Where’s that damn cleric with the ressurection spell?

Gary Gygax died yesterday.  If you don’t know who he was you obviously had a intellectually barren childhood.  He was responsible generations of young people pushing their imaginations through his creation.  Who knows how many hours I spent pouring over those books, memorizing, planning and playing in a host of different worlds.

Quite honestly, all that time playing D&D did more to prepare me for ‘real’ life that those four years I wasted in high school.

Ya done good GG.

How’s that burger taste now?

When people ask me why I’m a vegetarian I tell them it’s for a host of reasons but you don’t need more than this to convince you that meat should not but industrialized. I’m convinced that there’s no way to insure that meat is safe when the animals are raised and processed this way.

I also think that it’s impossible for most people to work in situations like this without becoming damaged on an psychological level. I just don’t see a lot of difference from these guys and the guards an concentration camps that ‘processed’ people into the ovens or created ‘games’ to dehumanize, torture and kill. It’s all about establishing emotional distance from the thing you are killing and treating it like a thing.

Unfortunately, we in the West have distanced ourselves from our food. We don’t recognize where it came from or how it got into that patty shape. Personally, I think it’s important, even on a symbolic level for people to take part in the collecting their food, at least occasionally. I still eat fish and so it’s important to me that a couple times a year I catch and prepare fish to eat. It may not seem like a big deal but I think I am going to something that was, at one point alive, I shouldn’t shy away from having to kill it. On some level it gives me respect for where my food came from.

I think there can be a good argument made for eating meat from organic, diversified farms like the one described in Michael Pollen’s book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma“. Cherry Grove Farm is one such place in New Jersey (although I couldn’t seem to find where they actually process their meat.) I know the USDA makes it very difficult for small farmers to do their own processing on site and so forces many to use the big industrial plants but at raising and feeding farm animals properly that eventually get to the table is not small task and anyone who does that is making huge strides in both animal welfare and public safety.

I still don’t know if I could eat beef, pork, lamb or chicken. Even when faced with free range, grass fed, organic and humanely raised meat products I couldn’t cross over to the dark side to buy any. I don’t think I have any moral issues about hunting particular animals for food (particularly if human activity has resulted in them over populating an area and causing ecological damage - like white tail deer in the Northeast) but that may just be because I haven’t had a piece of venison on a plate in front of me.

Methinks it’s time for some moral searching…

The Bhutto assassination

I’m not sure I have much to add than what’s moving throughout the information superhighway.  Just a couple of comments though…

I found CNN’s fixation on whether she was killed by gunshot or shrapnel along with the ridiculous amount of airtime wasted on that irrelevant question to be indicative of the problem with TV news’ today.  A reluctance to handle potentially complex issues and events and instead give issues of no consequence much more attention than they deserve simply because it will be possible to provide a ‘correct answer’.

“Yes…We can now confirm that Bhutto was killed by gunshots.  And now that we’ve got that settled we can take you to footage of a water skiing squirrel.”

Yo!  Pinheads!  How about a discussion of the various factions vying for power in Pakistan and what this might mean for our efforts in Afghanistan?

The first thing that came to mind when I heard about the assassination was the killing of Masood on the 9th of September, 2001.  If, in fact, Al-Qaeda/Taliban forces were behind this, was it a one-off to keep Pakistan in a state of heightened tension or perhaps is part of a larger effort to destabilize the country/region/etc.?  Of course it’s all speculation but Al-Qaeda does seem to try to think at least two moves ahead and so the question of how they intend to exploit this attack should be on our minds.

Continuing in a long line of famous Swedes…

Greta Garbo

Gustavus Adolphus

Linnaeus

Lennart Järlebro

Wait…who?

Just in case you thought the United States had a lock on the backyard inventors and ingenuity check out this article from The Local where a man decided to devote his energies to the problem of dog urine corroding light poles.  The solution?  A urinal which will whisk away the pee.

Don’t write this guy off yet…remember the pet rock.

Return to the dark ages…

Those Scandinavians apparently aren’t happy with what they’ve got…IKEA, North Sea oil, and the Swedish Bikini team should be enough to satisfy any region.

This story, however, describes a ‘research effort’ to sail a replica viking ship from Denmark to Dublin.

Well, all I’ve got to say is: Something’s rotten in the state of Denmark.

Seems to me that the Scandinavians are fed up with their increasing zombie problem and have decided to relive their glory days of pillaging and plundering.

I always thought that those Scandinavians would turn wild again. They’re probably already in contact with their brethren in Minnesota and Wisconsin to prepare the way.