Marketing mystery

Who is the genius behind this?

50% vegetarian

A few people/movements suggest eating vegetarian at least one day a week, e.g.: "Vegetarian Wednesday, or David Suzuki's "Nature Challenge".

I find this quite sympthomatic of a North American meat-centric culture.

I'm Italian, and Italian cuisine has plenty of meat-free dishes -- we don't call them vegetarian options, we call them: garlic and oil pasta, eggplant Parmigiana, Margherita pizza, fresh tomatoes pasta.

So, for me it's not hard to take it one step further: I don't eat any meat for breakfast or supper, but I do eat some meat for lunch.

Whether this makes me 50% vegetarian or not, I'm quite proud of it.

Minimum energy

One good thing about the snow is that it lets us see what portion of our streets we really need.   Similarly, it's interesting to observe cow-paths and the people-created walking paths in urban parks.

One good example that I remember is this little park in front of the Milan's Polytechnic University.   Here is the original image from Google Maps.

All of these examples follow just one simple rule: minimum energy.

• shortest walk: connect common origins and common destinations
• physical constraints: avoid obstacles (e.g. trees, light poles, puddles)
• reinforcement: previously created paths offer clean, compacted soil

Perhaps landscape architects should let people find these natural paths?   One could even decide to leave the park without any paved paths for a few months, then pave the acceptable ones and block off those that are undesired.