Monthly Archives: July 2004

Eat more meat! (have a sense of humor too)

Sunday, July 18, 2004

So I was watching something yesterday about how reduced calorie diets not only dramatically increase health in animals, but also slow the aging process itself. The “senior monkeys” in the study still had young fit bodies, never grew gray hair, and kept up their libidos. None of this is really new knowledge — we've known for at least the past hundred years that lowering caloric consumption causes a person to live longer and stay healthier and more alert, and the swath of diseases associated with both high calorie diets as well as with meat, dairy, and eggs, are also quite public knowledge.

So why does the US government so aggressively promote high calorie and high animal-product diets? While it's true that there are powerful lobbies for the junk food and animal farming industries, I think the real answer is a lot darker than that. Give some objective thought to why the US (and other Western nations) would want people to age quickly and die sooner…

One of the biggest problems that modern societies face is what to do with old people. The pension and healthcare systems were never designed to handle people living so long after retirement, and are becoming increasingly strained. There just isn't enough money in the system to support such a high percentage of people living so long, and Medicare certainly can't even come close to supporting it. Keeping in mind that this new American lifestyle that espouses high calorie and high meat is a recent idea (no more than forty years old — this is not the diet of your grandparents' youth), I think it has to do as much with population control and economic stabilization as it does with lobbyists.

By feeding people a high calorie and high animal byproduct diet, you ensure that they die before they become a burden on society. It's really quite clever when you think about it… So eating a steak really is a patriotic thing to do, in the same way that becoming a suicide bomber might be patriotic in other nations. I suppose it's better than the sci-fi alternative of having forced suicide at age 65, right? If everyone went vegan and lived to be 85, or we found some other way to extend life, many people would be stuck working until age 75 due to the growing cost of supported a huge retired population.

So keep eating your meat — the early death you suffer is for the good of the nation.

PS. Maybe it's selfish, but I'm staying vegan.

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BMEbooks presents

Saturday, July 17, 2004

After doing a hundred and fifty 4000 DPI scans taking up 14 gig on my harddrive, I'm ready to start doing actual work on the new book, booklet, CD, DVD, online project, or whatever it ends up becoming. Nothing on it is set in stone and the project could take a lot of different directions, but I think it should be interesting. The scans are 95 meg a piece, so if you're in them, please don't ask me to show them quite yet as I haven't had time to prep them.

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Don't you love theocracy?

Saturday, July 17, 2004

This quote has been all over the blogs today, but I thought it was worth repeating. This is from President Bush, meeting with a group of Amish supporters on Friday:

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job"
- George W. Bush

Skipping over the fact that it's highly disturbing that he thinks he's a prophet or messiah, let me point out a really obvious truth: God should not speak through the President. The American People should be speaking through the President. That's his job. He's not there to be god's emissary. He is there to represent the people of the United States.

Of course, this recent bunch of anti-gay marriage pushes make it pretty clear that the US government represents one deity only, and that their responsibilities to that deity outweigh their responsibilities to the people. It's all fine and good to say “civil union is fine, after all, marriage is a religious institution between a man and a woman”, but it's a fallacy. The fact is, gay marriage was permitted by the Catholic Church until the 1500s, and is still permitted by many faiths around the world including active Christian Churches inside the United States. So the truth of the matter is that the anti-gay marriage movement has little to do with attitudes on homosexuality (that's just a symptom), and much more to do with forcing a state religion onto the subjects of this modern theocracy independent of their beliefs.

Not that this is anything new. Remember when Utah wanted to join the Union (well, remember it from school at least)? At that point polygamy was perfectly legal in Utah (as it was in many parts of the world, and still is, since there are cultures and faiths that accept it as a valid way to live). However, the federal government refused to allow Utah to join without first banning polygamy, which they did, thus allowing the government to force a specific religion on the people.

Don't forget that both polygamy and homosexuality are common (and often healthy) in a historical and international context, and looking at the world more broadly, also extremely normal in the animal kingdom. None of this has anything to do with morals, ethics, concerns about society crumbling, issues of what's “normal”, or anything like that — it is literally the government officializing its state religion.

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ModCon 4 – The Book

Friday, July 16, 2004


Phil's been over tonight helping me scan his photos from ModCon 4 and figuring out what the options are for a book and other media… So those of you who were there may be hearing from me throughout the week as that project continues (the theme for this book is tentatively on modified young people — young as in “under 35″). I have an extremely full week; trying to get that book complete, set up another community site, as well as a bunch of not so exciting software development work, so I may not post that much (Rachel is off figuring out where we're going to move to come year's end when our lease expires).

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Apocalypse time

Friday, July 16, 2004

First the good news. Scientists have tentatively detected ammonia on Mars, after also detecting methane a few months ago. Because these are volatile organic compounds which don't last long, they can have two sources: active volcanoes (there aren't any on Mars that we know of), or life. So the case for life on Mars is getting better and better. I hope they believe in Jesus, because if they don't, it's time for the interplanetary crusades! Saddle up, Christian soldiers.

Unfortunately the rest of the news is not so promising. The US torture scandal gets worse, with new videos of American soldiers sodomizing Iraqis while they're screaming their guts out in pain are due to be released (more), and the CIA director is promising fireworks — “something big” and “very, very solid” information. Not that we haven't heard this a few times before, but this time “we have very little doubt about the information we have in terms of its sourcing and authenticity.”

Dead pool for cities anyone? Will it be Boston or will it be New York? Or maybe they'll blow up Los Angeles? Maybe they'll take out Chicago? Perhaps small town America will go up in flames? Well, if that doesn't scare you, the Washington Times is warning Americans to actually expect the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse itself (more). So if you're not scared enough of terrorists to vote for Bush, God himself is going to come down and kick your ass.

But don't worry too much, because there's a lot of money to be made (more), although the Bush Cabal are keeping secret billions of dollars in money handed over to Halliburton and other friends of the government (more). And how is that helping national security? Of course, if you're to believe Cheney's official bio page produced by the government, he never worked for Halliburton in the first place (more). I don't know about you, but given that he's still taking a million dollars a year from them, I'd say that's relevant. To put that into context, Cheney is paid $212,900 annually to serve the American people (his VP salary), and over a million dollars annually from Halliburton (a $20 million severance package that's still being paid out, about $10 million in Halliburton stock that's generating income, plus $150,000 a year in cash from them; more). Where do you think his loyalties lie?

But don't get too distracted by all that — even bigger problems are ahead as the US continues to threaten China with war (more), and China feels increasingly cornered on Taiwan (more). Oh, and crazy old North Korea is continuing to work hard on its nuclear weapons program (more)…

Humans sure are stupid.

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