What you do with vegetables could be criminal

Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey wants to outlaw out-of-season vegetables

making out-of-season produce illegal would raise "levels of inspiration".
"There should be stringent laws, licensing laws, to make sure produce is only used in season and season only," he said.

HT Perry de Haviland

Man spends 18 hours in police cell and has his DNA taken for 'dropping an apple core', a charge he denies.

From Grandma's House

Listen up brothers and sisters, come here my desperate tale
I speak of our friends of nature, trapped in the dirt like a jail
Vegtables live in oppression, served on out tables each night
This killing of veggies is madness, i say we take up the fight
Salads are only for murderers, cole slaw's a fascist regime
Don't think that they don't have feelings, just cause a radish can't scream

I've heard the screams of the vegetables, watching their skins being peeled
Grated and steamed with no mercy.. how do you think that feels?
Carrot juice constitutes murder.. greenhouses prisons for slaves
It's time to stop all this gardening.. let's call a spade a spade.

"When Death is near, how do we show our love?"

After the extraordinary reception to the Beloved Professor Delivering His Last Lecture Jeffrey Zaslow teamed up with Randy Pausch to co-write the new book,

"The Last Lecture" (Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow)

Zaslow reports that Pausch is finding more difficult to say goodbye to his family  than he did to his colleagues at work.

Zaslow asks "When death is near, how do we show our love?" in  A Final Farwell

For many of us, his lecture has become a reminder that our own futures are similarly -- if not as drastically -- brief. His fate is ours, sped up.
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People wrote about how his lecture had inspired them to spend more time with loved ones, to quit pitying themselves, or even to shake off suicidal urges. Terminally ill people said the lecture had persuaded them to embrace their own goodbyes, and as Randy said, "to keep having fun every day I have left, because there's no other way to play it."
--
Years ago, Jai had suggested that Randy compile his advice into a book for her and the kids. She wanted to call it "The Manual." Now, in the wake of the lecture, others were also telling Randy that he had a book in him--

"Well, you also need emotional insurance," the minister explained. The premiums for that insurance would be paid for with Randy's time, not his money. The minister suggested that Randy spend hours making videotapes of himself with the kids. Years from now, they will be able to see how easily they touched each other and laughed together.
--

Randy also made a point of talking to people who lost parents when they were very young. They told him they found it consoling to learn about how much their mothers and fathers loved them. The more they knew, the more they could still feel that love. To that end, Randy built separate lists of his memories of each child. He also has written down his advice for them, things like: "If I could only give three words of advice, they would be, 'Tell the truth.' If I got three more words, I'd add, 'All the time.' "

The advice he's leaving for Chloe includes this: "When men are romantically interested in you, it's really simple. Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do." Chloe, not yet 2 years old, may end up having no memory of her father. "But I want her to grow up knowing," Randy said, "that I was the first man ever to fall in love with her."
--
As he later explained it: "I am maintaining my clear-eyed sense of the inevitable. I'm living like I'm dying. But at the same time, I'm very much living like I'm still living."
--

And so despite all his goodbyes, he has found solace in the idea that he'll remain a presence. "Kids, more than anything else, need to know their parents love them," he said. "Their parents don't have to be alive for that to happen."

The Last Lecture website.

Cross-posted at Legacy Matters.

Why even the idea of Plant Rights is bad

Am I supposed to feel guilty because I eat salads and fruits? 

The Silent Scream of the Asparagus

This sounds like a joke but isn't.  What it does demonstrate is another way the rights you take for granted can be made subject to a bureaucrat's whim. 

What is clear, however, is that Switzerland's enshrining of "plant dignity" is a symptom of a cultural disease that has infected Western civilization, causing us to lose the ability to think critically and distinguish serious from frivolous ethical concerns. It also reflects the triumph of a radical anthropomorphism that views elements of the natural world as morally equivalent to people.
--
ts majority view holds that it would if the genetic modification caused plants to "lose their independence"--for example by interfering with their capacity to reproduce.

So much for breeding seedless Clementines or grafting hybrid wine grapes.

Belmont Club on the Plant Rights

Swiss lawyers are elaborating the doctrine of vegetable rights.
--
Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out." In short, they are arguing that plants have inherent rights which humans can't transgress. It sounds ridiculous.
--
who is really being "empowered" by the Swiss committee's decision? Is it plants? No. It is bureaucrats. The point of vegetable rights isn't to give plants dignity but to transfer yet more individual human freedoms to activists and government officials.

Deciding that individuals had power over themselves and the things around them was central to the development of human freedom -- and human rights
--

The point of legally empowering vegetables is not to give standing to a stalk of celery who might suddenly decide to appear in court, but to empower the bureaucrats and activist lawyers who will appear on their behalf. Today we already have spokesmen for Gaia. Tomorrow the lawyers from Brussels will be lawyers for brussels sprouts.

Walmart Does It Again

I don't see how Walmart, the world's largest retailer,  makes money on its discounted prescription drug program but apparently it does because they are expanding the program to offer 90 day supplies for $10 and to include several drugs for women to treat breast cancer and hormone  deficiency.

They will also lower the price of more than 1000 over-the-counter drugs.

Already Wal-Mart in less than 2 years has saved customers more than $1 billion.

This is only good.

Said CEO Bill Simon,

"We're in business to make money,"

"Go out and make a bunch of money"

Not many commencement speakers give away such advice, so it's a breath of fresh air to read a  commencement address by P.J. O'Rourke

Go out and make a bunch of money.
--
There's nothing the matter with honest moneymaking. Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino's box. In a free society, with the rule of law and property rights, no one loses when someone else gets rich.
--

Don't chain yourself to a redwood tree. Instead, be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. No matter how much you cheat the IRS, you'll still end up paying $100,000 in property, sales and excise taxes. That's $100,000 to schools, sewers, roads, firefighters and police. You'll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good?

Slow Medicine

Slow medicine encourages less aggressive and less costly care at the end of life reports the New York Times in For the elderly, being heard about life's end.

Grounded in research at the Dartmouth Medical School, slow medicine encourages physicians to put on the brakes when considering care that may have high risks and limited rewards for the elderly, and it educates patients and families how to push back against emergency room trips and hospitalizations designed for those with treatable illnesses, not the inevitable erosion of advanced age.

Slow medicine, which shares with hospice care the goal of comfort rather than cure, is increasingly available in nursing homes, but for those living at home or in assisted living, a medical scare usually prompts a call to 911, with little opportunity to choose otherwise.
--

The chief medical officer at U.C.L.A., Dr. Tom Rosenthal, said that aggressive treatment for the elderly at acute care hospitals can be “inhumane,” and that once a patient and family were drawn into that system, “it’s really hard to pull back from it.”

“The culture has a built-in bias that everything that can be done will be done,” Dr. Rosenthal said, adding that the pace of a hospital also discourages “real heart-to-heart discussions.”

Beginning that conversation earlier, as they do at Kendal, he said, “sounds like fundamentally the right way to practice.”

That means explaining that elderly people are rarely saved from cardiac arrest by CPR, or advising women with broken hips that they may never walk again, with or without surgery, unless they can stand physical therapy.
--

Some of those most in tune with slow medicine are the adult children who watch a parent’s daily decline. Suzanne Brian, for one, was grateful that her father, then 88 and debilitated by congestive heart failure, was able to stop medications to end his life.

“It wasn’t ‘Oh, you have to do this or do that,’ “ Ms. Brian said. “It was my father’s choice. He could have changed his mind at any time. They slowly weaned him from the meds and he was comfortable the whole time. All he wanted was honor and dignity, and that’s what he got.”

"Why can't people just see the best in things?"

A wonderful story about a 18 year-old boy, struck with a terminal cancer,  who is wise beyond his years. 

John Challis.

Teen is running out of innings, but the game still isn't over.

After the walk, John addressed the crowd.

"He spoke from his heart," Mr. Wetzel, the coach, said. "He said, 'I've got two options. I know I'm going to die, so I can either sit at home and feel sorry, or I could spread my message to everybody to live life to the fullest and help those in need.' After hearing that, I don't know if there were many people not crying."

Later in an interview he was asked where he gained his wisdom.

Through cancer.

"They say it takes a special person to realize this kind of stuff," he said. "I don't know if I'm special, but it wasn't hard for me. It's just my mind-set. A situation is what you make of it. Not what it makes of you."
-
"I guess I can see why people see me as an inspiration," he said. "But why do people think it's so hard to see things the way I do? All I'm doing is making the best of a situation."

John then raises his voice.

"Why can't people just see the best in things? It gets you so much further in life. It's always negative this and negative that. That's all you see and hear."
--

Through his own thoughts and through his deep Catholic beliefs, John believes he has "figured it out." He answers questions with maturity, courage and dignity, traits that have become his trademarks.

The Diaries of Cats and Dogs

I meant to post this last week, so you may have already see it.  From Good Eats

The Dog's Diary

  8:00 am - Dog food! My favorite thing!
  9:30 am - A car ride! My favorite thing!
  9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favorite thing!
10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!
12:00 pm - Milk bones! My favorite thing!
  1:00 pm - Played in the yard! My favorite thing!
  3:00 pm - Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!
  5:00 pm - Dinner! My favorite thing!
  7:00 pm - Got to play ball! My favorite thing!
  8:00 pm - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!
11:00 pm - Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!

The Cat's Diary

Day 983 of My Captivity

    My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets. Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength.

    The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape. In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet. Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates my capabilities. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a "good little hunter" I am. Bastards!

    There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of "allergies." I must learn what this means, and how to use it to my advantage.

    Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow, but at the top of the stairs.

    I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches. The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released, and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded. The bird must be an informant. I observe him communicate with the guards regularly. I am certain that he reports my every move. My captors have arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe. For now ...

Lessons in Manliness

There's a fine, new-to-me blog on  The Art of Manliness where lessons in manliness are next to practical tips like Nine ways to start a fire without matches.   

When all else fails, a coke can and bar of  chocolate will do

Some like John McCain need no lessons but can teach some.  Of course, he'll never do it and so it rests on others to tell. 

Mr. Day relayed to me one of the stories Americans should hear. It involves what happened to him after escaping from a North Vietnamese prison during the war. When he was recaptured, a Vietnamese captor broke his arm and said, "I told you I would make you a cripple."

The break was designed to shatter Mr. Day's will. He had survived in prison on the hope that one day he would return to the United States and be able to fly again. To kill that hope, the Vietnamese left part of a bone sticking out of his arm, and put him in a misshapen cast. This was done so that the arm would heal at "a goofy angle," as Mr. Day explained. Had it done so, he never would have flown again.

But it didn't heal that way because of John McCain. Risking severe punishment, Messrs. McCain and Day collected pieces of bamboo in the prison courtyard to use as a splint. Mr. McCain put Mr. Day on the floor of their cell and, using his foot, jerked the broken bone into place. Then, using strips from the bandage on his own wounded leg and the bamboo, he put Mr. Day's splint in place.

Years later, Air Force surgeons examined Mr. Day and complimented the treatment he'd gotten from his captors. Mr. Day corrected them. It was Dr. McCain who deserved the credit. Mr. Day went on to fly again.

Self-focused or other-focused lives

Jennifer F has written a remarkable post that may cause you to reconsider your world view

All of my scattered thoughts on the subject were brought into relief the other day when I had a conversation with an immediate family member (whom I don't want to identify directly). He seemed depressed and uneasy about something, and when I asked him why he said it was about his retirement account. He's deeply distressed that he won't have enough money to afford anything other than a government-run nursing home in his old age. I reminded him that my husband and I would love for him to move in with us when it gets to the point that he doesn't feel comfortable living on his own. We weren't even talking about a situation where he might need intensive medical care, yet he flatly refused to even consider the notion.

"I would never do that to you," he said. "I would never have you put your life on hold like that."

We've had this conversation many times before, yet this time, the first since my conversion to Christianity, I was hit by just what a profoundly sad worldview this reflects. I've always wanted this family member to live with us when he can no longer live on his own, and he's always refused on the same grounds. That part is nothing new. Yet this time I saw clearly that the situation goes beyond an unfortunate refusal of help: it reflects a worldview in which well-meaning people like my relative believe that the best thing they can do for their loved-ones is to not burden them with their presence, where the very meaning of life has been twisted to suck love out of the world.
--
It leads us to believe that if we were ever to lose our self-sufficiency, our presence would not just be an annoyance but would in fact prevent our loved-ones from fulfilling their very purpose in life.

When I compare my life with the self-focused worldview to my life with the other-focused worldview, the difference is striking. Not that I am anywhere near some saint-like level of always seeking to serve others before myself, but simply understanding that that is the goal, that my own life isn't about me, has changed everything. It's counter-intuitive, it requires sacrifice, and it isn't always the most comfortable path. But it is clear that, truly, this is how we were designed to live. After all these years of trying it my way, it's like I'm finally operating my life according to the instruction manual. And it is ultimately a manual for how to live a life of love, written by he who is Love itself.

Is Vitamin D too good to be true?

Apparently not if you listen to the scientists.  Vitamin D could
prevent cancer, heart disease and tuberculosis, preserve bones, and thwart autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile diabetes.
--
Just this month, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a special supplement on Vitamin D highlighting widespread deficiencies "in various populations throughout the world, including 'healthy' people in developed countries where it was thought that Vitamin D deficiency was obsolete."


In March, Picciano chaired a session on Vitamin D at the Experimental Biology annual meeting, one of the largest gatherings of scientists in the world. Designed to pinpoint gaps in knowledge, the session was the second meeting on Vitamin D sponsored by the ODS in a year. In the wake of emerging positive results, the National Cancer Institute gathered scientists to review the nutrient's ability to reduce cancer risk, particularly of the breast, colon, prostate and lung. And last fall, the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality issued an evidence-based review of Vitamin D that found it to be key for bone health at all ages, including in the prevention of falls in the elderly.

"There are a lot of benefits to Vitamin D that have surfaced in the last 20 years," notes Hector DeLuca, a University of Wisconsin biochemist who has been a pioneer in Vitamin D research.

Normally, we'd get our vitamin D from the sun, but now, given serious health and vanity concerns about damage to our skin, we take supplements.

Next time you go to the doctor, get your vitamin D level checked.  You may be surprised to learn that you too are deficient as are most adults in the U.S.

Lip Gloss Danger

You may think that your lip gloss offers a protective barrier against the sun, but experts say Lip gloss can invite skin cancer.

“These lip glosses can make more of the light rays penetrate directly through the skin instead of getting reflected off of the skin’s surface,” says Dr. Christine Brown, a dermatologist at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.
--

It's the moisture in lip gloss that's to blame, says Dr. Bruce Robinson, a Manhattan dermatologist. Your lips are equipped with a protective outer layer, but the hydration of a lip gloss "kind of smooshes that down," Robinson says. Once that outer layer is effectively squashed, it's easier for UV rays to penetrate deeper into the skin.

"Instead of having to travel through that thicker layer, it's more condensed," Robinson says. "So the UV rays reach are reaching deeper layers of epidermis and dermis because you don't have this forcefield."
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“Take a magnifying glass and put it over your lips,” Robinson says. When you apply lip gloss and go out in the sun, “that’s essentially what you’re doing.”

Just make sure your lip gloss or lip balm has SPF.

Gen Y broke

Are 20 and 30 somethings in a financial mess?

Emma Johnson writes "Is it because we're dumb, arrogant or simply uneducated?"

Why Gen Y is broke

[S]tats indicate our generation's financial literacy is abysmal, with personal finances to match. Only 52% of high school seniors passed a recent national financial literacy test, meaning adults entering the work force do not know enough about basic budgeting, interest rates or taxes to make sound decisions for their own lives.
--

Bob Manning, author of "Credit Card Nation" and professor of consumer financial services at Rochester Institute of Technology, says these problems are compounded by powerful cultural forces...,
"This generation feels that somehow or another they're going to figure out some technological advancement that's going to get them out of their financial troubles and outsmart the market," says Manning,

* The median credit-card debt of low- and middle-income people aged 18 to 34 is $8,200.
* The average college debt for recent grads is more than $20,000 and rising.
* People between the ages of 25 and 34 make up 22.7% of all U.S. bankruptcies (but just 14% of the population at large), according to a recent report.

Because it is not instinctual, financial literacy is a life skill that must be taught and developed with each generation.

Left ear for love

The way to a man's heart?  Through his left ear

New research suggests that declarations of love, jokes, or words of anger are best remembered when they are heard through the left ear, while instructions, directions and non-emotional messages have more impact on the right side.

It is all to do with how our brains process information. Although the left and right hemispheres, or sides, of the brain are similar structures, they have specialised functions. The left side, it is suggested, is more logic-based and dominant, while the right is the more imaginative side, more visual, intuitive, emotional and spatially aware. Because the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, the left ear has been shown in some research to be the route to the emotional side of the brain, and the right ear to the non-emotional, logical side.

The news that left and right ears process sound differently is not so new.  A 2004 article in Science found that the left ear of a baby was more attuned to music and the right better at picking up speech-like sounds.

Speak to my right ear, sing to my left

Locked in a cellar for 24 years

A horrifying story of the Austrian man who locked his daughter in a cellar for 24 years, repeatedly raping her and fathering seven children by her.

Three of her children were adopted by her father and three remained locked in the cellar with their mother and had never seen sunlight until days ago.  The body of the seventh, a twin who died at birth, was burned by the father in an oven.

His wife insists she knew nothing about it.

The daughter, now 42, agreed to talk to authorities only after she was promised she would not have to see her  father again and her children would be protected.

In the face of such evil, one can only pray for the poor woman and her children.

UPDATE: Details from this unspeakable crime emerge

One police officer described seeing Elisabeth after she gained freedom: "She has been so starved of sunlight that her skin and hair were pure white and she had to shield her eyes from the light. She has been left badly nourished. It may take months and years for her to recover."

Preaching Up

By preaching up, not down, by paying us the compliment of making serious, sustained arguments, the Pope brought America not just new perceptions but challenging ideas as well writes George Weigel

Bawer on creeping sharia

Bruce Bawer collects all too many examples of how Westerners are acquiescing to 'creeping sharia' in An Anatomy of Surrender.

Westerners have begun, in other words, to internalize the strictures of sharia, and thus implicitly to accept the deferential status of dhimmis—infidels living in Muslim societies.
--
Press acquiescence to Muslim demands and threats is endemic.

From the BBC to the lack of coverage of the astounding result in the 2007 Pew poll of American Muslims aged 18-29 that showed 20% of them supported suicide bombing to the 'affectionate' reporting of a Brooklyn Iman, Reda Shata, by a New York Times reporter who focused on sympathetic personal details, only mentioning
in passing that Shata didn’t speak English, refused to shake women’s hands, wanted to forbid music, and supported Hamas and suicide bombing.
--
Many free people, alas, have become so accustomed to freedom, and to the comfortable position of not having to stand up for it, that they’re incapable of defending it when it’s imperiled—or even, in many cases, of recognizing that it is imperiled.

What are you doing to preserve and pass on the freedoms given you?   

Going Bald

A not-bad excuse NOT to go to the gym.

Musclemen who pump iron are more likely to go bald, scientists warn.

That is unless you think bald men are more intelligent, sexier and more masculine as well as cooler in the summer.

A few thoughts on the Pope

It seems as if I've not been blogging much about the Pope's visit to America, but that 's not really true. I've just been reading blog posts not writing them.

I was riveted to the television for the entire visit not wanting to miss a moment or a word of what he said. I downloaded all his speeches so I could read them and ponder them.  Every excited expectation was met and then some as the Pope showed in every action, word and gesture, his purpose to spread Christ's hope and his personal humility.  Maybe the most important event was one we never saw,  The Healing in the Chapel when Pope Benedict became the healing pastor to five victims of the clerical abuse scandal.  The sight of the Pope walking down the deep pit of Ground Zero to fall to his knees and pray for minutes in silence was the most moving.

I spent two days on and off writing a wrap-up post with lots of links and thanks to the people, reporters and bloggers who wrote so much better than I could and with great feeling about each of the Papal events.

Then I lost the entire post.  So here's a much shorter recreated post to give special thanks to
The Anchoress
Whispers in the Loggia
Sissy Willis
Miss Kelly
The Deacon's Bench

Pope 2008
and all the members of  Papal Discussion blog at the New York Times.

What struck me and what I haven't seen discussed anywhere is what a profoundly counter-cultural moment in time it was.    We are so used to a steady media diet of war, murder, terrorist attacks, fears, hatred, sex, politics and celebrity stories, that the six days when the media allowed us to see the Pope at the White House and the UN along with the splendor and beauty of the Catholic Mass were astonishing.

The contrast between the bleakness of most of what we see and the power of peace and love the Pope brought to our shores could not be greater.  The contrast between the happiness of the huge crowds waiting for hours to see the Pope and the crowds at anti-war rallies or San Francisco rallies could not be greater.  The clarity, intelligence and moral seriousness of the Pope's addresses contrasted sharply with the political speeches we are used to.  We are not used to dignity, reverence and joy as part of our media diet. 

Some seeds sown by Pope Benedict will flourish immediately, others may not be evident for months, even years.  But grow they will.  In a future full of hope, many will point to this visit as changing their lives.

"If you eat bananas, you'll have a boy"

The old wives tale has some truth behind it.

Mom's diet  may play role in whether baby is boy or girl

Having a hearty appetite, eating potassium-rich foods including bananas, and not skipping breakfast all seemed to raise the odds of having a boy.

Lie older

Danielle Crittenden has fine advice on how to age without pressure.

In sum: Add on 5 years to your real age  and people will say how great you look.

Doing Good with Menstrual Blood

If this is true, it's astonishing.

Menstrual  Blood: A Valuable Source of Multipotential Stem Cells
Researchers seeking new and more abundant sources of stem cells for use in regenerative medicine have identified a potentially unlimited, noncontroversial, easily collectable, and inexpensive source -- menstrual blood.
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Stromal stem cells derived from menstrual blood exhibit stem cell properties, such as the capacity for self-renewal and multipotency," said Amit N. Patel, MD, MS, Director of Cardiac Cell Therapy at the University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine. "Uterine stromal cells have similar multipotent markers found in bone marrow stem cells and originate in part from bone marrow."

A day later, a Japanese study shows that cells from menstrual blood may be useful in repairing heart damage.

The success rate is 100 times higher than the 0.2 to 0.3 percent for stem cells taken from human bone marrow, researcher Shunichiro Miyoshi, a cardiologist at Keio University's school of medicine, told French news agency AFP.

There's even a company that's begun menstrual blood banking!

It wasn't so long ago that the public and scientific consensus was that stem cells could only be harvested from human embryos. 

I'm not the only one who remembers the hysteria that surrounded President  Bush's decision not to allow federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. 

Charles Krauthammer does in Technology Vindicates Morality.    So does the Anchoress who reminds us that embryonic stem cells have produced nightmarish results in the lab and never had a successful application.

So far there have been 73 successful treatments using adult stem cells and none for embryonic stem cells.

Doing good by doing no harm works.