You Gonna Eat That?

So. A study has found that eating a diet rich in red meat (beef, pork or lamb), is riskier than cutting back.

To which most of us say: "What about this is new, precisely?"

The basic upshot is a familiar one - eating meats frequently raises your chances of heart disease, certain cancers, and so on and so on. Make that processed meats, like hot dogs (which somewhat stretch the definition of "meat," I think), and the chances jump even higher.

Of course, the meat industry weighs in with an attempt to debunk the numbers, vegans and vegetarians start crowing about the superiority of their lifestyles, the meat eaters shoot back and... well, you know the drill. But I think that something becomes lost in all of this, and it's a familiar idea. Everything is a trade off.

I, for my part, like meat. I find it tasty. I don't eat a lot of beef because I can't cook it very well, but lamb and pork are within reach of my abysmal culinary skills. And when someone else is doing the cooking, a well-cooked steak is wonderful, in my opinion. Will it shorten my lifespan? Probably. It is worth every forgone minute? Definitely.

I eat the foods that I do because I savor the pleasure of eating them. While I can go without meat when really want to, I find that I loose a lot of the enjoyment of eating, and I miss it, because I don't have anything near at hand to replace it with. Unless I'm traveling - being away from home with things to do is more enjoyable than eating, and so I find it much easier to eat better when I'm on vacation. Because while steaks are good, the British Museum, to name one thing, is MUCH better, and I can have steak when I get home.

But when my life is dull and boring, I good pork chop or lamb stir-fry goes a long way towards livening things up. And so I make the trade-off against my future health. Will I regret it? Maybe. But it's likely that if I get to the point that I'm an invalid, I'll regret a lot of things that I've done, and haven't done. And, in my estimation dying of something other than old age isn't the worst way to go. And I suppose that's what's always struck me as strange about these studies, and the reporting on them. The idea seems to be that we should always want to live as long as possible. Dying is always portrayed as something that you never want to have happen to you. Even when you're looking at spending the rest of days drooling on yourself or in an iron lung. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not in a hurry to start pushing up the daisies. The idea isn't that since I'm going to croak off anyway, I may as well go tomorrow and beat the rush. But I'm not on the bandwagon on doing whatever it takes to live a few more months or even years. Life's been good to me, but I don't need it to last forever.

And quite honestly, it seems that relatively few of us do. Okay, so I'm not risking shortening my life in return for a bigger paycheck, an adrenaline rush, being of service to my fellow man or for God, President and Country. Running an increased chance of not living to see your next birthday for those reasons seems somehow more acceptable than just because you like the taste of something. And that's okay - to each their own. And so if more people abandon meat to squeeze some more years out of life - well, that just makes savoring meals that much cheaper.

This is a RAID

The website founded by Andrew Breitbart claims to have found evidence (in a videotaped hug from 20 years ago, apparently) that President Obama is a dangerous Black Radical who wants to reduce White people to slavery, or something. I don't know. And frankly, I'm beyond caring. I just see the battle lines being drawn. Again.

Easily-spooked White conservatives are suddenly running around like frightened chickens, convinced that the comeuppance that they've been avoiding for centuries now is suddenly going to find them in their beds. This idea, that all that stands between the stability and prosperity of the United States of America and a bloody African Intifada is a single, well-placed, radical Black leader is as old as the hills. And despite the fact that African Americans aren't any more organized or of a single mind than any other group on the planet (including Whites) it never seems to go away.

On the other side, Liberals of all stripes who are quick to point to yet more proof of lingering Racism, not seeming to understand that this is basically a political issue. Sure, the President is Black, but he's also a Democrat. Given the number of people who actually seemed to think that Herman Cain would have made a competent President, which do you think is more important? No-one with a "D" in their party affiliation is acceptable, no matter what the color of their skin. And on the flip side, anyone who will vote to ban gay marriage and lower corporate taxes is more than welcome, regardless of their extraction.

And the real problems that the country has go un-dealt with. I know that it's fashionable to say that the President, the Congress or even God has the responsibility to take care of things, and magically restore us to a place of untouchable world preeminence, but it's not going to happen. This is our work. That's what a Republic (or Democracy, if you must) really means. Yet it seems that every time, we look at the scope of the problem and then look for someone to swoop in and rescue us. If we want to fix the United States, we're going to have to stop bickering over every pointless bit of minutiae that we stumble across, and start working - or fighting - things out. The real things. Not the petty bullshit that we've taken to occupying ourselves with while we wait for a miracle. Not the moronic sideshows that we put on for no better reason than to convince people that "we're one of them." And not the cultivation of Rage, Anxiety, Ignorance and Distrust, no matter how good it makes us feel about ourselves or how comforting it is to be able to blame the Disloyal Others for our self-inflicted woes.

The big-picture, life and death issues. We can't keep pretending that things will magically turn out all right if we just keep it together a little while longer and pick the right political faith to follow. The path that we're on isn't sustainable. Hoping that it lasts until the month after we die isn't a viable strategy, regardless of how well it may have worked for some people a couple of generations ago.

The expectation that we've cultivated, that we can save the future with little more effort than voting for the right people, is a pipe dream. It's time to wake up, be sober and realize that we aren't special (or "exceptional" if you insist) enough for history to give us a pass forever.

The Plan

Westboro Baptist Church is at it. Again.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that these guys are really Deep-Cover Peaceniks. Their grand plan is to bring Christians, Moslems, Atheists, Jews, Shinto, Satanists, Zoroastrians, Wiccans, and pretty much any one else who can hold a bat together in what will turn out to be the final act of violence on Earth, before everyone realizes that they have a lot in common, go off to have a few dozen beers and sing cheesy drinking songs.

Now, were it up to me, I'd look for a way to bring humanity together that wouldn't result in being brutally beaten to death, but sometimes, taking one for the team means going all the way.

This Location Only

Because there aren't any other locations left, most likely.

I once knew the locations of 8 different Blockbuster stores. This is the last of them. I now can't think if a single going Blockbuster within 15 miles of my apartment.

All Aboard

This is why I don't ride anyone's hate trains.

Normally I don't send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine.

A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?' His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'
The Honorable Richard Cebull, chief U.S. district judge for Montana

When you find it "touching" to slander the dead to mock the living, I don't think that just saying that you're "not a fan" of the President comes anywhere near the truth; "but this goes beyond not being a fan" should win prizes for understatement from far and wide. It takes real emotion, actual feeling, to cloud one's judgement to this level. While Judge Cebull may have honestly believed that this e-mail would never have gone beyond his circle of fellow "non-fans," the simple fact he didn't come to the realization that he was effectively cosigning a mean-spirited slut joke about the President's mother demonstrates to me how the animosity that become such a large part of American politics is destroying our brains.

It's easy to lay this sort of thing at the feet of the right. They're worked long and hard to claim the best seats on this hate train for themselves. But four years ago, it was the political left who were the most vocal about letting their emotions get the better of them. It's always easier to emote than to think. To convince ourselves that the gut reactions that our feelings inspire speak to a deeper truth about the targets of our emotions - and say nothing about ourselves.

We are quick to cast ourselves as puppets of the more powerful - the forces that "make" us feel things. We wrap ourselves in a mantle of victimhood, controlled by outside forces that rob us of our better natures. It justifies not only our anger and bitterness, but our willingness to transgress on others in ways that we claim to find completely unacceptable. And our willingness to keep silent or even rush to the defense when people we want to see as allies take the very actions we decry in our adversaries.

As Americans, we have been brought up to be sensitive to the other in our midst, and to hound them mercilessly. For our entire history, we have shown a willingness to turn on one another, and do react with howls of outrage when confronted with it. But confront it we must, or it will be our end. For there are never pleasant destinations at the ends of hate trains.