There's an idyllic image of pastoral America, a rainbow of vegetables growing just beneath the dirt. These vegetables are the last bits of healthful food in a world overtaken by prepackaged madness, microwavable everything, irradiated beef, and food so highly preserved that our insides are as pickled as the pepperoncinis floating around in a jar of sulfites on the grocer's shelves. Yep, at least we have vegetables.
What's that? What about the vegetables?
Oh yeah, there's fertilizers and pesticides. And now with the advent of a not-so-lovely fertilizer called Auxigrow, there's MSG in the vegetables. There's no washing that off, guys. Ever had a headache just after one of those nasty Gyros from the Greek joint in the mall? How about after Chinese food?
That's because most of us have MSG sensitivities. And for the unlucky few of us, it is a seriously bad sensitivity that causes vomiting, intense headaches, dizziness, and heart palpitations. But since it's not an "allergy" it's not something that has to be labelled appropriately, and the use of it as a fertilizer is mostly unknown.
Auxigrow has been approved for use on almost everything, sending a lot of folks sensitive to MSG into a personal hell of symptoms that they may not even understand. After all, they are innocently consuming the last of the the "safe" foodstuffs, or so they thought.
Farming has morphed into this unrecognizable industry in the last few decades, beyond what anyone has predicted back when Muley sat in remorse on the changing landscape in the Grapes of Wrath. Mechinization, for better or worse, surely transformed the way our produce is brought to the table, but did anyone expect that after that, a virtual chemical warfare would be waged upon the food we eat? It's insane that there is now barely a single edible item in the grocery store that isn't a potential health risk.
Skeptic or not, the further from 100% natural, the more risk we take putting something into our bodies. Hoping that the chemical compounds we ingest won't kill us a little later down the road isn't a bet we should have to make. Why is it so hard to ask for crops grown without more science than dirt, manure, water, sun?
Does anyone else think there is something to the fact that the very same company that makes fertilizer and pesticides also made Agent Orange, which obliterated so much of a nation that it continues to infest the groundwater supply and crops with poison four decades later?
Those chemical compounds really have no business near our bodies. Venturing just a guess, they probably do more harm than good. As for MSG, it's not nearly as devastating as some of the other nasty chemicals, but this skeptic has been bedridden one too many times because of monosodium glutamate.
Vegetables are better when they're just vegetables, damnit.
Skeptically Yours.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Friday, September 12, 2008
To live and die simply, thou shalt not sue me
My father was born in depression era Ohio, essentially handed two pairs of clothes and told to survive. By the time he was about six, he was shooting animals we mostly associate with rabies and roadkill in order to help feed a booming family of ten. His first car was actually a jalopy, and not the kind romanticized by laureate Beats, but the actual kind badly needing the parts he bargained and traded for out junk yards. This jalopy? A Model T. The price? $50. My Dad? 13.
Those were different days. When my father wasn't yet a father and just Herb, just a boy in the late 1940's, he went to jail for speeding and wreckless driving, he ran around without shoes on in junk yards chock full of rusted metal, he handled guns at the ripe old age of six without shooting anyone else or his own eye out, he cut tobacco with giant machetes for 25 cents a week, he ate food better left untouched, he used and reused everything possible, and he lived. And he had a decent job and family, and all of us lived, too.
So what the hell happened in modern times, that people can't get on as well as folks did back then with practically nothing?
What's going on out there? Now, we can't help a mom install a baby seat in her car because if she wrecks, and the infant is hurt, she can sue the company, the individual, and probably the employee that walked by and smiled as the installation was occurring. Why? 'Cause we can't have any forgiveness or moreoever, any culpability. Everyone points fngers and wants a safety net.
Guess what? We don't have a safety net guys, and my dad has some scars, and he made some mistakes, but his photo books are thick, his memory is great, his stories are long and hysterical, he knows everyone in town and moreover, he's 77 and he's never sued anyone. He's had an engine dropped on his back, a machete through a vein, and a host of other accidents. But there's the rub, eh? Accidents. They were accidents.
The point? He learned to live LIFE. No lawsuits, no stupid grudges and no time for wasting time. He still had fun, he was still wreckless and wild, but he chose to just live, and live simply.
The birth of the Large Hadron Collider should have everyone considering a lot of the big questions about life. Read about it? It's an amazing piece of work, and sounds more Star Trek than reality. It's either the machine that will propel us to the next level of scientific research, or destroy the world, depending on who you listen to. The experiments to discover what makes up mass, and searching for the answers about the Universe right after the Big Bang are useful and exciting. On the other hand, it could begin creating blackholes or worm holes and destroy us all (complete drivel, this philosophy).
In moments like these, it's wise to consider what really matters---lawsuits, money, pitiful and and pathetic squabbling that reduce us to the common and base elements of our most vile nature? Or the simple things, those things that taught my father about surviving, laughing, family and frugality? Thinking about the end of the world should make us want to forget about all of the vindictiveness, the time ill spent with creating dividers and boundaries. As science explores the tiniest frontiers of matter, and these miniscule protons smashing into each other, shouldn't we spend time on our own human frontier trying to explore our own relationships or interactivity?
The disappearing facets of what we are, who we are----those are the things that we would miss the most should we be without them. No one would ever say, "I should have sued him when I had the chance" if they had only 4 seconds left. Leaving the legacy of human beings for another society of beings should be something we think about, just in case.
I hope that should the LHC destroy us, but somehow leave a legacy behind, it forgets the lawsuits, the pettiness, the destruction and the waste. I hope that it remembers the souls like Herb. Resourceful, simple, able to subsist from the Earth and with the Earth, beside his fellow man, working with his fellow man, and finding joy in the smallest things.
The world is in a collossal shit lagoon. People are awful to each other, committing treachery just because. This is not the state in which the world should end. If it ends, it should be in a massive hoorah, take no prisoners, party like it's 1999 type of way. Even if the LHC isn't sending us into a stream of strange matter, remember this: life is short, doomsday machine or none. When you find yourself wasting time with petty vindictiveness, pondering a lawsuit, or whittling your time away by doing something soul-crushing, picture the LHC. Even if it's harmlessly sending little protons around in a giant circle beneath the Franco-Swiss border, it's enough to make you want to live life without the bullshit.
Skeptically Yours.
Those were different days. When my father wasn't yet a father and just Herb, just a boy in the late 1940's, he went to jail for speeding and wreckless driving, he ran around without shoes on in junk yards chock full of rusted metal, he handled guns at the ripe old age of six without shooting anyone else or his own eye out, he cut tobacco with giant machetes for 25 cents a week, he ate food better left untouched, he used and reused everything possible, and he lived. And he had a decent job and family, and all of us lived, too.
So what the hell happened in modern times, that people can't get on as well as folks did back then with practically nothing?
What's going on out there? Now, we can't help a mom install a baby seat in her car because if she wrecks, and the infant is hurt, she can sue the company, the individual, and probably the employee that walked by and smiled as the installation was occurring. Why? 'Cause we can't have any forgiveness or moreoever, any culpability. Everyone points fngers and wants a safety net.
Guess what? We don't have a safety net guys, and my dad has some scars, and he made some mistakes, but his photo books are thick, his memory is great, his stories are long and hysterical, he knows everyone in town and moreover, he's 77 and he's never sued anyone. He's had an engine dropped on his back, a machete through a vein, and a host of other accidents. But there's the rub, eh? Accidents. They were accidents.
The point? He learned to live LIFE. No lawsuits, no stupid grudges and no time for wasting time. He still had fun, he was still wreckless and wild, but he chose to just live, and live simply.
The birth of the Large Hadron Collider should have everyone considering a lot of the big questions about life. Read about it? It's an amazing piece of work, and sounds more Star Trek than reality. It's either the machine that will propel us to the next level of scientific research, or destroy the world, depending on who you listen to. The experiments to discover what makes up mass, and searching for the answers about the Universe right after the Big Bang are useful and exciting. On the other hand, it could begin creating blackholes or worm holes and destroy us all (complete drivel, this philosophy).
In moments like these, it's wise to consider what really matters---lawsuits, money, pitiful and and pathetic squabbling that reduce us to the common and base elements of our most vile nature? Or the simple things, those things that taught my father about surviving, laughing, family and frugality? Thinking about the end of the world should make us want to forget about all of the vindictiveness, the time ill spent with creating dividers and boundaries. As science explores the tiniest frontiers of matter, and these miniscule protons smashing into each other, shouldn't we spend time on our own human frontier trying to explore our own relationships or interactivity?
The disappearing facets of what we are, who we are----those are the things that we would miss the most should we be without them. No one would ever say, "I should have sued him when I had the chance" if they had only 4 seconds left. Leaving the legacy of human beings for another society of beings should be something we think about, just in case.
I hope that should the LHC destroy us, but somehow leave a legacy behind, it forgets the lawsuits, the pettiness, the destruction and the waste. I hope that it remembers the souls like Herb. Resourceful, simple, able to subsist from the Earth and with the Earth, beside his fellow man, working with his fellow man, and finding joy in the smallest things.
The world is in a collossal shit lagoon. People are awful to each other, committing treachery just because. This is not the state in which the world should end. If it ends, it should be in a massive hoorah, take no prisoners, party like it's 1999 type of way. Even if the LHC isn't sending us into a stream of strange matter, remember this: life is short, doomsday machine or none. When you find yourself wasting time with petty vindictiveness, pondering a lawsuit, or whittling your time away by doing something soul-crushing, picture the LHC. Even if it's harmlessly sending little protons around in a giant circle beneath the Franco-Swiss border, it's enough to make you want to live life without the bullshit.
Skeptically Yours.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Bigskeptic's Driving School, or How to Not be a Dick
Common sense is rapidly dissolving on the jam-packed streets of LA, and though the newly imposed no-cell-phone law is a start, it's just not enough. Sure, everyone makes a boneheaded move occasionally, but driving at any hour on any freeway in this city is practically a life or death proposition.
Part of the problem is that technology has turned the average driver into a blubbering idiot. Why maneuver when VSC, VDIM, TRAC, ETC, VGRS, and all of the other can't-actually-drive-but-my-car-will-do-it-for-me-acronym-heavy systems will keep the car rolling in the right direction while the poor schmuck you cut off takes a header for the ditch? Why actually pay attention to the road when your Lexus has the active safety systems to help you avoid accidents?
The problem is here: let's compare braking in feet from 60 MPH to 0 MPH.
Lexus IS350-119 feet
Honda Civic-126 feet
Ford Edge-158 feet
A Lexus IS350 with amazing safety features and an oblivious driver that cuts off a Ford Edge has a great chance of causing an accident because of the braking comparisons.
Pair this with the oblivious driver that cuts off a semi and you have a real catastrophe.
Now, to the don't be a dick part.
If you have ever:
1. Cut someone off and then slowed down...
2. Driven less than the speed limit in the fast lane (that's the left lane, to any of you that wonder)...
3. Darted in front of a big truck...
4. Darted in front of a classic car...
5. Driven in the right lane and refused to let someone enter the freeway...
6. Hit someone's car and ran...
7. Waited until the last second when you know a lane is ending to jump in the other lane...
You are a dick.
Have some respect for classic cars. What's more, many of them have drum brakes. Don't know what that means?? It means they can't stop as fast as you, and when you cut them off, the massive amount of steel used in their rigid construction will mutilate your puny little unibody wonder. And probably you too. So when you see an old car cruising along, resist the temptation to jump in front of it and slam your brakes. It's bad for your health.
This goes doubly for big, big trucks. Countless accidents show that people don't understand physics or velocity, but the proof is the pudding that semi trucks make of pedestrian vehicles. This goes for pick up trucks too. They will maul you, though not the extent of the overworked and underpaid trucker making a delivery who will barely feel the thu-thump of your Honda under his axle.
This pretty much comes down to looking out for someone other than Number 1. Remember that often times you get home alive because someone else out there decided to let you in that lane, even though you were too close to their car. That someone may have been Bigskeptic.
Taking care of each other is something that has to happen everywhere, even on the road. Especially on the road.
Skeptically Yours.
Part of the problem is that technology has turned the average driver into a blubbering idiot. Why maneuver when VSC, VDIM, TRAC, ETC, VGRS, and all of the other can't-actually-drive-but-my-car-will-do-it-for-me-acronym-heavy systems will keep the car rolling in the right direction while the poor schmuck you cut off takes a header for the ditch? Why actually pay attention to the road when your Lexus has the active safety systems to help you avoid accidents?
The problem is here: let's compare braking in feet from 60 MPH to 0 MPH.
Lexus IS350-119 feet
Honda Civic-126 feet
Ford Edge-158 feet
A Lexus IS350 with amazing safety features and an oblivious driver that cuts off a Ford Edge has a great chance of causing an accident because of the braking comparisons.
Pair this with the oblivious driver that cuts off a semi and you have a real catastrophe.
Now, to the don't be a dick part.
If you have ever:
1. Cut someone off and then slowed down...
2. Driven less than the speed limit in the fast lane (that's the left lane, to any of you that wonder)...
3. Darted in front of a big truck...
4. Darted in front of a classic car...
5. Driven in the right lane and refused to let someone enter the freeway...
6. Hit someone's car and ran...
7. Waited until the last second when you know a lane is ending to jump in the other lane...
You are a dick.
Have some respect for classic cars. What's more, many of them have drum brakes. Don't know what that means?? It means they can't stop as fast as you, and when you cut them off, the massive amount of steel used in their rigid construction will mutilate your puny little unibody wonder. And probably you too. So when you see an old car cruising along, resist the temptation to jump in front of it and slam your brakes. It's bad for your health.
This goes doubly for big, big trucks. Countless accidents show that people don't understand physics or velocity, but the proof is the pudding that semi trucks make of pedestrian vehicles. This goes for pick up trucks too. They will maul you, though not the extent of the overworked and underpaid trucker making a delivery who will barely feel the thu-thump of your Honda under his axle.
This pretty much comes down to looking out for someone other than Number 1. Remember that often times you get home alive because someone else out there decided to let you in that lane, even though you were too close to their car. That someone may have been Bigskeptic.
Taking care of each other is something that has to happen everywhere, even on the road. Especially on the road.
Skeptically Yours.
Monday, August 25, 2008
You want a suburb WHERE??
On approach to LAX it becomes nauseatingly clear that Los Angeles is a city of suburban/urban sprawl, which stretches its homogeneous breadth from Orange county all the way to the desert. It's ugly, even from the air. Looking down from that height, it's clear exactly how much land space was wasted for concrete and streets and houses that celebrate commonality.
Somehow, someway, the suburban mindset travels like an air born disease, which also affects people's sense of how to be neighborly. In the countryside, where generation after generation of farmers live and plow, big business landed and surveyed.
The landscape was beautiful and serene, and so they started buying up farmland. Farmers these days have a tough road, because industrialization has put a big fat feather pillow on the face of American food production and suffocated the first line of defense. Driving down prices to inflate their own bottom line, our mega-corporations like Tyson Foods, et all, have made living as a farmer practically a service to charity.
So when these companies come and offer money for land, the farmers see a profitable way out and sell and run, and Jeffersonian America's perfect independent citizen is one step closer to extinction. And now---welcome suburbanites to the country.
But there are farmers who stay and do what they do, which is, believe it or not, actually farm. The newly transplanted suburbanites hoping for countryside tranquility get a taste of sharing the road with tractors, smelling hogs and cows, breathing dust when the hay is bailed. And that's country life.
But that's not suburban life, and there is an inherent clash. There is a clash when a stray calf makes his way into the neighboring suburb. There is a clash when the farmer has a 1978 Chevy truck that doesn't match his suburban neighbor's idea of "transportation." There are grounds for lots of clashes.
But here's the question: why would you want to move to the country and build on a pint sized lot near hog farms and dairy farms and corn and bean fields, and then complain about the thousand acre hog farms and dairy farms and corn and bean fields that have been there for many, many more years than your suburb?
What's the point of leaving of Suburban-Where-You-Already-Are, USA? And if you do get that call-to-nature, and go, why complain about the lifestyle you are inherently joining by moving "to the country"? And why buy a house that probably looks like the one you are leaving?
Bitching about farmers in farmland makes as much sense as moving to Puerto Rico and bitching about the Puerto Ricans. Why move there if you aren't ready for the culture change? If you're closed minded, don't go. Do the locals a favor, por favor.
Farmers have it hard enough without a bunch of bored suburbanites knocking on their doors to tell them that their horses smell.
But know what? Horses and farmers built this damn country. Go pick up some literature by a man named Thomas Jefferson. And land developers: ignore a part of the country called Brown County, OH. It's really beautiful and we have a lot of farmers, and I like it just how it is. It smells like horses, cows, and pigs. It's dusty when it's hay season, there are tractors on the road, and at times, steam engines. Suburbanites, you would hate it.
*To read a discussion on the suburban encroachment topic on The H.A.M.B., click on this link: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=284286&highlight=farmer Be warned, though, that this is a forum of traditional hot rodders. If it's not your type of thing, they will immediately sense this and out you. Also, if you're a dick, they will punish you, and you will have deserved their flagellation. Enjoy!
Skeptically Yours.
Somehow, someway, the suburban mindset travels like an air born disease, which also affects people's sense of how to be neighborly. In the countryside, where generation after generation of farmers live and plow, big business landed and surveyed.
The landscape was beautiful and serene, and so they started buying up farmland. Farmers these days have a tough road, because industrialization has put a big fat feather pillow on the face of American food production and suffocated the first line of defense. Driving down prices to inflate their own bottom line, our mega-corporations like Tyson Foods, et all, have made living as a farmer practically a service to charity.
So when these companies come and offer money for land, the farmers see a profitable way out and sell and run, and Jeffersonian America's perfect independent citizen is one step closer to extinction. And now---welcome suburbanites to the country.
But there are farmers who stay and do what they do, which is, believe it or not, actually farm. The newly transplanted suburbanites hoping for countryside tranquility get a taste of sharing the road with tractors, smelling hogs and cows, breathing dust when the hay is bailed. And that's country life.
But that's not suburban life, and there is an inherent clash. There is a clash when a stray calf makes his way into the neighboring suburb. There is a clash when the farmer has a 1978 Chevy truck that doesn't match his suburban neighbor's idea of "transportation." There are grounds for lots of clashes.
But here's the question: why would you want to move to the country and build on a pint sized lot near hog farms and dairy farms and corn and bean fields, and then complain about the thousand acre hog farms and dairy farms and corn and bean fields that have been there for many, many more years than your suburb?
What's the point of leaving of Suburban-Where-You-Already-Are, USA? And if you do get that call-to-nature, and go, why complain about the lifestyle you are inherently joining by moving "to the country"? And why buy a house that probably looks like the one you are leaving?
Bitching about farmers in farmland makes as much sense as moving to Puerto Rico and bitching about the Puerto Ricans. Why move there if you aren't ready for the culture change? If you're closed minded, don't go. Do the locals a favor, por favor.
Farmers have it hard enough without a bunch of bored suburbanites knocking on their doors to tell them that their horses smell.
But know what? Horses and farmers built this damn country. Go pick up some literature by a man named Thomas Jefferson. And land developers: ignore a part of the country called Brown County, OH. It's really beautiful and we have a lot of farmers, and I like it just how it is. It smells like horses, cows, and pigs. It's dusty when it's hay season, there are tractors on the road, and at times, steam engines. Suburbanites, you would hate it.
*To read a discussion on the suburban encroachment topic on The H.A.M.B., click on this link: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=284286&highlight=farmer Be warned, though, that this is a forum of traditional hot rodders. If it's not your type of thing, they will immediately sense this and out you. Also, if you're a dick, they will punish you, and you will have deserved their flagellation. Enjoy!
Skeptically Yours.
My V8 vs. Your Hybrid
Ooooohh---I bet I bet that makes your skin tingle, right?? The hybrid is the righteous little guy with the synergy drive, single handedly saving us from the oil crisis. The V8 is a boisterous and gas guzzling waste-mongrel, mangling the diminutive supply of petrol remaining. My gripe isn't actually the hybrid. It's the hybrid drivers, most of them. They look over at me, nose in the air, scoffing at my rumbly little Underdog Nova.
I laugh every time I pass a Steakhouse with Hybrid mobiles choking the Valet lot. I chuckle when I peak inside and see a well-equipped Hybrid bathed with leather interior. I emit nothing short of a chortle when the Hybrid lovin' nation totes home their succulent goods flown in from half way around the world.
My point? I have several. Let me expound.
Firstly, some of the most disgusting and air-f0uling emissions out there comes from my friend, the cow. I do not eat the cow. I do not believe we should mass produce the cow like this poor creature is living simply to be your steak, your boot, your belt. It's feces ends up in what we lovingly call a "lagoon." Sounds nice, right? It ain't. It's a festering, steamy pond of cow shit that actually eats away our ozone at levels way above what comes out of the Nova's exhaust pipe. Surprised? That's right. The Nova's dual exhaust is way less harmful than a herd of cows' asses.
Pack the Hybrid with leather, and you have this complete wash of anything that the little righteous-mobile was actually campaigning towards. So the car was halfway there, and then---yep, missed it! Now, these cows, manufactured by a completely industrialized and heartless system, die for your car. And their lagoon? It will exist for a very very long time.
My point further??
The goods from around the world. That's pretty self explanatory. Buy local, people. Local. I will talk plenty more on here about farmers. But planes = emissions.
What's more, hybrid drivers, you hate me, I know. I'm cool with that. Have you ever asked the driver of a classic car how much they drive it? What kind of mileage it actually gets? Here's some news...Mine? 18 MPG. Better than a lot of new cars. And not that much, i.e. to shows, on pretty days, and for testing out new parts. And when I am stuck in traffic next to a Hybrid, I always look over and make sure to smile at the driver.
The reaction? Almost always a smirk.
Skeptically Yours.
*For those of you out there that drive a Hybrid, can explain Hybrid Synergy Drive, forgo leather, and understand the concept of reduce, reuse and recycle, I applaud you. Don't smirk at me.
I laugh every time I pass a Steakhouse with Hybrid mobiles choking the Valet lot. I chuckle when I peak inside and see a well-equipped Hybrid bathed with leather interior. I emit nothing short of a chortle when the Hybrid lovin' nation totes home their succulent goods flown in from half way around the world.
My point? I have several. Let me expound.
Firstly, some of the most disgusting and air-f0uling emissions out there comes from my friend, the cow. I do not eat the cow. I do not believe we should mass produce the cow like this poor creature is living simply to be your steak, your boot, your belt. It's feces ends up in what we lovingly call a "lagoon." Sounds nice, right? It ain't. It's a festering, steamy pond of cow shit that actually eats away our ozone at levels way above what comes out of the Nova's exhaust pipe. Surprised? That's right. The Nova's dual exhaust is way less harmful than a herd of cows' asses.
Pack the Hybrid with leather, and you have this complete wash of anything that the little righteous-mobile was actually campaigning towards. So the car was halfway there, and then---yep, missed it! Now, these cows, manufactured by a completely industrialized and heartless system, die for your car. And their lagoon? It will exist for a very very long time.
My point further??
The goods from around the world. That's pretty self explanatory. Buy local, people. Local. I will talk plenty more on here about farmers. But planes = emissions.
What's more, hybrid drivers, you hate me, I know. I'm cool with that. Have you ever asked the driver of a classic car how much they drive it? What kind of mileage it actually gets? Here's some news...Mine? 18 MPG. Better than a lot of new cars. And not that much, i.e. to shows, on pretty days, and for testing out new parts. And when I am stuck in traffic next to a Hybrid, I always look over and make sure to smile at the driver.
The reaction? Almost always a smirk.
Skeptically Yours.
*For those of you out there that drive a Hybrid, can explain Hybrid Synergy Drive, forgo leather, and understand the concept of reduce, reuse and recycle, I applaud you. Don't smirk at me.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)