I endeavor to live a healthy lifestyle. This means regularizing patterns of sleep (the Okinawans, who enjoy a lifespan approaching 100 years, swear by this), exercising with cardio routines and light weights (so as not to put too much pressure on the heart with extra muscle that I can't maintain through midlife), and consuming plenty of wholesome, organic, synthetic foods.
I'm a sucker for non-foods that pretend to be healthy. I dig in to them like the wasted shell of man who dragged himself across scorching desert to the heart of a village feast. To increase the intensity of the experience, I read the narratives on the side and back of the box as I eat. I take comfort in their words, in the stories of family farmers who had the good fortune to reap some success four generations ago so that now they're in the perfect position to oversee distribution of their products by a multinational.
The king (or queen) of the boxside narrative is Annie. As in Annie's Homegrown, the pasta maker based in Napa, California. Sometimes, just reading a box of Annie's Shells and White Cheddar Macaroni and Cheese is enough to tide me over until dinner. Consider a box of another stellar product, Shells and Real Aged Cheddar Macaroni and Cheese. The box speaks to me: "Dear Friend." The box is full of life: little bunnies, including a rabbit's tail that you push in to open the box, Annie's signature after a lovely note about the "smooth texture and sharp taste of real aged cheddar," and a photograph of the product that (get this!) is not even enlarged to show texture. That's right: it looks fine just the way it is. No artificial anything! (the preceding sentence in its entirety will soon be a registered trademark.) Zero grams of trans fat! Keep your letters and emails coming! No weird chemicals! Annie's Way of preparing the meal (which sounds suspiciously like everybody's way - boil, stir in, cook, measure, drain, pour - but that's alright). An entire panel about how I can Be Green to Help the Earth Live (I must "speak out on behalf of all of the Earth's inhabitants," including "plankton"). Symbols populate the box like it was from another world - designs that whisper in code near the bottom of the box that the manufacturer purchases renewable energy, uses recycled paper fiber, and uses certified organic ingredients by Oregon Tilth. Oh, and one last thing: please remember to Reduce Your Footprint, Too!
All of this for a product that is suspiciously similar to Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. In fact, the entire product before me (cheddar mac and cheese) is Annie's attempt to speak to the kids who, according to Annie, "want orange cheese." But enough rhetoric. Let's look at the first 10 ingredients: wheat, cultured pasteurized milk, salt, enzymes, whey, buttermilk, cream, salt, sodium phosphate, annatoo extract. Now, Kraft: wheat, niacin, ferrous sulfate, vitamins B1 and B2, folic acid, whey, milk, salt, calcium, Sodium Tripolyphosphate. Yes, Kraft includes a splash of artificial color (which is what Annie's is so desperately trying to compete with through use of her own "orange cheese"). But relatively speaking, you're getting the same thing - same amounts of protein, vitamin A, calcium, fiber, and fat. You miss out on the organic experience, for sure. But given the regulations, a farm can use treated sewage sludge one year and before long attain "organic" grower status.
All of this is missing the most important point - the product, whether made by Kraft or little grower Annie, is NOT A REAL FOOD. Not in the sense of the produce and meats with which human beings co-evolved. It's a fabrication, a figment of focus groups and the minds of other people. It's not how the natural world, in all of its wisdom, elected to provide sustaining nourishment, carefully providing ingredient A along with B, C, and Q because Q aids in the absorption of C and is best consumed along with B. It is, as the box rightfully proclaims, "manufactured," and on shared equipment that also processes eggs. I'm not trying to knock the product at all - I will consume Annie's until my dust is scattered along the tracks of the Trans-Siberian Railroad by my future grandchildren (my children couldn't do it because they were taking part in a preemptive strike against Sri Lanka). And Annie's is one of the more benign "health foods." For example, Nature's Path Peanut Butter Granola cereal includes two nutrition labels on its box: one with the real nutritional value, and one for "an 8 ounce serving of dry roasted peanuts." The latter is brimming with vitamins and minerals galore. Only problem is, most of these are missing from the product that you are asked to buy.
But Annie's is emblematic of a broader trend in our culture: calories are readied for intake, and we eat them not because they are good for us, but because we are told as much. And it takes a lot to tell us in so many creative ways. And that takes money. And for that, we pay. Never mind that a pound of pasta and a hunk of cave-aged cheese, with a dash of milk and butter, would be much cheaper and better for us.
Another of my all-time favorite products (this time a 7% juice beverage) is Orange Mango with Mangosteen Honest Ade. It's wonderful for so many reasons. But extra kudos go to Seth and Barry (yes, the best health food manufacturers put names, and hopefully faces, to the product) for the meniscus at the top of the bottle. They fill their bottles liberally, all the way to the brim, and I mean precisely to the brim. Reminds me of those days in high school when you played with test tubes and learned how water molecules attract molecules in the glass tube, tugging the water slightly higher than it should otherwise travel near the sides of the container.
And if I'm going to pay $1.99 for 16.9 ounces of mostly water, it helps reassure me that I've done the right thing when I'm welcomed to the beverage consuming experience with a meniscus. Other drinks don't fare so well. I bought a pint of Naked juice the other day for over $3, and the entire neck of the damn bottle was empty! Not cool. Perhaps it was to remove some weight from the juice so as to save on shipping costs. Or maybe it's part of the broader trend of downsizing foods. Don't believe me? Just look at a slice of Wonder bread nowadays. You may be able to eat it with real cheese, but make sure that your favorite gouda is sliced like a deck of playing cards.
Vaya con Dios - Ordinary Skill
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
On Fear
Scientists are on their way to curing fear. I'm afraid that this could get out of hand.
Here's what the folks at MIT accomplished: mice, the usual suspects, were given small shocks when placed in particular environments. Some of them were genetically engineered to have lower levels of a kinase (an enzyme, called Cdk5) than the others. Mice with higher levels had far more difficulty distinguishing between the memory of a shock and the environment in which it was received. Those mice froze. The mice with inhibited kinases felt comfortable enough to continue exploring their environment, despite the painful memories. The men and women in white coats were quick to point out that the mechanism concerns fear based on a traumatic event. They intend to focus their efforts on developing a drug for use with those who suffer from PTSD. But what's to say that they will stop there?
The next frontier would be the kinds of background fears that accumulate as we live our lives and absorb culture, stories, associations, and the like. Many of these fears are irrational, so good riddance. But then there are two seemingly divergent kinds of fears that I'm not ready to part with as yet. In one direction are the fears that we learn over the eons, that are hard-wired by evolutionary experience. And then there is the seemingly ephemeral (because it is so complex that your conscious thoughts only capture bits and pieces on occasion) but actually quite pervasive fear: existential fear. The ability to "cure" or control fear presents a bit of a conundrum in that it could lead to an outbreak of existential crisis.
Let's say that we remove a sufficient amount of fear within the general population through some pharmaceutical means, and not just fear of the trauma-induced kind. People grow less afraid of not just situation-memory links but of concept-concept bonds, such as aging and death. Some may shed their belief in a higher power and the comforts of faith, finding less of a need for the narratives of triumph over death and endless renewal that they provide. But then what? Fear reduced, freed from religious dogma, and hopefully not killed prematurely because they forgot to look both ways before crossing the street, what do these human beings do next? Lacking a narrative for what life is all about (remember for a large swath of the newly medicated, their existing supernatural narrative went away along with the kinase levels), but still aware of their impending personal demise, they are ripe for existential malaise. If the reduction in fear does not also address the negative affect that comes with the realization that life is meaningless (at least until another narrative comes along to replace religion), we could find ourselves living among a teeming subpopulation of millions of Woody Allen clones. Hopefully scientists will deal with this side effect and avert a public health crisis.
Fears of all kinds are difficult to pin down. This became apparent to me recently when boingboing.net ran a story about old Sesame Street sketches from the 1970's. The article struck a chord - attached to it grew an endless string of links to YouTube and videos that in one way or another frightened the reader. Why were the skits on children's television so scary back in the day, the readers asked? One reader even exclaimed, "I am having post-traumatic flashbacks just watching it!" Psychedelic rubber-band faces contorting while reciting the numbers one through ten, clown-men who look like stalkers or worse sitting uncomfortably close to the camera while they remove their makeup, a Muppet trying to sell the letter "O" to Ernie with a shadowy, drug-dealer air to him, stop-motion fruits singing in kitchens bathed only in the hues of twilight - is this really how I learned to read and count and move through this new world? Try these on for size:
But then I thought about it and drew the following conclusion: I fear these scenes now, in ways that I could not have possibly feared when I was three years old. I even remember watching Sesame Street. And I remember feeling not fear, but fascination at these clips. Only later did I grasp, with a little help from some enzymes and a lot of careful teaching by forces that I have yet to understand, of what I should really be afraid.
Vaya con Dios - Ordinary Skill
links:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=jG-0_p_yefg
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vs5VYOnpMrw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qYaArMDA1ZE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vs5VYOnpMrw
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qYaArMDA1ZE
yip yip yip yip...Saturday, July 21, 2007
Scary Thought of the Day
Just thought you might like to know.
Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Senator Bayh and Representative Celler proposed (and the states later ratified) the 25th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Section Three of the amendment states that the President may, by transmitting written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House, transfer his authority to the Vice President on a temporary basis. This is more commonly known as voluntary withdrawal.
That was 1967. Dick Cheney, aged 26, was newly married and enjoying his fifth draft deferment from the Vietnam War. He was two years away from the start of his political career as an intern for the Nixon Administration. He was a good twenty years away from becoming Secretary of Defense. He was not the Vice President.
The 25th Amendment has been in effect for 40 years. Let's review the history of Section Three.
In 1985, Ronald Reagan underwent a colonoscopy. The President was told that he would have to enter surgery within two weeks to remove a precancerous lesion. Reagan debated evoking the 25th Amendment, transferring power to George H.W. Bush. He made it clear that he did not want to set the wrong precedent. Historians still debate whether he truly did transfer power to the Vice President. The written statement did not specifically mention Section 3.
That was July 13, 1985.
In 2002, President George Bush underwent a colonoscopy. Prior to the colonoscopy, he transferred authority to Dick Cheney, citing Section 3 of the 25th Amendment.
Otherwise, Section 3 has never been evoked by a sitting U.S. President.
Until today.
Again, prior to a routine colonoscopy, President Bush transferred his powers to Dick Cheney at 7:16 a.m.
No word yet whether the necessary follow-up letters have been sent to Speaker Pelosi or President Pro Tempore Byrd. For all intents and purposes, as noted this morning by a White House spokesman, "The Vice President is now serving as acting President."
May God be with us and protect us in this our time of need.
Vaya con Dios - Ordinary Skill
Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Senator Bayh and Representative Celler proposed (and the states later ratified) the 25th Amendment of the United States Constitution. Section Three of the amendment states that the President may, by transmitting written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office to the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House, transfer his authority to the Vice President on a temporary basis. This is more commonly known as voluntary withdrawal.
That was 1967. Dick Cheney, aged 26, was newly married and enjoying his fifth draft deferment from the Vietnam War. He was two years away from the start of his political career as an intern for the Nixon Administration. He was a good twenty years away from becoming Secretary of Defense. He was not the Vice President.
The 25th Amendment has been in effect for 40 years. Let's review the history of Section Three.
In 1985, Ronald Reagan underwent a colonoscopy. The President was told that he would have to enter surgery within two weeks to remove a precancerous lesion. Reagan debated evoking the 25th Amendment, transferring power to George H.W. Bush. He made it clear that he did not want to set the wrong precedent. Historians still debate whether he truly did transfer power to the Vice President. The written statement did not specifically mention Section 3.
That was July 13, 1985.
In 2002, President George Bush underwent a colonoscopy. Prior to the colonoscopy, he transferred authority to Dick Cheney, citing Section 3 of the 25th Amendment.
Otherwise, Section 3 has never been evoked by a sitting U.S. President.
Until today.
Again, prior to a routine colonoscopy, President Bush transferred his powers to Dick Cheney at 7:16 a.m.
No word yet whether the necessary follow-up letters have been sent to Speaker Pelosi or President Pro Tempore Byrd. For all intents and purposes, as noted this morning by a White House spokesman, "The Vice President is now serving as acting President."
May God be with us and protect us in this our time of need.
Vaya con Dios - Ordinary Skill
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
[T]error
This is merely a placeholder.
I'm getting tired of the government's lack of straight talk concerning the likelihood of another terrorist attack on American soil (which any rational thinker would know is 1). Most recently, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security told the Chicago Tribune that there was an increased risk of such an attach this summer. How does Michael Chertoff know this?
His gut told him so.
The next day, the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee sent Chertoff a letter. It asked, "what color code in the Homeland Security Advisory System is associated with a 'gut feeling'?" The letter also went on about the tens of billions of dollars that have been spent to increase capacity to secure the "homeland." Blah, blah, blah.
I work in a building where a few years ago, an Al Qaeda operative sat for several days, tallying how many children played in the atrium at certain hours. The building sits on stilts and rises more than 50 stories into the air in midtown Manhattan. It's existence was even erased from Google Maps for a while. I also take the subway to work, which according to Ron Suskind came within 45 days of a hydrogen cyanide gas attack using a mubtakkar (Arabic for "inventive"). The attack was called off, and there was no public explanation for why. Except this: the media got one thing right after the story broke: it contacted the appropriate experts and reported casualty estimates for such an attack: 3,000 people if the several "inventives" functioned according to spec. This was simply not catastrophic enough to follow September 11th. Al Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden in particular, has always underscored the importance of incrementally increasing the pain endured by the United States until it is forced to reassess certain geopolitical stances. Given this simple logic, and the network's track record for patient planning across many years, one might ask, what did the organization decide to wait patiently to execute that would prove more damaging than a subway gas attack? And what does our man in charge's "gut" have to say about this?
Of course, everything that I just wrote might be complete fantasy. After all, it comes from books and reports and hearsay. Such sources, in the right combination, fail to conjure the legitimacy they once held over the American public. But the question remains: New Yorkers were possibly days away from being gassed and my building's blueprints were found on a laptop in a cave in Afghanistan - what should we do about this elevated gut?
I intend to take a first step: since libraries are out of vogue, crumbling, abandoned, or seriously out of date, I will go to Barnes & Noble, gather a handful of the best sources I can find in plain view, and sit in a chair for 90 minutes. From there I intend to compile a more realistic assessment of my city's threat level than has been provided by the media. Of course, I won't come close to the data mining capabilities of our Department of Homeland Security. But that isn't the point. The point is to simply outperform the media. To provide you, Dear Reader, with better intel than CNN, MSNBC, and others have shared with you.
Consider the most current reporting on CNN's website, which represents some of the best coverage in that it asks a couple of tough questions. The story is called "On the Scene: The bottom line on threat reports - Is America safer?" The writer tried his best to get answers. He "pushed" a Bush aide on the most recent National Intelligence Estimate that "Al Qaeda will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities" in Iraq to launch an attack within the U.S. The reporter added that a Senate Intelligence Committee report mentioned that Bush was warned before Operation Iraqi Freedom that preemptive war with Iraq could give Al Qaeda influence within Iraq, influence that the network historically did not have. The aide answered:
"every time you poke the hornets' nest they are bound to come back and push back on you"
That's right, kids. An admission from the White House Homeland Security Advisory that we're dealing with not one head, or even a hydra, but a hornets' nest. In Iraq. That didn't exist prior to the war. And that cannot be stopped by a decapitation strike (setting aside for the moment our failure to do even this much in Tora Bora).
Next up, the article recounts an exchange between one of the author's colleagues and White House spokesman Tony Snow (former guest host of the Rush Limbaugh Show and the O'Reilly Factor) about Bush's claim that Iraq is the "central front in the war on terror." Whither Northern Pakistan? Tony was asked. And why don't we pursue the terrorists where we know they will be found, along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan? Tony replied:
"When you talk about the U.S. going in there, you don't blithely go into another nation and conduct operations."
Ahem.
The former talk show host later mused for all to hear that Al Qaeda is "weaker" than it was in the past, even weaker than "a month ago." Yet the new Intelligence Estimate says that the group has for the most part reconstituted. And the National Counterterrorism Center recently reported that Al Qaeda has "regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001." And then there is this elevated gut indicator (GI). What led to Secretary Chertoff's indigestion? No specific intelligence, we are told. Only "several factors," which were reported as (a) the group's increased freedom to train; (b) an increase in public statements by their leadership; (c) their proclivity for Summertime attacks; and (d) increased activity in Europe and Africa (more attacks, more "homegrown" operatives in those regions). Factors that have lined up many a time before, with the possible exception of "increased freedom." Where is this increased freedom: in IRAQ and PAKISTAN. Why is there increased freedom for the evildoers within those two nations? Because we invaded one and chose not to invade and diverted attention and resources away from the other. This is about all we can deduce from the media for why we should be extra worried this summer.
So to recap: Al Qaeda as strong as in 2001. New leverage in Iraq. Increased freedom of movement within Pakistan and Iraq, among other places. Many of our spy satellites repositioned over the Iraqi theater to focus on the surge (which, by the way, was announced months ago but the White House argued this week is only "three weeks old"). Resources stretched thin. Elevated gut. What do municipalities do to prepare? How should they optimize resource allocation? What do we do?
I'm getting tired of the government's lack of straight talk concerning the likelihood of another terrorist attack on American soil (which any rational thinker would know is 1). Most recently, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security told the Chicago Tribune that there was an increased risk of such an attach this summer. How does Michael Chertoff know this?
His gut told him so.
The next day, the Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee sent Chertoff a letter. It asked, "what color code in the Homeland Security Advisory System is associated with a 'gut feeling'?" The letter also went on about the tens of billions of dollars that have been spent to increase capacity to secure the "homeland." Blah, blah, blah.
I work in a building where a few years ago, an Al Qaeda operative sat for several days, tallying how many children played in the atrium at certain hours. The building sits on stilts and rises more than 50 stories into the air in midtown Manhattan. It's existence was even erased from Google Maps for a while. I also take the subway to work, which according to Ron Suskind came within 45 days of a hydrogen cyanide gas attack using a mubtakkar (Arabic for "inventive"). The attack was called off, and there was no public explanation for why. Except this: the media got one thing right after the story broke: it contacted the appropriate experts and reported casualty estimates for such an attack: 3,000 people if the several "inventives" functioned according to spec. This was simply not catastrophic enough to follow September 11th. Al Qaeda, and Osama bin Laden in particular, has always underscored the importance of incrementally increasing the pain endured by the United States until it is forced to reassess certain geopolitical stances. Given this simple logic, and the network's track record for patient planning across many years, one might ask, what did the organization decide to wait patiently to execute that would prove more damaging than a subway gas attack? And what does our man in charge's "gut" have to say about this?
Of course, everything that I just wrote might be complete fantasy. After all, it comes from books and reports and hearsay. Such sources, in the right combination, fail to conjure the legitimacy they once held over the American public. But the question remains: New Yorkers were possibly days away from being gassed and my building's blueprints were found on a laptop in a cave in Afghanistan - what should we do about this elevated gut?
I intend to take a first step: since libraries are out of vogue, crumbling, abandoned, or seriously out of date, I will go to Barnes & Noble, gather a handful of the best sources I can find in plain view, and sit in a chair for 90 minutes. From there I intend to compile a more realistic assessment of my city's threat level than has been provided by the media. Of course, I won't come close to the data mining capabilities of our Department of Homeland Security. But that isn't the point. The point is to simply outperform the media. To provide you, Dear Reader, with better intel than CNN, MSNBC, and others have shared with you.
Consider the most current reporting on CNN's website, which represents some of the best coverage in that it asks a couple of tough questions. The story is called "On the Scene: The bottom line on threat reports - Is America safer?" The writer tried his best to get answers. He "pushed" a Bush aide on the most recent National Intelligence Estimate that "Al Qaeda will probably seek to leverage the contacts and capabilities" in Iraq to launch an attack within the U.S. The reporter added that a Senate Intelligence Committee report mentioned that Bush was warned before Operation Iraqi Freedom that preemptive war with Iraq could give Al Qaeda influence within Iraq, influence that the network historically did not have. The aide answered:
"every time you poke the hornets' nest they are bound to come back and push back on you"
That's right, kids. An admission from the White House Homeland Security Advisory that we're dealing with not one head, or even a hydra, but a hornets' nest. In Iraq. That didn't exist prior to the war. And that cannot be stopped by a decapitation strike (setting aside for the moment our failure to do even this much in Tora Bora).
Next up, the article recounts an exchange between one of the author's colleagues and White House spokesman Tony Snow (former guest host of the Rush Limbaugh Show and the O'Reilly Factor) about Bush's claim that Iraq is the "central front in the war on terror." Whither Northern Pakistan? Tony was asked. And why don't we pursue the terrorists where we know they will be found, along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan? Tony replied:
"When you talk about the U.S. going in there, you don't blithely go into another nation and conduct operations."
Ahem.
The former talk show host later mused for all to hear that Al Qaeda is "weaker" than it was in the past, even weaker than "a month ago." Yet the new Intelligence Estimate says that the group has for the most part reconstituted. And the National Counterterrorism Center recently reported that Al Qaeda has "regrouped to an extent not seen since 2001." And then there is this elevated gut indicator (GI). What led to Secretary Chertoff's indigestion? No specific intelligence, we are told. Only "several factors," which were reported as (a) the group's increased freedom to train; (b) an increase in public statements by their leadership; (c) their proclivity for Summertime attacks; and (d) increased activity in Europe and Africa (more attacks, more "homegrown" operatives in those regions). Factors that have lined up many a time before, with the possible exception of "increased freedom." Where is this increased freedom: in IRAQ and PAKISTAN. Why is there increased freedom for the evildoers within those two nations? Because we invaded one and chose not to invade and diverted attention and resources away from the other. This is about all we can deduce from the media for why we should be extra worried this summer.
So to recap: Al Qaeda as strong as in 2001. New leverage in Iraq. Increased freedom of movement within Pakistan and Iraq, among other places. Many of our spy satellites repositioned over the Iraqi theater to focus on the surge (which, by the way, was announced months ago but the White House argued this week is only "three weeks old"). Resources stretched thin. Elevated gut. What do municipalities do to prepare? How should they optimize resource allocation? What do we do?
Meet me at Barnes and Noble.
To be continued...
Vaya con Dios - Ordinary Skill
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
