April 29th, 2009
The modern armchair nutritionist can now determine that your whole diet is wrong from one or two trifling clues, mostly by the fact that you are not them. They will tell you with a straight face that Earl Butz’s subsidies to the corn farmer have caused a precipitous drop in life expectancy. The self-made expert will go on, with the constancy of a Connecticut senator, to condemn the ill effects of processed foods over a pint of their favorite micro brew, I suppose under the impression that independent breweries gather their healthful product from moisture tents in a meadow.
You won’t need to raise the issue of genetically modified foods at this point as they will surely do it for you, explaining how this advance will be the one to finally spell the end of our species. They have not seen Attack of the Killer Tomatoes but have heard of it and find it plausible. One wonders how they feel about embryonic stem cell research.
I expect human meddling with the gene will produce roughly the same results as nature’s. It was her wild experiments that yielded such unmitigated disasters as the platypus, the Kiwano African horned melon, and lest we forget, our own human race. But, this is only the latest Pandora’s box to be opened, and like all science it will not go back in. What strange days are these where the Amish have accepted this and progressives have not.
Food culture is rife with tiring fads and prejudices. Simply eat fresh fruits, grains, vegetables, (and lean meats if you choose), and eat less food that is high in fat, salt, and sugar and you will improve your chances of seeing those endlessly rewarding decades that follow retirement. If you think there is more to it than that be cautioned: stress and a joyless life can be more dangerous than cheeseburgers and ice cream. If you are tempted to save someone from indulging in these and other poisons pause and consider allowing them the same respect that the atheist wants from the evangelist.
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April 22nd, 2009
I believe that all men are created equal – in their shortcomings. However, there are a people who challenge this notion, a rabble I sometimes think have sunk below even the muck where the rest of humanity roots like catfish. I think this and wonder if I am a bigot for I find myself describing them with such excessive hyperbole, with ludicrous hypothetical illustrations, and with straw-man arguments that have nothing to do with anything – in other words I act like them.
What is a libertarian? It is a vague term. I choose to think of them as people who are unhappy that ordered societies have rules. The modern libertarian often makes his stand on things like gun rights and legalized drugs. Why not add prostitution and gambling? Then we would have the four corners for the foundation of a perfect civilization. And are these vices really closed to him? What is he fighting for, the right to smoke upwind of a bored policeman?
Of all the trappings of civilization the libertarian finds taxation the most onerous, feeling somehow exempt from this basic obligation. They resent social security if they are not elderly or disabled, and public schools if they don’t have children. They are under the remarkable illusion that each of us chooses our own path and nowhere do the paths cross.
The libertarian will cite particular inefficiencies as cause for pruning whole branches of government. Should an outbreak of salmonella spell the end of the Food and Drug Administration? The libertarian thinks so. Perhaps food safety would be better managed by a private company – to the libertarian the word ‘private’ suggests accountability. Of course the real imperative is to root out waste and expose corruption, to repair what doesn’t work to the benefit of the community. This is just one of the responsibilities of a free citizen.
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April 15th, 2009
Gun rights advocates often bring up a hypothetical situation wherein a crazed lunatic intrudes upon dinner to rape your wife and murder your children, and they advise keeping a firearm in the home to prepare for it. They might also recommend holding off on dessert in case an old nanny arrives in an apron, offering to bake apple tarts.
To retrieve a firearm that has been responsibly locked up and return in a timely fashion to ‘light up’ the common trespassing rapist without injuring your loved ones is apparently an unconditional right. The most ardent patriots have formed militias ready to defend this right. Though historically, if people are breaking into houses to rape wives and execute children, it’s traditionally as part of an armed militia.
You might be surprised to learn that securing the homestead from frothing madmen was not actually the intended purpose of the Second Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms was originally meant to ensure that the people had the means to defend themselves against an oppressive government. When this amendment was conceived there was little difference between an infantry musket and a civilian musket. With the advent of things like hunter-killer drones, guided missile cruisers, and fifth generation stealth fighter aircraft the difference has perhaps become more pronounced.
To make it right advocates for the Second Amendment should demand the government distribute an equal amount of advanced weapons systems to the public, particularly tactical nuclear warheads. They should also probably lobby for subsidized special forces training and an independent network of the latest communications and surveillance satellites. This may seem like a large expenditure and at an inopportune time, but can proponents realistically put a price on restoring the republic that was the vision of our Founding Fathers?
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April 8th, 2009
We live in a dangerous world. Elephants and eight-hundred pound gorillas are apparently turning up everywhere. As if this weren’t enough, a curious mode of homicide has come into vogue. People are being thrown under buses so often one wonders why anyone would even go near one. It is impossible to live in the world and not hear these two clichés ad nauseam. They are hurled around in public like rotten eggs on Halloween.
What does it even mean to be thrown under the bus? Every time I hear it I think it’s a Cliff Burton reference – the only person I know to have been actually thrown under a bus. It paints a morbid picture and raises many questions. Is the bus tipping over or driving past? Who is capable of actually throwing an unwilling victim under a passing bus? I expect it would take an eight hundred pound gorilla. I will stick with stabbing people in the back.
Let us not ignore the elephant in the room. Those seeking to point out the pachyderm want you to think they are the artless little child who blurts out that the emperor has no clothes. It is they who have been taken in by swindlers, and sold a fake witticism. What’s more the pink elephant is just as often a red herring. Ask yourself which is more likely to have fit through the doorjamb.
I once brought this subject up with the a skinhead in a tattoo parlor. “The art of conversation is like…#@%&,” he lamented. What a creative way he found to make his point! Stupid people have always been inarticulate; what worries me lately is the just as frequent use of these two clichés among supposed intellectuals. They are as quick to point out the elephant as anyone, and without an ounce of shame.
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April 1st, 2009
Its only a very few people that want children to starve. Yet children starve to death all day long – one every five seconds or so. One just now probably. Why is that? Its as if some invisible force is somehow thwarting our best efforts. Its funny that we should see it that way. The actual problem is that we are all complete idiots.
I know I am. I sometimes don’t know what 8 x 4 is and occasionally I have trouble with the ‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’ rule. In fact I hesitate to speak my mind on this subject because I’m pretty sure I have no idea what I’m talking about. But, I believe it was Socrates that said that the only thing he had any confidence in is that he didn’t know anything either. It would take quite a fool to say he knew better than Socrates.
The only other possibility is that I do know what I am talking about. In either case I’ve made my point. See what an idiot I am? Well just because I’m an idiot doesn’t mean everyone is. What about Einstein? Einstein certainly was intelligent by most measures. But, then again he gave us the key to the atom bomb, and for the first time in history the distinct possibility of self-annihilation. That really wasn’t very smart.
From the poverty-stricken child poking at a landmine to the engineer designing a microphone for the Mars rover, we have absolutely no idea what we are doing. If we strive to make ourselves prosperous we find we have hollowed out our own life. If we strive to make our community prosperous we leave it in shambles. Now half a dozen children have died. Fools that we are we will think its someone else’s fault.
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