That is 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get back arguing that vaccines don’t cause autism with Deuce Bigalow, male gigolo.
– California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego), on a recent political kerfuffle (h/t Todd W.)
Food, Freedom, and Why I Stopped Using the Phrase, “Clean Eating”, Jennifer McGrail, The Path Less Taken, February 2, 2015
This is the food philosophy that I want to pass on to my kids:
I want them to see me eat food that nourishes me… in body, mind, and spirit. I want them to see me eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full. I want them to recognize that food is a fuel, yes, but that it’s also fun and interesting and to be enjoyed. I want them to understand that the way an individual eats should be a fluid, changing thing, and that sometimes needs are best met with a yummy salad, and sometimes with a warm and gooey chocolate chip cookie.
I want them to know that the act and art of eating is also highly personal, and not something that should be controlled or micromanaged by another person, even if that person is a well-meaning parent. I watch again and again as parents create food struggles, force their kids to clean their plate, make rules like “no dessert unless they eat x number of bites of broccoli first”, or refuse to buy certain foods because they’re not “healthy” enough. I can’t imagine it’s a super good thing for your relationship with your child, but it’s also a pretty surefire way to guarantee they’ll have an unhealthy relationship with food in the future.
Food isn’t supposed to be a battle! It’s not supposed to be about control, or stress, or pressure, or categorizing things into “good foods” and “bad foods.”
Orthorexia: When healthy eating becomes an obsession, Sarah Elizabeth Richards, CNN, October 12, 2014 Continue reading
Freedom doth not reign supreme in the restrooms of food service establishments all over these great United States, at least according to one Republican senator (h/t Bob):
A freshman GOP senator argued this week that the government should not require food workers to wash their hands after using the toilet, saying “the market will take care of that.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) called routine hygiene rules an example of government overreach at an event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center on Monday.
“I don’t have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy as long as they post a sign that says, ‘We don’t require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom,’ ” Tillis said to audience laughter in a clip captured by C-SPAN.
“That’s probably one where every business that did that would go out of business,” he conceded, “but I think it’s good to illustrate the point, that that’s the kind of mentality we need to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country.”
Three observations about this:
1. He might have just been kidding, in which case my only definitive beef with him is that his sense of humor is terrible.
2. In a truly laissez-faire free market, he’s probably right that the market will take care of businesses with poor sanitation, because no one would want to eat at an establishment whose customers keep getting sick. Please note, however, that this requires people to get sick before market forces kick in, and it assumes that consumers have access to accurate information about restaurant cleanliness. That leads me to my third point. Continue reading
Enough Is Never Enough with Blaming Anti-Vaxxers, Science Babe, January 24, 2015
Let’s get one thing straight; if a blogger with zero medical credentials tries to claim that they have more accurate science than the vast majority of the scientific and medical establishment, they are, on every level, wrong. I promise you, somebody who got their degree at Google University and has a waiver on their website that says “my advice isn’t designed to treat anything” has nothing to lose by giving you terrible advice. A real doctor’s advice doesn’t come with an asterisk. They will give you advice that’s grounded in real science.
Friend in Need: The tragedy of my friend’s life and death is that he lived in a society that left him to deal with it alone, Saul Elbein, Texas Observer, January 21, 2015 Continue reading
I did not understand the Double Down, KFC’s “sandwich” that used friend chicken breasts instead of bread, when the restaurant chain introduced it in 2010. For one thing, unless the chicken is cold, how do you hold the dang thing? And who wants to eat two cold fried chicken breasts at the same time???
Similarly, I do not understand KFC’s new Double Down Dog:
© KFC, via Death and Taxes
KFC is like the Grim Reaper of fast food, here to usher you painlessly and deliciously into an early grave.
Though their newest addition to the Myocardial Infarction menu might have gone a step past guilty pleasure into straight-up disgusting. Above is the Double Down Dog, one of the most egregious food abominations ever visited on mankind: A hot dog wrapped in a bun made out of fried chicken, topped with nacho cheese. No, that’s not mustard you see above.
There is also a Double Down Burger.
My current theory on how all of these came into being is that a marketing algorithm has secretly gained sentience and is slowly wiping out humanity in order to claim the planet for itself.
Vegans, your moment to save humanity may come soon, albeit not in the way you probably expected.
Anyway, at least this stuff is better than the unintentional roughage found in some of KFC’s food. I’ll see you at the apocalypse!
(Inspired by the article “E-Cigarettes Can Churn Out High Levels Of Formaldehyde,” h/t Lynn.)
I’m gonna churn out high levels of whoop-ass if I hear the word “vape” again.
Here’s the thing, though: The most passionate defenders of these things (I hate the term “e-cig” almost as much as I hate the word “vape”), at least in my circles, are the people who were finally able to quit smoking actual cigarettes thanks to these things (I’m just gonna have to suck it up and say “e-cigarettes,” aren’t I?)
I can absolutely respect them for helping smokers to quit, but we’re not talking about Nicorette here. It’s a replacement for smoking that precisely mimics the act of smoking, and it’s introducing a whole new concept of how it’s “cool” to suck on a stick and exhale some sort of mist. Plus, people think it’s okay to do indoors and they have douchey new words for it.
![Wes + Tony [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/)], via AmazingSuperPowers](http://crypticphilosopher.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/2013-11-14-No-Smoking.png "Wes + Tony [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/)], via AmazingSuperPowers")
Via AmazingSuperPowers
As long as I’m being ranty, I support marijuana legalization in part because I never want to hear idiotic slang like “420,” or metaphorical uses of the term “herbal remedies,” ever, ever, ever again.
Image credit: Wes + Tony [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 US], via AmazingSuperPowers.
A friend posted this bit of wisdom to Facebook the other day:
Via Mentors Channel / Facebook
While I like the sentiment, I don’t think it tells the entire story. Anger and sadness are linked, most certainly, but anger is also a byproduct of fear. That’s the sort of anger that is most dangerous. Even Yoda agrees with me. Actually, I probably stole the idea from him.
I thought I’d expound a bit, in the form of a meme and a Big Lebowski reference: Continue reading
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, Mark Manson, markmanson.net, January 8, 2015
Now, while not giving a fuck may seem simple on the surface, it’s a whole new bag of burritos under the hood. I don’t even know what that sentence means, but I don’t give a fuck. A bag of burritos sounds awesome, so let’s just go with it.
The point is, most of us struggle throughout our lives by giving too many fucks in situations where fucks do not deserve to be given. We give a fuck about the rude gas station attendant who gave us too many nickels. We give a fuck when a show we liked was canceled on TV. We give a fuck when our coworkers don’t bother asking us about our awesome weekend. We give a fuck when it’s raining and we were supposed to go jogging in the morning.
Fucks given everywhere. Strewn about like seeds in mother-fucking spring time. And for what purpose? For what reason? Convenience? Easy comforts? A pat on the fucking back maybe?
This is the problem, my friend.
5 reasons “white pride” is always racist, Matthew Rozsa, The Daily Dot, January 9, 2015 Continue reading
Dating advice from Fox News gets even more obnoxious, Amanda Marcotte, Pandagon, January 2, 2015
Fox News continues its march right past being conservative on gender issues and towards being overtly and grotesquely misogynist. As David Edwards at Raw Story reported, the show Fox & Friends did a New Year’s Day bit praising one of those sexist dating guides that promises women they’ll be able to “catch” a man while simultaneously and unintentionally arguing that men are wretched creatures that no woman should ever mess with. (To be clear, I disagree. There are plenty of men who don’t need a woman to debase herself by acting like an unpaid servant in order to “earn” love, but these kinds of dating guides always assume men are such weak monsters that this is the only way to get one to like you.) The book is called Single Man, Married Man and it purports to be a guide to how to mold yourself to be what men really want. And apparently what men really want is a doorma, though one who pretends that waiting on you hand and foot and never standing up for yourself is a form of “strength”.
Can We Please Stop Pretending Republicans Have Ever Had A Health Care Plan? Scott Lemieux, Lawyers, Guns, & Money, January 9, 2015 Continue reading
Hollywood’s Disability ‘Inspiration Porn’ Is Terrible, but Here’s How We Can Fix It, Holly Eagleson, TakePart, November 21, 2014
The general consensus is that American Horror Story: Freak Show is a gift. Sure, the story lines have been teetering on the rails for the last two episodes. But it’s one of a pathetically few places you’ll see a talent like Mat Fraser on television.
Fraser has phocomelia, a congenital disorder that causes malformed appendages. On AHS, he beautifully embodies Paul the Illustrated Seal, a tattooed member of a 1950s freak show under threat of nefarious forces. Unlike so many infantilizing roles for disabled actors, Paul isn’t stripped of his eroticism; he has affairs with two different female characters on the show. Play on, player!
It’s a breakout role for Fraser, a performer who’s well known on the cabaret and burlesque circuits and is also a drummer and playwright. Fraser is fierce by any measure, even more so for his perspective on his new-found fame. In an excellent interview with The Onion’s AV Club, he puts media eager to exploit his story directly in his crosshairs: “I’ve already turned down two offers from really mainstream people, too f—ing mainstream, to do a life-story interview, because I am not interested in ‘inspiration porn.’”
That term may not be familiar, but you know the concept. It’s that soft-focus prime-time sitdown about a “heroic” soldier who lost limbs in battle. The relentless memes of developmentally disabled people as Successories posters. The documentary about a person triumphing over a disfiguring disease to run a marathon and climb a mountain. It’s all to celebrate ability in many its forms, if you’re being generous. In reality, it’s a clarion call to the able-bodied: If these less-thans can do so much with so little, by God, you can do anything! (Cue “reach for the stars” graphic.)
Consent, Emma Holten, Hysteria #5 ‘Nonsense’ Continue reading
