Month: April 2022

Adopting a Vegan Diet

Rainforests are not merely the metaphorical lungs of the planet; they literally convert carbon emissions to oxygen. Burning the Amazon rainforest to scorched earth to provide feeding lots for cows can be compared to allowing a chain-smoker to direct nicotine into your lungs. Like burning live carrots on a bbq grate? No. It is not.

Yesterday, I encountered a baconist on Facebook who suggested these very points. By this morning, my response had been deleted. So I shall post my thoughts on this blog.

Pigs and cows are fellow mammals who possess spinal columns and complex nervous systems. They have the same sets of organs that they use to see the world, reflect upon it, experience the same emotions, and feel inflicted pain. Their reproductive systems are quite similar. Their eyes and ears work in the same way that mammals have employed since the Cambrian Explosion 541 million years ago.

Animals with eyes that developed in that Cambrian Explosion do not want to live in the squalor of a factory farm, to live short lives, to die violent deaths, to find out they are wanted because a supermarket scanner beeps when each dead animal’s product code is recognized. Under separate cover, I have suggested that the familiar beep be replaced by a scream. Specifically, the kind of scream it makes upon completion of its time in the slaughterhouse. At the kill station.

Currently, the non-mammal “food” animals eaten by discerning foodies with demanding palates are chicken and fish. These are touted as economical alternatives to “beef and pork.” Fish provide essential oils that you cannot obtain otherwise unless you happen to know about flaxseed oil. The center of a meal must be a dead animal in our society.

From Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary

Speaking now of our educational foundations, why are school field trips never scheduled at the local abattoir? If bacon, another euphemism, defines the so-called most important meal of the day why does it not seem proper to schedule regular school trips to a slaughterhouse? See it happening firsthand, such that you may understand and learn that a homo sapiens’ personal predilection must never be associated with the blood and death of billions of land animals every year and trillions of fish per year. If only to exorcise something I learned in the Catholic educational system — a meatless Friday is canonically defined as a day when you eat no cows, no pigs, and no chickens. Fish must then have more in common with carrots. A healthy mind remains healthy when it questions presumed authorities. A fish has eyes that see in much the same manner as we do, but definitions can be heartlessly arbitrary. Does a fish have eyes in the way that a potato has eyes? An eye for an eye?

Eat these on meatless Fridays? Something from the Cambrian Explosion?

Critical thinking is something that gets thoroughly discouraged in Western society. Take a deliberate look at our food-processing system and ask yourself if it is a morally healthy and God-fearing kind of thing. You don’t need to visit a slaughterhouse to know what happens there, but the distance from the deadly source numbs your mind into submission at a critical level. Take a field trip to your local Kroger, the largest supermarket in the United States, and take a close look at every place where dead animals are to be found. Do not simply look at the bloody slabs wrapped in plastic on styrofoam trays. Look at the cans and the boxes and the frozen “foods.” Beeps at the checkout lanes determine if a reorder gets cut for more “products” from the slaughterhouse.

A final thought: slaughterhouses pay low wages to those whom we deem illegal. They dare not question the death-dealing, and no one applies for a job there. They do it because you want to continue to call the fellow souls that die there by a wholesome name: MEAT.

Thanks for reading.

Is Limiting Carbon Emissions a Crime?

This might become criminal activity when six of the nine SCOTUS judges follow through with their opinion of 2.28.2022. Fossil-fuel extractors lose business whenever power plants switch to providers of sustainable energy. This is what happens if you vote conservatives into office. However, cretins such as Mitch McConnell use their political might to keep progressive candidates from even receiving a Senate hearing, such was the case when Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland for consideration. McConnell kept Garland from a single word of consideration for the entire 11 months remaining before Obama left office. DJ Trump installed three hand-picked by the hard-nosed and highly conservative Federalist Society, each has proven their loyalty to highly conservative supporters who gifted them with a rubber stamp.

Checks and Balances

Climate change is not the stuff of opinion, it is happening precisely as determined by the scientific method, a process that looks for flaws in a hypothesis at every stage before accepting a hypothesis as a working theory. Compare this to a process that props up untenable arguments in a way that builds a house of cards. Expect a collapse and refuse to learn from past bad decisions.

Time is not on the side of those who get to witness the damage caused by global warming. Each fraction of 1.5 Celsius degrees brings the destruction already discovered in 1973 when it could have been addressed with ease. Now, three decades later, we have collectively squandered precious time. And we have done so with abandon. Closing your eyes and ears, shutting your mouth, does not turn opinions into facts.

Math and science are not strong points in the American educational system, they have become weak points that require us to fill those weak spots with students from elsewhere on the planet. How many Americans do you see in University math classes?

We are the proverbial frogs waiting for the slowly warming pot of water to suddenly cool. Unfortunately, the lid is on the pot and we cannot jump out. Our entire planet is becoming that pot of boiling water and we are very slowly recognizing that planet B is a fictional orb. Six of nine Supreme Court justices live in a fairy tale land where bad moves do not have consequences. Sadly, Earth’s entire ecosystem might suffer from those consequences.

Thanks for reading.

Listening to Wynn Bruce

The 6-3 decision by the Supreme Court conservative majority on February 28, 2022, questioned the legality of limiting carbon emissions to address climate catastrophe. Certainly, Wynn bruce chose self-immolation by fire on Earth Day 2022 at the steps of a conservative-led court to send a critically important message to anyone who would listen. I am listening to Wynn Bruce and am devoting this post to his life-affirming decision. This was a call to all, reminding us that we collectively choose to ignore impending doom’s certainty. This was not a suicide, this was a signal to each of us that inaction condemns this planet to certain extinction. This is not rhetorical excess, the fuse has already been lit.

By 1973, the fossil-fuel industry had already known that catastrophic climate change was a scientifically proven fact in the face of inaction; however, the scientists working from within the fossil-fuel juggernauts were silenced before this information could be made available. Positions of power among corporations leading the Fortune 10 would lose profits if truths were told. In 1973, a gradual change could have allowed all involved parties to move carefully and deliberately over several decades to prevent what is now imminent. The 11th hour has passed. History will not judge us kindly for our inaction, each of us needs to accept the responsibility for setting the Earth on fire. Bruce Wynn knew this, you should too. Self-immolators are prophets.

Capitalism has no mechanism for preventing global warming. Our billionaire class would never contribute the funds. The planet’s richest man has just spent 44 billion dollars in cash to own a social-media diversion, our short attention span prefers diversion. Do not expect him to spend a fraction of that cash to reduce carbon emissions. Even if he were inclined to lean in that direction, the highly conservative Supreme Court does not speak for the future generations who will be incinerated by proxy.

Civics is an obsolete word. In 1973, it could still find currency among an educated public and an enlightened electorate. Civic responsibility is as solidly demeaned as the despised word “woke.” Something to smirk about on what is now the social outlet owned by the planet’s most wealthy asshole. Twitter is a place to play your fiddle while waiting for mega deaths to become burning banalities. A 6-3 majority at the Supreme Court of the world’s most influential indecision makers assures that those of us who appreciate the caliber of Bruce Wynn’s character are doomed to silence. Civics is as dead as our future generations.

I do not mince words, nor do I wish to fiddle among Neros.

Thanks for reading.

Supertramp: an appreciation


Here I am with a third reflection on Rock Music, mostly bands founded in the 1970s. There is a thread that runs through the independent individuals behind these accounts I write, something that goes a bit beyond words provided by a DJ announcing a song on the radio.

Founder Roger Hodgson



How can it happen that an important rock group, Supertramp, has not yet been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? I don’t expect the Archies to get there first, but I do not understand how music with such a unique character in sound can be so quickly forgotten. The last attempt to get the ‘tramp nominated was in 2017, so I am honoring them by dedicating a blog to their incomparable songs and hoping that it makes an impression on a reader or three. Perhaps someone at the Hall of Fame reads this blog and gets the gears moving up there in Cleveland, OH.

Breakfast in America icon

The genius behind Supertramp may be traced to two founding members: Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies. Speaking of the name Davies, the band’s name comes from a 1910 novel that you can access on the internet: The Autobiography of a Supertramp. Noted here in case your interest has been piqued by the mention of this 110-year-old piece of fiction.

Hodgson wrote and composed most of the songs, he gave the group its defining character, in my humble opinion. Davies provided a personal touch of his own, but these two musicians drifted apart to different geographies and to personal predilections. Roger Hodgson continues to appear at concerts; fortunately, these are readily available on YouTube. There haven’t been many days that go by without my revisiting some of their performances. Hodgson is the singer and composer playing the piano on stage. A few musical instruments used in each performance gives the production a unique sound that has become a trademark to the ear, an instant connection.

Band member John Helliwell worked the instruments to arrive at the distinctive sounds in such works as the Logical Song. and Take the Long Way Home using the harmonica (2:01 in) and a saxophone (4:07 in).

Hoping you enjoyed this little background piece from a big fan of their work.

And, thanks for reading.

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