Beef Recall

Recently the Humane Society caught a beef processing plant in California sneaking downed cattle, which are cows too sick to even stand, into the food supply. Caught on secret video, workers sprayed sick and dying cows with firehoses, rammed them with forklifts and dragged them into processing facilities. The video is particularly disturbing and it prompted the largest beef recall in history, four times larger than the previous largest recall. The reason for the prohibition on downed cattle should be obvious. Cows that get sick in these high density lots and slaughterhouses usually have E. Coli or Mad Cow disease the very last thing you want to do is cut them open. The recall affects beef that goes back 2 years, the meat was served in school lunches and elderly aid programs, so most of it has already been eaten. If you were trying not to catch mad cow disease... too late.

Moral: Vegetarian. 

People are Smart

That's right. People are smart. We are smarter now than we have ever been in all of human history and don't let anyone tell you different. What has compelled this statement? Well, I'll tell you. Susan Jacoby, author, has been making the rounds and she is shilling her new book in all the usual places where people like to be told they are smarter than everyone else. She cites prime time reality shows and religious fundamentalist groups as sources for the theory that people - as a whole - are getting "more ignorant." This is not the first time I have heard this assessment of society and its not the first time I have declared it as nothing more than self serving bullshit. 

People are not getting dumber. Just because they do not make time in their days to read or use big words or know the obscure histories of obscure nations - that does not necessarily make a person dumb. I have succeeded in giving the impression of intelligence by merely controlling conversation. By only talking about the things I know most about people think I  am a genius. You will never catch me going on national television so that Jeff Foxworthy can ask me questions from a third grade lesson book.

Its true that there is a total lack of critical analysis in daily life and we tend to accept blindly some very foolish things, but in defense of a society, we have to absorb so much more information than before. The complexity of our society is exploding exponentially - daily. I never heard of stem cells before 2002, so how am I supposed to have an opinion about the moral implications of using embryos to rebuild Christopher Reeves spine? If NPR tells me they are good, I follow, were I a religious man and the preacher said they were bad, I'd probably follow him because who has time to figure this stuff out?

She cites "good old days" arguments for a more advanced and enlightened society. How preceding generations were more studious, reading classics and writing actual letters with grammar. FDR would tell people to get maps and follow along "picture pages" style while he did his fireside chat. People don't have maps anymore, we have Google Earth now. We can see the bombed out holes in the Afghan countryside in realtime via satellite, of course I'm not going to get a fucking map and look this shit up. Way back then they had party lines for the phone - meaning you shared the phone line with the whole neighborhood, your only source of information was a hulking radio that ran on vacuum tubes, no one is going to tell me that this should be the model for our ideal future society.

People are smart. Smart and only getting smarter. To say that one of the most advanced countries in the world is populated by idiots is a bold statement designed for no other reason than to irritate people and sell books. For all Susan Jacoby's big brains - I would bet her VCR is still blinking 12:00.

Witchcraft

I like to pretend that I live in a twentieth century modern sort of world, like in the scifi movies I saw as a kid. We have robots vacuuming the floor and all the knowledge of human history at our fingertips, but every now and then something happens that forces us to say "What the fuck?". I had a what the fuck moment today when I read this article about a woman on trial for witchcraft in Saudi Arabia. That's right, witchcraft. She was imprisoned in 2005 by the religious police. She was beaten and forced to sign a confession she could not read with a thumbprint because she could not write, because a man accused her of making him .... impotent. 

Being a Massachusetts native, I am particularly sensitive to the subject of capitol punishment for witchcraft. We had an incident back in 1692 that we have never been able to live down. Regrettably, Salem has become a theme park dedicated to witchcraft, choosing to emphasize the supernatural angle instead of the gross perversion of justice/wrongful capitol punishment aspect of the event. I guess tourists are more interested in spooky witches than frightened illiterate farmers killing their neighbors for no reason.

From now on, whenever I hear anything about Saudi Arabia I am going to think about it as being very much like Massachusetts in 1692. There is something very unsettling about someone being PUT TO DEATH because a man can't get an erection. To be clear - this went to COURT, in front of a JUDGE, and they made this decision.