Intro:
robzvegan.uk is a personal site by me, Rob 😉
It’s just a place online for me to dump ideas, share and curate articles and write about things I find interesting – I find a lot of things interesting!
Some of the subject areas I am drawn to are:
ethics & morals; ecology & sustainability; art & design; health & nutrition; science & technology; words & language; sound & music; humour & quirkiness
So who am I? Hmm, that’s always such a hard question to answer, and often depends on who is asking.
Some of the ways I describe myself are:
Ethical Vegan – this is probably my most defining core value , and underlies almost everything I do. I have been vegan since 1980, and celebrate my veganniversary on 1st December.
Antithiest Athiest –
Enviromentalist – for me this means being vegan, child-free and anti-natalist, car-free and anti-road expansion, anti-air travel expansion, for re-wilding the environment.
Neo Anarchist Libertarian– this is just a term I made up – I’m not sure there is a particular doctrine out there yet that adequately describes my political leanings. In this area I’m influenced by the “The Accidental Anarchist” Carne Ross. I’m still trying to pin-down my thoughts in this area, but some of the aspects I think we should be working towards are smaller, local, people-scale governments, closer to the people rather than the large scale corporate led and market capitalist states we currently have.
I’m sure there is enough there to upset many people 😉
I studied physics (badly) but maintain an interest in it, especially some of the recent theories in quantum physics. I also hold a MSc in Computer Science, which has enabled me to hold a senior technical position at a large financial institution, one of the kinds often described at the “engine of capitalism”, which is rather ironic given how I describer myself above – what can I say, I fell in with the wrong crowd!
Overall,I don’t take myself too seriously, and neither should you 😉
Why robzvegan? In the 90’s at university when I was socialising a lot, I used to often be offered non-vegan food and drink by people who did not know I was vegan. I don’t really like fuss and attention, so I would just quietly and politely refuse such offers. But my friends, all of whom were non-vegan, and maybe thought it was fun or eccentric to know a vegan, a rare thing in those days, would often speak up more vocally on my behalf and say things like “Rob can’t have that, because Rob’s vegan”. Robzvegan is the contracted form of “Rob’s vegan”.
Sitemap:
Latest Posts:
- The Best Wildflowers for Wild Bees - The research paper “The Best Wildflowers for Wild Bees” published in the December 2019 edition of the Journal of Insect Conservation looks at the wildflower mixes available in Governmental agri-environment schemes (AES) aimed at improving pollinator abundance and diversity. The researchers found that the wildflowers in such mixes were not particularly great for wild bees, and suggests… Continue reading The Best Wildflowers for Wild Bees
- Some notes on Water - Some gathered facts on water from a vegan perspective: 5% of water consumed in the US is by private homes while 55% of water consumed in the US is for animal agriculture. (Center for Science in the Public Interest) 47% of California’s water footprint is associated with meat and dairy, and 4% with households. (Pacific Institute)… Continue reading Some notes on Water
- Meat’s link to World Hunger - This article first appeared on the website of the Woodstock Sanctuary in 2013: Of the world’s nearly 6.8 billion humans, almost 1 billion people are malnourished, and 6 million children starve to death every year. Feeding half the world’s grain crop (1) to animals raised for food instead of directly to humans is not only… Continue reading Meat’s link to World Hunger
- What about land that can’t be used to grow crops? - Little Green Seedling dismantles the argument that because some land can’t be used to grow crops, it should be used to farm animals, arguing that if we all followed a plant-based diet we wouldn’t necessarily need to use this land for crops anyway, questioning whether such land is really not suitable for plant crops and… Continue reading What about land that can’t be used to grow crops?
- Eating vegan is better than eating local - On Monday 8th October 2018, the IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), issued their special report (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/) focused on the importance of keeping global warming to within 1.5°C of pre-industrial levels, or else the world will suffer dire consequences. Since then, the news media has been full of articles, letters and posts on… Continue reading Eating vegan is better than eating local
- Why some vegans become lactose intolerant - And why its perfectly natural Lactose is a form of sugar, or disaccharide, found in animal milk. Like all mammalian milk, human milk, the natural food for human babies, contains lactose. In fact human milk contains more lactose than cow’s milk (but less protein). In order to fully digest milk, an enzyme called lactase is… Continue reading Why some vegans become lactose intolerant
- Livestock vs Wildlife vs Humans - Taken from “Biodiversity, land use and ecosystem services—An organismic and comparative approach to different geographical regions” – Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/Estimations-of-the-total-global-biomass-organically-bound-carbon-regarding-humans-wild_fig3_314653548 [accessed 10 Aug, 2018]: Fig. 3. Estimations of the total global biomass (organically bound carbon) regarding humans, wild terrestrial mammals and large domesticated animals (livestock) for the years 1900 and 2000… Continue reading Livestock vs Wildlife vs Humans
- Vegan Grocery Shops in London -
- Meat and greenhouse gas emissions, and the grass-fed fallacy - In this edition of the BBC Radio 4 programme Inside Science – first broadcast BBC Radio 4 on 17th November 2016 – the question of meat’s contribution to climate change is discussed after in the previous week’s broadcast a climate change scientist confirmed that being vegan would reduce your carbon footprint by 50% compared to… Continue reading Meat and greenhouse gas emissions, and the grass-fed fallacy
- PNAS: The opportunity cost of animal based diets exceeds all food losses - This article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows how growing plant-based food to replace animal-based foods can produce 2x to 20x more nutrition per unit of crop land, and complete replacement of animal-based products would produce more benefit than attempting to eliminate all supply chain losses: With a third of… Continue reading PNAS: The opportunity cost of animal based diets exceeds all food losses
