By Bryan | Published:
September 13, 2008
It struck me recently that I think our country could be heading into a new era of moral conservatism, and if McCain wins the next election, it’ll pretty much seal it. In this future I think the era from the beginning of Clinton’s presidency until now would be remembered as a free and easy time, kind of like the 1960’s. There was earth loving and what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas and Vicodin and medical marijuana and gay people gained rights!
It seems like these things come in cycles. Did the Roarin’ 20’s bring on prohibition? Did the 60’s bring on the “war” on drugs and the Moral Majority?
I’ve been convinced for a while that somehow in the end, McCain was gonna pull it out, and for the first time it actually seems like it could happen. I’m actually pretty scared. I’m afraid of how many more rights we might give up in the name of national security.
But for some reason I just have very little faith in the Democratic party to be able to win an election. I mean, George W. Bush got re-elected. If that doesn’t prove they are inept, I don’t know what could. And now the Republicans have a vice presidential nominee who I personally think is the worst VP nominee in history, and somehow she’s actually helping McCain. It’s amazing.
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Also posted in Politics | Tagged election, McCain, Palin |
By Bryan | Published:
July 4, 2008
I originally wanted to make this post about a week ago but I’ve been too busy with other stuff to get to it, so I hope it doesn’t feel outdated right now but anyway…
At the time that I was originally contemplating this, news sources were reporting that there were about 800 cases of tomato-related salmonella. According to the CIA World Factbook the estimated population of the United States as of July 2008 is 303,824,646. It seemed to me that ~800 cases out of 300 million people is actually quite a small number of cases of salmonella, especially when you consider how many other potential sources there could be. Chicken, anyone?
In the midst of all this hub-bub regarding tomato-related salmonella, and all the economic disruption and inconvenience that it has caused, one thing I began to wonder and the one piece of relevant information I could not find in any reports on the subject was this: How many cases of salmonella do we really get in an average year?
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By Bryan | Published:
June 11, 2008
Let me start out by saying that I love eating beef. But the more I see and hear about the subject, the more I am coming to believe that the large scale production of beef which currently allows us to enjoy such plentiful, high quality and inexpensive beef, is largely environmentally (and as a consequence, economically) unsustainable. Check out this Mark Bittman TED talk which goes into some other topics as well.
Now I hope the animal activists and environmentalists don’t kill me but this has recently led me to the conclusion that this means that I need to eat as much beef as I can right now while it’s still affordable. I don’t want to look back on today from the Soylent Green future and regret not taking advantage of everything I had when I had it!
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