On September 28 I attended a hearing on proposed federal regulation of coal industry practices here in Kentucky. I received my number--can't remember what it was--took a seat in a large conference room at the Seelbach in downtown Louisville, and waited for my turn, rehearsing my speech to the EPA panel at the head of the room while one speaker after another went up to the mic and spoke their mind. I was impressed by most of the speakers. Mainly I admired the courage of the citizens from rural E. Kentucky who are directly and adversely affected by the toxic pollution that coal industry practices leave behind for people who's lives are already difficult enough. A big challenge in public and professional communication is the courage, the character to speak out in the first place.
As it turned out, the evening had a plot twist in store for me. Just as I had gotten all of my eloquent and passionate points arranged in my head, the speaker who went right before me changed the mood of the whole hearing. He was a businessman, an advocate of big coal, opposed to federal regulation of Kentucky's coal industry.
Everything this person said and represented made my blood boil. He read off a piece of paper, which meant he had no grasp of the truth--he could not speak from the heart because he knew if he did he would say something else. That's why people read statements off a piece of paper. Either you know what you're talking about and you know you're being honest or you don't and you're not. He was an older man, who no doubt had read off a piece of paper like this for many years, lining his pockets. There's nothing wrong with getting older--I'm doing it myself--but this man represented everything bad about being old: set in his ways, mired in a cognitive rut that looks at the world and human society in rigid, unchanging ways, all about himself and his interests, completely closed off to the fact this is a new century, a new millenium, full of babies and children who will grow up and live in the awful mess people like him have left behind, a man totally uncaring about a future he will not be a part of. There is not even a single cell in this man that wants to explore, learn, or discover. In the words of Bob Dylan, this man is "busy dyin'."
Everything this person said was a re-hash of sound-bites and cliches from the Reagan era--an era that still has a vice-grip on American economic practice and thinking, hence the economic meltdown in which we are still mired . . . and may be mired until the end of time, as long as the values that put big-coal come first and America last continue to prevail. His statement to the EPA panel was Reaganomics 101: you can't regulate industry too much or industry will suffer and profits will dwindle. Industry provides jobs, and families have to have jobs. Too much regulation (read: any regulation) stifles productivity and hurts industry profit which in turn means no jobs.
But the thing this man said that sent me from mere eye-rolling disgust to blood-boiling fury was that federal regulation of Kentucky's coal industry on top of the state regulation it's already under "would amount to regulatory overkill."
Overkill? OVERKILL?!!!
You've been in a room where for two hours one mother after another gets in front of the panel and reports that her children have brain tumors or other serious, deadly health problems because of the toxins released by big coal, and you're going to use a term like "overkill" for a metaphor? If you think regulatory "overkill" is a problem, how would you like to wake up with a tumor wrapped around your bleeding brain?
So when it was my turn to take the podium, I was shaken with anger, watching this man troll out of the auditorium, not about to stick around and hear anyone respond. There I stood. Should I just go with what I'd rehearsed in my head? I couldn't do that. For one, I was so emotionally shaken-up I couldn't quite remember the tidy rhetorcial arrangement of points I was going to make. More important, I myself could not speak from the heart and tell the truth if I didn't say something in response to this vapid, sociopathic mantra I've heard too many times. I took a deep breath, looked up at the panel, their eyes fixed on me, then turned to the doorway where the man was walking out, and spoke.
"Give me a break," were my first words, directed at the previous speaker. I felt good that I said that even though there was no resounding applause from the audience and the faces of the panelists remained locked in solemn institutional objectivity. As far as they were concerned, I was another number, and my three minutes to speak were already underway. I did my best to recollect what I'd rehearsed. Then my opening line came back to me.
"America is its own worst enemy."
That was, and still is, the gist of my point--and since I made it at the hearing, it rings truer in my heart every sad day that passes. Any nation that blows up its own mountains, poisons its own rivers, permeates its communities with toxic waste, and dooms its future generations to disease and ruin is a nation at war with itself. That is the grave danger of any nation jacked up on the frenzy of war: once the passion for war sets in, there is no way to stop out, and if there is no way to stop it, there is now way to live with purpose in the absence of an enemy. Once this happens there is no turning back--war becomes chronic, the need for enemies becomes habituated, and the most readily available enemy is always the people next door, thy own neighbor.
A country always at war is a country that has become its own worst enemy.
Last week my podcast colleague and I railed in dumbfounded rage against the decision of the Obion Co., TN fire department to sit there and watch a man's home burn to the ground with three family pets inside because the man failed to pay a $75 fee for fire protection. When you stand there and watch someone's house burn down, that is an act of war. And that is not just that man's house burning down--that was America. That was an American target left in smouldering ruin. Nothing like this incident of hate-mongering insanity illustrates how mainstream Americans say they love their country but hate Americans. They love 'America' as an ideological abstraction that conveniently stands for whatever their self interests are at the moment, but as soon as America has a face, they hate it, and they are literally at war with that face. If you love your country, you love your fellow countrymen. All of them. You don't have to agree with them, invite them to your Christmas party, or let your kids play with theirs. But if you hate the guts of everybody you think is not like you are or who does something you disagree with such hostility that you pridefully watch their house burn to the ground when the means to put out the fire are readily-available, you have declared America your enemy. And in doing so, whether you realize it or not, you have become your own worst enemy.
In the 21st century, America's greatest enemy is not terrorism, it's not illegal immigrants, it's America itself. This enemy represents the gravest threat because there is no protection from it. When you become your own worst enemy, there is no one to trust, no refuge to take, because the territory that was once yours is now your enemy's. When the means of protection--like a local fire department--turn on the people they ought to be protecting, there is no way to fight back. Becoming your own worst enemy is at once suicide and surrender.
When you remove the tops of mountains with explosives, you are literally using weapons of mass destruction to erase your own country. You cannot have "America" without its land, its people, its culture, its families, its children, its future. Mountain top removal and the poisoning of America's waterways is a destruction of everything earthly and human that make America what it is.
There is no hope for a collection of people who insist on putting anything--especially out-right antagonism and indifference toward each other--ahead of their own collective well being. I read just today that a retired teacher from Obion Co., TN said she was glad the local authorities let this man's house burn to the ground since she feels people "must suffer the consequences of their actions." That says it all. Her fellow American suffering is the most important thing of all, not saving his home, his pets, or the area from a dangerous threat. What do we call someone we want to suffer, someone who's home we want to see burn to the ground? The enemy. This was a domestic version of shock and awe. This man and his home have no worth or value to anyone beyond a $75 monetary payment. Thus, he is worthless. No, he is less than worthless, for he is worthy of punishment in the form of endorsed destruction of his home.
In America the only thing that unites us is our collective desire to see one another suffer. The tireless need to punish other Americans comes first, before anything caring, sensible, or civilized. Why should the priority of an entire nation be on punishing itself? Why should the immeasurable suffering of Americans be the measure of our unity and prosperity?
How can you fight back when you're destroying yourself from the inside out, your mountains leveled, your land and water poisoned, your homes burned to the ground--the topography of a defeated enemy?
Friday, October 15, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Alan is Learning
Nothing is more gratifying for a teacher like myself than those rare and epic breakthroughs, when seemingly impregnable barriers to cognitive development finally crumble, slowly at first, and then collapsing against a bursting stream of knowledge, a fresh current that has been unlocked from the depths. Last week proved to be my latest rewarding moment, when news of the Obion, TN fire crew watching a resident's house burn to the ground because he didn't pay a $75 fee triggered an epiphany for Alan. He now realizes that America's biggest problem is that the majority of Americans are hate-mongering assholes, not that are simply just "stupid." Firemen know how to put out fires. They didn't put this guy's fire out because the are hate-mongering pricks. They were punishing the ill-fated home owner because he didn't pay his fee rather than put the fire out and deal with the issue (if at all) afterward. A clear example of how America's raging hate has blinded it to being able to put first things first. Put it on the guy's tab for Christ's sake. There were pets in there. These devil worshipers should convicted for animal cruelty and certainly never be entrusted with putting out fires again. This is the firefighter version of American health care, where just sitting there and watching people not get the help they need in the name of money is apparently the measure of success. In coming weeks I look forward to Alan affirming his breakthrough. As much as he pays attention to what is going on, it won't be hard for him to do that. Let's give my MOpod colleague a round of applause.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Modus Operandi Podcast episode 35
episode 35 10/8/2010
Show notes and links:
Coal ash spill.
Pakistan. [not "kinder" pass, Khyber Pass]
Le Show (Harry Shearer)
Military and oil.
"Membrane Dynamic" (I was close - AM)
Your house burned while the fire department watched? HATE HATE HATE HATE
read the comments and tell me we're not a nation of hateful mother fuckers.
Internet doomed.
Dark fiber.
Greater Tuna
Waterboarding is torture.
Alan On The Spot last week:
Kentucky v Ole Miss: 16-45 35-42
Murray v Reidland: 21-27 49-7
CCHS v whoever: Lakers win by less than three points. 31-25 Lakers
Arizona Cardinals v San Diego: lose by less than 7 10-41
Will UK students be camped out for UK tickets: yes yes
Saints v Panthers: win win
Commonwealth Games.
Fed may ask any question of applicants for employment, perhaps.
Show notes and links:
Coal ash spill.
Pakistan. [not "kinder" pass, Khyber Pass]
Le Show (Harry Shearer)
Military and oil.
"Membrane Dynamic" (I was close - AM)
Your house burned while the fire department watched? HATE HATE HATE HATE
read the comments and tell me we're not a nation of hateful mother fuckers.
Internet doomed.
Dark fiber.
Greater Tuna
Waterboarding is torture.
Alan On The Spot last week:
Kentucky v Ole Miss: 16-45 35-42
Murray v Reidland: 21-27 49-7
CCHS v whoever: Lakers win by less than three points. 31-25 Lakers
Arizona Cardinals v San Diego: lose by less than 7 10-41
Will UK students be camped out for UK tickets: yes yes
Saints v Panthers: win win
Commonwealth Games.
Fed may ask any question of applicants for employment, perhaps.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
Glenn Beck, the Ogre-fuck that Keeps on Fucking
[This is one of those posts that I keep starting, erasing, and re-writing (like the post about the Republican mayor and fire chief allowing a man's home to burn to the ground) because it's mostly cursing and little sense. Hopefully I've overcome that. - AM]
Glenn Beck is dangerous. He is inciting violence and hatred. How close to coming right out and telling people to kill other people do you have to get to be guilty of incitement in this country? Apparently there is no "close." You can't suggest that someone is guilty and should be executed and be guilty of a crime, you have to actually tell someone directly to kill that person. Glenn Beck has encouraged the assassination of our President* (though he will deny it), he has encouraged the bombing of abortion clinics (again he'll deny it), and he's encouraged attacks on institutions he thinks help poor people like ACORN or the Tides Foundation. Now in each of these cases he (and his associates) did not actually say "assasinate the President," "bomb abortion clinics," "shoot Dr. Tiller," "film nonsense at Acorn clinics and then edit to appear incriminating," or "attack the Tides Foundation with multiple firearms" but his rhetoric implies, without a doubt, that these are things that should be done. He even encourages his listeners to listen to what he is saying "between the sentences." But since he doesn't explicitly say these things he cannot be tried for the crime of causing them to happen.
Beck's rhetoric inspired the real life shoot-out on I-580 in San Francisco between Byron Williams and the police. Williams is an ex-felon that heard what Beck was telling him "between the sentences." From the SFGate story:
*Blowing his dog whistle as hard as he can Beck has insinuated the "Left" will assassinate Obama [1, 2, 3] (read: if you kill him we'll blame the hippies) and recently he's decided that he and his Tea Party followers are on Obama's list of people to assassinate [1, 2, 3](read: protect me from the evil Kenyan!).
And just in case you still have doubts about Glenn Beck, there's this.
Glenn Beck is dangerous. He is inciting violence and hatred. How close to coming right out and telling people to kill other people do you have to get to be guilty of incitement in this country? Apparently there is no "close." You can't suggest that someone is guilty and should be executed and be guilty of a crime, you have to actually tell someone directly to kill that person. Glenn Beck has encouraged the assassination of our President* (though he will deny it), he has encouraged the bombing of abortion clinics (again he'll deny it), and he's encouraged attacks on institutions he thinks help poor people like ACORN or the Tides Foundation. Now in each of these cases he (and his associates) did not actually say "assasinate the President," "bomb abortion clinics," "shoot Dr. Tiller," "film nonsense at Acorn clinics and then edit to appear incriminating," or "attack the Tides Foundation with multiple firearms" but his rhetoric implies, without a doubt, that these are things that should be done. He even encourages his listeners to listen to what he is saying "between the sentences." But since he doesn't explicitly say these things he cannot be tried for the crime of causing them to happen.
Beck's rhetoric inspired the real life shoot-out on I-580 in San Francisco between Byron Williams and the police. Williams is an ex-felon that heard what Beck was telling him "between the sentences." From the SFGate story:
"He hasn't been able to get a job because he's an ex-felon and nobody will hire him," [Williams's mother Janice Williams] said.
She said her son, who had been a carpenter and a cabinetmaker before his imprisonment, was angry about his unemployment and about "what's happening to our country."In two separate jailhouse interviews Williams states that Glenn Beck told him what was "really" going on. The "news" he was watching was the hate mongering Glenn Beck and the Fox News family of hate mongers. But there is no legal way in this country to inform Mr. Beck that his rhetoric is inspiring violence and that if it happens again he will go to prison for incitement. Apparently we have no recourse against this horrible, horrible man for his crimes against humanity and our country. But smoke a joint in public and go to prison. Yep, that's American justice for you.
Williams watched the news on television and was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items," his mother said. [emphasis added - ED]
*Blowing his dog whistle as hard as he can Beck has insinuated the "Left" will assassinate Obama [1, 2, 3] (read: if you kill him we'll blame the hippies) and recently he's decided that he and his Tea Party followers are on Obama's list of people to assassinate [1, 2, 3](read: protect me from the evil Kenyan!).
And just in case you still have doubts about Glenn Beck, there's this.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Nazi Teabagger Alert
Thursday, October 7, 2010
A Mess of October Ogre-oids To Upset Your Stomach
Ogre-fuck Number 1:
The perfect hypothetical example of why libertarianism is a giant vat of stupid has always been the fire department. You would think we would've learned back in the 19th century that private fire companies that only served paying customers was a bad idea, but apparently one asshole Republican mayor in Obion County Tennessee decided it was a good idea. One man who didn't pay the $75 fee for fire coverage watched his home burn to the ground as the fire department put out the fire in his neighbor's field. Both the fire chief and the mayor should be taken out and hung from the nearest tree until they are dead. Anyone that would watch their neighbor's home burn to the ground is a worthless son of a bitch and society would be better off without them.
Ogre-fuck Number 2:
Containment pond ruptures in Hungary.
Ogre-oids:
-[Jim] DeMint [R-SC] said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn't be in the classroom.
-News Corp. gives $1 million to the Chamber of Commerce (basically a GOP entity).
-Northern Hemisphere winter 2010 2nd hottest in 130 years, summer 4th hottest in 131 years. Yes, Virginia, the earth is getting warmer.
The perfect hypothetical example of why libertarianism is a giant vat of stupid has always been the fire department. You would think we would've learned back in the 19th century that private fire companies that only served paying customers was a bad idea, but apparently one asshole Republican mayor in Obion County Tennessee decided it was a good idea. One man who didn't pay the $75 fee for fire coverage watched his home burn to the ground as the fire department put out the fire in his neighbor's field. Both the fire chief and the mayor should be taken out and hung from the nearest tree until they are dead. Anyone that would watch their neighbor's home burn to the ground is a worthless son of a bitch and society would be better off without them.
Ogre-fuck Number 2:
Containment pond ruptures in Hungary.
Ogre-oids:
-[Jim] DeMint [R-SC] said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn't be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who's sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn't be in the classroom.
-News Corp. gives $1 million to the Chamber of Commerce (basically a GOP entity).
Fox is having it both ways right now as a news organization and political campaign. With $2 million direct from their corporate treasury invested in the defeat of Democratic candidates, it is an insult to actual journalists that the network is treated as anything other than a research, fundraising, and communications arm of the Republican Party. They don't belong in the front row of the White House briefing room, they belong at RNC headquarters. -Media Matters VP Ari Rabin-Havt
-Northern Hemisphere winter 2010 2nd hottest in 130 years, summer 4th hottest in 131 years. Yes, Virginia, the earth is getting warmer.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Modus Operandi Podcast episode 34
Links for episode 34:
Mutilated bodies again.
Fisher Price has massive recall for reasons including potential genital bleeding.
War an abstraction for most.
Austin "Jack" DeCoster: The Salmonella King.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Postcards From the Pledge | ||||
| ||||
Attacks increase in "Green Zone."
Alan on the Spot last week:
Kentucky at Florida: 44-13 48-14
Alabama at Arkansas: 17-16 24-20
Murray High v Trigg Co.: 36-9 29-3
Calloway Co. High School v whoever: The pain continues. CCHS lost
Saints win lost
This week:
Kentucky v Ole Miss: 16-45
Murray v Reidland: 21-27
Calloway Co High School v whoever: Lakers win by less than three points.
Arizona Cardinals v whoever: lose by less than 7
Will UK students be camped out for UK tickets: yes
Saints: win
Saturday, October 2, 2010
NPR Begins the Slide to Irrelevance
I hate marketing people. They have convinced themselves that what they're doing is A) important and B) helps while in fact they are engaging in make believe and draining money and resources from every entity that employs them. Why the fuck do State Universities have marketing departments? Because their leaders went to business school and in business school they are taught marketing is important. Marketing is bad. Anyway, I've written a letter about a recent marketing study that is bound to destroy NPR if taken seriously (which it will be).
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Friday, September 24, 2010
Modus Operandi Podcast episode 33
Links for episode 33:
Louisville is the country's hottest city this summer.
Nutcracker/hooch.
Witchcraft & the GOP base.
Is your worst fear horny gay turkeys who can put their foot behind their head while defending our nation?
The FBI is spying on evil doers like this.
UK Football and Moonraker are related.
Alan makes predictions about games he knows nothing about.Shop cats:
Kentucky at Florida: 44-13
Alabama at Arkansas: 17-16
Murray High v Trigg Co.: 36-9
Calloway Co. High School v whoever: The pain continues.
"Part of the charm of the podcast is that we're absolutely confused and unprofessional. It's what makes for a truly great podcast."
Dave says during the "Von Goodness Report" that he would vacuum his apartment when he got home which leads to this week's unanswered question: Did Dave vacuum his apartment?
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Ogre-fuck: Virginia Executes Retarded Woman
Virginia joins the depths of hell usually occupied by the state of Texas today as it murders Teresa Lewis. The civilized world takes a dim view on executions of any kind, but especially the execution of the mentally retarded or disturbed. The EU even chimed in:
Nutritionism Comes to Louisville
Bloggers note: I submitted the following opinion to the Louisville Courier-Journal in response to the Louisville Health Department's $500,000 plan to require local restaurants to list the calories in their menu items. And guess what? They've blown me off.
The Louisville Health Department's plan to get local restaurants to list the number of calories contained in menu items is another example of nutritionism, a fake science that has dominated Americans' perspectives on food and eating for over a quarter century. As author Michael Pollan--who will be visting Louisville in October--demonstrates in his 2008 book In Defense of Food, the consequence of nutritionism has been to make Americans less healthy and more ignorant about food than they ever were.
Nutritionism is not a science but an ideology (Pollan, p. 28)--a pervasive but unexamined set of assumptions--that posits the best way to eat is not to focus on food itself but on the nutrients in the food. This unfortunate perspective oversimplifies the complexity of the food we eat, its dynamic interaction with the land and soil, and the political and cultural factors that influence people's health and happiness. The gist is that a "nutrient-by-nutrient" approach to food ignores everything about how people live beyond a dumbed-down breakdown of the nutrients in their food. In other words, nutritionism does not take the old saying "You are what you eat" with a grain of salt, as it were (because, of course, salt is bad for you!). While this saying may be helpful to six year olds who don't understand why they shouldn't eat ice cream all day long, it does not qualify as sound scientific thinking adults ought to understand and appreciate.
Which is a big part of my objection to the Health Department's initiative: putting the calories of food selections on menus is a way of treating adults like children. How clueless and helpless does the Health Department think its tax paying public is? Do I need to be held by the hand every waking second and told what I should and shouldn't eat or drink by complete strangers with whom I have absolutely no social relationship? How soon before government bureaucrats sit down next to me and cut my food up in "safe," chewable bites?
What is so pathetic about nutritionism and the recent proposal to list the calories on menu items is that no one has stopped to ask themselves why adults would need such information in the first place. If people don't know anything about the food they are eating, what, may I ask, do they know about? What are they learning--if anything--at the universities that raise tuition every year while their basketball teams play in multi-million dollar areans named after fast food industries? As much as I like Pollan's book, I wonder how dysfunctional society has to become for people to need someone to write a book reminding them of what food is and how they ought to eat it.
The Health Department's proposal perpetuates the unexamined assumptions behind nutritionism--the idea that blind trust in the food industry and a nutrient-by-nutrient focused approach to food will solve all our problems. But as Pollan's book--and the numerous journal articles he cites (pp. 206-214)--demonstrates, nutritionism not only fails to make people healthier, it does the opposite. Never before in our nation's history have obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates been higher in our population, and today these health problems affect children as well as adults. Nutritionism's mantra ought to be "Eat right, get fatter" (p. 50), the title of one of the sections from Pollan's book.
Here is a local case in point. About two years ago, the C-J ran an article about a 24 year old who died of heart disease because the doctors who identified his symptoms ruled out that they were attributable to heart disease. Why? Because not long ago it was unheard of that someone in their mid-twenties would get heart disease, a health problem associated with people in middle and late adulthood. Here is where nutritionism goes wrong: by ignorning the complexity of human existence, it ignores the way people live, insisting that only lack of nutrients and excess of calories they consume offer explanations for their health problems. In the case of this young man, the fact he got no exercise, sat around and played video games, and passively gobbled up fast food and snacks all day rather than actively participating in the preparation of the food he ate and sharing it with family and friends during something known as a meal were his undoing. The point is that during the nutritionism era a 24 year old died of a health problem that in previous generations only occured in older people. How does that demonstrate an improved understanding of food and health? It doesn't. As his mother explained, "His age killed him," a sad reference to the fact that even medical experts would never have thought someone just ought of college could be suffering from heart disease. Welcome to "The Age of Nutritionism" (p. 17).
Here's another local example. Recently the C-J published an article on pedestrian deaths here in Louisville. Now, why are people risking their lives just because they cross a street or ride a bicycle? Because Louisville's infrastructure is designed for automotive traffic, and it will never be altered for a light-rail public transit system that would eliminate overdependence on the automobile and make walking and bicycling safe and enjoyable. So a city where it is either dangerous or miserable to get around by any means besides driving is a place where it is difficult to get regular, daily exercise, which, obviously affects people's health, regardless of how much time they spend at stoplights calculating how many more calories they are allowed to consume for the day by their local government.
Not that most people in Louisville care. Besides being a car culture forever stalled in the 1970s, there is a local aversion to exercise here that is not just unhealthy but cryptic and primitive. Just this week, for example, the C-J reported that the Southern Baptist Seminary has condemned yoga since it is rooted in Eastern mysticism and goes against Christianity. Yoga is unquestionably both a good form of exercise as well as a meditative means to emotional and mental health. The calm and peace it brings practitioners runs contrary to the frenetic, rampaging violence that feeds the consumerism that leads to big profits for the food industry and the mindlessness that keeps people listening to religious authorities who condemn exercise and introspection. Sorry to tell you, but praying to Jesus will not lower obesity rates, diabetes, or heart disease, but participating in activities like yoga, bicycling, and walking will.
All of these political and cultural factors remain unaccounted for in nutritionism's paradigm. If the package is green and the words "nutrients," "vitamins," and "low-fat" appear on it, then the public will no more question the credibility of the corporation selling the food product than big oil will encourage the public to get around by bike or Christian demagogues will encourage their followers to learn about Buddhism. That nutritionism does not account for these political and cultural factors gives away that it is a fake science. An honest, scientific analysis of the mounting health problems that have developed during the "Age of Nutritionism" would have long ago exiled it to the Ideological Dinosaur Museum where it would have taken its rightful place on the shelf next to witch hunts, sorcery, and human sacrifice (which our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could qualify as, but that's a different blog). Nutritionism is an ideology motivated by profit, not a science motivated by knowledge.
But the worst thing about nutritionism isn't its fraudulent nature or the fact it makes people less healthy in the name of promoting healthy eating. The worst thing about nutritionism is that it takes the pleasure out of eating and erases food culture. Humans learn about food--how to grow it, prepare it, and eat it--through family and community. As Kentucky writer Wendell Berry puts it, "Eating is an agricultural act." Government and fake science cannot replace cultural knowledge that has been shared among generations for centuries. The idea that it can is at once absurd and sinister.
I am not a farmer. But I know people who do farm, and I make an active effort to spend time on farms and learn what I can about food and the land from which it comes. One weekend I helped a friend out on his farm move piles of wood, clumsily side-stepping nails sticking out of the boards. Recently I met a farmer in the mountains of western North Carolina, and I've made plans to return there in the fall where I will for the first time milk a cow. Then I will sample some raw milk--in blatant defiance of nutritionist dogma. By nightfall, I will sit down at a table with other like-minded folks, and share a meal consisting of fresh, local food made by the people I'm eating with and harvested from the land that has brought us and this food together. I will enjoy learning how to milk a cow, the unpleasant odors of the barn, the food I will eat and company I will share it with. I will not ask anyone to provide me with a list of calories or nutrients in the food I'm eating.
Which brings me to my last point. At the end of another stressful American day, the last thing I want to do when I go to a pub or diner is to have yet one more thing to think about and worry over. I do not go out to eat to make more analytical decisions. I want to enjoy my food; I don't want to worry about it. How much anxiety and guilt must I endure before I can let down my guard and just enjoy living in my human body? How utterly void of pleasure and self-confidence does my existence have to be? But if the Health Department and its ideologues have their way, the people of Louisville will get another serving of fake science and false hope: another version of the American fantasy world where obese fourth-graders will simply disappear thanks to the availability of more "expert" information, and the willingness of the gullible public to let the authorities live their lives and place their orders for them. Bon Appetite!
Dr. David W. Overbey is an Assistant Professor of English at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Ky. He has focused on Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food and Omnivore's Dilemma in his courses for the last four years.
The Louisville Health Department's plan to get local restaurants to list the number of calories contained in menu items is another example of nutritionism, a fake science that has dominated Americans' perspectives on food and eating for over a quarter century. As author Michael Pollan--who will be visting Louisville in October--demonstrates in his 2008 book In Defense of Food, the consequence of nutritionism has been to make Americans less healthy and more ignorant about food than they ever were.
Nutritionism is not a science but an ideology (Pollan, p. 28)--a pervasive but unexamined set of assumptions--that posits the best way to eat is not to focus on food itself but on the nutrients in the food. This unfortunate perspective oversimplifies the complexity of the food we eat, its dynamic interaction with the land and soil, and the political and cultural factors that influence people's health and happiness. The gist is that a "nutrient-by-nutrient" approach to food ignores everything about how people live beyond a dumbed-down breakdown of the nutrients in their food. In other words, nutritionism does not take the old saying "You are what you eat" with a grain of salt, as it were (because, of course, salt is bad for you!). While this saying may be helpful to six year olds who don't understand why they shouldn't eat ice cream all day long, it does not qualify as sound scientific thinking adults ought to understand and appreciate.
Which is a big part of my objection to the Health Department's initiative: putting the calories of food selections on menus is a way of treating adults like children. How clueless and helpless does the Health Department think its tax paying public is? Do I need to be held by the hand every waking second and told what I should and shouldn't eat or drink by complete strangers with whom I have absolutely no social relationship? How soon before government bureaucrats sit down next to me and cut my food up in "safe," chewable bites?
What is so pathetic about nutritionism and the recent proposal to list the calories on menu items is that no one has stopped to ask themselves why adults would need such information in the first place. If people don't know anything about the food they are eating, what, may I ask, do they know about? What are they learning--if anything--at the universities that raise tuition every year while their basketball teams play in multi-million dollar areans named after fast food industries? As much as I like Pollan's book, I wonder how dysfunctional society has to become for people to need someone to write a book reminding them of what food is and how they ought to eat it.
The Health Department's proposal perpetuates the unexamined assumptions behind nutritionism--the idea that blind trust in the food industry and a nutrient-by-nutrient focused approach to food will solve all our problems. But as Pollan's book--and the numerous journal articles he cites (pp. 206-214)--demonstrates, nutritionism not only fails to make people healthier, it does the opposite. Never before in our nation's history have obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates been higher in our population, and today these health problems affect children as well as adults. Nutritionism's mantra ought to be "Eat right, get fatter" (p. 50), the title of one of the sections from Pollan's book.
Here is a local case in point. About two years ago, the C-J ran an article about a 24 year old who died of heart disease because the doctors who identified his symptoms ruled out that they were attributable to heart disease. Why? Because not long ago it was unheard of that someone in their mid-twenties would get heart disease, a health problem associated with people in middle and late adulthood. Here is where nutritionism goes wrong: by ignorning the complexity of human existence, it ignores the way people live, insisting that only lack of nutrients and excess of calories they consume offer explanations for their health problems. In the case of this young man, the fact he got no exercise, sat around and played video games, and passively gobbled up fast food and snacks all day rather than actively participating in the preparation of the food he ate and sharing it with family and friends during something known as a meal were his undoing. The point is that during the nutritionism era a 24 year old died of a health problem that in previous generations only occured in older people. How does that demonstrate an improved understanding of food and health? It doesn't. As his mother explained, "His age killed him," a sad reference to the fact that even medical experts would never have thought someone just ought of college could be suffering from heart disease. Welcome to "The Age of Nutritionism" (p. 17).
Here's another local example. Recently the C-J published an article on pedestrian deaths here in Louisville. Now, why are people risking their lives just because they cross a street or ride a bicycle? Because Louisville's infrastructure is designed for automotive traffic, and it will never be altered for a light-rail public transit system that would eliminate overdependence on the automobile and make walking and bicycling safe and enjoyable. So a city where it is either dangerous or miserable to get around by any means besides driving is a place where it is difficult to get regular, daily exercise, which, obviously affects people's health, regardless of how much time they spend at stoplights calculating how many more calories they are allowed to consume for the day by their local government.
Not that most people in Louisville care. Besides being a car culture forever stalled in the 1970s, there is a local aversion to exercise here that is not just unhealthy but cryptic and primitive. Just this week, for example, the C-J reported that the Southern Baptist Seminary has condemned yoga since it is rooted in Eastern mysticism and goes against Christianity. Yoga is unquestionably both a good form of exercise as well as a meditative means to emotional and mental health. The calm and peace it brings practitioners runs contrary to the frenetic, rampaging violence that feeds the consumerism that leads to big profits for the food industry and the mindlessness that keeps people listening to religious authorities who condemn exercise and introspection. Sorry to tell you, but praying to Jesus will not lower obesity rates, diabetes, or heart disease, but participating in activities like yoga, bicycling, and walking will.
All of these political and cultural factors remain unaccounted for in nutritionism's paradigm. If the package is green and the words "nutrients," "vitamins," and "low-fat" appear on it, then the public will no more question the credibility of the corporation selling the food product than big oil will encourage the public to get around by bike or Christian demagogues will encourage their followers to learn about Buddhism. That nutritionism does not account for these political and cultural factors gives away that it is a fake science. An honest, scientific analysis of the mounting health problems that have developed during the "Age of Nutritionism" would have long ago exiled it to the Ideological Dinosaur Museum where it would have taken its rightful place on the shelf next to witch hunts, sorcery, and human sacrifice (which our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could qualify as, but that's a different blog). Nutritionism is an ideology motivated by profit, not a science motivated by knowledge.
But the worst thing about nutritionism isn't its fraudulent nature or the fact it makes people less healthy in the name of promoting healthy eating. The worst thing about nutritionism is that it takes the pleasure out of eating and erases food culture. Humans learn about food--how to grow it, prepare it, and eat it--through family and community. As Kentucky writer Wendell Berry puts it, "Eating is an agricultural act." Government and fake science cannot replace cultural knowledge that has been shared among generations for centuries. The idea that it can is at once absurd and sinister.
I am not a farmer. But I know people who do farm, and I make an active effort to spend time on farms and learn what I can about food and the land from which it comes. One weekend I helped a friend out on his farm move piles of wood, clumsily side-stepping nails sticking out of the boards. Recently I met a farmer in the mountains of western North Carolina, and I've made plans to return there in the fall where I will for the first time milk a cow. Then I will sample some raw milk--in blatant defiance of nutritionist dogma. By nightfall, I will sit down at a table with other like-minded folks, and share a meal consisting of fresh, local food made by the people I'm eating with and harvested from the land that has brought us and this food together. I will enjoy learning how to milk a cow, the unpleasant odors of the barn, the food I will eat and company I will share it with. I will not ask anyone to provide me with a list of calories or nutrients in the food I'm eating.
Which brings me to my last point. At the end of another stressful American day, the last thing I want to do when I go to a pub or diner is to have yet one more thing to think about and worry over. I do not go out to eat to make more analytical decisions. I want to enjoy my food; I don't want to worry about it. How much anxiety and guilt must I endure before I can let down my guard and just enjoy living in my human body? How utterly void of pleasure and self-confidence does my existence have to be? But if the Health Department and its ideologues have their way, the people of Louisville will get another serving of fake science and false hope: another version of the American fantasy world where obese fourth-graders will simply disappear thanks to the availability of more "expert" information, and the willingness of the gullible public to let the authorities live their lives and place their orders for them. Bon Appetite!
Dr. David W. Overbey is an Assistant Professor of English at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Ky. He has focused on Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food and Omnivore's Dilemma in his courses for the last four years.
Someone in Senator Chambliss's Office Hates Fags
Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) has admitted that someone in his office posted "All Faggots Must Die" on a gay blog but says he doesn't know who posted it. The hacker community immediately tracked the I.P. address to Chambliss's office in Atlanta. It is only a matter of time until the exact machine from which this hate speech was sent will be found out and, hopefully, the homophobic bully that posted it. A bill repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell" was being debated on the Senate floor at the time of the posting. The bill failed.
Ogre-oid Outbreak!!!
The CDC has just issued an official alert: antibiotic-resistant Ogre-oids are spreading faster than bedbugs . . .
Poverty is at its highest level since the early 1960s, unemployment remains at 10%, the debt remains in the trillions, the Afghan war recklessly charges onward like a crashing NATO helicopter . . . it can only mean one thing: the recession is over! Yes, the lastest example of America's cryptic institutional schizophrenia should be a relief to the millions of Americans who have been out of work for over a year. Nothing like access to information, is there? Economists have said repeatedly that this recession is worse than others in recent decades because of how bad it has been and how slow the "recovery" out of it remains, yet somehow the endless American fountain of good news and progress keeps on a-flowin'. I guess if you have the kind of bullshit job that the people who are paid to tell the rest of us the recession is over have, it may as well have never happened in the first place. What I want to know is, now that the recession is over, how soon before I get reimbured the $2,600 plus interest bailout money I loaned the government to plug Goldman Sach's asshole (yeah, Lloyd Blankfein, I'm referring to you!). With the interest added in, that'll be much-needed money Americans can skirt by on while they continue to look for a dead-end, degrading shitjob. And what do you know, this announcement comes just five weeks before mid-term elections! The vicious sprials continue to suck the life and reason out of us. Truth is "the recession is over" is Obama's version of "Mission accomplished." Give me a fucking break.
Looks like the Catholic church has another past time besides ass-raping choir boys: money laundering! Hey, if you've got to get those cum-stained tighty whiteys and priest robes in the washer, may as well throw in a few thousand euros and Swiss franks along with the bleach. The NY Times (2010, September 22) reports that the Vatican is under investigation even after hiring a once well-respected banker to make its dealings more transparent. Lest you worry that money-laundering has diverted the church's energies from lubeing up children, Baptist megachurch minsiter Eddie Long allegedly has been taking up the pedophiliac slack, as he has been accused of coercing young men into sex. Just goes to show that even though the Vatican has sovereign state status, it doesn't have a monopoly on pedophilia.
But don't think the Christian church is all bad. This week the G.O.P.--the Christian appendage of American government--successfully blocked repeal of the unconstitutional "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gay servicemen. While this discrimination may be a blessing in disguise saving gays from pointless death in the forlorn Afghan war, it reinforces the reality that America, now in the second decade of the 21st century, remains a backward nation dominated politically by primitive Christian dogma, as clearly exemplified by the ascent of . . .
. . . Delware senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell, who recently praised turkeys who are no longer able to have sex because bio-technologists have been breading them for big chests. Since the turkeys have been neither baptized nor wed, O'Donnell regards them as models of abstinence for all Americans . . . even those who don't have big tits.
In addition to saving us from gay soldiers and lustful turkeys, the Christian church has also denounced yoga, saying that its roots in Eastern mysticism run against Christian doctrine, where one is only supposed to mediate on the word of God, e.g. more cryptic institutional schizophrenia. In case your worst nightmare is a horny gay turkey who can put its leg behind its head, these are great times to be an American, whether you're employed or not.
With such holy viligence in our presence, clearly there is no need to worry about the 69% increase in coalition deaths in Afghanistan in the three-month period ending September 14 from the same three-month period in 2009. Five of the nine soldiers killed in this week's helicopter crash are from nearby Fort Campbell--that's right, the same Fort Campbell that was the focus of an in-depth C-J report just weeks ago about the toll that the loss of life there is taking on the community. Nothing like the power of knowledge and information in a democracy to uphold the well-being of the people in the face of government ctyranny. Please explain: If Team Obama can declare the recession is over, why not declare "mission accomplished" in Afghanistan and get the fuck out of there?
Then there could be more "Welcome Home Hero" parties to celebrate the beginning of fall, where in Kentucky it's 98 degrees with a heat advisory. Gee, these temperatures couldn't have anything to do with the bleached coral reefs in the ocean which are suffocating in record heat? Perhaps these coral reefs are making a fashion statement, or maybe they've called off their symbiotic relationship with the algae that provided the microbos in them with nutrients and oxygen in honor of Christine O'Donell, but I'm guessing that marinebiologists are probably concerned when once colorful and vibrant coral reefs start to look like Andy Warhol.
Finally, no Ogre-oid Outbreak Update could be complete without mention of Austin "Salmonella" DeCoster, the egglord responsible for the spread of salmonella-tainted eggs across the country since 1987. But American government has done nothing over the past two decades to stop or punish DeCoster since salmonella-tainted eggs have nothing to do with putting people into privatized prisons over drugs. Tell me: when was the last time you read about a strain of cannabis that killed dozens of people and led to emergency rooms being flooded with people vomiting and shitting themselves? So why are millions of Americans in jail because of cannabis prohibition while DeCoster has raked in millions selling his while oval vermin? Because DeCoster is big-money-make-money, which means mainstream America wants to swallow his cum (which reportedly does not contain salmonella).
Poverty is at its highest level since the early 1960s, unemployment remains at 10%, the debt remains in the trillions, the Afghan war recklessly charges onward like a crashing NATO helicopter . . . it can only mean one thing: the recession is over! Yes, the lastest example of America's cryptic institutional schizophrenia should be a relief to the millions of Americans who have been out of work for over a year. Nothing like access to information, is there? Economists have said repeatedly that this recession is worse than others in recent decades because of how bad it has been and how slow the "recovery" out of it remains, yet somehow the endless American fountain of good news and progress keeps on a-flowin'. I guess if you have the kind of bullshit job that the people who are paid to tell the rest of us the recession is over have, it may as well have never happened in the first place. What I want to know is, now that the recession is over, how soon before I get reimbured the $2,600 plus interest bailout money I loaned the government to plug Goldman Sach's asshole (yeah, Lloyd Blankfein, I'm referring to you!). With the interest added in, that'll be much-needed money Americans can skirt by on while they continue to look for a dead-end, degrading shitjob. And what do you know, this announcement comes just five weeks before mid-term elections! The vicious sprials continue to suck the life and reason out of us. Truth is "the recession is over" is Obama's version of "Mission accomplished." Give me a fucking break.
Looks like the Catholic church has another past time besides ass-raping choir boys: money laundering! Hey, if you've got to get those cum-stained tighty whiteys and priest robes in the washer, may as well throw in a few thousand euros and Swiss franks along with the bleach. The NY Times (2010, September 22) reports that the Vatican is under investigation even after hiring a once well-respected banker to make its dealings more transparent. Lest you worry that money-laundering has diverted the church's energies from lubeing up children, Baptist megachurch minsiter Eddie Long allegedly has been taking up the pedophiliac slack, as he has been accused of coercing young men into sex. Just goes to show that even though the Vatican has sovereign state status, it doesn't have a monopoly on pedophilia.
But don't think the Christian church is all bad. This week the G.O.P.--the Christian appendage of American government--successfully blocked repeal of the unconstitutional "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gay servicemen. While this discrimination may be a blessing in disguise saving gays from pointless death in the forlorn Afghan war, it reinforces the reality that America, now in the second decade of the 21st century, remains a backward nation dominated politically by primitive Christian dogma, as clearly exemplified by the ascent of . . .
. . . Delware senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell, who recently praised turkeys who are no longer able to have sex because bio-technologists have been breading them for big chests. Since the turkeys have been neither baptized nor wed, O'Donnell regards them as models of abstinence for all Americans . . . even those who don't have big tits.
In addition to saving us from gay soldiers and lustful turkeys, the Christian church has also denounced yoga, saying that its roots in Eastern mysticism run against Christian doctrine, where one is only supposed to mediate on the word of God, e.g. more cryptic institutional schizophrenia. In case your worst nightmare is a horny gay turkey who can put its leg behind its head, these are great times to be an American, whether you're employed or not.
With such holy viligence in our presence, clearly there is no need to worry about the 69% increase in coalition deaths in Afghanistan in the three-month period ending September 14 from the same three-month period in 2009. Five of the nine soldiers killed in this week's helicopter crash are from nearby Fort Campbell--that's right, the same Fort Campbell that was the focus of an in-depth C-J report just weeks ago about the toll that the loss of life there is taking on the community. Nothing like the power of knowledge and information in a democracy to uphold the well-being of the people in the face of government ctyranny. Please explain: If Team Obama can declare the recession is over, why not declare "mission accomplished" in Afghanistan and get the fuck out of there?
Then there could be more "Welcome Home Hero" parties to celebrate the beginning of fall, where in Kentucky it's 98 degrees with a heat advisory. Gee, these temperatures couldn't have anything to do with the bleached coral reefs in the ocean which are suffocating in record heat? Perhaps these coral reefs are making a fashion statement, or maybe they've called off their symbiotic relationship with the algae that provided the microbos in them with nutrients and oxygen in honor of Christine O'Donell, but I'm guessing that marinebiologists are probably concerned when once colorful and vibrant coral reefs start to look like Andy Warhol.
Finally, no Ogre-oid Outbreak Update could be complete without mention of Austin "Salmonella" DeCoster, the egglord responsible for the spread of salmonella-tainted eggs across the country since 1987. But American government has done nothing over the past two decades to stop or punish DeCoster since salmonella-tainted eggs have nothing to do with putting people into privatized prisons over drugs. Tell me: when was the last time you read about a strain of cannabis that killed dozens of people and led to emergency rooms being flooded with people vomiting and shitting themselves? So why are millions of Americans in jail because of cannabis prohibition while DeCoster has raked in millions selling his while oval vermin? Because DeCoster is big-money-make-money, which means mainstream America wants to swallow his cum (which reportedly does not contain salmonella).
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Surprise! FBI Investigated Peace and Environmental Groups Under Bush
The Justice Department has reviewed the FBI's investigations of anti-war and environmental activist organizations and, according to Inspector General Glenn A. Fine the investigations were "improper" and the records are still around. This is not news to me as it was confirmed years ago that the FBI had actually spied on scary terrorist organizations like the Quakers.
From the LA Times:
FBI agents improperly opened investigations into Greenpeace and several other domestic advocacy groups after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and put the names of some of their members on terrorist watch lists based on evidence that turned out to be "factually weak," the Justice Department said Monday.
However, the internal review by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine did not conclude that the FBI purposely targeted the groups or their members, as many civil liberties advocates had charged, after antiwar rallies and other protests were held during the administration of President George W. Bush.
But Fine said the FBI tactics appeared "troubling" in singling out some of the domestic groups for investigations that lasted up to five years, and were extended "without adequate basis." He also questioned why the FBI continued to maintain investigative files against the groups.
"In several cases there was little indication of any possible federal crimes," Fine said. "In some cases, the FBI classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its 'acts of terrorism' classification."
In addition to the environmental group Greenpeace, the FBI investigated People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, and the antiwar groups Catholic Worker and Thomas Merton Center. [more...]
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Modus Operandi Podcast episode 32
A lively show covering a lot of ground from current events to crowd psychology theory to sports to hipsters and how they want to be gay lumberjacks and beyond.
Linky Dinks
Karl Rove speaks the truth and is immediately beaten into submission by the rest of the GOP.
America so lame, belief in witchcraft not automatic disqualification for holding public option.
BP finally seals Deep Water Horizon well for good, media barely notices.
The Recession is over... a year ago! Unemployed Americans realize they're just whiners.
America so lame, belief in witchcraft not automatic disqualification for holding public option.
BP finally seals Deep Water Horizon well for good, media barely notices.
The Recession is over... a year ago! Unemployed Americans realize they're just whiners.
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