You Are What You Eat

Literally, what you eat is digested and used to energize and re-build your body as your cells live and die, as you gain fat or build muscle, or when your broken hand heals after participating in a very bizarre riot on the streets of Berkeley at 2AM. If you eat like shit, you're not going to be healthy, and you're never going to be an Olympian, despite what McDonald's and Coca-Cola tell you. You can also become very very irrational. These maps make an interesting illustration. The most interesting maps are broken down within the states.

Dumbing of the Citizenry

I am watching - and, I guess, part of - a Q and A with the director of The Most Dangerous Man in America. My friend and I were going to see the new Leo DiCaprio film, but it sold out while we were in line. I picked this from the choices, citing my past as a history major.

More later...

Standards

The blogosphere was awash with fervor a couple of weeks ago over a recent poll published on DailyKos. The poll, conducted by Research 2000, asked self-identified Republicans a few questions about their beliefs. I've also been thinking a lot recently about the concepts of being entitled to an opinion and the fallacy of debate style reporting. One of the members of SANE was going to present on being entitled to one's opinion back on the 2nd, but he was sick, so he's presenting it on the 23rd. It should be interesting.

The poll demonstrated that the Republicans polled believe a lot of things that plain ain't true. Some things that are just fabricated falsehoods, and other things that are clearly proven with real evidence.This gives additional evidence to the case for reducing the number of falsehoods that are allowed to filter through society. I found this comment on Ginandtacos.com to be a great description of why we are in this predicament.

You might think vanilla cake is better, I might think chocolate cake is better, but we'll never settle on one to order for the party if you scream that every option I bring up is poisonous and will kill children and I'm only trying to order it because I hate freedom.

And if we take those positions in present America, the media just reports "X says vanilla cake is nice, Y says it kills children" and they don't bother sending it to a lab to test… and even if they did that, they wouldn't hold the person screaming "poison" responsible for trying to create irrational fear and panic.

And so our political debate is poisoned with lies and madness. And people like Corey who come in trying to pretend otherwise are not helping, they're feeding an unhealthy fiction that is derailing the country's ability to function on even a basic level.

-a response to Corey [and Trevor - ok, not really]

About a week ago, a friend defined himself as a free speech purist. I am certainly not, at least, not to the extent that he was indicating. I think that speech coming from authoritative sources must be well reasoned and supported by evidence. If it does not do that, it should cease to be regarded as authoritative. Non-authoritative information can and should be disregarded in public discourse. This doesn't make it illegal, and that is all free speech really concerns.

Amanda and others at Pandagon frequently call out people that think that free speech is infringed by the actions of individuals in the marketplace. For instance, many might call my continued boycotting of Whole Foods due to the health insurance op-ed the CEO gave last year an assault on that CEO's free speech. The 1st amendment is about the government infringing on speech, not about an individual deciding to patronize a business based on how they use their position in society. I don't think the guy's opinion should be illegal, or censored. I disagree with what he said and I decided not to shop at Whole Foods anymore. Private citizens are not obligated to continue listening to people that they do not want to listen to, for whatever reason.

I can't stand the loss of citizens to the lot of hucksters selling them bizarre conspiracy theories to explain away facts that disrupt their insular, patriarchal, entitled, bitter worldview. I refuse to listen to these people and it frustrates me that they are allowed to masquerade as authoritative when they cannot meet the qualifications. I think the time has come to hold ourselves to higher standards - with, of course, constant review of the standards to ensure that all well reasoned opinions supported by evidence are considered.