I’ve mentioned wanting to move to a different planet before, right?
I was reading this blog post regarding experiments in calorie reduction, as linked from this blog post about forcing Guantanamo detainess to diet as torture (I’d really recommend reading both of those posts), and it’s similar to studies I’ve read about before regarding weight loss and why it’s regained and no one can stick to a diet, but I thought the parts about how it affects people mentally were particularly interesting and enlightening.
The thought of dieting circles my head occasionally because there is no real estate on Mars for me to set up my hermit shanty yet and I see diet commercials every five seconds when I watch TV. I assuage this desire by reminding myself that hey, I’m getting degrees right now, I need my mind to be sharp so I can study and learn! I guess I never really had a scientific reason this other than when I’m hungry I’m thinking about foods rather than what hearsay exception is implicated when someone shouts “Sweet Baby Jesus on a cracker he shot me!” seconds before death, but I guess when I’m right, I’m right.
I was thinking the other day about how baffling it is that the same person who spews the “calories in calories out” mantra to justify railing against people for being overweight has no problem believing there are people who can eat as much as they want and never get fat. Hey, they have high metabolisms! But when I tell people my husband and I eat the same shit every day and he weighs 100 pounds more than me, I am assured he must be eating something else SOMEWHERE you know. At work or something. Because if we ate the same shit we’d definitely have the same body types.
I’ve come to the conclusion that people abandon all logic in order to cling to their prejudices a long time ago, but it just wears me down so much. I try to tell as many people as I can I probably eat like 2500 calories a day or more, which would be “overeating” except that eating like a normal person is only overeating when you’re fat.
The fact that I should supposedly be able to happily live on roughly half the calories I do is where the diet thoughts come in. Geez I bet if I went on a diet I’d be like, Kiera Knightley, except that’s just a product of memory loss since I’ve dieted while running a few miles a week and doing yoga and I only lost ten pounds and was constantly sick and felt like shit on a stick.
So, I was also reading this blog post the other day, on Pandagon, which is a blog I really like and read all the time. I don’t really care to comment on the contents of the article so much, but I find it interesting that people didn’t consider comments about “idiots” purchasing diet cokes with fatty food to be fat shaming. Who are those idiots likely to be? I guarantee if I walked into a McDonalds and ordered 5 cheeseburgers and a large fry and a diet coke people wouldn’t think anything of it, but WOULD if a fat person walked in. If I did that it would probably accurately reflect what I was doing–having a once in a while treat, and having my brain replaced by someone who can tolerate artificial sweeteners and McDonalds food. But if a fat person does it, it’s probably a habit, right?
What struck me the most though was the author of the piece, Amanda Marcotte (and again, I really like her stuff a lot this is just thinking about what she said not trying to slam her or something) responding to a comment someone made about high metabolism people being able to eat what they want (which I can’t find again, I have to get ready to leave in a minute so I’m not reading them again), and saying well she wishes she had that metabolism, but since she doesn’t, she has to watch it.
I generally consider myself to have a good metabolism and I usually think it’d be unfair of me to sit there and chomp down a hamburger and think, well, tough luck person with a propensity for weight gain, you better have a heap o’ carrots. Mmmm burger omnomnom. Really though that’s probably an exaggeration of her point but that IS how a lot of people think about it. Oh I can go into McDonalds and have 12 chicken nuggets and a bucket of fries once in a while, but if I ever see someone fat in there, holy hell that person is shameful. I can engage in this activity, but when that person does it, it’s wrong. I can sit in my ivory tower and shake my head and make disapproving ingressive sounds with my tongue when I see someone else doing the exact same thing I’m doing because wow if *I* didn’t have a good metabolism I’d have the willpower to not see food as something I should enjoy, right?
On one hand it seems prudent to say “but of course, eating healthy is always good.” Well, yeah, eat your veggies. Blah blah blah. I also refuse to believe that eating Thanksgiving dinner and the occasional giant fucking chili cheese fry will shave ten years off of one’s life. I do think it would be great for the U.S. and the world if people of all incomes had access to healthy, hearty home-cooked food and weren’t wage slaves without the time to prepare it. I don’t think you can separate cultural reality of no money and time for organic greens with a grilled rosemary salmon every night from this food morality so it’s a moot point to pontificate on what people OUGHT to be eating when the ability to eat the oughtfoods is just not there. I also refuse to believe it’s any of my goddamned business what someone else chooses to ingest, all things being equal.
Don’t believe for a goddamn second all the studies which comprise our knowledge of what is good now will not be seen as outdated, strange and quaint as the practice of using leeches in medicine appears to us today. I guarantee people thought they were the height of modernity back then and looked upon the past as a swirling cauldron of ignorance and idiocy.
I guess this rant is all over the place and incoherent, but, tl;dr version, I’m fucking sick and tired of people holding others to standards they could never ever ever fucking ever adhere to themselves. I’m also sick of people not engaging their neurons and firing one fucking synapse when thinking about this shit. The end.
Oh goddammit I need to put a different channel on in the morning
The Today Show isn’t even *trying* to appear to be non-partisan anymore–they just had Newt Gingrich on this morning to talk about how much Obama sucks in his opinion, and that was the whole damn piece. No figure head for the other side, nothing. I guess they’ve done this with Laura “who the fuck?” Ingrahrharhm before, I just wasn’t compelled to write about it.
Not that I feel the “hey we need to represent both SIDES!” thing actually acheives some sort of non-bias or is anything but gimmicky bullshit, but since when is the Today show anything but gimmicky bullshit? I guess what chapped my hide was that they didn’t even challenge the ridiculous shit he was saying–he was like, “dude North Korea shot a MISSLE and Obama did NOTHING! Iran is building a bomb and we’re sitting on our Laurels! We’re all doomsauced! Oh we have to be coldly indifferent to people in other countries we don’t like we totally can’t be nice to them.”
Ok I kinda get the reasoning for the latter part of that, but why the fuck didn’t Meredith Lauer (I can’t damn well remember who did the interview) ask, “well, what would YOU have done about North Korea and Iran?” ‘Cause to me it sounded like he was gung ho about getting us embroiled in a whole new mess o’ never-ending wars.
Shit I guess it’s about time we expanded this paltry empire. Gingrich for President, 2012! We’ll either be able to fly to get some seriously authentic khoresht without passports, or we will be fighting for roadkill in the streets. Exciting, either way, right??
In which I have crappy daydreams
Every once in a while I have a daydream about, I don’t know, actually intervening when someone is being attacked on a bus or something–and the purpose of it isn’t to be like “hey neat I’d be a hero,” but to ponder who would be put on the Today show to talk about it since I sure as hell will never allow my mug to ever be on TV. I mean you can totally tell that’s what they do–when someone is unavailable or doesn’t want to be on TV, they seek out a friend or relative to talk about it. I always wonder if said friend or relative is even that close to the person in question.
It’s really funny though when that person wasn’t there, really had nothing to do about it, and is on the Today show by virtue of having the slightest tangential knowledge of the person they actually WANTED to interview. It’s like “oh! What an amazing story! This person used Karate skills to save a bus of school children from a crazed gunman! Get that fucker on! Wait, she isn’t interested in being subjected to our insipid questions at 5 am? Well, shit. Wait, her father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate wants to talk? Just as good!”
Meredith Viera: “Hello, hero’s cousin! How are you today!”
Cousin: <Stares blankly for a good 10 seconds> “Good! Good.”
Meredith Viera: “Isn’t what happened yesterday totally amazing?”
Cousin: “Oh yeah, totally amazing.”
Meredith Viera: “So how long have you known your cousin?”
Cousin: “I guess since birth if you consider being related to someone knowing them!”
Meredith: “Did you think she was capable of such a selfless act and karate skills?”
Cousin: “Yeah, even as a toddler she would apologize after kicking me in the shins and making me buckle over in pain.”
Meredith: “Thank you for talking to us today!”
<Camera pans away>
<Everyone sits around and says the word amazing a dozen times>
I think I talk about the Today Show enough now to make it a tag. That’s kinda sad.
You must read this
It’s seriously one great smack after another. I was dying laughing. I am going to remember the last “story” in this and use it every day. EVERY DAY I TELL YOU.
I think I’m going to make facebook friends or twitter friends with Roger Ebert, if I can! Haha!
Edit: I can’t. Apparently he’s too cool for social networking sites.
This is too long, egads
I was reading a summary of the Iowa supreme court opinion (I swear to tacos I will read the whole thing when I have the time/patience/etc.), and it is a pretty sweet opinion if I do say so myself.
I feel like in most of these cases where the court goes along with the state’s purpose of “endorsing traditional marriage” and “encouraging procreation,” the court is being completely disingenuous, for reasons slapped around forthrightly by the Iowa court. The court noted that even if the traditional family is optimal, how the fuck does excluding gay people from marrying in any way encourage more families like that? How the hell does keeping gay people from marrying “encourage” procreation? How does excluding gay people from marrying make heterosexual marriage more stable?
Recognizing the sincere religious belief held by some that the “sanctity of
marriage” would be undermined by the inclusion of gay and lesbian couples, the
court nevertheless noted that such views are not the only religious views of
marriage.
Fucking DUH.
I seriously don’t see how even under the most lenient rational basis tests this shit can fly. The only one I can see making sense under the rational basis standard is the government resources one.
The tiers of scrutiny used by courts in order to determine whether laws are Constitutional under equal protection sort of make my head spin–the tiers are highest for race issues, intermediate for gender, and rational basis for everything else. State courts have the power to do stuff like this Iowa court did–make sexual orientation an “intermediate” category under their state’s Constitution. Under rational basis, a court must uphold a state law even if it’s stupid and unwise even if there’s the smallest bit of rationality to it. It’s a little more complicated than that when you consider the Romer case and such, but just for the sake of argument, how do these things pass rational basis muster? The state’s arguments are, essentially:
Maintaining traditional marriage. As the Iowa court noted, this is a circular argument to say “the classification accomplishes the governmental objective, which objective is to maintain the classification” when no underlying reason is given. I’m pretty sure after reading the bible that “tradition” included dudes who had a harem of 1000 wives. Totally disingenuous.
“Promotion of Optimal Environment to Raise Children.” This is where I stick my finger down my throat and vomit everywhere. I think the lack of ability to discern “how the ban benefits the interests of children of heterosexual parents” is what makes this not even pass rational basis muster. The court talks about how the law doesn’t target horrifically abusive heterosexual parents, and hurts the already-alive and breathing children of gay parents (I wonder sometimes if “gay marriage hurts children!” honks think that gay people won’t start having kids until they’re married or something?), so it obviously isn’t designed with the optimal interests of children in mind. True, true. It’s just that banning gay marriage doesn’t even have a tangenital benefit to the children of heterosexual parents, unless you count “the government is complicit in my telling my kids that homos are making a choice and are going to go to hell for it and no one should feel bad when they are mercilessly bullied at school” a benefit. I guess some people do, considering that was the very argument I heard when I got into this with a friend of mine. That and “I don’t want my little boy to think it’s okay to marry a little boy!” I find it hard to believe “if my kids see gay people marrying and stop hating them they will turn gay” can be a rational argument, though.
Promotion of Procreation. This makes me laugh, and cry. It makes me sad that, holy shit the government fancies itself to be the AKC association for human beings. We want people to breed as much as possible! “The court found no argument to support the conclusion that a goal of additional procreation would be substantially furthered by the exclusion of gays and lesbians from civil marriage.” No shit. I’m pretty sure straight people aren’t going to go galt from humping if teh gayz are allowed to marry. Is there a worse argument than this in existence? It also seems weird to me that this is the place of the government. I mean, if everyone in the U.S. decided to join the voluntary human extinction movement, which involves being purposely childless to allow the human race to just fizzle out, I think that’s their goddamned business. I think it’s just nasty and dehumanizing–like the silly uteri of the world need to do their duties as future soldier factories.
Promoting Stability in Opposite-Sex Relationships. Once again, yeah marriage probably convinces straight people who hate each other to stick it out despite the misery it inflicts on their lives makes opposite-sex relationships more stable, but how the fuck does excluding gay people make opposite-sex relationships more stable? I feel sad for the relationship founded at pointing at gay people and going “neener neener,” I really do.
Conservation of Resources. This might be the only one I think passes the flimsy rational basis test. Marriage does result in tax breaks rather than penalties a majority of the time. So basically the gov’t would be like “wah we get more tax revenues from single gay people!” and since the government doesn’t have to treat you equally if it has a “rational” reason for doing so–although I wonder if there was a detailed analysis even this would turn out to be bogus. However, the court can’t do a detailed analysis of this sort of thing, it’s supposed to take the legislature’s word for it as long as this basis, if true, is “rational,” even if it’s dumb as shit. Anyway, since Iowa determined sexual orientation to be totally mid-tier, this bullshit did not fly.
Religious Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage – I’m not even sure why this is worth considering, or why the government thought this was worthy of bringing up. The court of course was like, “there are plenty of religions that embrace gay marriage?” but come on. There was religious opposition to interracial marriage too, people who are stupid fucking morons shouldn’t dictate the rights of people in this country even the majority is stupid fucking poop-smoking shitbrains.
Anyway, this has gone on far too long. I cynically await this to be overturned, but I do have some hope for the law being passed in Vermont to stay, though.
Same shit, different asshole.
Atheists like to say things like religion is oppressive, and the world would be better off without it, etc. etc.
While I do think religion is used as a tool of oppression, such atheists are missing the forest for the trees–or however that stupid idiom goes. Sure, religion leads to people justifying their bigotry, hate and misogyny because “god said to do it,” but even if tomorrow, hypothetically, somehow there was incontrovertible proof that atheists are correct, and hypothetically everyone believed it, that’s not going to stop oppression, bigotry, and hatred.
Instead of saying “god said women are inferior,” people will use evopsych which consists entirely of poorly-done studies and the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and appeal to nature in order to justify their bigotry, hatred and bullying. They’ll ignore the fallibility of the IQ test to justify racial prejudice (while at the same time not conceding the spot of supreme race to Asian people and Jewish people), they’ll use results in a study on 5,000 Asian women who had better sex lives when their husbands make more money to conclude that women are gold diggers and completely ignore the other obvious reasons for this correlation explored in great depth in that Pandagon blog article.
People already do this, obviously.
So, while I may personally not believe in a god or gods or a Candyland in the sky, atheists are fucking full of shit if they think a world without religion wouldn’t be the same old shit with a new name unless there are other cultural shifts as well. Progress isn’t hindered by religion, it’s hindered by petty mindedness and clinging to superiority. The world will be just as ugly with 100% atheists as it would with 100% people of <insert religion here> unless people can give up their narcissism. I don’t want to say it can’t happen or believing in progression would be fruitless, but many atheists already substitute one religion for another, and should stop kidding themselves.
Iowa: land of, I don’t know, and gay marriage
So Iowa became the fourth state where the Supreme Court ruled that precluding marriage for same-sex couples is unconstitutional. Being the bleeding heart hippy I am, this makes me happy, but being the cynical misanthrope I am, I figure it’s only a matter of time before the idiots people of that state change the Constitution. Right? I mean, if it happened in CA, surely it will happen in Iowa? If it doesn’t I think Californians should feel deep, deep shame, but I bitterly don’t think these good things last for long.
Gay marriage is one of those things where I cannot even possibly see the point of the other side. As pro-choice as I am I can at least understand where someone pro-life is coming from, if he or she has at least a modicum of intellectual consistency and isn’t also anti-contraception, but this is basically “omg my religion should RULE THE WORLD” or “I vote without even looking to see if those ads on TV are telling the truth because I’m fucking ignorant.”
I can’t even argue about this with my friends and family who are against gay marriage because their arguments are illogical, they start talking about “god’s law” (as if an atheist gives a rat’s fuckin’ ass what “god’s law” is), or talk about how being gay is a choice they shouldn’t have to support, or that if gay marriage is legal it will make your kids think being gay is okay and therefore will become gay. This is why no sheltered home-schooled kids* who are taught there is no evolution and they will be smote in their beds for masturbating ever become gay, and why there are no creepy fucking bible camps to try and convince these kids to pretend not to be gay stop making that “choice.”
Speaking of not exposing your kids to the world in fear that they might go along with it–isn’t that, you know, proof that your position is inherently weak? If I had kids I’d tell them what I believed but I’d also tell them about various religions and let them choose on their own. I guess when you seriously think there’s a little, red, cloven-hoofed dude in your brain trying to convince you to be bad you just see “logic” as “the debbul” and there is just no goddamned reason to continue a conversation with you.
I’m going to read the decision, but it’s 69 pages long and that gives me heart palpitations. 69 pages isn’t long if I’m reading The Hobbit, but it sure as fuck is if I’m reading convoluted legalese.
*For the record, I think homeschooling is great if the purpose isn’t to brainwash your kids out of ever having a single thought of their own.
