Bigger People, Smaller Population

BBC: X-treme Eating in the US

Chain restaurants in the United States are promoting dangerous "X-treme Eating", a US watchdog has said.
They are serving up "ever-more harmful new creations," the Center for Science in the Public Interest says... some individual dishes can exceed 2,000 calories, more than the recommended daily intake for women.

Gross? Yes it is. It's as if fast food and chain resturaunts are having a culinary arms race with each other over who can build the biggest arsenal of disgusting and deadly food. And like the objects of a real arms race, it seems the menus of these resturaunts can be measured in megatons.

But because of the horrid affront to healthfulness that it represents, I would argue that some unintended but quite beneficial consequences could come out of this "X-treme eating" trend.

The human population on Earth is expanding faster than it ever has - not only because of pure exponential reproduction, but also because of improving medical care and increasing life expectancies.

But the fact that a disgustingly large (pun intended) section of the population won't make it past middle age will help stem the growth of the population. Think about it: you don't see many obese senior citizens. For a healthy person, a retirement plan is a 401(k) and a condo in Florida; for an obese person, it's a heart attack and an XXL coffin.

And there also will be an added bonus for those of us who don't eat ourselves into oblivion. Since social security money all goes into one big pool, those of us who actually survive to retirement will get to enjoy more money, since there will be fewer people around to collect.

So if you're a fan of the Texas Double Whopper, by all means: bon appetit. Go ahead and block up those coronory arteries. And take up smoking while you're at it. We atheletes and vegetarians will be enjoying your social security money and the extra space in the neighborhood long after you've been buried in your big, fat grave.

Good Riddance to Bad Bile Farmers

BBC: Bears Eat Keeper Who Took Their Bile

Gee. I wonder why the bears were upset:

The bile is extracted in an excruciatingly painful process which involves slicing into the animal's flesh and "milking" the substance with a tube.

What the hell is the deal with traditional Chinese medicine's penchant for killing and abusing rhinos, tigers, bears, and other wildlife? Is it a traditional doctrine of theirs that to help humans you have to maim and torture innocent animals?

These traditional superstitions hold that the tiger penis and rhinoceros horn are aphrodisiacs, and that bear bile can be used as a versatile 'medicine'. Riiiiight. Clearly they got their MDs at Hopkins.

This is NOT a matter of cultural relativism - these practices should not be seen as acceptable simply because they cloak themselves in "tradition". This is a matter of sheer ignorant superstition being used to justify appalling immorality.

Go bears! Well done. That ignorant reprobate asswipe got exactly what he deserved: a dose of his own "medicine".

Your Diet and the Environment

There are two commonly-known reasons for vegetarianism: avoidance of killing animals, and a more healthful diet. But there is a lesser-known reason for vegetarianism that many people would find persuasive, were they only aware of it.

I'm referring to the environmental and economic impacts of eating meat. Raising animals for slaughter and subsequent consumption is the most ludicrously inefficient and wasteful process that the modern-day free market still tolerates.

To raise a cow for hamburger meat requires:
1. Abundant land for grazing
2. Years of time
3. Enough food and water every day to feed multiple people

Clearing land for livestock is one of the primary reasons for deforestation, rainforests included. Just look at how much rainforest Brazil has destroyed in order to clear land for the meat industry. Also, the majority of agricultural land in the world today grows crops not to feed humans directly, but to feed the animals that will feed humans. Sound insane?

The amount of months and years it takes for a cow to mature enough to become your hamburger could be spent gathering multiple harvests of fruits, grains, or vegetables. And the fact that we feed a cow, day in, day out, for several years, means that we're providing it with thousands of human meals - just in order to create a few dozen hamburgers.

Put it all together, and it means that if no one ate meat, we would only need a fraction of the land we use today for agriculture, we would have an overabundance of food in the world, and deforestation would all but come to an end (especially because the land we would no longer need for agriculture could be used for RE-forestation).

As Peter Singer writes:

Animals raised in sheds or on feed-lots eat grains or soybeans, and they use most of the food value of these products simply in order to maintain basic functions and develop unpalatable parts of the body like bones and skin. To convert eight or nine kilos of grain protein into a single kilo of animal protein wastes land, energy, and water. On a crowded planet with a growing human population, that is a luxury we are becoming increasingly unable to afford.

Want to fight global warming? Stop eating meat:

Intensive animal production is a heavy user of fossil fuels and a major source of pollution of both air and water. It releases large quantities of methane and other greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. We are risking unpredictable changes to the climate of our planet... for the sake of mere hamburgers. A diet heavy in animal products... is a disaster for animals, the environment, and the health of those who eat it.

So avoidance of cruelty to animals and better health aren't the only reasons for going vegetarian. If you claim to support the environment but continue to eat meat, you need to face up to the fact that your actions do not match your ideals.

Philosophy in Lost 2

I forgot about yet another character on Lost who is named for an Enlightenment philosopher. Rousseau, the strange woman who lives in the woods, is aptly named after Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Enlightenment thinker best known for his theories on nature versus society. As Rousseau lives in a "state of nature" and acts as a contrast to the island "societies" of the crash victims and the others, this is a perfectly chosen name.

Also, I found some info on how John Locke relates to his Lost namesake here. Seems his social theories and his personal biography may be more of a connection than his epistemic positions.

So, now the count is 4 Enlightenment philosophers! Who will be next? Spinoza? Berkeley? Voltaire? I can't imagine them incorporating a Gottfried Leibniz. Maybe Adam Smith, though - that name sounds commonplace enough.

Philosophy in Lost

Lost is a great TV series, and no wonder: this season it's become clear that at least someone on the writing staff is a fan of Enlightenment philosophy! The character John Locke has been around since season one, and there's no mistaking that reference. But this season two more philosophic names have come to light: Desmond, whose full name is Desmond David Hume, and a peripheral character (from Juliet's backstory - her boss and ex-boyfriend) named Edmund Burke.

They sure aren't subtle about drawing these references to Enlightenment thinkers. So what does it all mean? Well, one prominent theme in the show is the mystery of the island. Both John Locke and David Hume contributed much to the study of epistemology (the study of knowledge), so perhaps there's a connection there. But both Hume and Locke were empiricists - relying on only the senses for a foundation of knowledge - whereas in the show, John is characterized by faith in some kind of unfathomable destiny, and Desmond seems to have the power of foresight, so the similarities seem limited.

Burke was a political thinker, primarily known for his opposition to the French Revolution. Unclear what the connection there is. He was also British, though - suppose that's something.

So now we know that two main characters are named after British empiricists. We'll have to see where they go with this. If a new character named George Berkeley shows up, we'll know something's really afoot.

"Tragic and misguided" indeed

Associated Press: Catholics Attack NYC's Free Condoms

NEW YORK - New York's top Catholic leaders on Thursday sharply criticized the city for "blanketing our neighborhoods with condoms," saying city officials were promoting promiscuity and degrading society by distributing subway-themed condoms.

The plan, the Catholic leaders said, "is tragic and misguided," adding that the only way to protect against sexually transmitted diseases is through abstinence before marriage and fidelity among married couples.

Religion has an amazing capacity for utterly disregarding any fact which it deems inconvenient. The only way to protect against STDs is through abstinence and marital fidelity? Um... no. No. No, that is simply a false statement. It's not open to debate.

We - and by "we" I refer to people with even a cursory, high-school-level knowledge of biology - have known for quite some time that sheathing a penis in latex will prevent male bodily fluids from getting out and female body fluids from getting in. No fluid transmission means no disease transmission. Quod erat demonstrandum.

And yet the Catholics talk about it as if it's a matter of opinion! It is not - it is a matter of fact, of empirical reality. Understandably, this makes Catholics nervous, because faith isn't very useful when facts and reality are involved. Faith is always employed as a vehicle to escape those things.

Catholics don't want you to have sex unless you satisfy two necessary and sufficient conditions: 1) you're married, and 2) you are copulating with the express intention to produce offspring.

This is pure stupidity. Waiting to have sex until marriage is not only a hopelessly unrealistic expectation for society at large, it is a bad starting point for any individual marriage. You really want people staying together partially because they don't know how good or bad sex would be with other people? Seems to me that the mere ignorance of something better would be a terrible foundation for a relationship.

And the Church also conveniently disregards the fact that sex is both natural and fun. It is an essential aspect of life, and it is something to indulge in, as much as eating a good meal or sleeping soundly. And no matter how much the Church may try to reduce sex to its most practical, functional role - the propagation of the species - they must admit that no one can ever have sex purely for that purpose. Sex always requires a male erection - you can't have sex without at least some desire (self-loathing as it may be). Our friend evolution made sure of that. Haha - science wins.

The Catholic Church, like so many other religions, is desperately trying to cling to its ancient heritage of superstition, willful scientific ignorance, and the reduction of women's roles in society to that of pious baby factories. But even the Church's priests sometimes realize that no one can live a full life without a little lust. Unfortunately, their minds twisted with years of repression, these priests then turn to pedaresty as their sexual outlet. Maybe they avoid women because they think condoms are a bigger evil than statutory rape.

Fullscreen

It was time to relax. I had it all ready: the bag of popcorn, the large glass of cranberry juice, the fluffed-up pillows on my futon, and my feet up on the table. The feature presentation of the evening was to be Million Dollar Baby, a critically acclaimed film that I'd long been eager to watch. I had borrowed it that day for free from the Middletown Public Library.

But then, just as I was ready to settle down into two hours of cinematic bliss, I looked at the DVD box. To my disdain, to my consternation, to my horror, was that loathsome word: FULLSCREEN.

After unleashing a violent series of expletives, I got up, put on my jacket, went downstairs, drove to Blockbuster, paid $4.50 for a rental of the widescreen version of the film, came back, and resumed my evening.

An extreme reaction? Hardly. When I watch a movie, I like to watch the actual movie, not the fake hackjob version. There is no surer way of raping the artistic work of a cinematographer than to render a film into a fullscreen edition.

Movies these days are usually shot in a 16:9 ratio (sometimes in even more rectangular ratios like 2.35:1). This is the rectangular shape of the movie that is projected on movie screens; it is the movie as it was shot and as it is meant to be seen.

Most televisions, however, are still more of a square shape (4:3 ratio) than a rectangular shape. And, as anyone who graduated from kindergarten will tell you, a rectangle will not fit into a square. So if you want to watch a film on your TV, you've got two options: shrink the rectangle down so that it will fit inside the square, or chop off the sides of the rectangle and force it to fit.

The former method accounts for the "letterbox" format of widescreen, with black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. The latter method is fullscreen.

Rendering a movie into fullscreen can cut out up to 45% of the original picture. That's right - you're literally seeing only two-thirds or less of the movie you're watching! And any attempt at artfully setting up shots is completely compromised.

For instance, I grew up loving the Indiana Jones films, and watching them all the time on VHS. The VHS tapes I had were fullscreen versions of the films. When the DVDs finally came out a few years back, I got to see the widescreen versions - and what a difference! I remember one particular shot in Raiders of the Lost Ark, a head-and-shoulders shot of Indy. In the fullscreen version he's simply in the middle of the frame - not a very interesting shot. In the widescreen version, however, he's only on one side of the screen - the entire right side of the shot is a beautiful background panorama. That's how the shot was meant to be seen.

It's not just artistic visions, however, that fullscreen versions compromise; sometimes you miss vital plot elements. Consider this info from Wikipedia's article on Pan and Scan:

Pan and Scan versions of DVDs are often called Fullscreen. But this method can also severely alter compositions and therefore dramatic effects.
For instance, in the film Jaws, the shark can be seen approaching for several seconds more in the widescreen version than in the pan and scan version. For the opening crawl [of text] in each Star Wars film, on the pan and scan versions the viewer has to wait until a line of text of the opening crawl reaches the center of the screen to read through that whole line. On the widescreen versions, each line of the opening crawl text appears in its entirety beginning at the bottom of the screen.

Additionally, in Indiana Jones (I don't know why I'm choosing all these examples from Spielberg), there's a scene in Raiders where Indy is sitting down in a bar with Belloq, the villain. At the end of the scene, all the Arabs in the bar suddenly pull out guns and point them at Indy. But in the widescreen version, this is foreshadowed by a hand in the right foreground handing off a pistol to another mysterious hand. A small detail perhaps, but an interesting one that heightens tension, and leads up to the climax of the scene. And yet it's simply lost in the fullscreen version.

Fullscreen versions of films should not exist at all, and they wouldn't if directors had their way. But there are too many idiots in this country who think that if the picture doesn't fill their screen, they're missing out. They have it backwards: they don't realize that when they watch fullscreen they're missing a third of the movie.

So remember: friends don't let friends watch fullscreen. When you watch a movie, watch the whole movie.

Links

A new addition to the Learned Pig: links! Click on them to acquire knowledge and support just causes!

Extraneous Apostrophes Sold Here

Part 3 in my ongoing series of pictures of ruined English:

Four-wheeler is sold here. Yes, just one. It's a limited-time offer.

Finally?

In a preview of the ten o'clock news during a break from House tonight, I heard a news anchor ask the following question:

"Coming up, the deep freeze, day 2: how long until we finally get some relief?"

Finally? Did I hear that correctly? Finally? Are you functionally retarded? I seem to remember that autumn lasted through mid-January this year. How soon we forget.

"Finally get some relief" from two days of actual winter. Ha! Now THAT'S the kind of absurdist sensationalism you can find only in the American media.

America Runs On Cholesterol

Have you seen those "America Runs On Dunkin'" ads for Dunkin' Donuts? They're narrated by John Goodman. John Goodman! Not only a fat man, but a fat man who even distinctly sounds fat. You can hear his bulging neckline putting pressure on his windpipe as he tells you about the new sausage and cheese monstrosities that Dunkin' Donuts wants to pass off for breakfast food.

Their food looks heart-attack-inducing enough; why would Dunkin' Donuts choose a narrator whose chubby voice merely highlights that fact? Don't they get that it's ironic to choose a spokesman who could serve equally well as a poster boy for the unhealthful effects of the food? It's as if the commercials are meant to be cautionary messages brought to you by the American Heart Association.

For Man Alone

In the course of their constant efforts to erase the line between Church and State, conservatives in the US often argue that the founding fathers were Christian, and intended America to be a Christian country.

This mythical nonsense can be proven false in a number of ways: by remembering that the founding fathers were deists, not Christians; by recognizing that Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison disliked Christian dogma for the simple reason that it held a tyranny over the mind, just as King George had held a tyranny over the colonies; or by acknowledging the emphasis the fathers placed on Enlightenment rationalism as the guiding light through the darkness of superstition.

But nowhere is the founding father's secular humanism more evident, and their desire for a separation of Church and State more obvious, than in the Constitution itself. The US Constitution makes no mention of God - a conspicuous omission in an age when kings still derived their legitimacy from the blessing of the Lord.

Why this omission? Robert Ingersoll, the great 19th-century agnostic orator, explained why the founders insisted on leaving God out of the Constitution - and therefore out of politics:

They knew that to put God in the Constitution was to put man out. They knew that the recognition of a Deity would be seized upon by fanatics and zealots as a pretext for destroying the liberty of thought. They knew the terrible history of the church too well to place in her keeping, or in the keeping of her God, the sacred rights of man. They intended that all should have the right to worship, or not to worship; that our laws should make no distinction on account of creed. They intended to found and frame a government for man, and for man alone. They wished to preserve the individuality of all; to prevent the few from governing the many, and the many from persecuting and destroying the few.

On Meat and Meatheads

A disturbing recent trend I've noticed in fast-food commercials has been to target the male demographic by portraying the consumption of processed dead animal flesh as an eminently masculine activity.

In other words, if you're a guy, fast-food companies want you to know that MEAT IS MANLY.

One such commercial, for Quizno's subs I think, features several average-joe types (construction workers, cops, and so on) being polled on a city street. They're each shown two sandwiches - a Quizno's and a Subway's - for which they provide deft and insightful commentary, like "Meat, no meat!" or "Lotta meat. Lotttta meat."

Another commercial features Jared, the most vapid icon in food advertising, extolling the virtues of Subway sandwiches like he usually does. But this time, he's joined by some testosterone-charged pro wrestler, and while Jared is excited about how Subway sandwiches have low fat, the wrestler is all about how they've got "More meat. MORE MEAT!"

The final commercial I've noticed in this emerging genre is a Burger King commercial with some asstard singing about how he likes eating beef because he's a man. (As you can see, this kind of marketing isn't big on subtlety.) The whole time the song's going on, every kind of loser that's ever boasted a Y chromosome is celebrating in the streets by flexing muscles, cheering, punching friends, and eating burgers. The insufferable song, featuring inventive lyrics like "Wave chick food bye-bye, now it's for whopper beef I reach!", ends with the triumphant exclaimation, "I am hungry! I AM MAN!"

As you can see, men love meat. Yes, that's what men do. Eat meat. And drink beer, and catcall at women, and watch football, and scratch their hairy asses.

I gave up eating meat over two years ago, so I'm no longer a man. In the popular view this is an insult, but once one realizes that the popular view of being a man amounts to being a loutish idiot with a gut and high blood pressure, being less manly quickly becomes a positive virtue.

This meathead bullshit is to men what the valley-girl is for women: stupid, annoying, and something to which anyone with a brain would want to take exception. Women aren't the only ones who face demeaning sexual stereotypes.

On Lite Reading

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason: they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

-Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832)