The Paleo Fad

I have been rereading Loren Cordain's book, The Paleo Diet. The basic idea is that the best diet is one that our ancestors would have eaten before the invention of agriculture. I call it a fad because that is what it is. That does not mean that such a diet does not have its good points.

The basic idea is the elimination of anything that our ancestors could not have eaten: dairy, grains, legumes, and soy. But yet for some reason most advocates of a As you can see by these two competing food pyramids, there is some difference of opinion among Paleo advocates as to the "perfect" diet. paleo diet will use olive oil, which our ancient ancestors would not use either. I am one to advocate complete and total consistency, except when I don't.

One point I harp on with my Biblical blog posts is that it is often impossible to port over Biblical law to our modern society. We do not live as a subsistence farmer in 1400 BC Israel; we do not live  in a city state in Asia Minor circa 50AD. Yet these are the exact people to whom the Old and New Testament are addressed. In the same way, we cannot port over these very artificial rules in an attempt to find the ideal diet. Domestication of plants and animals has profoundly changed the nutritional components of the food we eat.  This means that we cannot eat the same way our ancestors did—it is not possible.

Instead we need to take the foods we have and try as best we can to mimic the diet of our ancestors. For me this means that I have reduced the grain portion of my diet and replaced that with more vegetables. The fat that I save from my reduced dairy consumption I replace with olive oil and other fats to get the vegetables past my taste buds.

I can only evaluate my success as moderate.

If you have the desire to learn more about Paleo lifestyle, the following lecture by Loren Cordain is a good place to start. Even if you do not share Cordain's view of evolution, it is still worth watching.

Republicans Do Not Cut Spending

Republicans at the BeachThere is a lot of buzz in the blogosphere about the Republicans being tough and cutting spending. It is not for nothing that Republicans are called the stupid party. This is nothing less than allowing your opponents to set the rhetoric. The fact is that no prominent Republican not surnamed Paul has offered to cut any spending. The various Republican proposals are to grow spending a little more slowly than the Democrats. No cuts. They are allowing the Democrats to frame the issue as the “evil Republicans cutting spending on the poor.” The smart move instead would be for the Republicans to announce they were opposed to all cuts. Take the high road and announce that they want to help the poor just like was done in the previous year.

You Want Me to Cut What? The sneaky part about this is that it reduces spending more than the original proposal, but there are no cuts. Let the natural growth in the economy lead to a gradual reduction in the deficit. There are no booby-trapped stealth tax increases on the horizon. Submit the exact same budget as last year. When the Democrats complain just announce that the Republicans have already given Obama the tax increase he wanted. Announce that Republicans are opposed to spending cuts, then freeze the budget.

Will the Republicans do this? (Did they nominate a candidate who was extremely wealthy in a time of austerity? Did they nominate a candidate that was not particularly compatible religiously to a considerable part of their constituency?)

Will the Republicans do this?

No they are the stupid party.

Валерий Меладзе - Се ля ви

I do not think you need to know Russian in order to enjoy this music video. Се ля ви is a transliteration of C'est La Vie from French, it means, "Such is life." Valerie Meladze is a Russian pop star from Georgia, the country not the state. 

You Get Used to the Smell

I have often wondered about hoarders. Watching the hoarding series back when I had cable increased my questions. There has to be a smell from all this clutter. At the very least there has to be a stale smell. How do they stand it?

My guess is that they just get used to it. Hoarding does not happen overnight. I guess that if it happens gradually enough we can get used to anything. That explains my weight, I just got used to it. That explains bad marriages, the couple just got used to it. It also explains the cliché of the boiling frogs. Frogs placed in cool water are not supposed to notice if the temperature is gradually raised until they die. It is a potent analogy, but I always doubted that the frog would stay put.

If we can get used to a bad marriage, a bad smell, or weight gain, how much harder is it to notice more obscure moral issues? We do not see the child labor that is in our products. While companies like Apple are making good progress to eliminate this, they recently fired a supplier as they had to do to maintain good PR, for the most part we do not know.

We do not want to know.

The beloved editor of the Prophecy Podcast, Pam Dewey, has been doing a series on child labor on her blog. She points out the societal structural situation that led to child labor, with an emphasis in part one on the darker side of the industrial revolution. Click here for part one.

Panic in the Year Zero

I blogged about this movie in December. Click here to review my post. I remember watching the movie from an early Saturday morning or a late night creature feature in the 70's. With movies like this available free on YouTube, do you need cable? (My tongue is firmly placed in my check on that question.) But seriously I do watch a lot of YouTube, and for me it is a good and free alternative to modern TV fare. YouTube plus Netflix ($16 for 1 DVD and streaming), plus Hulu ($8) added to Russian Internet TV ($18) for my wife is all we need. I may even drop the Hulu. Right now I am going through Midsommer Murders on Netflix streaming. Maybe next week I will share that Sci-Fi classic, Day of the Triffids! Cut the Cable!