March, 2015 archive
QOTD 0
William Floyd:
The Bible has done more harm than any other book in the world.
Aside:
It’s not the Bible. It’s the persons who read it.
Paleolicious 0
Writing at the Guardian, Jason Williams examines the “paleo diet” and finds it paleolithic in unexpected ways. A snippet:
In my view, the answer to that has little to do with food. The paleolithic is a favoured era because of the way it answers to a desire to justify or reimpose certain social hierarchies, especially those concerning gender.
For John Durant, a paleo thought leader, feminism is a particular bête noire. He spends pages of his cash-in book, The Paleo Manifesto, railing against the feminist Carol Adams, who connected feminism with vegetarianism. At one point he writes that “Adams’s meat-hating, man-hating mantra – ‘Eat Rice Have Faith in Women’ – is intended to undermine the male culture of meat-eating, thus undermining male power, thus reducing rape”.
Missing from his analysis, but also noteworthy, is that the “Paleo Diet” is based on the imagined diet of paleolithic Europeans. THe “Paleo Diets” of persons in the various regions of the Americas (if there were any at the time), Africa, and Asia would have been much different, as they would have eaten foods native to their regions and their varying climates.
It is, ultimately, not only Euro-centric, but also an intellectually dishonest construction promoted by charlatans, as fad diets are wont to be.
Twits on Twitter 0
Fraternal twits.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness seals relationships.
The man, later identified as Gary Crandell, 67, called 911 just before 5 p.m. and told dispatchers he was cleaning his gun at his home in the 100 block of SE Evan Boulevard when it accidentally went off and hit his wife, deputies said.
This one is certainly sealed.
The Climates They Are a-Changing 0
It’s all downhill from here.
On Sunday, Sierra-at-Tahoe Resort announced its decision to close – at least temporarily – becoming the fifth of the Tahoe region’s 14 area resorts to shut early this season due to lack of snow, according to a listing compiled by OnTheSnow.com.
At least one outfit is getting out while the getting’s good.
CNL Lifestyle Properties owns 16 resorts including Sunday River and Sugarloaf in Maine, Bretton Woods, Loon Mountain and Mount Sunapee in New Hampshire, Okemo Mountain in Vermont, Crested Butte in Colorado, Brighton in Utah, and Northstar-at-Tahoe and Sierra-at-Tahoe in California.
(Personally, I’ve never had a desire to strap boards to my feet and fall off a mountain.)
Email the Way It Was Meant To Be 0
Learn how to do it from my latest podcast at Hacker Public Radio.
Then record your own podcast for HPR.
Playing the Oil Shale Game 0
Via Naked Capitalism, which summarizes his main points as
- The US is a much smaller player, in global terms, than the cheerleading would have you believe
- The EIA (which if anything has a bullish bias) projects that US oil production will peak in 2016
- Shale gas production is falling for all US plays except Marcellus, and that is estimated to peak in 2020
- LNG export is a bad idea; the US can’t compete with Russian prices.
“Give War a Chance” 0
Warning: Language.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Play politely.
Aside:
At least this gun does not seem to have fired itself.
The Privatization Scam . . . 0
. . . now targets the hungry.
And the Winner Is . . . 0
. . . Gannett, for creating the world’s user-unfriendliest websites, such as, say, for example!
And they said it couldn’t be done . . . .
Robbing the Cradle 0
He’s 66. She’s now 18 and a mother.
The only surprising thing about this story is that he’s not a “family values” Republican. This sort of stuff is usually the territory of “family values” Republicans, but he calls himself a Democrat.
What’s really screwy is that, after his “dalliance” came out and he got hauled into court for “dallying” with an underage girl, he resigned his office and then got reelected in a special election over the opposition of his own party, emphasizing that what is ultimately wrong with our elected representatives is the voters–and the non-voters.
I got no problem with lust. I understand lust; there is a time and a place for lust. Yes, there is such a thing as “safe lust.”
It’s the stupid . . . . It overwhelms.
Via my local rag.
