap to link to content and write opinion pieces. It's expensive to do investigative journalism, war correspondence, hell even sending a cub reporter to do a feel good piece on the local flower show costs a buck or two. A quick wikipedia search shows me that the Times made around $2 billion profit on income of around $20 billion last year. Which means that their operating costs were around $18 billion. So the sale price for Huff Post (Not its income, which is likely smaller than the sale price, nor it's profits, which are likely even smaller still) is around 1.5% of the operating cost (before anyone makes any money) of the Times.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. Companies like Audible, Amazon and Barnes and Noble have figured this out, why not the Times. If I buy a Nook Book on my iPhone I can later get it for my Nook, my PC, or my Mac. Simple. Same with an audiobook from Audible or music from iTunes (in that case obviously I'm just moving the file around). Paying for stuff doesn't bother me. Honestly, while I'd prefer not to have it, DRM doesn't even bother me much as long as it isn't intrusive and allows me to activate multiple devices. Having to pay for the same content twice depending on where I'm looking at it... that annoys me.
Except that thus far, with the notable exception of Google no company has successfully made any significant amount of money off of advertising on the Internet. Yeah, You can probably make enough to cover the hosting costs on your blog from advertising. If you are popular (write well, provide useful content, update regularly, etc) you might even be able to make enough to cover your hosting costs and make a decent living off advertising. So far though, no one has found a formula that scales that to the New York Times level. It's pretty expensive to maintain a reporter in the white House Press Corps, a few guys in Iraq, a few more in Afghanistan, so more on standby to send to Japan or Libya, or where ever tomorrow's hot spot is.
Most media sites initially tried to make their money off of advertising, it's only the continued failure of that model that is driving them to try something new.
It's not per se that they have Facebook accounts that bothers me. Technically it's against the terms of service, but that's hardly a serious issue. What annoys me is that my cousin had her kids make these account and send friend requests to essentially everyone in my immediate family without warning us ahead of time. My mother is one of five sisters, many of whom have two or three adult children of their own now, it's quite a substantial number of people we're talking about here. When people ignored and/or turned down these requests (mostly becasue we didn't want to have to self censor everything we did to be age appropriate for an 8 year old) she became irate and made a huge deal out it. She guilted several family members into accepting by basically implying that the kids were crushed by their refusal to accept the original requests.
Had she had the kids make accounts then contacted people ahead of time to ask if they'd want friend requests, and acted like an adult if they said "no" it wouldn't have been a problem. I don't post porn on my Facebook or anything, but I don't really feel like censoring it down to an 8 year level either. I also don't appreciate being the bad guy who crush her darling girl's dream of being able to read about my jogging schedule and check-ins at the local pub.
All I know is that my stupid cousin encouraged both of her kids (8 and 10) to get Facebook accounts and brow beat several members of the family into friending them. Their accounts haven't been closed after nearly a year. I'm half-tempted to finally take the friend requests then immediately do the "Which Sexual Position are You?" quiz and post my results.
He's never attempted to hide it. I don't think he uses "Sock Puppets" in the tradition sense, I think he just likes having his name show up 15 different ways. It's very odd. We've gotten into a few arguments over the last few months and it's really odd to get continuous replies from 5 or 6 different accounts all of whom are obviously the same person.
Even more to the point, even if Google *is* violating the GPL in some esoteric way on this point, it's pretty immaterial if neither the FSF nor Linus think they are. As those are (as far as I know) the only two people/organizations with the standing to sue over it. This Florian Mueller guy seems like the Fox News of Linux blogs.
He was both right and wrong. Wrong in the sense that *you* do use what he taught you. Right in sense that of the people in that room, you're probably one of 2 or 3 that do. "Probably" is the key word. As long as 51% of the people in his class don't use calculus (an extremely likely event) he made a correct statement. Does that mean we should stop teaching calculus to most students? Difficult to say, and there have been very long Slashdot threads arguing back and forth on the matter. It remains true that that most people who take introductory calculus, especially in high school, will probably never use it.
Actually, probably the best systems and network guys here is a huge American Idol fan. He's also a classically trained musician who teaches a few music courses at the local university. Damned if I know what he sees in the show, but it's one of the few things he actually watches on TV, and he critiques the various acts in ways that would probably make Paula Abdul drool. Sometimes there's just no accounting for taste.
This. One of my best friends is a lawyer. He makes a bit less than I do, has a crushing load of student debt (still), and it took him 3 years to really find a job (he had a few short term gigs in there, but it took him 3 years to find a permanent "real" job). On top of all of that, he's doing completely uninteresting work in real estate law, while I spend most of my days playing with big iron HPC systems.
I addressed the first point. OP will either (a) not be the only one hunting the deer (if he lives in a relatively rural area where a lot of people know how to hunt), or (b) have hard time finding the deer (if he lives in a relatively urban area where they're not likely to be hanging out). Now when the Hell did we start farming them? we're talking about a disaster here. Any kind of significant husbandry program will take months, if not years, to organize. But hey, my response is stupid. Sure.
Really on a per capita basis there wasn't much looting in New Orleans either. Most of what there was was for food, and probably people would have paid had their been anyone in the shops to pay. What looting of luxury goods there was (and it's been to shown to have been exaggerated in the early media coverage) was almost entirely looted out of empty shops, and covered by insurance. There were no armed gangs wandering around stealing from survivors. There were a few assholes breaking windows of empty stores and picking up what they could carry.
OP is apparently envisioning himself as Mad Max or something. No major American city has been reduced to that in a hundred years, and frankly if one was it would indicated a total collapse of the internal infrastructure of the US, and a far more serious situation than a mere natural disaster. Even as badly as the government handled Katrina, it never got close to "Beyond Thunderdome".
Slashdot Mirror
Again, it's pretty easy to point out things that clearly *are* junk food: donuts, candy bars, snack cakes, etc. It's also pretty easy to point out things that are *not* junk food: vegetables, lean meats, whole grains, etc. OP was proposing a tax on junk food though, that requires a specific, legally defensible, definition of "junk food" and there are a whole lot of edge cases as I point out.
Do we say snack cakes are junk food? What if I make a whole grain organic snack cake that's (relatively) low in calories, high in fiber and got lovely raisins and nuts for some extra nutrition? What about energy bars? Arguably, consumed as intended, they're not really junk food, they're a calorie dense supplement for people who do a lot of exercise. In practice many people eat them as candy bars that they feel slightly less guilty about. What about Starbucks Lattes? In theory it's just coffee, but add in the cream and sweetened syrup and they can rival any muffin you buy with them for calories. What about "healthy" snack foods like rice cakes and such? How much honey and/or chocolate turns a rice cake from a healthy snack to "junk food"?
It's easy to say "just use common sense" but bureaucracies are notoriously short of such things. People who don't want to pay more will lobby to make their particular nom of choice not considered "junk", companies (especially huge ones like Coke or Hostess) will tweak products so they are *precisely* outside of any legal definition of "junk". You'll have "Coke - AZ" tailored to have exactly one less calorie, point zero one less carb grams, and just enough vitamin C added to make it "not junk food" by the AZ tax codes. My initial reply was a response to a specific idea "tax junk food" with a specific problem "It's hard to legally quantify junk food". That's not the fault of fast food merchants (though they certainly don't help matters).
Also you have to subsist on a bean and lentil curry for a week or more straight. Don't get me wrong, its sounds tasty, but as I said in my original post "How many times can you eat beans and rice in a week?" In your case it appears to be "many, many times", but people in general like a little variety in their diet. You have to have realistic expectations of people. If you plop someone down in a modern supermarket and give them $50 to spend on groceries, the chances that they'll show up at the register with a big bag of rice, a big bag of beans and some spices is pretty slim. Even if they can live off that quite healthfully (and probably spend a lot less than their $50). They're going to attempt to get the best variety they can within their $50, and that's probably going to involve some potato chips and Little Debbie snack cakes.
It's a Hobson's choice for poor people, at least in terms of diet (smoking is another matter entirely). Bad food is cheap, good food is expensive. Check the prices of fresh veggies verses potato chips sometime. What's the cheapest cut of meat? The fatty cut. McDonald's food is cheap as Hell and it's all empty calories. There are, if you're careful, inexpensive and reasonably healthy alternatives, but how often can you eat beans and rice in a week?
You're also ignoring the fact that while statistically being obese (or smoking) is going to mean you're sick more often, even people who live healthy lives do get sick. Poor people typically have nothing or a pittance left after paying for the basics. What do you suggest they do when (inevitably) they get sick despite a generally healthy life? Just die?
No, unless he's some kind of regulator empowered to make decisions about what is or isn't junk, he really isn't. Many low fat food have added sugar.. Are they diet or junk? Many natural foods are quite unhealthy for you, or quite fattening. I try to limit my sweet intake, but once a week I get an organic cookie from Earth Faire (the local Whole Foods-a-like). It's all organic with real sugar, unbleached flour, etc... It's still a cookie though. Junk or not? What about high fat (but also high nutrition) red meats? In moderation they're quite good for you... in excess they're a hug contributor to obesity. Then there's all the stuff that you wouldn't expect to be nearly as awful as it is. A Starbuck's Carmel Latte seems like a small indulgence till you realize that it has nearly as many calories as a sleeve of Oreos.
It's really easy to point at Krispy Kremes and say "that's junk food", but like anything the Devil is in the details. For every Twinkie or bag of potato chips there's an item that is "low fat" (but high in something else), and item made from all natural ingredients (but still full of fat and carbs), an item that is good in moderation (but often eaten in excess), or an item that is just as bad as the Twinkie (but you never really realized it).
It's pricey, but Brookstone sells a nifty iPad case with a built in flexible Bluetooth keyboard. You unfold the case one way and the keyboard is tucked out of sight behind the device and it just acts like "normal" iPad case, unfold it another way and the device is set vertical (or near vertical) like a screen and the keyboard is in front of it like a laptop. I don't have an iPad so I didn't play with it enough to really judge the usability, but the concept at least seems pretty reasonable.
Linky I saw one while wandering through the Airport Brookstones in Baltimore on a layover.
Bah, sibling isn't an AC, sorry dude. Must have read the wrong line...
I hate to agree with the AC, but I'd have been shocked if they *could* have answered your question. I am willing to bet that if you go back with your guitar and and iRig (Which I assume is a way to connect the guitar to the device) they'll give it a go. Not only will they potentially sell you something, but everyone in the store will see the lengths that they'll go to helping you out and get a small show out of the deal. That's like gold wrapped in diamond paper from their point of view.
Also, while all signs and reviews point to the Xoom and similar being good products, they're actually slightly more expensive than and iPad for what appears to be a mostly work-a-like item. There are cheaper Android Tablets, but those don't appear to (as a rule) be as good of a product. Apple seems to have found a pretty good sweet spot on price to quality in this case (somewhat unusually for them, I love Apple but they do tend to be bit expensive), they have first mover advantage, and people identify with the product (having a long line of iPods and iPhones to look back on). I suspect the iPad will continue to dominate the market for a while yet, at least until tablets become common enough to be commodities.
At least for now, iPads continue to sell fast. I was visiting in Massachusetts last week and had the bright idea to hop over the border to New Hampshire and grab one sales tax free. No love. At least at that particular Apple store, they still have people lining up for opening and sell out 20-30 minutes after opening daily. Granted this was in Nashua, which is one of the border towns where people from Mass like to go for sales tax free large purchases, but still...
I'm not 100% sure, but doesn't iPad iOS allow file sharing? I don't have one, so I can't easilly verify. That might be the larger issue if I'm correct.
What evidence do you have the iPhones (or Android phones for that matter) still have accessible data after a wipe? I've not heard this before. Regardless, the article is *not* about "securely" wiping the phone. It's about people foolishly trying to manually wipe a phone and missing stuff. Given that this is the only story you've *ever* commented on, and the fact that you're clearly spining facts, I'm inclined to believe the AC above who accuses you of being an astroturfer.
Actually it's trivially easy to wipe an iPhone. Dunno about Android, though I assume they have the same feature, but on an you can set up an iPhone to self wipe after four failed PIN attempts. That's right, if for some reason you can't figure out who to use the large "reset to factory default condition" button in iTunes, you can turn on the PIN function and force it to wipe itself after four failed attempts. But hey, it's a lot easier to bash products you know nothing about than to actually post accurate information.
And damn did I misread them too. Now is the time I wish I could edit Slashdot post. So profits of 70 *million* on income of 2.4 billion. Still way more money than changed hands on Huff post, but no where near to the level I initially stated. I don't know how I misread that so badly. My point stands, but not nearly to level it did.
Wikipedia: Here. Wikipedia has it's weaknesses as a source, but I don't see any reason to mistrust their revenue numbers on a publicly traded company.
Your sibling goes into part of why that is. Huffington doesn't post original content. She and her staff link to and give opinions on real journalist's work. Don't misunderstand me, there's value in that. I've read and enjoyed (and read an disagreed with) Huff Post articles. She's by no means a do nothing and she adds value; there's a long and useful tradition of aggregation and editorializing in journalism she is an heir to that (as are people like Micheal Drudge on the other side, who also makes a damned good living on his site).
That's not the point though. It's cheap to link to content and write opinion pieces. It's expensive to do investigative journalism, war correspondence, hell even sending a cub reporter to do a feel good piece on the local flower show costs a buck or two. A quick wikipedia search shows me that the Times made around $2 billion profit on income of around $20 billion last year. Which means that their operating costs were around $18 billion. So the sale price for Huff Post (Not its income, which is likely smaller than the sale price, nor it's profits, which are likely even smaller still) is around 1.5% of the operating cost (before anyone makes any money) of the Times.
I think you've hit the nail on the head here. Companies like Audible, Amazon and Barnes and Noble have figured this out, why not the Times. If I buy a Nook Book on my iPhone I can later get it for my Nook, my PC, or my Mac. Simple. Same with an audiobook from Audible or music from iTunes (in that case obviously I'm just moving the file around). Paying for stuff doesn't bother me. Honestly, while I'd prefer not to have it, DRM doesn't even bother me much as long as it isn't intrusive and allows me to activate multiple devices. Having to pay for the same content twice depending on where I'm looking at it... that annoys me.
Except that thus far, with the notable exception of Google no company has successfully made any significant amount of money off of advertising on the Internet. Yeah, You can probably make enough to cover the hosting costs on your blog from advertising. If you are popular (write well, provide useful content, update regularly, etc) you might even be able to make enough to cover your hosting costs and make a decent living off advertising. So far though, no one has found a formula that scales that to the New York Times level. It's pretty expensive to maintain a reporter in the white House Press Corps, a few guys in Iraq, a few more in Afghanistan, so more on standby to send to Japan or Libya, or where ever tomorrow's hot spot is.
Most media sites initially tried to make their money off of advertising, it's only the continued failure of that model that is driving them to try something new.
It's not per se that they have Facebook accounts that bothers me. Technically it's against the terms of service, but that's hardly a serious issue. What annoys me is that my cousin had her kids make these account and send friend requests to essentially everyone in my immediate family without warning us ahead of time. My mother is one of five sisters, many of whom have two or three adult children of their own now, it's quite a substantial number of people we're talking about here. When people ignored and/or turned down these requests (mostly becasue we didn't want to have to self censor everything we did to be age appropriate for an 8 year old) she became irate and made a huge deal out it. She guilted several family members into accepting by basically implying that the kids were crushed by their refusal to accept the original requests.
Had she had the kids make accounts then contacted people ahead of time to ask if they'd want friend requests, and acted like an adult if they said "no" it wouldn't have been a problem. I don't post porn on my Facebook or anything, but I don't really feel like censoring it down to an 8 year level either. I also don't appreciate being the bad guy who crush her darling girl's dream of being able to read about my jogging schedule and check-ins at the local pub.
All I know is that my stupid cousin encouraged both of her kids (8 and 10) to get Facebook accounts and brow beat several members of the family into friending them. Their accounts haven't been closed after nearly a year. I'm half-tempted to finally take the friend requests then immediately do the "Which Sexual Position are You?" quiz and post my results.
He's never attempted to hide it. I don't think he uses "Sock Puppets" in the tradition sense, I think he just likes having his name show up 15 different ways. It's very odd. We've gotten into a few arguments over the last few months and it's really odd to get continuous replies from 5 or 6 different accounts all of whom are obviously the same person.
Even more to the point, even if Google *is* violating the GPL in some esoteric way on this point, it's pretty immaterial if neither the FSF nor Linus think they are. As those are (as far as I know) the only two people/organizations with the standing to sue over it. This Florian Mueller guy seems like the Fox News of Linux blogs.
He was both right and wrong. Wrong in the sense that *you* do use what he taught you. Right in sense that of the people in that room, you're probably one of 2 or 3 that do. "Probably" is the key word. As long as 51% of the people in his class don't use calculus (an extremely likely event) he made a correct statement. Does that mean we should stop teaching calculus to most students? Difficult to say, and there have been very long Slashdot threads arguing back and forth on the matter. It remains true that that most people who take introductory calculus, especially in high school, will probably never use it.
Actually, probably the best systems and network guys here is a huge American Idol fan. He's also a classically trained musician who teaches a few music courses at the local university. Damned if I know what he sees in the show, but it's one of the few things he actually watches on TV, and he critiques the various acts in ways that would probably make Paula Abdul drool. Sometimes there's just no accounting for taste.
This. One of my best friends is a lawyer. He makes a bit less than I do, has a crushing load of student debt (still), and it took him 3 years to really find a job (he had a few short term gigs in there, but it took him 3 years to find a permanent "real" job). On top of all of that, he's doing completely uninteresting work in real estate law, while I spend most of my days playing with big iron HPC systems.
I addressed the first point. OP will either (a) not be the only one hunting the deer (if he lives in a relatively rural area where a lot of people know how to hunt), or (b) have hard time finding the deer (if he lives in a relatively urban area where they're not likely to be hanging out). Now when the Hell did we start farming them? we're talking about a disaster here. Any kind of significant husbandry program will take months, if not years, to organize. But hey, my response is stupid. Sure.
Really on a per capita basis there wasn't much looting in New Orleans either. Most of what there was was for food, and probably people would have paid had their been anyone in the shops to pay. What looting of luxury goods there was (and it's been to shown to have been exaggerated in the early media coverage) was almost entirely looted out of empty shops, and covered by insurance. There were no armed gangs wandering around stealing from survivors. There were a few assholes breaking windows of empty stores and picking up what they could carry.
OP is apparently envisioning himself as Mad Max or something. No major American city has been reduced to that in a hundred years, and frankly if one was it would indicated a total collapse of the internal infrastructure of the US, and a far more serious situation than a mere natural disaster. Even as badly as the government handled Katrina, it never got close to "Beyond Thunderdome".