No editing needed

Oh man I about fell over when I heard this song this morning. Like, whoa. Have a listen.

Well, at least one employee of the FDA isn't getting blown by the farm industry*

Hey, our government doesn't want antibiotics in all its country's livestock anymore? Seriously? Who finally caught on to drug-resistant bacteria?

Well, fake-surprise aside, I'm happy Obama is taking on the farm industry even though apparently their lobbyists are some badass ninjas with winning support.

This article from Wired was the one I originally read, but you've also got to check out this one from the NY Times because part of it really cracked me up. Want me to just tell you? Okay, so the article's about giving antibiotics to livestock, right? Well, there was a hearing about this issue...

The hearing was held to discuss a measure proposed by Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York and chairwoman of the Rules Committee. It would ban seven classes of antibiotics important to human health from being used in animals, and would restrict other antibiotics to therapeutic and some preventive uses.

Now, could that be better? Representative Slaughter talking about our livestock? I LOL'ed when I saw that. Hopefully you got a kick out of it, too. Anyway, no real political/environmental angry writing today. Just wanted to share that story with y'all.

________________
*There just isn't a smooth way to reference "give oral sex to a female," and we don't have a gender-neutral way to express that either. Therefore, "getting blown" was chosen as the most efficient way to get my point across to you.

Good music, good eats

I had no idea this song was over two years old. I only recently heard it and it's awesome, as are the Kaiser Chiefs in general. EMBEDDING DISABLED BY REQUEST = lame, so you get a linked screenshot.

Clicky.


Things I/we have cooked/baked recently:
-Chocolate chip cookies (Recipe)
-Peach cobbler (Recipe)
-Veggie pizza (toppings have included squash, olives, green pepper, red pepper, green onion, yellow onion, mushrooms, and of course tomato sauce (sometimes vodka sauce!) and mozzarella cheese)
-Sweet and sour veggie stirfry (with added pickled ginger)
-Saturday night dinner: Steak, tenderized with fork + tenderizer (in a jar), mooshed with barbecue sauce; Potatoes, diced and panfried with garlic salt (awesome with ketchup); Choy sum and carrots, stir-fried with salt and onion powder

Naturally Approachable

People talk to me. People on the street, on the bus, on the train, in stores, in lines, in hallways, wherever. Whether I just happen to be near outgoing people or I emit some vibe that lets people know I'm "okay to talk to," I don't know, but people talk to me. For the most part, I like it. It's just taken some getting used to, especially out here, since the percentage of weirdos out here is significantly higher than I encountered in the southeastern United States. But really, the large majority of interactions are at least neutral, with many of them being positive.

Take this morning for example:

*walking to campus, reading my book as I walk, a woman is walking along the sidewalk in the same direction I am; I pass her*

Woman: Wow, I can't believe you can do that.
Me: *realizes she means read while walking*
Woman: I mean, I just couldn't...
Me: Oh. Yeah, I do, but I almost run into things more than I'd like to admit.
Woman: *laughs* (this totally makes the interaction worth it)
Me: *as we approach an intersection* Not across streets, though, nope. Gotta put the book down... *crosses street*
Woman: *still laughing*

Yup. Good day.

WTF Monday: Atheist PSA

(It's Wednesday but this link/post is good enough to make the WTF Monday series.)

I'd all but forgotten about my StumbleUpon account/add-on, but the dang thing sends me emails every once in a while, and I couldn't help but click on this link in one of those emails. It's essentially a blog post where a self-proclaimed "godless liberal" comments ("refutes" is an unnecessary word) on the ridiculous points made by some woman in Canada about atheists. While I won't drag you through the entire post, I have to share the first "point" the woman made about atheists, in which she, get this, claims that atheists think that they themselves are god.

>_>

Maybe she thinks all atheists are complete morons and don't understand what it means to be an atheist, because that's the only "rationale" I can envision behind such an obviously conflicted statement.

So, just to clear things up, atheists don't believe in a personal/definable/knowable god. And we're also aware that for that to be true, we ourselves cannot be gods.

In other atheist news (see, I'm trying hard to carve out a community feel here), my atheist spirituality book is so refreshing, thought provoking, and at times even saddening that I might have to send copies to some people just to share what is a wonderful book. Again, it's not an angry or converting/convincing type of book. It's simply a book with some thoughts and reasonings and emotion.

Did you know that some atheists wish there were a god? Does that seem strange? Initially, it did to me. But it makes sense after having read the author's thoughts on that idea. *happy sigh*

Okay enough of that for now. I should get back to my food miniseries soon anyway.

Eleven months of cohabitation

Last night before we went to sleep, Mike was already sitting in bed, and I walked over to his side of the bed to give him a hug. He hugged me, as Ceri pranced around on the bedspread, meowing here and there.

"I am so happy with you. Everything is so great," he said softly. "It's not always easy, but it's always great."

I concurred, but lacked the words to express how touched I was by those statements. *happy sigh*

A good, but unsettling moment

On my walk to school today, mid-step, I asked myself, "Did I remember to put on underwear this morning?" And, yes, yes I did remember.

The best underwear is the kind you forget you're wearing.

Fuck Nihilism

I am reading a book called The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality and so far it has been incredibly different than I expected and in a way that is not only educational but also AMAZING. I'm 50 pages into it.

This quote doesn't really illustrate the awesomeness of this book, but I had to quote it because, well, I just really, really like it:

People who wish to turn their lives into works of art are deluding themselves about art and lying about life.

Also, I can't stand nihilism. Grow up. It's dumb. Just like your mom.

Part Two - Background: Some Dissent

(Went over my word count cap for this one. Forgive me? Thanks)

It's all my mom's fault, you know. She read food labels first, way before I ever cared what was in my "Fat Free Processed Cheese Food." It's not only in the food titles, but in the ingredients list where the truth lies. Or at least, most of it.

Anyway, she would read food labels to make sure we weren't eating much, if any, hydrogenated oils. "Palm kernel and coconut oils are bad," I remember her saying. "Any of those hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils means it's bad for you." In the same way that I took pretty much anything my father said about math, science, people, and history to be factual truth, I took my mother's words about foods, medicines, and personal care. If she said hydrogenated oils were bad, then they were bad. That's just how it was.

And she's right. They are bad for us. But what I only realized many years later was that our attempt to eat healthily and avoid those horrid "bad foods" wasn't really a complete way of living. It wasn't nearly as balanced as it could be, and it definitely didn't take other "no-no's" into account.

You might remember the summer of 2006 where I took a public speaking course and did some research on high fructose corn syrup. That summer sticks out to me as a turning point in how I viewed my life, my choices, and how much influence/input my parents were going to have on all of that.

My parents were (and are) skeptical about my HFCS avoidance and criticism. My dad asked me why he hadn't heard about the atrocity that was HFCS if it was so bad. And now, looking back, if I'd been educated, if I'd been able to say "Because the corn industry is gigantic and wouldn't want their solid gold product to be cast in a bad light AND IN ADDITION, the people who would warn you about those things? The FDA and USDA? Guess who is at the top of the food chain (har har) of those departments? People who have ties to the big crops like corn and soybeans. Now why the hell would they want word to get out that the product they're unnecessarily adding to everything from Ritz crackers to Special K to Heinz ketchup to 7UP is something to be worried about? That's just not good business."

...if I'd been able to say all that, I'd have stopped him cold. But I was uneducated, uninformed, unaware of many, many things that weren't going to be known to me until many years later...

Part One - Background : Family

In the early years of my life, my parents bought whatever food was cheapest, while still abiding by the "food pyramid" guidelines. At some point in my early childhood, sometime in elementary school, a couple things happened that changed how we ate. I'm not sure if I actually had high cholesterol as a child or if I were only at risk for it because of my genetics, but I remember being told that my diet had to change to include less fat and cholesterol. Fat and cholesterol were bad, and I shouldn't eat them. The other thing that probably happen concurrently was that my parents realized that they had been making food choices that were not so great for us for the long term. I believe they cut out whole eggs, switched from 2% milk to 1% milk, and soon after switched to skim milk. It's all a little fuzzy in my head because I was something like seven and skinny and happy and didn't care as long as I could eat dessert most of the time.

My family's food-buying strategy changed somewhat. They now wanted the best deal on products with low (or no) fat/cholesterol, while still staying within dietary guidelines. And this is all well and good until you start comparing nutrition facts and ingredient lists between "regular" foods and "low fat" or "fat free" foods. If you've ever done this, you'll likely agree that a lot of the time, the manufacturer takes out fat and adds some sort of sweetener in its place. I don't blame my parents for the decisions they made. I just likely ate more sugar or sweeteners than fats growing up. I brushed my teeth regularly, so this wasn't an issue.

But you see the mindset: Low prices + "Healthier" = Desirable food