I had only been going into New York to hang out with freegan.info for a month when I featured in my first media story. A Dutch journalist was quite taken with the incongruity of a Princeton University student going through the garbage, and despite my protestations that there were way more knowledgeable people in the… Continue reading Fool Me Twice
A few weeks ago, I spilled my coffee at the breakfast table three days in a row. Someone suggested that maybe I was guzzling too much caffeine, and I replied that, no, I’ve been on an unhealthy-grad-student level of coffee consumption for some time. Curious, though, I went off for a few days, but it… Continue reading The Normal One
Nicholas Kristof has recently informed me that most of what I do is relatively useless, and that the only solution is to blog more (tweets are cool too). Ever since he opened my eyes to the fact that half of the world’s population has two X chromosomes, I’ve hung on his every word, so here… Continue reading Left-Wing Think Tank “United States Department of Agriculture” Concludes Capitalism Is The Cause of Food Waste
Dates like these are always kind of arbitrary, but it’s been three months. Three months since I was last crumpled up on my parents’ couch, since I cried for no reason at all, since I could speak of “being depressed” in both a present and seemingly eternal tense. Three months, and it already seems so… Continue reading Happy, At Any Cost
As much as I like to think dumpster diving is in some ways inherently political, there are times when the whole thing can feel incredibly self-involved. And so, in the perpetually problematic desire to “give back”, I’ve been volunteering in food redistribution (again). I like this charity, even though it’s a charity and not a… Continue reading Gleaning the Gleanings
Recently I’ve been spending my days working frantically on my book, voraciously reading texts for my qualifying exams and—this is the best, and most exciting, part—talking animatedly about potential dissertation ideas with my colleagues. You could say that, after a two-year hiatus, I love sociology again. The only problem is that it took me getting… Continue reading Anomie Soup
Well, it’s officially official. You really can find anything in the trash, as these two six packs of beer attest. Speaking of garbage, I’ve updated the “writings” section of my site with a handful of papers that are in various states of rejection from academic journals, as well as a partly re-written of the never-really-going-to-be-published… Continue reading Letters from the Wasteland
Last night, I met someone who produces no waste. Now, you could quibble over the technicalities—in an obvious biological sense, we all make some waste—but I was still impressed. She eschewed all food that came in disposal containers, bought things in packaging only if she could reuse it, and got all of her clothes second-hand.… Continue reading The 90% Rule
The decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hungry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system… Continue reading Bleach
I think I felt the stupidest when I gave out the gluten-free Wonton Wraps. Admittedly, there are a lot of times at my job where I’ve wondered, “Is anyone going to eat this?” I certainly want to believe that someone is going to be happily surprised by the wave of pomegranates we’ve been packing, and… Continue reading Bears Don’t Eat Onions
Alex V. Barnard - Sociology 