1977! Yr. obdt. was 16, Jimmy Carter was in the White House, people were lining up to buy gas, and David Bowie had just released his studio album Heroes. Here, from that album, is Let’s Dance.
Category Archives: Culture
Culture for the cultured and uncultured alike.
Goodbye, Blue Monday
An amazing scientific achievement was recently realized when a small probe semi-successfully landed on a comet. But that’s not what I’m going to discuss today.
What I am going to discuss is the silly, completely disproportionate and irrational response of some to the shirt worn by team member Matt Taylor at a press conference announcing the 
event. For reference, here is the shirt:
It’s a custom made shirt, crafted for Mr. Taylor by a close – female – friend, and it depicts a bunch of comic-book women, some in a state of semi-dress.
Which, by the way, is nothing unusual in the comic book world.
Thanks to the screeching of humorless, vapid nonentities, Mr. Taylor was forced to go before the cameras again, to apologize for the shirt.
Now, in most of the businesses in which yr. obdt. does consulting work, the now nearly ubiquitous business casual dress code would balk at such a shirt – as it would balk at a shirt showing male comic characters, as lacking the decorum required in a business environment. But that’s not relevant here; what is relevant is how the peripatetic-ally thin-skinned are so quick to screech their outrage at the silliest provocations.
There is only one proper reply to such screeching, and it is most eloquently put by the South Park anti-hero Eric Cartman:
Mr. Taylor was wrong to apologize. He should have adopted what I will henceforth call the Cartman Gambit in reply to the hysterical outrage – “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”
Another example, from a few years back; in 1999, an Imperial City mayoral aide, David Howard, was forced to resign his position after using the word “niggardly” in a private meeting. (To be fair, Mr. Howard was later rehired.) For those who do not know the word, here’s the definition from Merriam-Webster:
nig·gard·ly
adjective \-lē\
: hating to spend money
: very small in amount
Mr. Howard’s use of the term was taken by some irrational – and probably only marginally literate – attendees as a racial slur, when in fact the word comes from the Middle English words “nig” and “ignon,” which have the primary meaning of “miser.”
No racial connotation in that word. None.
Again, the Cartman Gambit was not invoked. But there can be no rational response to the irrational. Apologies, though, should not be tendered. This only serves to feed the beast, and then the next hysterical cry of outrage will be over something even more inoffensive.
Tangled Up In Blue.
This may well be one of the best songs ever written.
Animal’s Hump Day Meat-Eating News
Here’s an interesting tidbit from PJMedia’s peripatetic undercover man-on-the-street Zombie: I Am Ashamed To Be A Vegetarian. Excerpt:
I’m a vegetarian. I haven’t eaten meat in 20 years.
Up until this morning I was OK with my dietary choice.
But then I saw this video just uploaded by “Direct Action Everywhere,” a radical vegetarian activist gang, and now I am ashamed. Ashamed to be associated with them. Ashamed that everyone I meet must think I’m some sort of anti-meat revolutionary. Ashamed that mean-spirited lunatics have hijacked my personal food preference and turned it into rallyng cry for passive-aggressive bullying.
Watch and weep, as a contingent of vegetarian fascists burst into a random restaurant in San Francisco and try to pull some kind of creepy mind-game on the bewildered diners:
Watch the video. It’s a hoot.
Speaking as the guy who actually wrote the book about these people, this protest is typical – factless, clueless, and achieving nothing but an unearned sense of moral superiority on the part of the protestors, with no real effort on their part. (See my own PJMedia article on the topic of “ethical veganism for some idea of what a real effort might entail.“)
Personally I prefer to hunt my own protein. Only last Sunday all of us here at the Casa de Animal enjoyed venison burritos for supper, using up some of the last of last year’s fat meat muley. This coming Friday loyal sidekick Rat and yr. obdt. will pack up high-powered rifles and sidearms and take to the field again to pursue wild ungulates, with the intent of killing and eating them. Don’t like it, “vegans?”
Tough shit.
But, I digress. Let’s get back to Zombie’s protestors.
The proper reaction on the part of the restaurant owner in this case would have been one sentence: “Get the hell out.” The incident described took place in looney San Francisco, however, where rational reactions are the exception rather than the rule.
Make no mistake about the ultimate goal of these people; given the opportunity, they would use the force of law to prevent you from eating meat. The “vegan” movement is, at its heart, fundamentally anti-choice; they are fundamentally against that very basic bit of individual liberty.
Fortunately they are a small part of the nation’s lunatic fringe. Let’s hope they stay that way.
Animal’s Daily News
Here’s an interesting bit on the weird dichotomy of the Golden State, from one who knows, the always-worth-reading Dr. Victor Davis Hanson. Excerpt:
California is run from a sort of Pacific Versailles, an isolated coastal compound of elite rulers physically cut off from its interior peasantry.
To understand how California works — or rather does not work — drive over the I-5 Grapevine and gaze down at the brilliantly engineered artificial Pyramid Lake. Thanks to California water project deliveries, even in a third year of drought its level still fluctuates between 90 to 100% full — ensuring, along with its companion reservoirs, plentiful water for the Los Angeles-area municipalities for the next two years. The far distant watersheds and reservoirs that feed Pyramid Lake are about bone dry.
The same disconnect is true of Crystal Springs Reservoir along the I-280 near San Francisco. The Sierra watershed that supplies the now 90%+full lake is drying up. But San Francisco will have an assured water supply from its manmade reservoirs for some time, even if the drought persists.
One of then central tenets of the personal Philosophy of Animal is that the government governs best that governs least, and that government should be as local as possible.
This is why.
Witness the results when a cabal of uber-wealthy coastal elites make well-meaning policy that so adversely affects the hoi polloi in the interior. As disconnected from the normal people of most of the state as Louis XVI was from the peasantry of France, this coastal elite has led California into fiscal insolvency.
Dr. Hanson concludes:
But for now in our pyramidal state, there is a Versailles elite on the coast, and a let-them-eat-cake mass everywhere else.
Do you remember what happened to Louis XVI? I wonder if Jerry Brown does.
Animal’s Daily Scottish News
Will Scotland vote to break up the United Kingdom? It’s looking a bit more likely. Excerpt:
Scottish independence increasingly looks like an iceberg that could sink Prime Minister David Cameron’s government and the opposition Labour Party. And like the passengers on the Titanic, they never saw it coming.
Yesterday’s YouGov Plc poll putting the Yes vote on 51 percent sparked a fresh effort from supporters of the union to urge Scots to come back from the brink. About 100 Labour lawmakers will travel to Scotland this week to campaign for a No vote, while Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne offered more powers over taxes and spending to the Scottish Parliament — if voters opt to stay part of the U.K.
This is something that’s been simmering since the days of William Wallace, of course, and will have some pretty serious implications for the United Kingdom and the European Community (Will Scotland go on the Euro or keep their own currency? Will there be a Scottish pound?)
There is a similar separatist movement closer to us here in the States, too; maybe Scotland and Quebec could compare notes.
Scotland and Quebec do share some commonalities; a distinct culture (although English-speaking Scotland lacks the major difference of Francophone Quebec) and a contentious history with the containing country. There are probably as many Quebecois who remember General Louis-Joseph de Montcalm and the Plains of Abraham as there are Scots remember William Wallace and Falkirk.
The Quebecois separatists have been quiet of late. Scotland – well, it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
Animal’s Hump Day News
Well, in the wake of the round of legalizations, you can now get pot soda. Excerpt:
A cannabis-infused fizzy drink is now on sale in the state of Washington as part of the ever-expanding US market for legal pot products.
Less than two months after recreational cannabis became legal in the west coast state, Washingtonians can now get their highs out of a soda bottle.
The drinks, called Legal, come in cherry, lemon and pomegranate flavours but are all infused with 10mg of liquid cannabis. The drinks cost around $10 (£6).
They are being marketed as a gentler alternative to smoking that could be attractive to those still wary about cannabis.
As marijuana becomes legal more places (as yr. obdt. suspects will happen) we’ll start seeing more of this kind of thing. In our own Colorado we are already seeing cannabis in a plethora of forms; in candies, in oils, in the inevitable baked goods (brownies and more) and in the traditional smokeable form.
The free market is a wonderful thing.
The linked article concludes:
For now the fizzy drinks will only be sold in Washington’s certified cannabis dispensaries but could one day be available on supermarket shelves.
Recreational cannabis became legal in Washington state in July, making it the second state to legalise cannabis after Colorado began sales in January.
Voters in Alaska and Oregon, Washington’s neighbouring state, will have their say on similar measures during referenda in November.
There is every reason to expect the measure will pass in Oregon. It may well pass in notoriously hands-off Alaska, too. This is a social trend that has legs. They may be a bit unsteady, but they are there.
Animal’s Daily Burger News
Want to see a possible consequence of a minimum-wage hike? Meet the Burger Robot. Excerpt:
I saw the future of work in a San Francisco garage two years ago. Or rather, I was in proximity to the future of work, but happened to be looking the other direction.
At the time, I was visiting a space startup building satellites behind a carport. But just behind them—a robot was cooking up burgers. The inventors of the burger device? Momentum Machines, and they’re serious about fast food productivity.
“Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient,” cofounder Alexandros Vardakostas has said. “It’s meant to completely obviate them.”
As a burger aficionado, I wonder if the automated Burger-O-Matic will produce adequate burgers while never producing some of the idiosyncrasies that can make a burger truly great.
Which brings me to Soldotna, Alaska, and the greatest burger in North America.
If, True Believers, you ever find yourselves wandering Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, go to the small town of Soldotna, on the Homer Highway between Sterling and Ninilchik. On the main drag you will find Hooligan’s Saloon, and in Hooligan’s Saloon you will find the best 
burger in North America. It’s not on the menu, and you have to be there on a day when the chief cook, Todd, is in residence. But on that happy day you can request a Todd’s Burger, a masterpiece of a grilled half-pound beef patty on a sourdough roll, with bacon, two kinds of cheese, and trimmings at your request.
Apparently the secret to the Todd’s Burger consists of various ingredients mixed into the ground beef prior to pattification. I have no idea what those ingredients might be, nor do I intend to try to find out – some mysteries should stay just that.
Animal’s Hump Day News
Let’s talk about more science stuff today; Anti-GMO Activists Are Harming Hungry Africans. Excerpt:
African crop yields lag well behind those of the world’s developed countries, and the continent’s food security is shaky at best. Starvation is an ever-present threat for many, and the impending effects of climate change loom ominously in the distance. But scientists have solutions, genetically modified crops that are resistant to droughts, pests, and disease, that, pending government approval, are ready for planting. Dismayingly, Luddite anti-GMO campaigners have smeared these potential problem-solvers as unsafe and unnatural, and as a result, to-date no African government has approved the use of GM crops.
Looking for a logical argument coming from the kind of eco-Luddites who oppose things like GMO crops and vaccines is like looking for a piece of straw in an enormous stack of needles, but even that isn’t the worst of it. The thing is this: Africa should be a wealthy continent. The place is huge; you could drop the United States and Russia into Africa and have room left over for a Europe or two. It has enormous mineral wealth, some of the world’s best farmlands, and plenty of manpower.
So, what’s holding Africa back?
Generations of fundamentally corrupt governments, for one thing. In some places – like Sudan – Islamic nutballery is a big part of the problem. But the West has limited ability to affect those things. What can we affect?
We could – and should – stop helping them.
Heartless? Not at all. The GMO controversy is just one way in which well-meaning but ignorant outsiders are preventing the spread of technology that could revolutionize African agriculture. And yes, the anti-GMO protestors are ignorant; no reputable study has ever found a threat to human health from GMO crops (see here and here.)
What’s interesting is that the anti-GMO nuts are almost invariably members of the political Left. I thought the political Left was supposed to be pro-science?
In all candor, in our country at least, this is probably more a symptom of the United States’ utter failure in basic science education than anything else.
Animal’s Daily News
Thanks as always to The Other McCain for our inclusion in the Sunday Rule Five index!
This morning, let’s look at some tidbits from the world of science.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Is a Fucking Idiot. ‘Nuff said.
Check out the vehicle that people could drive on Mars. I doubt you’ll see one at a showroom near you any time soon. Too bad.
The Secret of Natural Sandstone Arches. Sandstone arches, not Golden Arches; the only secret to the latter is how they manage to stay in business while serving such crappy food.
What Happened When A State Accidentally Legalized Prostitution. Thumbnail: Rape cases decreased. Specifically: “The statewide incidence of gonorrhea among women declined by 39 percent, and the number of rapes reported to police in the state declined by 31 percent, according to the paper.”
Finally, in answer to a question that nobody had ever asked until now: Scientists Use MRI to Measure Precisely How Your Butt Deforms When You Sit Down. Excerpt:
“The complex deformation of buttocks tissue seen in this case study may help explain the inconsistent results reported in finite element models. 3D imaging of the seated buttocks provides a unique opportunity to study the actual buttocks response to sitting.”
Uh… OK?
And on that note, we return you to your Tuesday, already in progress.