Pre-Cooked Turkeys

Killing Me Softly With His Meal

It was inevitable – now there's an article on MSN, written by the usual food Puritans and scolds, warning us as to how horribly fattening and unhealthy all our favorite Thanksgiving foods are. Folks – it's one frickin' meal out of the whole year! Can't you just chill out for once? Guess not...

The Real Grunts

The latest question in scientific ethics – should we “bring back the Neanderthal” by using recovered DNA? But I've got a better idea. Throw away all those test tubes and gadgetry. Just raid the campus of the nearest large state university and pick a few football jocks out of a fraternity house, and go study them. That's close enough for government work.

For the Birds

Today may be the first day in weeks when the stock market neither “soared” nor “plummeted”. What the heck is it, a bird of prey? (The poor schmucks who invested their retirement money in it might think so.) I think the media need to recalibrate their lexicon in this area. Yeah, the market is volatile, but the way the media describe it, it sounds like a cross between NFL football and a Las Vegas casino. Hmmm... well, maybe that analogy is not so off-base. And what would our media be without eye-popping, vein-bulging "crises" to report every five minutes? I think Thoreau was right when he advised people to ignore the "news".

Tutti Duce

Picture a soccer game between the U.S. and Italy in 20-odd years. Everyone on the U.S. team is named Obama, and everyone on the Italian team is named Benito. At least that's the trend on our side, and if a right-wing political party in Italy has their way, parents will be naming their male children Benito (after Mussolini, for those of you in Rio Linda) in order to collect a reward of nearly $2000. This is in Potenza province in southern Italy. I drove through there once, and the place makes West Virginia look like Beverly Hills. So I imagine quite a few parents will be taking the party up on their offer. But can you imagine German parents being paid to name their kids Adolf? I doubt if it would even be legal. But those wacky Italians... you gotta love 'em.

The Secret Sharers

Let's say you're a medical researcher who has developed a – hopefully – life-saving treatment of some sort. You'd like to try it out on a few patients – the ones who are the most likely to benefit. But you realize that if it works – or even if it doesn't – you're going to catch hell from all the other people who have the same ailment but whom you decided not to treat, for whatever reason. So you administer the treatment to the preferred group but swear them to secrecy, and don't let on to the others that anything special is being done for those few. Ethically, this is a bit on the shady side – but pragmatically it could make a lot of sense. This is why I'm changing my mind somewhat as to the rationale for all the secrecy, i.e. “non-transparency”, surrounding the by-now-innumerable bailouts the government is providing the “private” sector in an attempt to avoid a complete economic collapse. No one knows where the money is going or who's getting it, or what they're supposedly doing with it, and no one knows what, if anything, the government is getting in return for its “investment”. Now, this could well be just a gigantic scam and con game – the biggest in history. That's a possibility. But if it's not – at least not entirely – then it might still make sense to not completely expose the process to everyone on earth, especially to people who might get indignant and go to court to claim their “rights”. In a way this reflects the sea change in people's thinking that started with the New Deal, but has reached new heights during the current crisis. It's not just the government's job to bail out troubled financial entities for the overall good of the economy – it's their job to bail everyone out, on all levels – to make everyone whole, and restore everything they might have lost over the past few weeks, months, or even years. In other words, don't take all the uncertainty out of the system – it's still fun to gamble – just make sure that everyone's losses are covered, in the event they lose. Well, how much do you have to tax winners in order to bail out all the losers? My guess is, about 100%, like in Sweden in the old days. And does this remind anyone of total economic collectivism, but with the elite still getting a bigger share of the pie (or the whole pie, for that matter)? And can we expect Obama & Co. to do anything to back off this position, now that it's been established by the good old pro-capitalist, pro-free enterprise Republicans? Yeah, I know... it's a joke.

Schools for Scandal

A column in yesterday's paper by Cal Thomas bemoans the fact that the “products” of the American educational system continue to underperform on tests of basic facts about America, and he adds: "Ignorance of America's history and heritage is a setup for politicians and others who want to manipulate us into a way of thinking that allows them to make decisions that are unconstitutional and unwise.” What he doesn't do – 'cause that's my job – is to propose that this is precisely the reason general ignorance is not only tolerated, but aided and abetted, by our public schools. I mean, if ignorance feeds into the agenda of politicians, demagogues, and “agents of change”, and if those same people, and their lackeys, are in charge of public education, why is anyone still surprised at the result? Why does anyone pretend to be amazed and upset, and claim to be “seeking solutions”? This is another one of those cases of “mission accomplished” that no one wants to own up to – kind of like the situation in the inner cities. Every time a proposal is made that might yield real change, it is ruthlessly suppressed, and the people responsible pilloried in the public square. (Kind of reminds me of the way third parties are treated, in fact.) Consider also that many of the people who voted for Obama really and truly expect him to fix things so that everything is “free” -- free housing, free food, free medical care, free gasoline, no taxes, and no one will have to work. Doesn't this betray just a tiny bit of ignorance as to how the world operates? But is anyone disabusing them of these notions? And I daresay the people who believe this are all, without exception, products of the public education system. So yes, ignorance may be bad for the country, but it's good for politicians, and they're the ones who count the votes.