Sometimes I wonder if our expanding inclination to ban foods says something about our do-gooder nature, or our bullying nature. Last month, I wrote about how Massachusetts PTAs were so upset about sugary-food bans they got the state legislature to exempt bake sales from such bans. And, of course, there’s the pending ban of large sodas in New York City.
Now, the Bay State’s cranberry growers have corralled the state’s two senators–John Kerry and Scott Brown–to lobby the U.S. Department of Agriculture to exempt cranberry cocktail drinks from bans in schools under new rules being drawn up. Lobbyists are getting involved. It seems that because cranberries are so tart, the producers of fruity drinks feel they need to sweeten cranberry juice with sugar of some sort. Of course, apple juice is a potential sweetener. But there I go, trying to dictate what should be in someone else’s food. How about simply removing vending machines from the schools? Do it the old fashioned way, and just have water fountains. Or if parents and teachers agree vending machines are needed, let each school make its own decisions about vending machines?
Also on the food-ban agenda–foie gras, the duck and goose liver pate. California has a ban due to take effect July 1. Apparently, Chicago tried a ban of foie gras four years ago, and gave up on it after two years. Apparently in became an international embarrassment to the city. I know, the force feeding of ducks and geese to enlarge their livers is considered cruel by animal rights advocates. They definitely have a point. I just wonder if the practice is any more cruel than the way we raise our factory chickens, cooped up in cages barely able to breathe.
You know these bans are simply going to expand. I’m not sure what’s next, but who knows, they may be a good way to create jobs. You need more bureaucrats to write up all these rules, then you need lobbyists to fight or change them, then you need agents to enforce them, and of course, you need lawyers to interpret what finally results. Maybe that’s one answer to our nation’s job-creation problems.
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We think of drones as weapons against terrorists. But they are being introduced into the U.S. via police departments and universities. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s coming next. Now, Wired reports that very cheap drones–in the hundreds and few thousands of dollars–are on the way. Just let your imagination go, and it’s not just visions of people spying on their sexy neighbors. It’s the ag police monitoring farms. Then there would be no more need for animal registration, since the drones can keep tabs on every farm’s animal comings and goings. I would imagine we’ll eventually need special defense drones to shoot down the spy drones the government will unleash on us….except it will probably be declared against the law to possess the defense drones.
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So I’m at Whole Foods, and there’s a guy with a table displaying 16-ounce bottles of vegetable and fruit juices. Turns out they are unpasteurized fresh juice–first brand I’ve seen on a store shelf anywhere in a long time. According to the CDC, 98 per cent of juices are pasteurized, and to sell bottled unpasteurized juice, you need to include a warning label. The maker of this new brand, BluePrint, says this on one of its little promotional pamphlets: “Juice should never be cooked. Heat, pasteurization, common in most conventional juices, kills vitamins, minerals, and even live enzymes. Even ‘flash’ or ‘gently’ pasteurized means cooked.” Sound familiar? Sure hope they make it in retail.
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The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is celebrating its fifth anniversary July 7, with a celebration at the Maryland farm of Sally Fallon, head of the Weston A. Price Foundation. The celebration includes lunch, a tour of the farm, and a sampling of the farm’s cheeses. I understand there are still a few places available. I’ll be there. Hard to believe it’s been five years since the FTCLDF launched.
If people want to be healthy then teach about what that takes. The examples will be clear to those that do not embrace good nutrition. They will be fat, asthmatic, IBS, Crohns, ADHD, Austic, immune depressed, diabetic, infected, bone weak, dental deficient…and mostly unable to reproduce.
Stupid is as Stupid eats.
Sounds pretty Darwin Self-Limiting to me.
Drink up your raw milk and eat local fresh whole foods and thrive. You are the sustainable example for the future. Teaching and mentoring by example is the future.
On the way to our market this week, one of our large transport trucks was stopped at a weigh station and the driver was harrassed. One of the childish things that the CHP officer did was to call our driver gay….”told him that he had just come out of the closet”.
This driver is not gay…he is the husband of my daughter Kaleigh and the father to my grandson James. even if he was…it would be no business of the CHP officer. This officer is emblematic of the police bias, beligerance and abuse….etc. When another officer attempted to ask what was going on…the Ass Hole Cop resisted the interferance and went on unabated with his tirade. The blue line stood together.
The good was weaker than the bad.
Why is it that police are jerks and it is tolerated? Why is it that society tolerates this total and complete excess of power provided to criminal brutality loving gun toting badge abusing jerks?
A letter is going to the officers supervisor.
Stupid diets demonstrate the power of paradigms, which provide all ones answers, right or wrong, and much more important, provide ones questions as well. Makes you wonder if modern Americans, fully trained now to look always outside themselves for direction (generally to bureaucrats, experts, and other central-control freaks—Kens well-described bullies and do-gooders) are even teachable anymore.
You would think, for example, that Marks list of modern epidemics would at very least create suspicion of the status quo, but apparently no I guess its just too hard to let go of what youre used to.
I heard an NPR (National Paradigmatic Radio) report the other day about a research study suggesting that not all calories are the same. Scientists we are told, have always believed that a calorie is a calorie until (maybe) now they are discovering that refined carbs may be more fat-producing on a per calorie basis than proteins or fats.
Well, the calorie is a calorie notion has been understood by MANY for a very long time to be wrong, wrong, wrong. But the insightful folks who said so were unchained from the current paradigm (read loony) so, with all the smug self-righteousness that NPR and doctors and establishment science and all the others could muster, they were marginalized and ridiculed. Now on this small issue, establishment science (and their worshippers in media) just may be catching up some little bit with reality. Undoubtedly we will hear no apology for their past faults, let alone an embarrassed recusal.
The story goes like this. The marine was depressed and had called #911 explaining that he wanted to kill himself but not hurt anyone else.
The police responded and shot him to death….no gun or weapon was found on him or near him…he was unarmed. The police all knew that he was depressed and wanted to die…
Does this not make this a true crime. A premeditated murder by cop.
If the cops knew that this guy wanted to die and they responded with the idea that they would shoot him dead if he did anything strange….I argue that none of the actions of the police were preventative and that they knew well before that they would kill him. Their training is a premeditated murder protocol.
“Action and reaction” go the arguments from the Police departments. They have no choice but to use deadly force. No choice…the guy was unarmed. He had explained his depression to the #911 operator. the cops were not even needed at the scene. There mere presence became the crisis. Why not less lethal use of force…???
This is a farce and a murderous excuse for excessive and abusive force. It would put any of us in jail for life.
As juries excuse murder by cop, this reinforces murder by cop and our cultural tolerance changes over time.
Again….We the people suck… we are the wimps. We are a society of weak, niave and stupid people. If we started putting cops in prison…this madness would stop.
Some of my best friends are cops. They all stand together at the blue line and support the worst of the worst cops. This is a failed system.
“Suicide by Cop”…is an excuse for premeditated murder by protocol and excused murder.
I hope those cops roast in hell. I am not one of those jurors that would let this pass. Cops that shoot only to find out that the victim is unarmed are wimps and worse. As a paramedic I feared the cops on scene far more than any person with a weapon or in this case a person with out a weapon.
Where is the humanity and service to society…when I call *911… I want help not the executioner ???
Makes you really wonder what kind of people or monsters are attracted to power, un bridled and unquestioned authority, a badge and gun.
Well down the road to nazi type facism indeed.
Mark
With CA Grade A raw milk “sold to be pasteurized” at a Milk Pool base price of $13.65 per CWT for May and the break even above $20 per CWT….this is insane.
It is also an indictment of the sanity of the producers as a whole. Why can they not stand together and stop this madness.
Solution: dump all milk for four days and tell the processors what the price will be…done.
Solution excuted in less than one week. Instead, death a slow death upon the producers of CA.
Crazy….humans are crazy and really really stupid.
Apparently, the man did point a gun at the police. That doesn’t excuse the excess use of gun power, etc. Fresno has a nasty reputation for high crime, not as bad as Stockton…. Death by cop is more common than the media lets on.
Mark, shame on you. As a “health professional” you should know better. You should be teaching facts, not personal feelings. Suicide by cop is NOT “an excuse for premeditated murder by protocol and excused murder”.
If someone were to point a gun at me, I’d shoot first and ask questions later. Basic gun rules,— treat every gun as if it is loaded. Never point a gun at anyone without the intent to use it.
http://www.suicidebycop.com/7922.html
http://www.forensiccriminology.com/pdf/Suicidebycop.pdf
Do not shame me for defending the rights of people that are unarmed. I know that their are truly brave and great police officers. The problem with this brave and great police officers is that they have no courage to stand up against the bad and truly brutal and shameful officers.
I know this all to well.
As far as the shooting that your link connects too…why in the hell are 8 cops shooting at a house and hitting the neighbors house instead with 63 rounds. This is called Contageous Fire. It happens to cover the ass of the first shooter. So they can all stand together and no one knows who or why the first jerk off started to shoot. http://www.theppsc.org/Staff_Views/Aveni/Contagious.Fire.htm
I am not ashamed of my comments here. I know the truth because I have scene the trash that stays on the public police pay roll when they should be in jail. I am disgusted.
My emotions run very high when it comes to public officials ending other peoples lives in my name.
End of fricken story. I do not endorse these policies and they are sick…and pagan!
Unarmed people killed by cops, when the person was reaching out for help is sick. Even more sick is the protection and defense of those policies and the lack of humanity in heart, morals and or ethics.
Kind of like saying….soldiers dying in foreign wars for our liberties and freedom. What an irrational, stupid concept.
Soldiers die because they are sent to protect oil and money….not our lives or our freedoms.
Insane concepts. Vietnam taught us this. We killed milions and 56,000 died all for what?….nothing but oil, rubber, and corporate profits. The same goes for our current wars. Ask a veteran what they died for….many will agree with these words.
Americans are idiots and follow our national policies over a cliff.
Think about it: “Home of the free” has more people in prison than any other country in the world. We’ve got roughly 2.03 million people behind bars… that’s more than China, Iran, and Russia. For what reason? You can probably guess it: profit. It’s one of the fastest growing industries in the US over the last few decades.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/jailed-for–280–the-return-of-debtors–prisons.html
We didn’t have a TV growing up but I think I was better educated than 90% of today’s kids, and had stronger ethics and sense of right and wrong. Keep it simple, and always teach, teach, teach. That much I definitely agree on, now back to milk talk please. Oh and for the record, I’m a practicing Pagan.