Fair is Fair

One Week Since I Posted Here....

You can certainly sing the Barenaked Ladies song, if you must. Me, I was never a huge fan of theirs back when it was new. I did, however, enjoy the Weird Al parody...but that's a story for another day.

“The basement is closed at 11” Fuck that! It's bad enough that the internet connection gets axed at 11:30, but now I'm no longer allowed to write up my blog on this computer up until then? It's but a trifle to type up a second half, and post it as an edit, but should I really have to? I have been living under the assumption that I will be able to go to university and live at home for at least a while, but that seems less and less possible. I know that it's probably for the best, as I will get a lot more sleep this way, but that does not mean that I appreciate it in the least

But enough winging about that, because I promised myself that I would never let my Blog get bogged down with whiny self-pity and the like.

Fortunately...

I have something worthwile to talk about: DOING SOMETHING. Those of you familiar with philosophy (existentialism, in particular) will get a kick out of this URL here. You don't need to sign up to browse a short list of actions (I went this route), so take a gander at it. The long and short of it is that a lot of them are “small acts of kindness”, or even “random acts of kindness”, or simply “easy acts of kindness”. What do you do now? Uh, try 'em out, perhaps? If any sumbitch wanders across that page, and decides that there is no place in their schedule for such superfluous niceness, I want to bitchslap them; we all have the time, we just find it easier to ignore that fact.

At this point, I must also link you to the site from which I linked to the above. At a bus stop today, I happened upon a few of those lovely people who stand out in the cold, for the sole purpose of informing you with some free literature. No, not those Freaky Fanatics with their mini-gospels! These were the happy, orange-clad, Engineers Without Borders types, and they were handing out a ficticious newspaper, dated this day 2025. The headline? “Worldwide celebrations: End of extreme poverty declared”. It may be optimistic, it may be unfeasable...but why say such things? “Extreme poverty” is defined as living on less than $1 per day. There are currently 1.2 Billion people (according to this lovely paper here). You would think that those of us who comprise the other ~5 Billion could scare up AT THE VERY LEAST enough to double that figure. That would cost maybe $300 per person per year. Compare that to tuition of as much as $20K a year (which is, I will grant, more than is strictly necessary, but if you want to go to certain schools, there is a price you pay). It's not a solution that would work all that well, but I meant it as a springboard. For a mere pittance ($7 a week), you could DOUBLE someone's income. Imagine what you could do for that person with some REAL money, and some volunteers, maybe some generous equipment donations. Yes, yes, this is what 'they' have been doing for years...why isn't poverty gone already? Perhaps it's because 'they' have been doing it, and not YOU. After all, if you want something done right...

It might be a small start, but I'm going to see what else besides coffee and chocolate can be bought fair-trade. Nothing tastes better than a fair deal. Nothing. (This is actually true. Fair trade, Organic chocolate is every bit as good as the regular stuff. Sure it costs more, but imagine someone was paying YOU less than $1 a day to break your back working. Fair trade starts to sound a little better, doesn't it?)

Take the red pill, not the red meat

Food For Thought

S.M.O. Recently posted a plea for people to stop idling their cars on her blog. It may be 2 or 3 down on the page by the time you read this, but it's there. I would like to advocate another small change that almost anyone can make, which could vastly decrease one's environmental impact. Eat less meat. That is all. I will justify this from both moral, and practical standpoints.

It is not inhumane to kill and eat another creature, supposing one kills it to enjoy sustenance, and not sadism. Predators and prey are central to creating balance in an ecosystem, since long before humans evolved. It is true that animals experience pain, and that we may comprehend this suffering. Does that not make it immoral to knowingly cause an animal pain? At the very least, we should limit the amount of suffering inflicted upon the prey. The food of all life is either in whole or in part derived from other life. Unless all eating is made immoral, killing an animal to eat it is not wrong...unless one values life based upon complexity, and our traditional food animals are protected. I dismiss that as logic of convenience, as the acceptable definition varies by culture. You might not kill and eat a dog or cat, but there are people who do.

If eating meat is not wrong, per se, why should you eat less? Because animals are not killed in any humane fashion (insofar as such a thing can exist). They have been (and according to the news today, still are) fed the ground remnants of their own predecessors in their food! They are kept in enclosed conditions, and given far too many drugs. I have no problem with the use of medicine, but overuse of antibiotics is dangerous. You can free your mind from any delusions you have about the meat industry here.

Ah, yes, and the environmental impact. If you didn't take grade 11 biology (and I won't blame you if you haven't!) I'll sum it up like this: plants are about 10% efficient at transforming solar energy into stored (ie. food) energy. Animals are 10% efficient at converting that energy into stored energy. 10% = .1, and .1 x .1 = .01. When you buy meat, it contains only one one-hundredth of the energy required to produce it (even less, taking into account transportation and packaging costs). You, too, are nearly 10% efficient, so in a best-case scenario, eating meat will render one one-thousandth of the input energy available to your body. The added costs of meat are exacted upon the earth in the burning of rainforest for pastures, use of fresh water we can ill afford to spare, and use of grain we could eat direct, the use of electricity and gas in the farming industry, and what must be 10x the food required to feed a person directly. Humans are Omnivores, emphasis on the OMNI. We do not have to eat meat, certainly not as much as we do. If anyone reading this has ever looked down on someone for being a vegetarian, or for not eating meat daily and in abundance...fuck you. Go and get eaten by a bear, or lion, or tiger, if meat is so fucking good. Oh, right...it's only good when you aren't the one being eaten. If all of Canada, say, ate even one-tenth less meat than we do now, that would be something. Less cruelty, less pollution, and less greenhouse gases.

Sinter Klaas – Booty* in your boots!

Tonight is essentially Dutch Christmas, or as I like to call it “ha ha, I -get-some-presents-before- the-rest-of-you-with-winter-holidays-later-in-the-month eve”. On the thought of presents, I already said to give money to charity, instead of buying me swag this year. How's about we go a little farther with that one. To my circle of friends, and beyond: let's do some real giving this season, and I'm not talking about sex (although the Christmas/holiday season is an excellent time for that, too). No, I speak of pooling some cash, and buying a goat for a village in a country less developed than our own. Sure, it's great to get new games, hardware, all that junk...but we give those out on birthdays already. This might sound preachy, and it might sound less fun (I would counter the latter, because it would be pretty cool to say “I gave goats for Christmas/Hanukkah/etc. This year”, don't you think?)...but in the end, we would have made a real difference. If you are interested, take the time to leave a comment, MSN me, call me, email me...your choice. I want to get this organized ASAP. Oh, and we don't have to do goats...although I hear that's all they had last year. Specific decisions as to the nature of the gift will be made in due time.

*As in 'Loot', geniuses. As for the boots, the Dutch version involves wooden shoes, as opposed to our traditional stockings.